Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

Finally flying into a rage, the mother suddenly hurled the half-shaved cork at the tatami and shrieked, “You brat…!” “You brazen little brat, yammerin’ ‘bout school this, school that!” “Can’t ya see it’s pourin’ out?!” “Skip today!” “I ain’t skippin’ school!”

Tomiji retreated into the cramped kitchen and retorted like that. He rattled around there awhile before sliding out through the torn shoji screen, his ashen face breaking into a grin―“Hey Mom, got my lunch packed—ain’t no reason to skip now. Rain don’t scare me one bit.” “What?!” “You earthquake brat―” the mother snarled venomously, but immediately abandoned that approach and launched into sarcasm instead. Even as she thought, “A parent shouldn’t say such things to their child―” she couldn’t stop herself from saying it.

“Then go be the school’s child forever, Tomiji! Don’t you dare come back!” The mother stared fixedly at her son’s grimy face as he began to waver. “Tomiji—every bit o’ trouble’s been piled on me since the day I first laid eyes on that nasty mug o’ yours…! If you never came back—oh, how much lighter d’you think my load’d be?!”

When told this, the child’s earlier courage instantly crumbled, and he stood there dumbfounded.

He knew since dawn that the rain was pouring down, but when that time came, the child promptly abandoned the detested task. The home-based piecework of cork-shaving forced on him from daybreak had thoroughly rotted his spirit. And Tomiji earnestly wanted to go to school. It wasn’t some noble desire to study that drove him—the spacious school simply felt a hundred times more comfortable than this gloomy tenement. With a vague sense of unbearable frustration toward the constant fights between his bedridden father and mother working herself to death through cork-shaving—but finding his mother’s fierceness most terrifying—Tomiji clutched the bag with its torn strap tightly under his arm and reluctantly looked at his father in situations like these. His father lay stretched out on the floor, his bearded face resembling the crucified Christ Tomiji had once seen at school, only his eyes emitting an unnervingly pale light. Tomiji hastily averted his gaze from those wildly darting eyes to the wall. There, pasted in accordance with the custom of patients who couldn’t rely on medicine turning to deities, was a poster of Fudō Myōō.

“What’s school even good for—” The mother’s voice abruptly softened. “Hey Tomiji, school’ll only make ya lose out without gettin’ a single cent out of it. Better help your mom with her work, yeah? Do that an’ I’ll take ya to Asakusa next time.” “If you haven’t even finished elementary school,” the father interjected, “you can’t even get ’prenticed nowhere these days.” Tomiji, relieved, looked at his mother. She wrinkled her nose like she wasn’t about to budge an inch.

“Look—if I get healthy again, I’ll manage somehow. The kid’s done nothin’ wrong—least you can do is let ’im go to school.” “I’m sick of your dramatic talk, got it? You should hurry up and sort yourself out too.” Having said that, the mother shot a glance at her husband, then snapped at Tomiji. “Get going already, you disgusting brat―”

Tomiji Kashiwabara, clutching his schoolbag in his right hand and gripping the umbrella handle with his left, dashed out into the spitting rain. The main street had become a coursing river. The bearded traffic officer bundled in a raincoat protected school-bound children from automobiles and trams, then beamed at their salutes.

The reinforced concrete elementary school, built like a fortress, loomed jarringly conspicuous in the downtown area that flooded spectacularly on rainy days. This entire area had been reduced to ashes by the earthquake disaster a decade prior. The survivors had come scrambling back, but they now had to live in houses even more precarious than before. Only the elementary school—as befitting government work—stood completed in truly grand form. For example, even on rainy days like this, it boasted lighting facilities designed to protect the children’s eyesight. And so every last interior wall had been painted stark white. Countless children were once again clamoring as they were sucked into the building this morning. Swinging umbrellas, slapping rubber-coated raincoats—the entranceway trembled under their clamor. The children were somehow happy to do that. However, the teachers watched this commotion with increasingly sullen expressions. Looking utterly exhausted from early morning, they stood vacantly with both hands thrust deep into their trouser pockets. A child who came running collided with them, jolted in surprise, then abruptly straightened up and trudged into the white-walled classroom.

The direct management of this building—along with the responsibility of how to make compulsory education effective—rested entirely on the shoulders of its principal with his monthly salary of two hundred yen. This position—attained only after long years of effort by a man whose sole credential was graduating from Normal School—was the result of such strenuous labor that it thinned his white hair and even risked making his arms appear perpetually crooked unless he constantly kept them folded behind his back defensively. Thinking of this, he felt his shoulders stiffen under the weight of his burden. But he too—as one of the Imperial Capital’s foremost principals—clung to this final hope: to at least attain the maximum salary of 240 yen. To achieve this, above all else—he thought, shaking his head—he must first keep the school building immaculate for as long as he drew breath. Needless to say, even educational inspectors first noticed this school building—and only afterward, with the dexterity of wielding both sides of a shield, skillfully adopted new educational facilities—.

The principal invariably delivered this admonishment during morning assemblies where students were gathered.

“Everyone—you are model students who scrupulously follow your teachers’ instructions, and indeed model Japanese subjects.” “Therefore, all of you striving to improve our nation must remember to improve this school as well.” “This school is praised for its immaculate cleanliness—how delightful that this stems from your diligent scrubbing! With so many commendable pupils who adore cleaning among us—is that not splendid?” “Shan’t our institution grow ever cleaner than when first constructed?” “You grasp this… Ah! Those who comprehend—raise your hands.”

The hands of the children filling the assembly hall all at once swayed above their heads. The Principal creased the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and cast a furtive glance at the surrounding walls. The children’s faces swiftly turned in response. At that moment, this aging Principal showed an unreservedly satisfied smile and raised his voice to shout, "Very well——"

“Now then, everyone, lower your hands. Alright——”

“However—” The Principal stopped in front of the staff room. The teachers who had been trailing gloomily in a line startled and turned to look at his face. He then scurried up to Sugimoto and tapped his shoulder. “Mr.—” “Your class requires special attention—they may have raised their hands like everyone else, but that low-ability group you’re in charge of wasn’t listening to a word I said!”

At exactly 9:00 AM, the entranceway doors were closed by the janitor’s hand—all but one, which was left half-open like a passageway. The child who was about to be late came rushing in wearing a look of fear. Tomiji Kashiwabara clutched his schoolbag, umbrella, and muddy wooden clogs with broken straps all together to his chest. The janitor, who had been washing the mud-covered floor, clicked his tongue in irritation and snarled at him, “Brat... Wh-what’s with those filthy feet...?” Tomiji flinched in surprise, but by then he was already being dragged by the collar to the foot-washing area. “Th-that—” the janitor barked. “Still got a whole heap stuck to your heels—what’s with your legs, huh? Do ya even take a proper bath once a month or what?”

“I’ve got my lunch today, see?” Tomiji blurted out, bursting with irrepressible joy as he addressed the janitor nonchalantly. “You think I’m lyin’? Should I show ya?” “Huh?”

The burly janitor effortlessly carried the child like a bundle to the entrance, then turned away from the homeroom teacher standing there and addressed him. “Good grief, Mr. Sugimoto, what a disgustin’ kid… This brat…” Sugimoto clasped Tomiji’s chilled cheeks between his lukewarm palms. The child timidly looked up at him from under his lowered eyelids. The pointed chin tilting upward was framed by a jet-black beard that reached his cheeks, while behind glasses, black pupils stared intently. Tomiji finally realized this was his homeroom teacher. Then he smiled—exposing purple gums—and promptly began speaking.

“I’ve got my lunch today, Teacher! At my house, yesterday... or whenever, we bought this much rice from the ward office, and then—hey Teacher—” “I see——” Sugimoto replied, urging the child—who still seemed eager to say more—up the stairs. “I’ll hear the rest later. Everyone in the classroom must be worn out from waiting by now.” Sugimoto was in charge of nearly forty children like this—ones radiating with such simple joy they couldn’t keep still. Even though they were fourth-year elementary students—and thus this class had been organized as a new educational facility for low-ability children. For they too—ostensibly to bring their grades closer to those of regular children, or failing that, to provide them with vocational training as far as possible—though that was all well and good, wasn’t this segregated group merely being branded as nuisances, as unnecessary? Or perhaps under the pretense of managing the unmanageable, they were in truth………………… scheming to smash them entirely—Sugimoto had struggled desperately to make these children ordinary too, and now he recalled these months of futile efforts with visceral pain, violently shaking his head.

Sugimoto had no particular aspirations or aptitude for low-ability education. For him, that position had been assigned almost by chance. Anyone would naturally seek career advancement through easier assignments. Thus as the school year approached... certain teachers furtively visited the Principal's private residence. Without betraying these maneuvers, when the day arrived they were compelled to hear their classroom assignments. "No objections to this decision shall be tolerated—" declared the Principal, his rhetorical grip tightening on the teachers' throats as he delivered his edict with haughty finality, adding a perfunctory explanation: "—as this falls within my purview. In reaching this determination, I have exhaustively weighed both the individual qualities observed in each of you and the distinctive characteristics of every class." There stood Sugimoto—the youth who'd once resolved to pursue scholarship at all costs, yet whose family had been forced to plead tearfully for acquaintances' favors even regarding admission to a state-funded Normal School (he dwelled bitterly on that "even"). A father wheezing with chronic asthma and two young sisters—their entire survival depended on the mother alone. Whether it qualified as proper work remained dubious, but she hawked butterbur beans at dawn and udon noodle bundles at dusk. This petite woman—a hand towel draped over her head—would drag her grimy cart through back alleys, its bell jingling as she disappeared.—Having emerged from such circumstances, Sugimoto felt this child's rapturous joy over an occasional lunchbox pierce his chest like shrapnel. Only now did Sugimoto recognize his own suitability for overseeing this low-ability class. Then—as if Tomiji's stunted frame were an extension of his own flesh—he clamped the sodden boy beneath his arm and charged up two flights of stairs.

II

In the first period on Monday mornings, moral education class was uniformly allocated to every classroom. From the tightly packed square classroom of thirteen tsubo and some shaku, the sonorous recitation of the Imperial Rescript on Education overflowed into the hallway. The voices of the children said to be in the well-disciplined class repeated it in an extremely monotonous rhythm——

However, Sugimoto’s classroom at the edge of the third floor was seething with deafening noise. Even when the teacher appeared, they remained completely unfazed. On top of a desk, a small swordsman gripping a broom rolled his eyes and bellowed, “Denjiro Okochi here! Come at me!” as he glared fiercely in all directions. “Hey you! Why ain’t ya dead when I cut ya down?!” roared Denjiro Okochi from atop the desk, stamping his feet before suddenly walloping the child below. “Ow!” “If it hurts, die! At least pretend you’re dead!” “The hell you say?!” shouted the catcher, vaulting onto a desk as he began chasing Okochi. A cluster of children gathered beneath the blackboard began brawling over a single spinning top, and as the chalkboard eraser went flying, a billowing curtain of white chalk dust mushroomed into the air.

The older children who had been fidgeting at the back of the classroom finally remembered how they had to behave in front of the teacher. They first habitually clicked their tongues with “Tsk, tsk,” and finally shouted “You morons!” to issue warnings. “Teacher’s coming! Teacher’s…” Finally heeding the warning, the children begrudgingly acknowledged the teacher’s presence and, as if resigned to the situation’s inevitability, lumbered back to their seats. After a long while, the classroom fell into an uneasy silence; then the children stared at Sugimoto’s face and began to snicker.

“Teacher—moral education!” a child suddenly shouted. Sugimoto pulled a chair near the lectern, propped his chin on his hand, and surveyed the children. The windows were abundantly partitioned and the white walls reflected the light, so the children’s varied faces were overly bright in the vast emptiness, instead oppressively layered upon one another. Some sat with mouths agape staring vacantly at the ceiling; others squinted, shut, or rolled their eyes in restless circles; those with runny noses constantly dabbed at them with tongue tips—all superficially facing forward in a posture of awaiting the teacher’s next words, though in truth this was merely a habit drilled into them through years of school life. The low-ability children sat there vacantly, as befitted their label. The teacher too sat vacantly, taking in the children’s faces with a single glance.

“Teacher—” another child suddenly blurted out. “C’mon, let’s do moral education already, Teacher…” “Very well—moral education it is!” Hearing this, the children clattered their desk lids. They yanked out their flimsy textbooks. Some among them stomped their feet gleefully, chanting “Moral education! Moral education!” to improvised rhythms or whistling through teeth. Sugimoto flipped open his lesson plan book to find “Diligence” heading meticulous notes about a Mitsui family member’s wick-peddling career—even including the maxim “Diligence breeds success.” He’d pored over reference books just yesterday preparing these materials. But now, seeing these hollow-cheeked children before him, his efforts increasingly felt pathetic—until at last…………………………he snapped the book shut. One kid abruptly sprang upright.

“Teacher!” he shouted, clutching his crotch. “I gotta pee! I-I-I... I’m gonna wet myself!” One child’s urge to pee instantly spread to all the children. “Teacher, me too!” “Ah! I’m gonna lose it!” “If ya don’t let us go, we’re gonna leak everywhere!” “Me too!” Chanting in unison like that, they dashed out into the hallway. He had no choice but to let events take their course. Sugimoto’s ears rang hollowly as they grew distant; his throat parched. He stood vacantly.

The large-framed janitor, startled by the noise, burst in with a fierce glare; he kept shouting impatiently. The commotion from this classroom was disrupting other classes through the concrete walls. The janitor, who had been bellowing, looked around the classroom—now abruptly silenced by his own voice—and added awkwardly, “What’s goin’ on, Mr. Sugimoto? The principal’s fumin’, ain’t he—”

In the meantime, Sugimoto resolved once again to turn today’s moral education class into a storytelling session. The children who rejoiced at hearing “moral education, moral education” were also recalling the storytelling session that had been postponed to “next time” because of it. “Teacher—Hikozaemon!” a child urged. “Alright, Hikozaemon,” Sugimoto replied. At that signal, the children straightened their postures, and the sound of them gulping audibly was heard. The teacher, now utterly desperate, even began gesticulating wildly during a segment of the mock battle. Just as it reached its climax, a child sitting in the middle of the seats popped up again.

“Teacheeer… w-w-wait!”

“What is it? “Motoki—” But Takeo Motoki had already leapt from his seat and stood swiftly beneath the teacher’s nose. Sugimoto had grown thoroughly accustomed to such outlandish behavior. He ignored Motoki and continued speaking. The child, now at a loss, leaned against the teacher’s desk. From there, for a while, he gazed at the teacher’s quivering chin, and as he kept watching, a thread of drool dripped from the slack corner of his lips. Takeo Motoki dropped his head. He dipped his finger into the sea of drool that had pooled on the lectern and began drawing a haphazard picture, but before the drawing was finished, he suddenly remembered his own question. He could no longer contain himself. “Teacher!” he shouted at the top of his voice and suddenly clung to the teacher’s waist. Motoki continued shouting in one breath, “Was Hikozaemon Ōkubo’s wife really such a mean old hag?” while shaking the teacher’s hips with repeated “C’mon, c’mon!” The instant this happened, Sugimoto took a step back, trying to evade the child’s overly earnest question. Then Takeo Motoki flew into a rage and swung a punch with a meaty thud toward the teacher’s crotch.

“Hey—Teacher!”

Caught off guard, Sugimoto bent at the waist, covered his crotch with both hands, and tried to regain the breath that had momentarily stopped. At that comical posture, Takeo Motoki once again forgot his own question and continued to guffaw alone, eyes crinkling.

The classroom fell deathly silent—a rare occurrence. The forty faces lined up in rows were now drawn to this story with unusual intensity. Sugimoto, noticing his own ridiculous posture, looked around at the children. But their expressions merely demanded a response from this teacher. Sugimoto’s face flushed with shame. The wife of Ōkubo Hikozaemon—who had likely been dimly conjured up in the mind of Takeo Motoki with his peculiar disposition—struck a profound chord in the hearts of these children labeled as slow-witted. Pierced through by forty pairs of fiercely gleaming eyes, the face of the teacher, unable to provide an answer, gradually began to pale. Then Takeo Motoki began guffawing again, as if a dam had burst. The classroom’s tension broke apart all at once. Enveloped in the noise, Sugimoto somehow let out a sigh of relief, expelling the obstruction in his chest.

This time, Tsukahara, who had been by the window, stood up. He who spent all year fidgeting and glancing about bore the stamped trait of “chronic distractibility.” But at that moment, seized by sudden righteous fury, he flew at Takeo Motoki with flecks of spit spraying from his mouth. “Motoki, you idiot! There ain’t no wife for Hikozaemon Ōkubo! Shut your trap!” No sooner had Tsukahara roared this than his attention snapped toward the rain outside. The broad leaves of a Chinese parasol tree swayed below his gaze; beyond them lay a schoolyard turned gray and dulled by rain’s relentless spatter. When he shifted his eyes back to the teacher—there it was: a rare glint of tears surfacing in Yoshio Tsukahara’s bewildered black pupils.

“Teacher, in my house, see… my dad doesn’t have a wife.” “Y-you’re such an idiot—you!” Motoki shouted from beneath the teacher, waving both hands frantically before his nose as he vehemently denied. “Idiot! The wife in my house’s a hag! Tsukahara—! All grown-ups got wives, see? And you grown-ups—you only dote on your damn wives, I tell ya…” Tsukahara yanked up his own eyelids and retorted, “Bastard—! I’ll have Lord Hachiman curse you rotten—just you wait…………”

Without any order or connection, the children’s thoughts bubbled up one after another. However, beneath those terribly absurd shouts lay glimpses of their lives. People called them low-ability children, but through living alongside them, Sugimoto had come to see through the frothy surface—he couldn’t bring himself to bark commands like “Stop that! Quit it already!” Had Keisuke Kuji not mustered his trademark shrill voice from his seat by the corridor at that very moment—bursting out with a “Shut your traps! Cut it out!”—the two boys would have surely started brawling in their frenzy. Kuji—unusually neat in his serge uniform—continued with wide, darting eyes: “Umm... Teacher?” “Teacher, that Motoki guy—he went and scribbled weird pictures all over the walls.” “Saying stuff ’bout my house…… and then he fought Tsukahara earlier too—that Motoki did…”

Then the children’s eyes swayed like reeds and fixed on Kuji in unison. He was pleased to be noticed in that way. Puffing out his chest haughtily, he turned his body with exaggerated gravity and pointed resolutely at the white wall behind him.

“See—?” “Can you see it?” “He wrote it with a red pencil—look, you can see it, look!”

Guided by that pointing finger, Sugimoto began lumbering toward the wall. As he drew nearer, the graffiti gradually sharpened into focus. When the image finally registered as coherent artwork, a sudden chill crept down his spine, raising gooseflesh across his back. Struck by an inexplicable mix of dread and shame, he froze rigidly in place. The children too tensed up, breath caught in their throats. They suddenly recalled this wall's sacred status—how this sallow-faced teacher might erupt in fury over its defilement. Years of institutional conditioning left them petrified by formless terror. Yet Sugimoto found himself fighting tears instead. "Motoki—" he called to the boy while still facing the wall. "You're... such a remarkable artist. So why does your schoolwork always..." His voice caught mid-sentence. The scrawlings had been drawn with a red pencil tip moistened by repeated licking... On the shin of the resolute-faced man…………………even that detail had been etched. Motoki crept timidly toward the teacher. "Hey! You!" he shouted, craning his neck to peer up at Sugimoto—who now gripped his own shoulder like a vise. Reading no anger in the teacher's expression, he blurted out, "Teacher—ain't I good at drawin'?" Sugimoto bit his lip, features contorting as if stifling sobs. Then Motoki seized the teacher's arm and pressed again: "Teacher—how's my drawin'? Huh?" But Sugimoto only blinked rapidly as he spoke.

“We have to erase this quick, Motoki—the Principal’ll give us hell.” When he heard that, he shouted “Whoa!” and jumped up. “Oh no—ah, oh no!”

At that lone voice, the entire classroom burst into commotion all at once. When they realized "Oh no," the thought that they had to erase it instinctively surfaced in their heads. Once that thought struck them, they couldn’t bear to stay still for another moment. The child who had tried rubbing chalk on it and wiped over it with a cloth started crying. Two or three children ran out to fetch water, clattering their buckets' bottoms.

The commotion shook the thick concrete walls once more, resounding through the entire school building. Yet here, everyone worked with desperate earnestness. Sugimoto threw off his jacket. He pressed the knife blade against the wall. White powder scattered down roughly, leaving behind dents where the concrete base turned rat-gray. Was it anger at this betrayal of their white ideal?—Sugimoto sweated from his brow in agitation, then grew even more irritated at the absurdity of his own exaggerated passion.

At that moment, as if doused with cold water, the noise suddenly vanished. Sugimoto looked frantically around him, startled as if someone had kicked away his pillow—and there, right before his nose, the stocky white-haired principal loomed.

“What do you think you’re doing?” the Principal asked. “The walls have to be kept pure white, you see—”

The Principal—who had narrowed his coldly suspicious eyes—cast a sweeping glance over the children now seated at their desks with feigned solemnity. Sugimoto followed his gaze to look around at the children himself and said, “Hey, everyone—” “The walls are important things, you know—” “Yeah, that’s right, they’re important,” declared Abe—the round-faced boy resembling a Fukusuke doll in the front row—as he sprang up and bobbed his oversized head like a mallet. The Principal’s face turned toward this and, with apparent satisfaction, narrowed his eyelids instantly. Then, as if he’d been waiting for just that moment, Abe clicked his tongue with a sharp “Tch!” “I’m gettin’ sick of this! Quit makin’ that weird face an’ glarin’ at me! Tch! How ridiculous!”

III From children who spouted such raw truths without a shred of fear, homeroom teacher Sugimoto grew desperate to erase the stigma of "low-ability" branded upon them. "If the intelligence testing that this elementary school prides itself on as a special facility were truly scientific," he thought, "then there would be no reason for the truths these children cry out to be scorned—" "Hey..." Sugimoto began aloud. "Answer exactly what you think without holding back." "What's your father's job?"

However, Chuichi Kawakami, who had been kept back alone after school until the very end, was already fidgeting nervously from that alone. At thirteen by traditional count—twelve years and five months in actual age—he was a fourth-year student in the standard curriculum who had been held back twice; a chronic repeater of grades. But from his father's perspective, he wanted desperately to do something—anything—for this child. "No matter what anyone says, I'm the one who truly knows this kid!" pleaded the father as he knelt on the school floor. "When he's home, he's sharp as a tack," the father pressed on, "but at school it's all Cs and Ds... Sure, our kind of brat ain't got no manners—but that's apples and oranges, ain't it Teacher?" "What with his filthy clothes and no money for drawing paper—then they go flunkin' him? It's downright criminal I tell ya." "I thought to myself—ain't no choice but get 'im into a proper school... Nearly broke my back gettin' that notice from the ward office! But hah! Finally got 'im into this fine place—c'mere Chu!" Here he yanked his son's hand—the boy shamefacedly fiddling with his kimono hem. "Lookit this palace of a school! You better bow proper and beg 'em right!" Yet despite enrolling with such resolve, Chuichi Kawakami had been immediately dumped into the low-ability group. The Principal—exercising his authority with a glance at the boy's grimy transfer papers—appeared in the classroom without ceremony and tried passing him to Sugimoto like handing off a parcel. Sugimoto glared indignantly at the Principal's face. Only then did the Principal unclasp his hands from behind his back and begin speaking while flapping them up and down. "We must conduct intelligence tests... I'm counting on you Sugimoto-kun." *Precisely because it was this child*—Sugimoto thought—*he wanted to overturn the Principal's slapdash "low-ability" label using that so-called Binet-Simon method.* If this was what passed for scientific measurement in modern experimental psychology— Sugimoto slammed the testing tools and papers onto the lectern. Placing his hand on the boy's head: "Hey Kawakami—" "What kind of work does your father do every day?" Though exhausted from his own day's labor, Sugimoto tensed until his body shook—staring at those cold-seeming lips lest he miss a syllable.

Chuichi Kawakami hunched his shoulders and tried as much as possible not to meet the teacher’s gaze. He gradually shifted his gaze toward the window. After school, the building now completely devoid of children fell utterly silent—and yet the sheer weight of that silence seemed to press against their ears. “Huh? “Kawakami?” The teacher pressed further for an answer as he too shifted his gaze toward the fading sunset colors beyond the window. Chuichi Kawakami frantically adjusted his kimono collar as if he’d made some decision and stared up at the teacher with a defiant glare.

“Let’s wrap this up quickly and head home,” said Sugimoto. The child rubbed his face with both palms and forced a grin. He had been ashamed—so why was he pressing so persistently? It was solely because occupation was believed to directly determine intelligence—and because that question headed the examination guidelines’ first item. Flustered, Sugimoto tried to retract it.

“If you don’t want to say…”

Chuichi Kawakami irritably cut him off mid-sentence and barked— “It’s a boat!”

“Boat?” “What kind of boat?” “Tch! Ya don’t get it?” Clicking his tongue, the boy squared his shoulders. Now committed to spilling everything, he glared straight at the teacher with hardened voice. “A boat’s a boat! “One that goes to Taiga and Shibaura! “I was pushin’ the rudder hard—me too—” Kawakami jutted out his thin lips, words tumbling faster now. “Don’tcha get it wrong—ain’t no mud scow. Proper cargo ship called Agemaru.” “But why ya askin’ like some cop?” Sugimoto blanched and crushed his half-smoked cigarette. “We’re honest folk,” Kawakami pressed. “Ain’t told one lie! Now gimme it back!”

“Does it pay well?!” Sugimoto tried to divert the conversation after saying that.

“Like hell it does!” Chuichi Kawakami furrowed his brows and immediately denied that. “We’re gettin’ pushed out by motorized boats—ain’t no work comin’ our way at all. There’s days we’re idle as hell, and even when we are, what’s the damn use? No jobs to be had. Dad’s sufferin’, and I—” Sugimoto could no longer bear to listen to the child’s words, now pouring forth with such eloquence. He realized the smell of dust and floor oil had become trapped and yanked the revolving window’s cord with a clatter. The reflection of the sunset broke there and brightened the painted panel. “Teacher, I ain’t got time to play like those town kids. That damn woman—Mom—ran off, see? ‘Cause the boat ain’t makin’ no money.” “Even if I said it wasn’t makin’ money…” The teacher walked around the lectern to hide his embarrassment and continued puffing away on his cigarette. This emaciated child—presumed to be a dropout and thus low-ability, handed over to his care—was now spouting words that flowed so effortlessly and struck straight to the heart. “Alright then—” Sugimoto turned his crimson face back toward the child and attempted to forcibly silence the mouth that still tried to keep wailing.

“Alright!” Sugimoto stomped heavily on the floor. “Alright! “Alright, I get it. Then—” Chuichi Kawakami, who had abruptly transformed into a failing student under his forceful momentum, hunched his neck like a turtle hatchling and poked out his slender tongue. He thought, Damn—but it was already too late. And without even realizing that he himself had reverted to being a professional teacher from that very moment, he kept saying, “Alright then, Kawakami—from now on, answer whatever I ask you right away.” Then he spread out the test paper and ostentatiously picked out questions intended for three-year-olds.

“Place this bowl on that desk, close the window above it, and bring the book from the chair over here—got it?” To the teacher glaring with unnerving intensity, Chuichi Kawakami responded with a mocking grin and executed the motions effortlessly. “That’s it!” Sugimoto exclaimed internally. That’s it—now tear these self-important inspections to shreds, one after another. He steeled himself and barked, “Next!”

“If you were to break something belonging to someone else, what must you do?” “Such a damn hassle—I’ll just chuck it in a ditch—”

“Huh? “What? “What?” Sugimoto had already anticipated the correct answer posted on the board: “I WILL APOLOGIZE IMMEDIATELY.” But this child’s response had spun sharply backward against the established trajectory. Sugimoto floundered as though he’d been hit with a shoulder throw. “Huh? “What? “What?” he repeated. “Can you say that one more time?” “If ya chuck it in a ditch, ain’t nobody gonna know who broke it, right?” Kawakami shot back.

“Then just one more—” Sugimoto recited the questions he had used many times while now intently gazing at the child’s face. “If your friend accidentally steps on your foot, what will you do?” “Tch! I’ll thrash you good—…”

Jolted by the boy’s fierce tone, Sugimoto involuntarily exclaimed “I see…,” and snapped the test papers shut. Chuichi Kawakami’s gaunt, sharp-featured face now lay veiled in an altogether different sorrow. He stared at the window where encroaching dusk pressed against the glass. The concrete classroom had darkened to a pale ink hue. With a full-body shudder, he licked his bloodless lips and looked around the classroom as if only just recognizing his surroundings. Then he abruptly stood up, dismissing the teacher’s presence entirely. “Gettin’ dark…” Sugimoto muttered under his breath. At the sound, Kawakami—suddenly reminded of where he was—peered warily at the teacher’s face. But with evening now settled thick around them, he knew he couldn’t bend to the teacher’s will any longer.

“I’m takin’ off now. Can’t have Dad worryin’,” he muttered, pulling his bag close to him. He tried pulling it closer, but this child—who’d endured years of schoolhouse torment—kept peering at the teacher’s expression with redoubled intensity. His body inched toward the doorframe while his neck stayed twisted backward, rigid as rusted iron.

Sugimoto stared blankly at the classroom walls that had turned mouse-gray. Chuichi Kawakami, who had finally grabbed the door handle, shouted with resolve: “I’m goin’ home, got it? Gotta cook Dad’s dinner—an’ my house’ll vanish if I don’t!” No sooner had he barked this than he tossed off a perfunctory salute and slammed the door open. The moment he slipped outside and escaped the teacher’s sight, the boy felt a weight drop from his shoulders—then charged down the long staircase like a beast freed from its chains, all ferocity regained.

Sugimoto remained in the darkened classroom, resting his cheek on his hand as he blankly pondered for a while. Despite his determination, Chuichi Kawakami’s intelligence quotient still fell short of eighty. The muddled, elusive unpleasantness that followed the measurement now gnawed at his mind with particular intensity. If this could truly predict the children’s fates—(as contemporary psychologists authoritatively declared, based on experimental results)—then those failing to meet this index could never become useful members of designated society. “This society! This society! This society!” Sugimoto repeated. The “this society” that esteemed psychologists and educators had established as their standard, and the “this society” where the low-ability children—rejected as defective products from that standard and now entrusted to him—lived, were both called “this society,” yet their very essence differed. The society over there was demanding... and Chuichi Kawakami had bluntly refused it. And then he protested—“Why the hell you asking me such cop-like questions?” Sugimoto self-deprecatingly recited his profession in three words—“Thou shalt not,” “It is forbidden,” “You must not.” Protesting vehemently against that, Chuichi Kawakami dashed out of the classroom. Having taken a solid blow to the face and staggered dizzily, Sugimoto felt an urge to shout—to scream something wordless! In the dim light, Sugimoto bared his teeth in a grin, then deliberately rose to his feet. Then, the nerves that had been fraying from eight in the morning until dusk suddenly gave way, and he discovered his body was utterly exhausted. It was the burly janitor who, equally irritated, had managed to track down Sugimoto.

“Mr. Sugimoto, hell of a situation here!” the janitor bellowed.

“Don’t act so insolent!” Sugimoto barked back. The janitor, who had been standing like a wrathful temple guardian at the entranceway, grew sullen. Sugimoto—already having finished preparing to leave—grew all the more sullen seeing this. Year after year they were shoved around; yet in that very instant when what they’d convinced themselves was their one act of free will got violently blocked, they found themselves engulfed by unimaginable animosity. With a sneer that screamed he wouldn’t be disrespected by some lowly teacher, the janitor went “Heh… This here’s how it is, Mr. Sugimoto,” rapping his own neck. “Kid’s gone missing—your old man’s come bawlin’ over it.”

“What?!” Sugimoto stood rigid. “If you’re sayin’ you don’t give a damn ’bout the kid… I gotta go tell the Principal.”

“No—” Sugimoto stopped the janitor. “I’ll find him myself!” he barked. And he rushed into the janitor’s room, but suddenly finding his own actions detestable, he turned back and raised his voice. “D-do as you please!” But Chuichi Kawakami’s father, who had been slumped dejectedly in the janitor’s room, suddenly snapped back to awareness and shrieked: “Teacher-sir—!” “He’s the only son I’ll ever have, y’see… Teacher-sir…”

Having said that, he directed the flood of anguish swelling in his chest toward Sugimoto, contorting his brine-soaked body wildly. It was asserted that responsibility for the children—from when they left the school gate until reaching home—still lay with the teacher. But precisely because today’s responsibility involved detaining that reluctant child until sunset, Sugimoto fidgeted restlessly, unable to stay still. “Teacher-sir—” The father kept pleading as if his child had vanished. “That boy’s been so filial—never once gave me worry till today—so why, why today of all days did this happen…”

The city had grown completely dark. The two walked side by side. The father peered into the face of each passing child while never ceasing to talk about his precious son—the one who, if gone, would leave him without any reason to live. "We’re in the boat business—so when I went back to Eitai Bridge, couldn’t see hide nor hair of the brat." “So I thought maybe he’s crouchin’ under the railings or somethin’, ended up trudgin’ back and forth over that damn long bridge three times over.” “We were supposed to meet at three… but I got greedy ’cause I finally landed some work after ages—so maybe this is heaven’s punishment, I s’pose?” From Asano Cement, they crossed Shin-Ohashi Bridge, and the boatman suggested walking all the way to Shibaura once more. When Sugimoto suggested, “Why don’t we report it to the police box first?” he waved his hand dismissively and explained, “Police boxes are—” “For folks like us, well… it just ain’t in our nature.” Then he pleaded with Sugimoto, who had proposed taking the train from Eitai Bridge. “The brat walks every day. I didn’t have a single coin today, so I walked too.” “Wouldn’t wanna miss ’im now, poor thing.”

And whenever they approached a bridge, the father’s pace would suddenly slow as he carefully scrutinized the boats moored in the canal waters there. After wandering about for some time and finding not even a shadow there, the father imagined his son floundering in the unfathomable depths of the city, then wrenched a sigh from the pit of his stomach. In Ginza, a river of humanity washed over the paved streets. The two, pushing against the human tide, found themselves pressed tightly together. “Teacher-sir—” the father continued, scanning the faces of passersby as he pressed on. “Is that brat Chu studyin’ proper-like?” “Aah, nothin’ matters more’n learnin’ to survive these days. I tried—sixteen damn times—to get certified as a motorboat driver. Ha ha… No learnin’ means you’re useless as tanned hide.” “I’ve made up my mind!” “Even if we gotta drink water, we’re sendin’ that brat Chu to school, right?” “Please take good care of him, Teacher-sir—ah, there’s so many impressive folks walkin’ around here—bet they’re all real educated, huh?—Teacher-sir?”

Cut off by the Go-Stop signal, the father let out a desperate, shrill cry of "If only we had learning!" amidst the motionless crowd, and the garish light of chaotically flickering neon signs painted the gaunt boatman’s face in grotesque hues.

IV

For Yoshio Tsukahara—one of the children who had grown up in misfortune—to make him just a little happier: that is, one means of chipping away at his characteristic sorrowful distractibility was to supplement his 0.5 vision with a pair of eyeglasses. For this child’s sake, doing this much was only natural—so resolved the teacher, then proceeded to write a letter addressed to his father. “That your child’s studies will progress even further stands clearer than firelight, and Yoshio himself rejoices greatly—” But that very day, the father came steaming with rage, bellowing in a thick, trilled accent.

“Bullshit! If we had that kinda coin lyin’ around—we’re a father and son here, y’hear me, Teacher?!” “We’re barely scrapin’ together meals for three days as it is!” “You think a brat like this can strut around wearin’ glasses? That’s some highfalutin nonsense!” “If they’re needed at school, then you buy ’em yourself!” His thinly balding scalp flushed crimson all the way to the hairline as he spat through his buckteeth with spattering sounds, putting on such a show of agitation—yet in truth, this father had once visited an eyeglass shop himself. Yet in front of the teacher, he had shouted in desperation, “Do as you damn please!” “That would be too cruel—” Sugimoto blurted out, trying to intercede for Yoshio. However, the father now truly bellowed at this clueless teacher.

“W-who’s pitiable here? It’s us, ain’t it! Got arms but can’t use ’em—ain’t that us folks scrapin’ by in this godforsaken world! Ain’t like I need you complainin’ ’bout my kid too!”

It’s because there’s this rule that you gotta send your kid to school—that’s why I’m sendin’ him. A few years back, during the era when rice shops used masu measuring boxes, he’d been a renowned craftsman in the masu-making trade. With his skill—dependin’ on what was needed—one to of rice could get measured out as either one to five sho or eight sho. And yet, by what twist of fate did every last rice shop up and have to start usin’ kilograms one day? “These arms of mine—” he finally groaned. “They’re fuckin’ useless.” “Hey Yoshi—” He turned to his son, whose eyes kept darting around nervously, “You’re one pitiful brat too. In the Earthquake Disaster, your ma got crushed flat.” “But y’know what—ain’t no way some glasses-wearin’ punk could survive out here anyway.”

The kamishibai storyteller’s clappers clacked through the air, drawing children trooping in from the back alleys—but even there, a child without so much as a one-sen coin would find themselves shut out. The inside of the tenement was dark and damp. In comparison, the school was spacious and allowed them to romp about freely. After school ended, driven out of the downstairs play area by janitors who considered keeping the school building clean—more than anything else, more than the children themselves—as crucial to preserving their jobs, the children fled up to the wind-swept rooftop playground. There, children who sucked on their fingers, muttering “Even if I go home, it’s boring—”, frolicked aimlessly like stray pups. “Teacher, I wanna go play too—” Yoshio Tsukahara parted from his father and clung to the teacher’s arm. When they ran up the dimly lit staircase spiraling upward and passed through the ceiling, they emerged onto a splintered concrete rooftop. “Hey—!” Yoshio Tsukahara shouted and leaped up. Then many children began gathering from all directions, straggling in. When they saw the teacher who had appeared there, they found the prop for their pent-up hearts and became unbearably happy. With cries of “Waa-wa-wa…,” they would sink their teeth into anywhere they could reach—whether the teacher’s neck, shoulders, or any other part they could latch onto. They smeared drool, boogers, and hand grime on him and, for some reason satisfied by this, ran wild with abandon.

The rooftop playground, encircled by a tall, sturdy wire mesh, evoked nothing less than the image of a large zoo cage. That place alone became their only playground until sunset.

However, once they started rampaging there, the early winter sun would immediately sink, and the wind blowing through grew noticeably colder. The children’s lips all turned purple; they had no will to fight off that chill. They made strange grimaces and fell silent, clinging to the wire mesh as if resigned. Then through the mesh, they could see their own homes they had to return to. As they thought of their own homes beneath the blackened, grimy roofs of the seedy outskirts, they grew increasingly sullen.

Whether that brought them happiness was unclear, but Sugimoto sought to keep them in their child-only world for even a moment longer—

“Abe, Abe—” The jovial, mallet-headed Abe turned toward the teacher while answering, “Huh—? Where’s your house at?”

“My house? “My house ain’t anywhere,” Abe said, trying to get a bit higher to show off the view as he clung to the wire mesh and dangled like a bat. “Look, over there—see that white roof? Then there’s Fukagawa Hachiman Shrine. There’s so much between here and there…” He stretched and shrank, desperate to point it out precisely, but everything just blurred into the same black roofs. With a tsk of his tongue, he spat, “Ain’t nothin’ too small to see, Teacher!”

“Teacher—I’ll show you my house!” the next child casually chimed in. “Look, there’s a big pond over there, right? “That’s Kiba, right over there next to it… But the ironworks are in the way, so you can’t see it good.” Next, at the wire mesh facing Tsukishima, a child stamping his feet began explaining desperately, as if this very moment was his chance. “My dad’s at that huge factory—hey—c’mon everyone, look—! The smoke’s pourin’ out all pitch-black!” “Hmph! My dad’s somethin’ else, workin’ at that factory every day...”

The factory’s black smoke alone was vigorously blending into the murky air of the Kyōbashi area. The smoke grazing the city’s rooftops was drifting toward this side from across the river. The Sumida River was meandering pale and swollen with the tide between them.

“It’s getting cold—let’s head back,” Sugimoto said, looking over the children’s faces. A clump of—children for whom even returning home was utterly uninteresting started at his voice and clouded their faces once more.

“Teacher, are you going home too?” one of them asked.

“Waaah—Teacher! Help me!” With that scream, Takeo Motoki came running up to the rooftop just then. He leaped over the startled children scattering through the gaps in a single bound and clung to the teacher’s midsection with a cry. His usually slack lips were now tightly drawn at both corners, pale cheeks twitching spasmodically. It took some time for his fierce breathing—shoulders heaving up and down all the while—to subside.

“What’s wrong?” Sugimoto asked.

His buddy Yoshio Tsukahara, who had been beside him, placed his hands on Motoki’s neck and peered into his face as he declared. "So you got bullied by your mom again, huh." “You’re such an idiot—tch! Who the hell skips school anyway—” Then, with a deadpan expression, he muttered one of those cursed words. “Lord Hachiman’s cursed you!”

Takeo Motoki’s elongated, flat face twitched as he blinked his sagging eyelids. The children encircling him nodded vigorously in inexplicable agreement, muttering under their breath. "That’s right, that’s right," said Yoshio Tsukahara, his bony hand clamping Motoki’s shoulder. He gave it two or three gentle shakes. "You—back then—at Lord Hachiman’s pond—right? You swiped that baby turtle! Yeah! That’s why you’re cursed!" "Ain’t true!" "That’s creepy..." rippled through the group with confirming nods.

“B-bastard!” Motoki suddenly shouted. “I hate becomin’ an apprentice, I tell ya!”

In the mere single day this child had been absent, the fate of Takeo Motoki, now twelve years old, was beginning to turn. "Maybe that’s for the best after all—" he thought, but when Takeo declared, "I ain’t gonna be no apprentice, I tell ya—!" and shook his hips defiantly, Sugimoto resolved not to let him go, troublesome child though he was. Compulsory education—he had to rebuff such cruel parents by declaring that.

Takeo Motoki’s parents, rubbing their hands, soon appeared on the rooftop.

“Heh heh, well if it ain’t the esteemed Teacher...” The wife with a jutting chin plastered on an oily smile, weaving her pretext. “We come ’bout a small matter to discuss...” said the father—the boy’s spitting image—picking up her thread. Takeo Motoki shrank behind the teacher’s shadow. The father’s face whipped around. “You—” he growled at Sugimoto, “Ain’t got no right meddlin’ in my boy’s affairs!” “If we don’t lay it out proper-like,” cut in the wife, “even a fine Teacher like yourself won’t grasp it, Mister.” She shot a viper’s glare at the child now glued to Sugimoto’s side. “Truth be told, these days’re rotten with hard times—eh? Heh! Fancy folk like you drawin’ wages playin’ with brats—recession just breezes past your sort, don’t it?” The old man barked his refrain: “We’re at our wit’s end!”

Their arguments meandered, fragments of words occasionally scattered by the wind—the day laborer father insisted they couldn’t make ends meet without one less mouth to feed, while the stepmother concocted lofty rationalizations about the boy’s ingratitude. The father—who hadn’t drunk a single glass of Electric Brandy in two or three years—declared that this brat Takeo wouldn’t refuse such a fine apprenticeship opportunity, then had the nerve to say they ought to consult the Teacher first. ………………………………………………… But when they pressed him all day—“Ain’t no way you’re refusing!”—Takeo Motoki fled to school in a fury, just like this. “That brat’s putting on such a show of being shocked, but what on earth… whether there’s any truth to it—‘I want you to listen.’” “This is a matter of life or death for me!” declared the father, puffing out his chest as he stepped a pace closer, then shot a furtive glance at his wife’s expression. “What ever are we to do, Teacher dear?” This time the woman suddenly put on a sorrowful act and fixed Sugimoto—his face framed by an unkempt beard—with an intense glare. Sugimoto’s body began trembling uncontrollably. Against those parents who were now trying every trick in the book to get this teacher to say yes—convinced that everything would fall into place if they could just secure his agreement—his defenses seemed unlikely to hold. Yet within the arms of Takeo Motoki—trembling as he clung desperately—a gradual surge of frantic strength began gathering. Despite being a frail child, he had managed to escape his violent parents and make it all the way here. With that thought, Sugimoto straightened up and renewed his resolve.

“So what does the child himself have to say about this?” “Well, you see—” the woman answered promptly, “if we could just get your approval, Teacher dear…” “I don’t wanna!”

Takeo Motoki’s voice cut cleanly through the evening wind.

But at the same moment as that shout, the woman tousled her hair. “Y-you damn brat!” she groaned. “Didn’tcha just spit out that you agreed before the gods?! Thinkin’ I’m just your stepmother so you can look down on me, huh… Damn you! Takeo!” As the situation seemed ready to tip into chaos, the father also bellowed, “You damn brat! Don’t you even see us as your parents?!” On top of that, the father flew into a rage and now lunged at his son, attempting to resort to violence. Takeo Motoki fled across the cold concrete. His flat, bare feet slapped against the wind-swept rooftop with an eerie rhythm. The watching children swiftly opened a path and cheered, “M-Motoki—run! Run!” “Don’t let ’em catch ya!”

V

The school doctor dipped his hands in mercuric chloride solution, wiped them meticulously, then leaned back in his chair and called the child with a jerk of his chin. The stark-naked child stood rigidly before the doctor, his body visibly tense. He first glanced at the child’s head and said, “Ringworm.” Then he stroked the child’s chest and declared “Protruding chest.” When he pressed the lower abdomen, he barked the diagnosis in a low yet penetrating voice: “Hernia.” The nurse waiting nearby ran her fountain pen across the physical condition logbook, smoothly filling it in.

“Alright!” The released child formed a relieved smile and sprang back from before the doctor. Then he searched for his own clothes, which he had discarded in the corner of the examination room—the grime-stained shirt had not a single button left. The doctor, rising from his chair, dipped his fingers into the mercuric chloride solution and slowly disinfected them as he addressed the principal, who stood rigidly with his hands clasped behind his back.

“What do you suppose that child’s home situation is like?” The Principal glared at Sugimoto among the children and asked, “You—well…” “What does that child’s family do for a living?”

The child who had been wrapping the tattered three-shaku cloth around himself suddenly stopped his hands and glared sideways at his homeroom teacher’s expression. Sugimoto shook his head. “Well—” He didn’t answer. Then the nurse, thinking herself helpful, reported the family occupation entered in the survey log. “There’s a character with the metal radical and ‘ka-n-ba-shi-i’—the ‘fragrant’ one—written here, but I can’t read it.” Having said this, she too raised her pale face and looked toward Sugimoto, seeking an answer.

The child found it unbearable to have his family’s humble occupation scrutinized in front of so many people in that manner. He looked down. Sugimoto crouched down and firmly tied the child’s three-shaku cloth for him. He told him to go on to the classroom and let him out of that room. And then he had to satisfy the adults’ curiosity.

“He’s a metalwork artisan.” “In other words, he’s a day laborer—and now, as you might expect, half of them are effectively unemployed…” Sugimoto answered thus and began helping the next child take off his shirt. The doctor, having returned to his chair, jerked back his angular face and called for the next child.

“Alright, next!” As if he’d been waiting his whole life for this moment, Keisuke Kuji stripped completely naked and stood briskly before the doctor. “Cerumen impaction—adenoids—rib flaring—hmph!” The doctor’s glasses flashed as he finally let genuine emotion color his voice. “Oh now this—this is textbook rib flaring! Observe closely—wouldn’t you agree?”

The nurse nearby stood up, and the principal tightened his sagging eyelids.

"My family works for Tokyo City Electricity Bureau!" Kuji declared shrilly with forced vigor.

The doctor ignored the voice. His interest lay not in home circumstances but in Keisuke Kuji’s chest—a near-malformation. He peered at it through the light, measured its depth with his fingers. Growing ever more impressed, he snorted through his nose: “Hmm—” From among the children waiting their turn came a voice tinged with spite. “Kuji—your dick’s so hard it’s blockin’ the way!” “Kuji—your dick’s in the way! Hurry up an’ get gone!”

Upon hearing that, Keisuke Kuji suddenly turned bright red all over. He shook off the doctor’s hand that was still insistently stroking him. He became aware of the ugliness of his own body, and that merged with the frustration of his father’s occupation being mocked. He began to cry loudly, still completely naked.

When stripped naked, these children's misfortunes were exposed all at once. The complicated disease names were written down until the page turned black. The doctor made a show of being impressed by this as if it were something new. "A sound mind dwells in a sound body... How wise our ancestors were, eh?" "Don't you agree?" Then the principal responded: "With such unsound bodies, their stunted intellectual development can't be helped—no, this is entirely due to defective families!"

It was a cold day, and the pores on the children’s napes stood erect. Of course they had no hakama or anything of the sort. They couldn’t even get indoor shoes bought for them, so they walked with sticky steps across the boards smeared with viscous floor oil. Fortunately, they had grown utterly accustomed to misfortune. Once they escaped that unpleasant place, they immediately forgot about it. Then, with shrill voices echoing off the ceiling and whistling haphazardly improvised tunes, they charged into their classroom while raising a completely meaningless racket.

When they entered this classroom enclosed on three sides by white walls, they felt a sense of relief akin to reaching home and looked around while humming to themselves. Sugimoto, who had been propping his cheek on the lectern, exchanged renewed glances with the children—Takeo Motoki’s seat yawned empty like a freshly pulled tooth. The powerless teacher grimaced and stared vacantly. Seeing his expression, the children redoubled their antics—prying their eyes wide and baring yellowed teeth. The children too grew restless, desperate to force some cheer into the air.

“Teacher—” With a bloop—like a bubble surfacing from an ancient swamp—Yoshio Tsukahara unexpectedly rose to his feet. “Teacher—moral ed, moral ed—let’s do moral ed again, c’mon!” But Takeo Motoki, who would usually grin and immediately start talking, was no longer there. Keisuke Kuji—the one who usually put on airs and pushed himself forward—still hadn’t shaken off the shock from earlier, his reddened eyes simply staring wide and dazed. The children—some drooling spit, others slowly licking blue snot from their noses, some leaning backward or lying face-down on desks, still others stretching their legs languidly beside their seats as if barely propping up their collapsing bodies—gradually began to stir. The large-framed child at the very back desk suddenly let out a “Haaah——” and yawned. The children all turned in unison toward him. The child who had contracted meningitis at three years old had miraculously survived with his life, but he was always looking up at the ceiling. Exemplarily quiet, he never registered anything he heard, and he had nothing he wished to say. Finally, Yoshio Tsukahara grew impatient and stamped his feet.

“Teacher—moral ed, I said! C’mon!”

Chuichi Kawakami stood up from the corridor side. “I’ll do the moral ed lesson myself!” “Tch! Who’d wanna listen to your damn story anyway?” shouted the metalworker’s son, rolling his eyes.

“Come on, come on,” Tsukahara started chanting. “Teacher—you’re in the way there! Kawakami’s gonna do moral ed now—get outta here quick!” Chuichi Kawakami hitched up his right shoulder, struck a rigid stance before the teacher’s desk, and dipped his head. Then he smacked his thin lips and scanned the room. “When I was three—there was this disaster, see? The Great Kantō Earthquake—houses burned down one after another.”

At the word *earthquake disaster—* the children’s murmurs stopped abruptly all at once. Something that had been quietly lurking in the depths of these unfortunate children’s hearts overturned with that single word, conjuring a silence so uncanny it seemed to thicken around them. Sugimoto leaned out the window and wondered whether this ominous sky—with clouds scudding across it—had made Chuichi Kawakami recall such a topic, or if it was their skin’s lingering discomfort from being prodded during the annual physical that drove him to speak. He studied the storyteller’s face anew. Chuichi Kawakami’s sharp features—eyes rolled back as he glared at a ceiling corner—were carved with deep shadows. After holding that pose awhile, he finally conjured up the scene he meant to describe. He peeled back his lips to bare gums in a sly grin.

“Well, back then my old Agemaru burned down too.” “I jumped into the river like my life depended on it.” “Fukagawa ain’t dangerous, they said. You know that, right?” “I took refuge at Tosei Warehouse.” “That place is stone, so it don’t burn.” “Even so, a whole buncha people came fleein’, and back then I had Mom with me, y’know?” “You—Tosei Warehouse was crawlin’ with more folks than Hachiman-sama’s festival day!”

Kawakami abruptly fell silent again, glared at the ceiling, and began conjuring up his next memory. The listening children, from the clumsy storyteller’s words, drew those horrific scenes now hereditarily ingrained and found satisfaction in being frightened. “A terrifying man with a Japanese sword—y’know… like this—” Kawakami swiftly showed the motion of delivering a single sword strike. “And then with this huge wire, y’know… …………………………………………, ……………………………………………………” However, his gestures began to tremble violently midway through, and he turned pale, letting out a sigh of his own accord. “That’s so scary—”

“You saw it?” Tsukahara pressed. “’Course I saw it—” Kawakami answered while steadying his heaving breath, then declared with arrogance. “I was three back then!” “S-so then? What happened next?” “Then you—into the big river………………………………” “So they died…” Another child now hung his head painfully and muttered. Chuichi Kawakami paid no mind and had become fully absorbed in his own story.

“When they said ‘You too…probably…’—hell, my guts got blown clean out.” “It’s nothing like them damn movies at all!”

At that moment, Abe—the hammer-headed boy seated at the very front by the window—unsteadily stood up and called out randomly to Sugimoto. “Teachereee? Teacher!” “Shut up and get back—Abe!”

Tsukahara, who had been excited by the story, snapped at Abe for his sarcastic interjection. He lunged forward and knocked the small child down. “Hammerhead, stay back!” With that bellow, he whirled back toward Kawakami and urged vehemently. “And then… and then, what happened next?” However, Abe—who had been knocked down—heaved himself back up and glared around the entire classroom. He spotted Sugimoto perched neatly at a desk in the back of the room. Abe sprang up with a pop and clung to Sugimoto’s head with frantic speed.

“Teacher! Teacher!” “It’s terrible! Kashiwabara crapped himself! Crap—!”

When Sugimoto finally stood up, Abe kept time by stomping on the floor and chanted rhythmically. “Ah! Crap! Crap! Kashiwabara crapped himself!”

When everyone noisily stood up at once, Yoshio Tsukahara was striking Chuichi Kawakami.

“Hey, you’re lyin’! My mom got crushed to death, y’hear!”

“Mr. Sugimoto, this is downright disgraceful! They’re supposed to be fourth-graders, ain’t they? Now if we’re ordered to clean up, sure we’ll clean—but hell’s bells—” Having said this, the janitor made no move to remove the pipe clenched between his teeth. “Even if we do this, our hands are full—what with the principal’s guests from the ward office supposed to arrive…” “Is that so? Then I’ll clean it up.”

Sugimoto scooped ashes into a dustpan and, carrying a rag and bucket, ascended from the janitor’s room to the third floor. The children had put away the desks that remained unsoiled. They had drawn a large circle with chalk. In the center of that circle sat Tomiji Kashiwabara, who had unwittingly soiled himself, remaining motionless just as he had been earlier.

“That’s all for today. Those who want to leave can go home quietly.”

But not a single child moved in response to the teacher’s words. The children surrounded the circular chalk ring like a sumo ring and crouched on the floor. They sat with proper manners, holding their breath and not speaking a word, as though mourning their companion’s misfortune. Sugimoto helped Tomiji up by the waist. “So your stomach’s been acting up—come on, let’s get that kimono off… There, come over here. Guess this is your punishment for eating too much, huh?”

“No—” Kashiwabara denied in a single word as he was being moved along. “I wasn’t scared of no earthquake.”

Stunted Tomiji Kashiwabara staggered like shade-starved weeds and grabbed Sugimoto’s shoulder. He pressed his foul, stuffy-nosed breath against the teacher’s warm neck. After having his soiled buttocks and thighs wiped clean, something like bodily contentment flushed across his face as he began speaking in a hushed tone. "My house got burnt down in the quake—was a proper shop, see? Then Ma went and had me when she got all shook up from it. That’s why they call me earthquake brat." As Tomiji spoke, his spindly arms found their way around the teacher’s neck without either noticing. His eyes fixed on the classroom’s dust-choked white walls while he kept talking, etching wretched futures into their plaster. "Hey—if Dad kicks it, Ma’s gonna find some new bloke who ain’t hacking up lungs, right? Then we’ll open shop again...the shop, well..." Tomiji abruptly lowered his voice, lips brushing Sugimoto’s ear.

“The principal’s come in—oh no… Ugh, this sucks.”