River with No Bridge

By Sue Sumii and Susan Wilkinson

The River With No Bridge (Hashi no nai kawa) explores with outspoken frankness a subject still taboo in Japan: the intolerance and bigotry faced daily by Japan’s largest minority group, the burakumin.

Racially no different from other Japanese, over the centuries burakumin have been cruelly ostracized for their association with occupations considered defiling. Spanning the years 1908 to 1924, the original six volumes of this novel trace the developing awareness of burakumin of their rights and dignity as human beings. Volume 1, translated into English for the first time in 1990, is a story about childhood in a burakumin village. It tells of young Koji Hatana’s questioning of the rigid social order and his growing sense of injustice as he meets prejudice from other children at school and from his teachers who try to instill in him their belief that since he was born defiled he should resign himself to his fate.

Told against the backdrop of Japan’s struggle to shed its feudalistic past and enter the modern age, the novel is a courageous work and a compelling read.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
• Release date: Dec 27, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462903290

Book preview

Translator's Introduction

JAPANESE women have, at least in the eyes of the West, an image of submissive acquiescence in a male-dominated society, but such an image could hardly be less applicable to writer Sué Sumii. Born in Nara prefecture in 1902, she left home at the age of seventeen and came to Tokyo to make her living as a writer. Her first job was with the publishing house Kodansha, but her rebellious spirit soon asserted itself, and she left in protest over the discriminatory conditions of employment for women members of the staff. A year later, her first novel was published, and she married the writer Shigeru Inuta, who was involved in a left-wing-oriented farmers' literary movement, the Nomin Bungei Kai, that opposed the privileges of the landowners. By the early 1930s, with the rise of ultranationalism in Japan, the repression of liberals and leftists intensified and the magazine edited by Inuta was suppressed, as was everything he wrote. This contributed to his growing ill-health, and it was Sué Sumii's writing, mainly of children's fiction, that supported them and their four children, and was to continue to do so for the rest of their married life.

Inuta died in July 1957, worn out from the long struggle with illness. Sué Sumii has described how, as she gazed at the face of her dead husband, she was suddenly overwhelmed by the realization that everything I'd given Inuta over the years was being repaid a thousand-fold. Not only was he showing her how precious life was, but also that everybody was bound by the same inexorable law of Time. He seemed to her to be saying that if there were such a thing as fate, it was the limits set by Time alone and had nothing to do with a law that determined one's lot in life. Sumii suddenly saw surrounding her dead husband the faces of those disadvantaged because of the commonly held belief that it was their fate to be so; in particular, she saw the faces of those forced to leave their village on Unebi Hill, at the beginning of the Taisho era (1912-26). It was to lead her to write her thought-provoking and moving six-volume novel, The River with No Bridge, about Japan's little-known outcasts, the burakumin.*

The people forced to leave their village on Unebi Hill were burakumin, or new commoners, as they were still known for some time following their legal emancipation in 1871. Their village was called Hora (Michi, in the novel), and in the History of the Imperial Tombs (by Shuho Goto), published in 1913, it was pointed out that both the government and the people seem quite unconcerned about the fact that there is a cemetery of the 'new commoners' on Unebi Hill, overlooking the tomb of Emperor Jinmu. It went on to protest that the unclean corpses of the 'new commoners' are being buried on this most sacred hill; they are rotting in this hallowed soil, their bones remaining there from generation unto generation. It is outrageous to permit a group of 'new commoners' to live between the Imperial Tomb and the sacred hill. ... Apparently, it was so outrageous that 208 households, or 1,054 people, were forced to leave in 1917.¹ How had these people become outcasts and why was their presence considered so defiling?

Until their legal emancipation, the outcasts were known as eta, or much filth. Over the centuries, they had come to be viewed as in some way different and physically inferior to the rest of the population, even animal-like, as is shown by other derogatory names for the eta, such as yotsu meaning four (inferring four-legged, or animal-like), and ningai, or other than human. Racially no different from other Japanese, their long association with occupations considered defiling had gradually made the outcasts themselves seem hereditarily defiled in the eyes of the majority population. This defilement was felt to be somehow communicable, or contagious, like a germ, so that the rest of society wanted to have as little direct contact as possible with the eta. As a result they were forbidden to live outside their own villages, or to marry those who were not eta like themselves.

The early beliefs of Japan's indigenous Shinto religion concerning purification and defilement were influential in the development of an outcast group. Uncleanness was the greatest tsumi, or thing displeasing to the gods. Death, disease, and wounds, as well as menstruation and childbirth, were all sources of uncleanness, to the extent that there were special parturition huts to separate pregnant women from the rest of the household. One of the later names for outcasts was sanjo-no-mono, believed originally either to refer to the homeless who sought refuge in abandoned parturition huts, or to the midwives. With the introduction of Buddhism from the Asian continent, the killing of animals and eating of meat also came to be considered unclean; thus, by the eighth century, butchers, tanners, and makers of leather goods had joined midwives and undertakers as a defiled group.

The first known written reference to the eta is in a thirteenth-century document that states the word eta is a corruption of etori, or food-gatherers, the title of those in the Department of Falconry in charge of butchering cattle to feed the falcons and dogs. This work was considered of low status, and when the Department of Falconry was abolished in 860, due to the influence of Buddhism, the etori lost their hereditary occupation and it is likely that some survived by working as butchers, or in other similar occupations considered defiling.

The eta were relatively prosperous during the Ashikaga shogunate (1338-1573) and Momoyama period (1568-1603). The fact that their occupational specializations were taboo for non-outcasts gave them monopolies in their trades, and, in an age of constant civil war, their skills in working leather, bone, and gut were in much demand for the manufacture of saddles, armor, and bowstrings. Military lords induced them to settle on their estates, offering incentives such as the tax-free use of land, and in this way eta communities spread from western Japan, where they had been concentrated, into other parts of the country, such as eastern Honshu. The outcasts were able to expand their trades into new areas, such as basket weaving and straw-sandal making, and the caretakers of tombs were also absorbed into the eta segment during this period. (These were descendants of the tomb guards, a slave group that had existed in the Nara period [646-794].) Many of the ancient burial mounds in the Nara, Kyoto, and Osaka areas had an eta community in their vicinity, including the village of Hora described above.

In the relative peace of the Tokugawa period (1603-1868), trades such as leather-work and tanning lost the importance they had held during the time of civil war, while, on the other hand, the perception of the defiled nature of the eta strengthened. A rigid social hierarchy was established, with the military at the top, farmers, artisans, and merchants below, and the outcasts right at the bottom. The eta were bound by many legal restrictions, which were enforced with increasing frequency from the middle to the end of the period. The eta were easily recognizable, as they were not allowed to dress their hair in the same way as commoners, had to use a rope instead of a sash to bind their kimonos, and were sometimes obliged to wear a patch of leather on their clothes as a badge of their defiled status. They were only permitted to marry other eta and could not live outside eta villages, nor enter the service of commoners as servants. They were forbidden the privilege of sitting, eating, and smoking with commoners and of crossing the threshold of a commoner home. In 1859, a time when discrimination against the eta was at its height, a notorious judgment was handed down in the case of an eta youth who had been killed by non-eta. The magistrate decided that an eta life was worth only one-seventh of that of a commoner and therefore six more eta would have to be slain before the guilty parties could be sentenced to death.

The Meiji Restoration of 1868 brought an end to the feudal Toku-gawa regime and to the two hundred years of Japan's seclusion from the rest of the world. One of the social reforms that followed the Restoration was the legal emancipation of all outcasts in 1871. However, equality before the law did not mean an end to prejudice and discrimination. In many ways, the position of the eta worsened as they lost their monopolies in trades such as butchering and leather-work, and, moreover, they were now required to pay taxes and do military service for the first time. Furthermore, the settled communities and specialized trades of the eta meant that they continued to be easily identifiable as new commoners, or former outcasts. This made them scapegoats and sometimes victims of violence for the feelings of frustration of ordinary citizens, for whom all the changes that took place following the Meiji Restoration meant financial difficulties and insecurity.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, Western political ideas of liberalism and democratic rights began to influence some of the burakumin and led them to form associations to try and overcome the continuing discrimination by raising their own education and living standards, in the hope that this would influence the majority population to treat them as equals. However, the self-improvement movement had little effect and a more radical emancipation movement, favoring direct action, began to emerge. Burakumin leaders were particularly active in the Rice Riots that broke out in 1918 following the sharp increase in the price of rice, the main staple. After the riots, these same leaders began to demand that the government give direct help to improve the economic and social conditions of the burakumin. In 1920, for the first time, the government gave them financial support and began to sponsor organizations to deal with their problems, largely from a desire to prevent the spread of revolutionary ideas among the burakumin. This did not deter young burakumin leaders from forming a new, militant movement, the Suiheisha, or Levelers' Society—named after one of the radical movements during the English Civil War—with the aim of removing all inequalities. On March 3, 1922, the Suiheisha held its first national convention in Kyoto; it was attended by two thousand representatives from buraku all over the country. The Suiheisha flag was unfurled: a blood-red crown of thorns on a black ground. The declaration that was read out at that convention was an interesting mixture of Marxist and religious language. Written by Mankichi Saiko, the son of a Buddhist priest, it began, "Burakumin throughout the country, unite! and ended, The time has come for the martyrs' crown of thorns to be blessed. The time has come for us to be proud of being eta."²

Set between the years 1908 and 1924, the six volumes of the River with No Bridge mirror the development of the awareness of burakumin of their rights and dignity as human beings, which lead to the formation of the Suiheisha. In the background are the actual events that took place during this period: the execution of the radical writer and thinker Shusui Kotoku, for allegedly plotting to assassinate the Emperor; the death of Emperor Meiji; the Rice Riots; the Korean Independence Movement; and the massacre of Koreans in Tokyo after the Great Kanto Earthquake.

In particular, the first volume (this translation) traces the questioning of the system by an individual child, Koji. Koji's growing sense of injustice derives not only from the prejudice he meets from other children and the teachers at school, but also from the content of what he is taught. The purpose of education in prewar Japan was to train children to become docile and loyal citizens. The more liberal education policies of the early Meiji era were soon replaced by a doctrinaire system centering round the idea of sonno aikoku—reverence for the Emperor and patriotism. School textbooks came under the direct control of the government, and children were taught the overriding importance of the Confucian virtues of filial piety and loyalty. They were constantly told that the Japanese state was one family and that the Emperor was the father of the nation; and just as children had to behave with filial piety toward their parents, so their main duty to the father-Emperor was loyalty. These principles were set out in the Imperial Rescript on Education, which, together with a copy of the Imperial Portrait, was issued to every school from 1891 onward. Shinto beliefs were increasingly used to reinforce the idea of the sacredness of both the national family and the father-Emperor. In the textbooks, Shinto mythology was presented as historical fact, and children were taught that the Imperial family had been commanded to occupy the throne by Amaterasu Omikami, the Sun Goddess and the divine founder of the Imperial line. The Imperial Portrait and Rescript on Education were sacred objects, and, in the case of an outbreak of fire at a school, they had to be saved before anything or anybody else, even at risk to life. The Imperial Rescript was often recited at school ceremonial assemblies, the scroll held in white-gloved hands, and there were cases of teachers having to resign, sometimes even committing suicide, over an impropriety such as a mistake in the reading, or for dropping the scroll.

It is not difficult to see how useful such an education system, with its deliberate indoctrination of children in the sacred nature of the State, was to the militarists when they came to power in the 1930s, nor, on the other hand, to see that since the State and its symbols were held to be so sacrosanct, it was all too easy to despise those traditionally viewed as being at the very bottom of the social scale, outside so-called normal society. In the Japan of the Meiji era, the change in attitude toward the burakumin on the part of the majority population had not kept pace with the change in the legal status of the former outcasts. Compulsory education and military service applied to the burakumin like everybody else but it was often in the schools and the army that they suffered from the worst treatment.

One of the leaders of the Suiheisha movement, Kyotaro Kimura, in some respects the model for Koji in the River with No Bridge, has written of the severe discrimination he suffered at higher elementary school. The burakumin children all had to sit together in the classroom; and in the playground, the other children avoided them. They could not use the same pails or cups without their being snatched away with cries of dirty, and the other children were continually abusing them with insults, such as You stink! or "Filthy eta!" openly in front of the teachers. Eight children from his buraku started school at the same time as Kimura. By the second term, their number had halved and, by the third term, only two of them were left. As in the novel, his buraku also suffered a fire that destroyed many homes, largely because the fire brigade of a nearby village turned back when they saw it was only an "eta fire."

While the discrimination that occurs in the River with Mo Bridge is based on the actual experiences of people like Kyotaro Kimura, Koji's view of the world, particularly of what he is taught at school, is that of Sué Sumii herself. Although not a burakumin, she was brought up in the same area of Nara prefecture in which the novel is set, and, like Koji, was six years old in 1908. She remembers the army maneuvers that year attended by the Emperor and how people searched the site of the Emperor's temporary headquarters afterward and brought back any souvenirs they could find, such as the remains of the Emperor's cigarettes marked with the Imperial seal. She also remembers how she laughed over the story of another souvenir. A lavatory for the Emperor's sole use had been set up at the headquarters and apparently somebody had found a specimen of Imperial feces there. While laughing at the stupidity of grown-ups, six-year-old Sumii had been struck by the thought that a sacred being like the Emperor should defecate. In fact, as an infant, she had suffered from feelings of revulsion over the feces her own body produced and would try and hold back from defecating as long as possible, with the result that she was always being scolded for dirtying herself. This had led eventually to a severe sense of inferiority and bashfulness when she started school. Sumii later wrote that when she heard the story of the Emperor's feces, she thought to herself, If the Emperor craps, it must mean he eats food too. In that case, he's no different at all from me. She claims that all sense of inferiority left her thereafter and that far from suffering from shyness at school, whenever the Headmaster lectured them at morning assembly on the sacredness of the Emperor and their indebtedness to the father of the nation, she would retort to herself, "The Emperor's not a sacred kami. He's just an ordinary person who smokes cigarettes, eats food, and craps like everybody else."

The insight afforded Sué Sumii through her own childhood experiences enabled her to see that the veneration of the sacred and the rejection of the despised are really two sides of the same coin. Her conviction is:

No one is born more than a human being.

And no one is born less than a human being.

I would like to take this opportunity to express my deep appreciation to the author, Sué Sumii, for her constant encouragement and endless patience in answering all of my queries concerning this translation.

Footnotes

Sources:

1)  The account of the forced removal of the village of Hora appears in Nara-ken suihei undo shi [History of the Suihei Movement in Nara Prefecture] (Kyoto: Buraku Mondai Kenkyujo, 1972).

2)  I am indebted for the account of the history of the outcasts to George de Vos and Hiroshi Wagatsuma, Japan's Invisible Race: Caste in Culture and Personality (Berkeley and Los Angeles: The University of California Press, 1966) and to Shigeaki Ninomiya, "An Inquiry concerning the Origin, Development and Present Situation of the Eta in Relation to the History of Social Classes in Japan" (Paper delivered to the Asiatic Society of Japan, December 1933).

The River with No Bridge*

1

Stars and Frosts

I

Hoh-ee, hoh-ee . . .

Somebody's calling. Somebody's calling to me.

The girl started running, blown along by the wind.

Hoh-ee, hoh-ee . . .

Somebody's calling. They're calling to me.

The boy too was running before the wind.

The girl shouted back; so did the boy. Then they caught sight of each other. Between them lay a small ditch in which water trickled away from a paddy field, golden with its ripe crop of rice.

Fudé! cried the boy, and Fudé realized with a start that she was no longer a young girl and that the boy was her husband, Shinkichi.

She had not seen Shinkichi for a long time, not for many years, but now there he stood on the opposite bank. Bracing herself, she was about to jump across when, all at once, the ditch became a swift-flowing river and she was cut off from her husband.

On the other side of the river, Shinkichi started to run upstream. Fudé ran upstream as well: there was bound to be a bridge somewhere.

Oh, there's one! and she hastened breathlessly toward it. But the bridge was only the arch of a rainbow; a rainbow that grew wider and wider as it swept smoothly up into the heavens.

There was no choice but to go farther upriver. Fudé and Shinkichi raced on until they found their way blocked by a great iceberg, looming out of the mist. They both turned round and began to run back downstream: there had to be a bridge somewhere . . .

The river broadened out and flowed with increasing force. Fudé caught the sound of Shinkichi's breathing: he was panting hard, almost gasping for air. Why was he so out of breath? The snow. Yes, of course, it was because of the snow that had been falling on the opposite bank and now lay several feet deep. Shinkichi was sinking in it and would soon be completely buried.

Fudé began to cry unashamedly, overcome with longing; she yearned for Shinkichi with her whole being.

Fudé, Fudé.

Fudé awoke. Her mother-in-law, Nui, was tapping her on the shoulder.

It was only a dream, she thought; yet she still ached with longing.

Hands resting on her breast, she asked, Did I talk in my sleep?

No, not a word. But you were gaspin' like you couldn't breathe. I thought you must be havin' a bad dream so I woke you.

Fudé sighed in reply and Nui rearranged her pillow.

It just struck four, we can go back to sleep for a bit. Do us good. With all this night work, we're never in bed before twelve.

All the same, Nui knew that she would not fall asleep again: maybe it had to do with her age, but recently she had taken to waking up at three and would lie there thinking her useless thoughts until it was light enough to make out the lattice frame of the screen door.

Fudé did not feel as if she would drop off again either, although she usually slept deeply until about five. She groped in the darkness for her kimono, which she had spread over the quilt, and pulled it up over Koji, who was lying beside her.

I bet it's frosty this mornin', said Nui, feeling for her kimono to cover Seitaro. He and Koji were her grandsons, the children of Shinkichi and Fudé. Seitaro was ten, and Koji, six.

Ever since Koji's birth, Seitaro had liked to snuggle up to his grandmother and had never spent a night away from her side. But he was no crybaby; on the contrary, away from home he behaved like a young ruffian, always the leader when he and his friends played soldiers: after all, he bore the weight of glorious history on his shoulders, being the son of one of the Fallen Heroes of the Russo-Japanese War.

Mother, I dreamed of Shinkichi, Fudé blurted out suddenly, after pondering her dream for a few moments.

Did you? Nui turned towards her. What happened?

It was a funny sort of dream. Shin and I were children again, least that's what I thought, but then suddenly it seemed as if we'd grown up. There was this great river between us and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get across to him.

Why not?

There wasn't any bridge. We ran upstream, no bridge; downstream, no bridge. And meanwhile, this blizzard had come on. Shin was gasping for breath and slowly sinking down in the snow, there before my very eyes. I just didn't know what to do.

Fudé did not mention her yearning but Nui understood only too well: what else would she feel for the husband she would never see again?

Nui lay back, folding her hands over her breast, and pictured her son gradually being buried in the snow. She could not dismiss it as a silly dream. No, there was no doubt about it, Shinkichi must have died that way.

Koji was two at the time and Seitaro, six; Shinkichi himself, at twenty-nine, had been in his prime. Just after war with Russia had been declared, he was called up on February 10, 1904. He left Japan from Hiroshima on April 20 with the Second Army. On May 5, they disembarked on the Liaotung Peninsula.

After landing on the continent, they found themselves literally in a battlefield: starting with the engagement at Chinchou Ch'eng, there was fierce fighting near Telissu, Tashichiao, Liaoyang, and, finally, the Shaho River. The weather grew bitterly cold, with deep snow, and at the Shaho River the tide turned against them for a while and many lives were lost. They rallied, however, and, during the decisive battle that followed, Shinkichi's short life of twenty-nine years came to an end.

Of course, the official dispatch informing them of Shinkichi's death made no mention of how he met his end, but the date of death, December 3, made Nui and Fudé imagine snow and ice. They were both afraid of speaking of this: the thought of the bitter cold, rather than of the actual fighting, was what conjured up his death most vividly.

Her eyes brimming with tears, Nui spoke as if to herself, You never had so much as a warm woolen shirt even when you was little, did you Shinkichi?

Mother, said Fudé in a low voice, after a pause.

Yes? whispered back Nui.

I can't help feeling Shin must have frozen to death in the snow, after coming to me in a dream like that. What do you think? Fudé asked in an even lower voice.

Matter of fact, I'd decided the same thing myself.

I'm not surprised. I mean he couldn't have walked in all that thick snow, even with only a slight wound, could he? He must have frozen to death.

Fudé, where's the sense in us going over it all now?

But I can't bear it. He just stood there staring at me as if he was longing to come back.

You know why that is, don't you? It's because you never stop thinking about him.

I know. All the same, a man's still got a soul, hasn't he, even when he's dead?

I suppose he does. But if a man don't get his way when he's alive it's not likely to make any difference when he's dead, even if his soul does go leaping and flying about all over the place.

Nui gave a wry smile and stretched out her limbs. She was born in 1852 and had lived now for fifty-six years. Nobody could deny that her life had been one of continual hardship and suffering but her will to go on living was as firm as ever; after all, she still had the use of her arms and her legs. With large hands like those, she'll never have any trouble earning a living, an old man reputed to be a palm reader had said of her in the autumn of 1871. She was almost twenty then and about to go as a bride to the home of the Hatanaka family. Her husband, too, who had died the previous year, used to compliment her: You're born skillful, with those long fingers of yours. And they had both been proven right, because it was Nui's dexterity, whether with a hoe, or needle, or the materials for sandal-making, that brought in a living. Despite the handicap of illiteracy, her confidence in being able to survive was unshakeable. Tensing the muscles in her outstretched limbs, she knew that she could—indeed, she must—live for another twenty years; by which time Seitaro would be thirty, and Koji, twenty-six, and both of them would certainly be able to read and write with ease.

Nui raised her head. Seitaro's a promising lad, I know, but I've got a feeling Koji's going to do even better.

Mm, murmured Fudé absent-mindedly, still turning the dream over and over in her mind.

She was well aware, of course, without her mother-in-law telling her, that it made no difference even if Shinkichi's soul did find its way back every night. Shinkichi belonged to the other world now; he was beyond reach, he made no response. Nevertheless, he was still alive in her dreams; he breathed and spoke in them, and Fudé was in love with him. She was in love with the husband who stared silently at her with a look of anguished longing such as she had never seen during their married life together.

Koji suddenly stretched out his hand to his mother's breast. Fudé caught hold of the small hand, wide awake at last.

I mean, take last night; Koji was writing such difficult characters on his slate again, all by himself, continued Nui.

"Yes, he can already write hiragana easily and some of the other children in the first year haven't even learned katakana* yet."

I'd like him to have a real good education.

Fudé made no response.

From now on, you'll need to be educated.

Fudé was silent.

If you're educated, you can do anything.

Do you really think so?

It was Nui's turn to fall silent.

"If you ask me, I don't think it'll make a scrap of difference whether the children have a good education or not. We're eta,* aren't we? Though when it comes to war, we end up the wives and mothers of dead soldiers like everybody else."

Nui said nothing.

Fudé closed her eyes. She saw the wide river; the swift-flowing water; the countless footsteps along the banks. Although the snow had melted, the footsteps were clearly imprinted there . . .

Was she still dreaming? She opened her eyes again. The papered screen of the adjacent workroom was a pale gray. Dawn was breaking.

Fudé gently released Koji's hand and Nui guessed that she was about to get up.

I'd sleep a bit longer if I was you, Fudé. I'm sure you had that bad dream because you're tired.

Fudé's period had begun the previous day.

II

How fair is the land of Yamato,

A land enriching our history,

Bathed in moonlight at Mikasa,

Perfumed with cherry at Yoshino.

In Nara, the ancient capital,

Which has prospered from age unto age,

Many thousands of sturdy young men

Are flocking to join our regiment.

May the Yamato soul fill our rifles,

And our swords burnish the glory

Of this our flawless, sovereign land,

Unequaled throughout the world.

We are as children before our Lord,

And our Lord is like our father.

Loyalty and devotion rest on

Wisdom, benevolence, and courage.

This was the song of the Fifty-third Nara Regiment. Led by Seitaro, about thirty strapping lads from the village of Komori climbed down the west bank of the Katsuragi River singing it at the top of their voices. Then battle began, and they fought long and hard until the pampas grass growing by the river was veiled in the gray light of dusk. On the way home, their singing gradually died down as the sight of the approaching village with its lights and curling smoke brought them back to reality. They began to imagine the sour faces and scolding voices of their parents: You little good-for-nothing, playing about all day long. Draw some water, or light the fire, and be quick about it or else!

Seitaro was certainly no exception and his grandmother roared at him as he came in, Silly boy, wasting your time every day playing soldiers when you could be giving us a hand. And to think you'd of left school by now if things hadn't changed.

That's right, Seitaro nodded with obvious approval. I might be an apprentice.

Nui could not help smiling, and Fudé's mouth also twitched as she lit the stove fire. That year, the elementary-school course had been extended from four to six years and Seitaro had unexpectedly enrolled for the fifth grade. As he was not fond of school, this was too much of a good thing as far as he was concerned; especially as some of his friends had already left at the end of their fourth year and either gone to serve an apprenticeship in Osaka, or stayed at home to help look after younger brothers and sisters. However, for the son of a Fallen Hero of the Russo-Japanese War, it was a point of honor to at least finish primary school.

Relieved by the smiles of his mother and grandmother, Seitaro went over to the stove. Mm, sweet potatoes! Come on, let's eat.

The lid was half off the pan and the sight of the round slices of sweet potato dancing about with the grains of rice in the gruel made him feel even hungrier.

I just put the potatoes in, so they won't be done yet. Watch the fire for a minute, will you.

Leaving Seitaro in charge, Fudé went to wipe the wooden floor of the two-mat* room that had served many generations of the family as living room, playroom, and sometimes guest room for entertaining the neighbors.

Koji had been playing there with his shell top, but when his mother began cleaning the floor, he went over to the stove.

You should've come, Koji. We've been fighting hand-to-hand in the middle of the river today. It was really exciting, whispered Seitaro, feeding the stove fire with straw.

I don't like playing soldiers.

You're a softie, and Seitaro pretended to punch him.

This did not escape Nui. If you go on playing soldiers all the time, Seitaro, you'll turn into one. I can't see why you think it's such fun to behave in that frightening way. Koji likes his books, so he doesn't want to be bothered with them silly games.

But all the most important men are soldiers. Lieutenant-generals and generals are ever so important. And d'you know, Gran, there's a Field Marshal who's even higher up than they are. And above the Field Marshal, there's the Emperor, the Supreme Commander.

Nui's eyebrows suddenly shot up and Fudé bent her head even lower as she wiped the floor; it was as if the sky had become a heavy weight pressing down on her and she bit her lip hard.

Are you going to be a soldier when you grow up, Seitaro? Koji asked, with a glint in his eye.

Course I am. I'm already a general, aren't I?

Ah, ha, ha! Seitaro's the general of all the mischief-makers round here all right.

Koji burst out laughing at his grandmother's words.

Mother, supper's ready, Fudé called presently, putting the pan down on the clean floor and stirring the gruel with a wooden spoon.

Nui went out and shook her apron under the eaves, giving a dry cough as clouds of dust rose into the air. Whenever there was a lull in the farm work, she and Fudé wove the upper side of hemp-soled straw sandals, in the workroom adjoining the living room. In fact, they spent more hours doing this than anything else, and, with only half-an-acre of arable land, their main occupation was really sandal-making rather than farming.

The four of them now sat down on the floor around the pan.

Eat as much as you can. They say sweet potatoes make you clever, said Fudé, ladling an extra big slice into Seitaro's bowl.

No, they don't, they just make you fart. But I like them a lot, though.

Seitaro took a large bite. The potatoes seemed to have absorbed the flavor of the rice gruel and were particularly delicious. They also made the rice go further, and, during the lean period before the harvest, when they had to be very frugal with what little rice was left, sweet potatoes became their staple food.

As she served herself, it suddenly occurred to Fudé that she still had not wiped her face, and she reached for a cloth. Nobody would have called her a great beauty, but, with her round face and fair complexion, she was not bad looking and was popular with the people in the neighborhood. Although only thirty-three, her dark, slightly reddish hair had already lost its gleam; not really surprising considering the hard life she led, where it was a luxury even to use hair oil once a year.

Eat some greens, too; they're good for you.

Fudé pushed the bowl of greens toward Seitaro, who had been eating only the gruel. The greens, known as stalks, were radish leaves preserved in salt and had rather a piquant flavor; but they were not the sort of food that appealed to children.

Those stalks are chicken food, and Seitaro held out his bowl for his fifth helping of gruel. The next minute, he was ready for a sixth, and Fudé looked rather taken aback.

You're not still hungry! You'll eat so much you won't be able to move. Try standing up.

You're in for a shock, chuckled Nui, crunching the stalks.

I'm not called Frogfish for nothing, and I can still eat another two helpings.

Seitaro could not help sniggering at his own retort. He had acquired the nickname of Frogfish because his mouth was so large. Fudé thought he resembled his dead father in this respect; and Shinkichi had undoubtedly taken after his mother. Nui's mouth was exceptionally big for a woman's, but this was her attraction and it mirrored her manly outspokenness.

The pan was empty, and Frogfish, full at last, gave a satisfied burp. Now there was nothing else to do but go to bed: due to a shortage of firewood, households only lit a fire for a bath once every seven to ten days in that area, the heart of the Yamato basin, and children usually went to bed shortly after their supper of gruel. Koji, however, settled down, as he often did, under the lamp that his mother and grandmother used for their night work and started to untie his bundle of schoolbooks. It was not yet seven.

Seitaro, why don't you do some homework, too, for a while. Fudé tried to sound as serious as possible, as he was already starting to yawn.

But tomorrow's a festival. I don't need to do any homework tonight.

Fudé remembered that the next day was November 3, the Emperor's Birthday.*

That's lucky, said Nui, her hands moving busily as she worked. We're going to start the reaping tomorrow, Seitaro, so please come straight home instead of playing soldiers. We'll need your help. The ceremony will finish in the morning, won't it?

What, are you starting the reaping already?

We are. It's a bit soon really, but the army's beginning Grand Maneuvers in a few days, and when they start, horses and troops will be trampling all over the place. They all say it's better to reap any rice that's ripe enough before they begin.

Seitaro nodded in agreement. He knew about the Grand Maneuvers, of course, and, infected by all the commotion over them, he and his friends had been playing soldiers with even greater fervor for the last few days. The children in his class talked of nothing else. Some boasted, We've got an officer coming to stay with us, while others, proud of the number of troops who would be quartered with them, retorted, Well, seven soldiers are coming to stay at our place. In fact, about forty thousand soldiers from four divisions—the Osaka Fourth, the Kyoto Sixteenth, the Himeji Tenth, and the Nagoya Third—would be surging into the small Yamato basin. It was unprecedented for the Grand Maneuvers to be held there and, not unnaturally, people were in a state of unusual excitement.

All right, I'll help.

Me, too, said Koji, following his brother's example; after all, this was nothing less than a family emergency.

The next morning, instead of the usual dark blue apron over his kimono, Seitaro wore a black muslin sash, while Koji was dressed in a lined kimono of brown cotton, replacing the unlined one he had worn continuously since the end of the summer. Fudé had given much thought to her children's appearance on the Emperor's Birthday.

III

On the east side of Ohashi Bridge, over the Katsuragi River, there was a path that sloped gently down to the entrance gates of a school, Sakata Primary School, which Seitaro and the other children from Komori attended. The elementary-school course having only just been extended to six years, there were at present only five grades and Seitaro was in the top one. There were two hundred and seventy-three pupils, and of these eighty-one came from Komori, a larger number than from any of the other villages. But the Komori pupils also had the lowest rate of attendance, as was clearly shown by the flag that Seitaro always shouldered to and from school. The flag was certainly splendid, with its design of a white cherry blossom on a purple ground, but Seitaro felt no pride or pleasure in being its bearer because of the five white stripes in the bottom corner.

Sakata Primary School served the five villages of Hongawa, Komori, Sakata, Shimana, and Azuchi, and, that April, it had provided them with flags that displayed from one to five white stripes. The attendance rate of each village was officially announced at the end of every month, and