What childhood was like in Meiji Tokyo

Desperate for more to read and having read through the pile of library books I'd checked out as the library was closing indefinitely behind me, I pulled a small book off my shelves that I'd been planning to read for a while, The Silver Spoon (Gin no Saji) by Naka Kansuke and translated by Etsuko Tarasaki. I believe I bought it when it was published and have had good intentions to read it ever since. It was published in 1976, which says something about my good intentions.

The back cover blurbs the novel as "A modern Japanese classic. The Silver Spoon is an extraordinary evocation of childhood and a memoir of the daily life, folk manners and children's games of pre-World War I Japan." By the book's internal evidence, Naka is evoking the Meiji-era Tokyo in the 1890s.

Naka Kansuke, (1885-1965) was born in Tokyo. Other than living in Hiratsuka (a city between Tokyo and Mt. Fuji) from 1926 to 1932 and evacuating to Shizuoka Prefecture during World War II, he spent most of his life in Tokyo. His father was a steward for the former feudal lord of Imao in Mino province (modern Gifu prefecture), who had a residence in the Kanda district. According to Wikipedia, Naka was one of the students taught by Natsume Sōseki at the University of Tokyo before Sōseki gave up teaching to write for the newspaper Asahi Shimbun. Sōseki arranged the serial publication in the paper of Naka's first novel, "a nostalgic depiction of his childhood and teens . . . The Silver Spoon. The novel is popular in Japan . . . replete with historical details as well as a contemporary sense of isolation; it follows Naka's psychological journey from childhood to adulthood."

I believe The Silver Spoon would be classified in Japan as a "shi-shosetsu"—an "I novel." There is only the narrowest gap between the narrator's account account in the book and the known facts about the author's life. In the West we would call it a memoir.

As the translator writes in her useful introduction, "The first part of The Silver Spoon consists of fifty-three short sections and deals with the preschool and early-school periods of the narrator's life. The second part, twenty-two sections, deals largely with his early adolescent years at school and ends when the youth reaches sixteen years of age." The past is truly another country, and Meiji-era Japan is perhaps more foreign than most. Here are two examples taken at random from the book:

—"One of my favorite amusements [at a neighborhood festival grounds] was watching the wrestling match between a man and a camel. A man wearing a twisted towel around his head and a fencing girdle would challenge the camel in the manner of an attacking bird, causing the angry beast to kick at him in response. Sometimes the camel lost, its neck pinned to the ground; at other times, the man, having been thoroughly kicked, ran away crying 'I surrender, I surrender!' . . . .

—"Nearby lived an old peddler of millet jelly who did some farming and local trading. When the weather was fine he came without fail, blowing a street vendor's flute as he pulled his wagon. The metallic, discordant sound of the pipe strangely stirred the children. Those in their houses came out; those who were playing stopped their games, some sheathing swords made of broken sticks while others pushed dirty spinning tops down the fronts of kimonos. All rushed clamoring to the wagon. Besides millet-jelly candy and other kids of sweets, the old man sold riddles. Everybody scrambled for these, turning over the red and blue papers to play the guessing games. . . . "

But while The Silver Spoon does describe scenes from childhood, it also shows the narrator at first "as as sickly, introverted child," writes Terasaki in her introduction. "He is often fretful and easily bursts into tears. This could be annoying and tiresome . . ." It certainly was for this reader. Bursting into tears seemed to be the only way the narrator could deal with disappointment, frustration, confusion—life's ordinary bruises. Terasaki notes that "small children, especially those who are sick are often given to weeping. but this trait is especially accepted by the Japanese people, for even as adults they are traditionally accustomed to expressing their emotions, both grief and joy, in tears when the occasion cals for it. Japanese literature is full of such instances." That may be true, but I am afraid it did not make The Silver Spoon less annoying and tiresome for all the pleasures it offers.

My road to KEEP - Part II

I went to KEEP twice in 1957. My father as an active member of St. Paul's East Cleveland Episcopal Church had written to tell me about the organization. He had read about KEEP in, I believe, The Reader's Digest. Because KEEP was Episcopal-affiliated, I asked the Episcopal Army chaplain at the camp about it. He was aware of it, and had a liaison with it in Tokyo. In time, someone from KEEP's Tokyo office telephoned me and I went into the city (my camp was on the outskirts), met with KEEP's assistant director, and they agreed to have me visit. The plan was that I would take take pictures, write a description, and my father would use the material to raise money for KEEP.

The author and the KEEP pickup

It is now sixty-three years later, so my memories are fragmentary and limited. But in early June I obtained a weekend pass to take a bus from my camp to the Narimasu train station, the train to Tokyo's Ikebukuro station, the train to Tokyo's Shinjuku station where I met my guide/interpreter a young Japanese man, Michi who was no older than I. He and I took a train to Kofu, a small city in the central Japanese mountains. From Kofu we took a bus to Kiyosato, the poor rural village in which KEEP was located. The road was an unpaved, one-lane track up the side of the mountain, so narrow that if a vehicle was coming down, the bus had to back up to a spot wide enough for the other to pass.

We stayed in one the camp's cabins, our beds were foam mattresses on the floor. Compared to an Army cot, the ten-inch-thick foam was like sleeping on a cloud. Michi took me on a tour. Paul Rusch wanted more than a summer camp; he wanted to improve the lives of rural Japanese. I toured the hospital, the school, the barn, and on Sunday morning attended the Episcopal church service. No pews; congregants sat Japanese-style on the tatami-mat floor, and the little children were free to run about, even play by the altar during the sermon.

Church service in the KEEP church

I wanted to see more of the countryside, so Michi borrowed a (the?) KEEP pickup truck and allowed me to drive it. The roads were mud and I, totally inexperienced, managed to put the truck into mud up to its axels. Michi managed to obtain help from several local farmers who pulled us out. I wanted to thank them with money; he suggested a big bottle of sake would be more appropriate, so he drove us into Kiyosato and I bought one. (By comparison to the local farmers and Michi, I was rich, although only an Army sergeant; in those days a dollar bought 360 yen; the sake was probably ¥500.)

By 1957, Rusch had imported a dozen or so purebred heifers from North Texas to establish a dairying business at KEEP. Although the Japanese had little taste for milk, butter, cheese, even beef before the war, the market was growing. KEEP's land was too high to grow rice on, too rocky for ox-driven plowing. With a bulldozer, however, KEEP was able to clear the rocks and plant grass for cattle. When I arrived, there was a thriving dairy business and at dinner that night in the virtually-rebuild Seisen Ryo lodge, I was served a glass of the raw milk.

I grew up knowing that unpasteurized milk could kill you, which is why milk came in bottles. Should I insult my hosts by refusing to drink? Or should I risk it? I drank. It was like drinking cream but better.

One other memory from that night: An older Japanese guest, also up from Tokyo (and probably a senior executive in a major corporation; who else do you wine and dine if you need money?), taught me the game of go. It is one of the easiest games to learn in the world. It is, like chess, one of the most difficult to master. We played three games, and while he was patient, he easily wiped me off the board.

A final memory: In August 1957, when the Prince and Princess of Japan were coming to KEEP for the dedication of the new Seisen Ryo lodge, I was returning to camp and our paths crossed at the Kofu train station. The street outside and the station was mobbed; hundreds of people wanted to see the royals. As a Westerner and as a head taller than most Japanese, I stood out, and when the waiting press corps saw me they attacked. What did I think of Japan? Of Kofu? Of the Emperor? Since these radio and press reporters had little—or no—English, and my Japanese was, to be charitable, limited, I probably said something like, "Nihonjin mo nihon mo suki desu," I like Japan and the Japanese, and caught my train.