VI.

My first experience in handling money came on that trip. Until then I had never had a single coin in pocket money; when I needed something I would charge it at the store. After the trip I could no longer be satisfied with that arrangement.

[18] These were high-ranking retainers of the Satsuma domain, from which came many of the civilian as well as military elite in the Meiji period.

[19] These were probably General Viscount Takashima Tomonosuke (1844-1916) and Admiral Count Kawamura Sumiyoshi (1836-1904), both prominent natives of Kagoshima. Takashima became Minister of the Army in the late 1890s and Kawamura served as a Privy Councillor. Later in 1901 Kawamura received the honor of serving as Guardian of the Imperial Princes, so the crown prince mentioned below was the Showa Emperor, who reigned from 1926 to 1989.

[20] Lieutenant General Tanaka Kunishige (1869-1941) attended the 1921-22 Washington conference.

The new middle school had been built among a long row of cryptomeria trees on the road between Shibata and Ijimino. At the end of the row of trees was a small restaurant called the Hebizukaya. Our gang called it by the English word Snake .^[21] All of us often would cut class to go there so it was the scene of a great deal of mischief. Because of this I began stealing money out of my mother's purse. She was always putting her purse somewhere and forgetting where. When she needed money she had to search the whole house, so she seldom knew how much she had in the purse. I took advantage of this to take small sums from time to time.

As time went on, these sums weren't enough and I finally sold the watch my father had given me. He had owned it for a long time. It was a very old-fashioned one in a silver case with a key that you put in a hole in the back and wound noisily. Mother found out somehow and told me, "Take that watch and go to your father's room." No longer possessing the watch, I had no choice but to go empty-handed and prepared for a severe scolding.

Father began the court proceedings. I answered only that I had sold the watch. I couldn't say what I had done with the money because I was afraid if I told Father about the Snake he would then find out about the other mischief—particularly about such things as the brotherhood among students in the gang. Both of my parents scolded me harshly and hit me, but I wouldn't tell them anything more.

During that winter we heard from the leaders of our gang—now third- and fourth-year students—that something momentous had happened. The Association Assembly had censured Headmaster Miyoshi and voted to dismiss him.

The middle school had been built by an association consisting of Shibata and the forty-some villages surrounding the town. The association had an assembly and it was this Association Assembly that had passed the vote of no confidence. Occasionally matters concerning the operation of the school were raised in the assembly and we heard that there

[21] Osugi gives it the English name suneku ; the full name of the restaurant was the Shop of the Grave of the Snake.

had been some kind of proposal concerning educational policy. We also heard that the headmaster had flatly rejected it. We knew nothing about what kind of proposal had been made. Neither did we know any of the contents of the vote of censure. Nor did we know any of the circumstances in which the association had become entangled. Nevertheless, we decided that the association was at fault. We resolved to start a movement in support of the headmaster.

A mass meeting of students was held the next day at the Chotokuji Temple with all the second-, third-, and fourth-year students there (the first-year students, being unable yet to understand such things, were purposely excluded from membership). The entire gathering voted unanimously to link our fate with Headmaster Miyoshi. The commotion continued for a month, right up until the approach of school examinations. It was then decided to turn the general boycott into a mass withdrawal from school.

Saying that a school like this was no longer any use, someone smashed the glass doors to pieces. Then almost all the desks and chairs in the classrooms were broken up into the size of firewood for the stove. One of the teachers, driving his carriage through the parade grounds at night, was beaten up because it was said that he was in league with the association.

One day my parents called me to where they were sitting next to the charcoal fire in the living room. "I understand that there is some kind of trouble and you haven't been to school at all lately," Father said. He had heard about it from the information that the association had sent to all the students' parents and guardians. It blamed the headmaster and asked that all the students be sent back to school the next day.

I muttered, as if to myself, that I wouldn't go. Father leaped to his feet, but Mother calmed him, begging, "This child won't listen to anything you tell him. Please forget the matter for now."

The commotion ended with the association withdrawing its vote of censure, the headmaster giving his resignation, and, at his entreaty, the students being given their final examinations.

Headmaster Miyoshi and his assistant Fukuda moved on together to a middle school in Nagano. A farewell party was held for them in a

restaurant in Naka-machi. The headmaster was a great drinker and everyone at the party drank a bottle of sake apiece. Throughout the party there was a smile on the headmaster's square face and Fukuda, in his esteemed voice, recited a poem about the "Band of White Tigers" who were from his hometown.^[22]

When it was finally time for the headmaster to leave town, the entire student body of three hundred marched off with his sled in the center through the high drifts of snow twenty miles to Niigata.

Miyoshi's successor was Hirota Ichijo. Despite the fact that his name sounded as if he should have been a priest, he was a stylish fellow who had just received his bachelor's degree.^[23] Shortly after he arrived he did some sort of experiment in the art of memory at a meeting of the school supporters and this actually made him unpopular with the pupils. Then he did something else. It was customary for the students to take off their shoes before entering the place where the portrait of the emperor was kept but it was said that he had entered with his shoes still on. This touched off a serious movement to dismiss him.

That spring I took the military school entrance examination for the second time. On the very first day I almost failed the physical. I had had no trouble with the eye chart the year before, but this time everything below the first two or three lines was a blur. I couldn't make out one part from another.

The young medical officer, shaking his head, went into the Other room to call a second army doctor. This was Dr. Hiraga, who had taken care of my illnesses since I was a small child. He said, "He's got to get in this year, whatever it is," and he corrected the eye examination. Then he took me off into a dark room and had me try on several pairs of glasses. In the end, I cleared the physical.

[22] In Aizu in 1868, during the civil war that accompanied the overthrow of the Tokugawa regime and the establishment of the Meiji government, a group of young samurai known as the byakkotai (white tigers) defended their castle against the Restorationist forces. In the end, some sixteen between the ages of fifteen and seventeen years threw themselves on their swords rather than surrender.

[23] Ichijo is written with the characters for "single vehicle" and thus refers to the teachings of Buddha. Since only a small segment of the populace held the bachelor's degree, it carried considerable prestige.

Although I had not studied for it, the entrance examination was about at the level of upper elementary school and I didn't have trouble with it.

A little before the official results were to be announced, we received a telegram from Uncle Yamada: "CONGRATULATIONS ON SAKAE'S ADMISSION. "