Totto-Chan, the Little Girl at the Window (20 page)

To children it is a storybook. The many replies from readers polled indicate that in spite of all the difficult words in it, children from the age of seven are reading my book with the aid of a dictionary. I can't tell you how happy this makes me. A Japanese literature scholar, aged one hundred and three, wrote, “I enjoyed it immensely." But far more remarkable is the fact that young children are actually reading it looking up the difficult words when comics and picture books are all the rage and youngsters are said to be no longer interested in the written word;

After the book appeared, I was deluged with requests from film, television, theater, and film animation companies for permission to produce my story in their various mediums. But since so many people had read the book and already formed their own mental images, I felt it would be difficult to improve on their imagination no matter how brilliant the director, so I turned them all down.

But I did agree to an orchestral interpretation because music gives free rein to fantasy. I asked Akihiro Komori--well known for his beautiful music--to undertake the composition. The symphonic tale Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window, for which I did the narration, was a brilliant success, filling the hall alternately with laughter and tears. A record has been made of it.

The book has now also become official teaching material. With the approval of the Ministry of Education, the chapter "The Farming Teacher" will be used in third grade Japanese language studies starting next year, and the chapter "Shabby Old School" in fourth grade ethics and manners classes. Many teachers are already using the book in their own way. In art classes, for instance, I hear teachers are reading children one of the chapters and then having them draw pictures of what impressed them most.

I have been able to realize my long-cherished dream of founding Japan's first professional theater of the deaf, thanks to royalties from the book—for which I received the Non-Fiction Prize as well as three other awards. For services to society, I recently had the honor of being invited, together with many distinguished guests, including Nobel Prizewinner for Chemistry Ken'ichi Fukui, to the emperor's spring garden party, where I was privileged to have a very pleasant conversation with His Majesty. And last year, I received a commendation from the prime minister to commemorate the International Year of Disabled Persons. The book I wanted to write so much brought all these happy events to pass.

Finally, 1 would like to express my heartfelt thanks to Dorothy Britton for translating my book into English. I am very fortunate to have found such a splendid translator. The fact that she is both a musician and a poet has enabled her to put my text into English that has both rhythm and sensitivity and is a delight to read.

Yes, one thing more. 1 would also like to thank Broadway composer Harold Rome and his author wife, Florence. I had only completed the first chapter when they began urging me to publish my story in English.

TETSUKO KUROYANAGI, Tokyo, 1982

What are they doing now, those friends of mine who "traveled" together with me on the same classroom "train?"

Takahashi, who won all the prizes on Sports Day, never grew any taller, bur entered, with flying colors, a high school famous in Japan for its rugby team. He went on to Meiji University and a degree in electronic engineering.

He is now personnel manager of a large electronics company near Lake Hamana in central Japan. He is responsible for harmony in the work force and he listens to complaints and troubles and settles dispute. Having suffered much himself, he can readily understand other people's problems, and his sunny disposition and attractive personality must be a great help, too. As a technical specialist, he also trains the younger men in the use of the large machines with integrated circuitry.

I went to Hamamatsu to see Takahashi and his wife--a kindly woman who understands him perfectly and has heard so much about Tomoe she says it is almost as if she had gone there herself. She assured me Takahashi has no complexes whatever about his dwarfism. I am quite sure she is right. Complexes would have made life very difficult for him at the prestigious high school and university he attended, and would hardly enable him to work as he does in a personnel department.

Describing his first day at Tomoe, Takahashi said he immediately felt at ease when he saw there were others with physical handicaps. From that moment he suffered no qualms and enjoyed each day so much he never even once wanted to stay home. He told me he was embarrassed at first about swimming naked in the pool, but as he
took off his clothes one by one, so he shed his shyness and sense of shame bit by bit. He even got so he did not mind standing up in front of the others to make his lunchtime speeches.

He told me how Mr. Kobayashi had encouraged him to jump over vaulting-horses higher than he was, always assuring him he could do it, although he suspects now that Mr. Kobayashi probably helped him over them--but not until the very last moment, letting him think he had done it all by himself. Mr. Kobayashi gave him confidence and enabled him to know the indescribable joy of successful
achievement. Whenever he tried to hide in the background, the headmaster invariably
brought him forward so he had to develop a positive attitude to life willy-nilly. He still remembers the elation he felt at winning all those prizes. Bright-eyed and sensible as ever, he reminisced happily about Tomoe.

A good home environment must have contributed, too, to Takahashi's developing into such a fine person. Nevertheless, there is no doubt about the fact that Mr. Kobayashi dealt with us all in a very far-sighted way. Like his constantly saying me, "You're really a good girl, you know," the encouraging way he kept saying to Takahashi, "You can do it!" was a decisive factor in shaping his life.

As I was leaving Hamamatsu, Takahashi told me something I had completely forgotten. He said he was often teased and bullied by children from other schools on
his way to Tomoe and would arrive there crestfallen, whereupon I would quickly ask him what children had done it and was out of the gate in a flash. After a while I would come running back and assure him it was all right now and wouldn't happen again.

"You made me so happy then," he said when we parted. I had forgotten. Thank you, Takahashi, for remembering.

Mr. Kobayashi's third daughter, Miyo-chan, graduated from the Education Department of Kunitachi College of Music and now teaches music at the elementary school attached to the college. Like her father, she loves teaching young children. From the time she was about three years old, Mr. Kobayashi had observed Miyo- chan walking and moving her body in time to music, as well as learning to talk, and this helped him greatly in his teaching of children.

Sakko-chan, the girl with the large eyes who was wearing a pinafore with a rabbit on it the day I started at Tomoe, entered a school that was in those days very difficult
for girls to get into--now known as Mita High School. She went on to the English Department of Tokyo Woman's Christian University, became an English instructor with the YWCA, and is still there. She makes good use of her Tomoe experience at their summer camps.

She married a man she met while climbing Mount Hotaka in the Japan Alps. They named their son Yasutaka-the last part commemorating the name of the mountain on which they met.

Tai-chan, who said he wouldn't marry me, became one of Japan's leading physicists. He lives in America, an example of the "brain drain." He graduated in physics from the Science Department of Tokyo University of Education. After his M.Sc., he went to America on a Fulbright exchange scholarship and got his doctorate five years
later at the University of Rochester. He remained there, doing research in experimental high-energy physics. At present he is at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois, the world's largest, where he is assistant director. It is a research laboratory comprising the cleverest people from fifty-three universities in America, and is a giant organization with 145 physicists and 1,400 technical staff, so you can see what a genius Tai-chan is. The laboratory attracted world attention five years ago when it succeeded in producing a high-energy beam of 500 billion
electron volts.

Recently, Tai-chan, in collaboration with a professor from Columbia University, discovered something called upsilon. I am sure Tai-chan will receive the Nobel Prize one day.

Tai-chan married a talented girl who graduated with honors in mathematics from the
University of Rochester. With such brains, Tai-chan would probably have gone far
no matter what elementary school he attended. But I think the Tomoe system of letting children work on subjects in any order they wanted probably helped to develop his talent. I cannot remember him doing anything during class but working with his alcohol burner and his flasks and test tubes or reading terribly difficult- looking books on science and physics.

Oe, the boy who pulled my braids, is now Japan's foremost authority on Far Eastern orchids, whose bulbs can cost tens of thousands of dollars. His is a very specialized field, and Oe is in great demand and constantly travels all over Japan. It was with difficulty that I managed to get hold of him by telephone in between trips and have the following brief conversation:

"Where did you go to school after Tomoe?" "I didn't go anywhere."
"You didn't go anywhere else? Tomoe was your only school?" "That's right."
"Good heavens! Didn't you even go to secondary school?"

"Oh yes, I did spend a few months at Oita Secondary School when I was evacuated to Kyushu."

"But isn't finishing secondary school compulsory?" "That's right. But I didn't."
"My! How happy-go-lucky he is," I thought. Before the war, Oe's father owned an enormous nursery garden that encompassed most of the area called Todoroki in southwest Tokyo, but it was all destroyed in the bombing. Oe's placid nature was evident in the rest of our conversation as he changed the subject.

"Do you know what's the most fragrant flower? To my mind it's the Chinese spring orchid (Cymbidium virescens). No perfume can match it."

"Are they expensive?" "Some are and some aren't." “What do they look like?"
"Well, they're not a bit showy. They're rather subdued. But that's their charm." He hadn't changed a bit since he was at Tomoe.
Listening to Oe's relaxed voice I thought, "It doesn't bother him one bit, the fact that he never even graduated from secondary school! He just does his own thing and really believes in himself." I couldn't help being impressed.
Kazuo Amadera

Amadera, who loved animals, wanted to be a vet when he grew up and have a farm. Unfortunately, his father died suddenly, and he had to drastically alter the course of his life, leaving Nihon University School of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Husbandry to take a job at Keio Hospital. At present he is at the Central Hospital of the Self-Defense Force in a responsible position connected with clinical examination.

Aiko Saisho, whose great-uncle was Admiral Togo, transferred to Tomoe from the elementary school attached to Aoyama Gakuin. I used to think of her in those days as a very sedate and proper young lady. She probably seemed that way because she had lost her father--a major in the Third Guards Regiment --who was killed during the Manchurian Incident.

After graduating from Kamakura Girls' High School, Aiko married an architect. Now that both her sons are grown and in business, she spends much of her leisure writing poetry.

"So you're carrying on the tradition of your famous aunt who was a poetess laureate at Emperor Meiji's court?" I said.

"Oh, no!" she replied, with an embarrassed laugh.

"You're as modest as you were at Tomoe," I said, "and as ladylike." To which she ventured by way of reply, "You know, my figure's the same now as when I played Benkei!"

Her voice made me think what a warm, happy household hers must be.

Keiko-chan, who had the chickens that could fly, is now married to a teacher at Keio
University's elementary school. She has a married daughter.

Migita, the boy who kept promising to bring those funeral dumplings, took a degree in horticulture, but he had always liked drawing so he went back to college and graduated from Musashino College of Fine Arts. Now he runs his own graphic design company.

Ryo-chan, the janitor, who went off to war, came home safe and sound. He never fails to attend the Tomoe reunions every November third.

This engaging series of childhood recollections tells about an ideal school in Tokyo during World War II that combined learning with fun, freedom, and love. This unusual school had old railroad cars for classrooms, and it was run by an extraordinary man--its founder and headmaster, Sosaku Kobayashi --who was a firm believer in freedom of expression and activity.

In real life, the Totto-chan of the book has become one of Japan's most popular television personalities - Tetsuko Kuroyanagi. She attributes her success in life to this wonderful school and its headmaster.

The charm of this account has won the hearts of millions of people of all ages and made this book a runaway best seller in Japan, with sales hitting the 4.5 million mark in its first year.

Dorothy Britton
poet, writer, and composer--was born in Japan and educated in the U.S. and England. A pupil of Darius Milhaud, she is well known for her popular Capitol Records album Japanese Sketches in which Tetsuko Kuroyanagi's father is violin soloist. She is the author of the English libretto of the Japanese opera Yuzuru and of A Haiku Journey, a distinguished translation of the poet Basho's Narrow Road to a Far Province.

Tokyo-born
Tetsuko Kuroyanagi
, voted Japan's most popular TV personality for five years running, studied opera singing at Tokyo College of Music but became an actress, soon winning a prestigious award for her radio and TV work. She spent
1972 in New York, studying acting and writing From New York with Love. Since 1975 she has hosted “Tetsuko's Room,” Japan's first daily TV talk show, recently awarded the highest TV prize. This and her other regular TV shows all have top viewer ratings. Devoted to welfare, she twice brought America's National Theater of the Deaf to Japan, acting with them in sign language. The Totto-chan Foundation, financed by her book royalties, professionally trains deaf actors--with whom she often appears. Author of Panda and I, she is also a conservationist with a long-time interest in the Giant Panda, and is a director of the World Wildlife Fund Japan.