Totto-Chan, the Little Girl at the Window (8 page)

Ichikawa Sadanji II; the modern drama pioneer Kaoru Osannai; the dancer Michio Ito. All of these people felt that Dalcroze's teachings were fundamental to many of the arts. But Sosaku Kobayashi was the first to apply it to elementary education in Japan.

If you asked him what eurythmics was, he would reply, "It's a sport that refines the body's mechanism; a sport that teaches the mind how to use and control the body; a sport that enables the body and mind to understand rhythm. Practicing eurythmics makes the personality rhythmical. And a rhythmical personality is beautiful and strong, conforming to and obeying the laws of nature."

Totto-chan's classes began with training the body to understand rhythm. The headmaster would play the piano on the small stage in the Assembly Hall and the children, wherever they stood, would start walking in time to the music. They could walk in whatever manner they liked, except that it wasn't good to bump into others, so they tended to go in the same circular direction. If they thought the music was in two-beat time, they would wave their arms up and down, like a conductor, as they walked. As for their feet, they were not supposed to tramp heavily, but that didn't mean they were to walk with toes pointed either, as in ballet. They were told to walk completely relaxed, as if they were dragging their toes. The most important thing was naturalness, so they could walk in any way they felt was right. If the rhythm changed to three-beat time, they waved their arms accordingly and adjusted their pace to the tempo, walking faster or slower as required. They had to learn to raise and lower their arms to fit rhythms up to six-beat time.

Four-beat time was simple enough: "Down, around you, out to the sides, and up.”

But when it came to five beats it was:

*"Down, around you, out in front, out to the sides, and up.” *

While for six beats, the arms went:

"Down, around you, out in front, around you again, out to the sides, and up.” So when the beat kept changing it was pretty difficult.

What was even harder was when the headmaster would call out:

"Even if I change my tempo on the piano don't you change until I tell you to!" Suppose they were walking in two-beat time and the music changed to three beats,
the children had to keep on walking in duple time while heating the triple rhythm. It was very hard, but the headmaster said it was to cultivate the children's powers of concentration.

Finally he would shout, "You can change now!"

With relief, the children would immediately change to the triple rhythm. But that was when they had to be especially alert. In the time it took to mentally abandon the two beats and get the message to their muscles to adapt to three beats, the music might suddenly change to five-beat time! At first, their arms and legs were all over the place and there would be groans of “Teacher, wait! wait!” But with practice, the movements became pleasant to do, and the children even thought up variations and enjoyed themselves.

Usually each child moved individually, but sometimes a pair would decide to act in unison, holding hands when the rhythm was in two-beat time; or they would try walking with their eyes closed. The only thing that was taboo was conversation.

Sometimes, when there was a parent-Teacher Association meeting the mothers would peek in through the window. It was lovely to watch—each child moving arms and legs with ease, leaping about joyfully, in perfect time to the music.

Thus, the purpose of eurythmics was first to train both mind and body to be conscious of rhythm, thereby achieving harmony between the spirit and the flesh, and finally awakening the imagination and promoting creativity.

The day she arrived at the school for the very first time, Totto-chan had looked at the name on the gate and asked Mother, "What does Tomoe mean?"

The tomoe is an ancient comma-shaped symbol, and for his school the headmaster had adopted the traditional emblem consisting of two tomoe - one black and one white--united to form a perfect circle.

This symbolized his aim for the children: body and mind equally developed and in perfect harmony.

The headmaster had included eurythmics in his school curriculum because he felt it was bound to have good results and help the children's personalities to grow naturally, without being affected by too much adult interference.

The headmaster deplored contemporary education, with its emphasis on the written word, which tended to atrophy a child's sensual perception of nature and intuitive receptiveness to the still small voice of God, which is inspiration.

It was the poet Basho who wrote:

Listen! a frog
Jumping into the silence
Of an ancient pond!

Yet the phenomenon of a frog jumping into a pond must have been seen by many others. Down through the ages and in the whole world, Watt and Newton cannot have been the only ones to notice the steam from a boiling kettle or observe an apple fall.

Having eyes, but not seeing beauty; having ears, but not hearing music; having minds, but not perceiving truth; having hearts that are never moved and therefore never set on fire. These are the things to fear, said the headmaster.

As for Totto-chan, as she leaped and ran about in her bare feet, like Isadora Duncan, she was tremendously happy and could hardly believe that this was part of going to school!

It was the first time Totto-chan had ever been to a temple fair. In the middle of Senzoku Pond, near her former school, was a small island with a shrine dedicated to Benten, the goddess of beauty and music. On the night of the annual fair, as she walked along the dimly lit road with Mother and Daddy, the night was suddenly ablaze with lights as they reached the fair. Totto-chan poked her head inside each of the little stalls. There were strange sounds everywhere--squeaks and sizzles and pops--and all sorts of enticing aromas. Everything was new and strange.

There were toy pipes, which you "smoked" by inhaling peppermint. They were decorated with pictures of cats and dogs and Betty Poop. There were lollipops and cotton candy. There were bamboo guns - tubes through which you pushed pieces of a certain kind of plant stem to make a loud pop.

A man by the side of the road was swallowing swords and eating glass; and there was a man selling a sort of powder you rubbed on the rim of a bowl to make it resound. There were magic golden rings that made money disappear, and pictures that developed when exposed to sunlight, and paper flowers that blossomed when dropped in a glass of water. As she walked along, her eyes darting this way and that, Totto-chan suddenly stopped.

"Oh, look!" she cried, seeing a box full of yellow baby chicks all cheeping away.

"I want one!" she said, pulling Mother and Daddy over. "Please buy me one! Please!"

The chicks all turned toward Totto-chan and raised their little heads to look at her, wiggling their tiny bottoms and cheeping even louder.

"Aren't they cute?" Totto-chan thought she had never seen anything quite so appealing in all her life, and she crouched down beside them.

"Please," she begged, looking up at Mother and Daddy. But to her amazement, her parents quickly tried to drag her away.

"But you said you'd buy me something, and this is the only thing I want!"

"No, dear," said Mother quietly. “These poor chicks are going to die very soon." "Why?" asked Totto-chan, starting to cry.

Daddy drew her aside so the vendor couldn't hear, and explained, "They're cute now, Totsky, but they're terribly weak, and they won't live long. You'll only cry when it dies. That's why we don't want you to have one."

But Totto-chan had set her heart on having a baby chick, and wouldn't listen. "I won't let it die! I'll look after it!"

Mother and Daddy kept trying to drag Totto-chan away from the box, bur she looked longingly at the chicks, and the chicks looked longingly at her, cheeping even louder still. Totto-chan had made up her mind that the only thing she wanted was a chick. She beseeched her parents, "Please, please buy me one.

Mother and Daddy were adamant.

"We don't want you to have one because it will only make you cry in the end."

Totto-chan burst out crying and started walking home with tears streaming down her cheeks. Once they were back on the dark road, she said, sobbing convulsively, "I've never wanted anything so much in my whole life. I’ll never ask you to buy me anything ever again. Please buy me one of those chicks!"

Finally Mother and Daddy gave in.

It was like sunshine after rain. Totto-chan was all smiles now as she walked home carrying a small box containing two baby chicks.

The next day, Mother had the carpenter make a special slatted box, fitted with an electric light bulb to keep the chicks warm. Totto-chan watched the chicks all day long. The little yellow chicks were very cute. But, alas, on the fourth day one of them stopped moving and on the fifth day the other did, too. She stroked them and called to them, but they didn't give a single "cheep." She waited and waited but they never opened their eyes again. It was just as Mother and Daddy had said. Crying to herself, she dug a hole in the garden and buried the two little birds. And she laid a tiny flower over the spot. The box they had been in now seemed awfully big and empty.

Catching sight of a tiny yellow feather in the corner of the box, she thought of the way the little chicks had cheeped when they saw her at the fair, and she clenched her teeth as she cried soundlessly.

She had never wanted anything so much in her life and now it was gone so soon. It was her first experience of loss and separation.

The headmaster was always asking parents to send their children to school at Tomoe in their worst clothes. He wanted them to wear their worst clothes so that it wouldn't matter if they got muddy and torn. He thought it a shame for children to worry about being scolded if their clothes got dirty or to hesitate joining in some game because their clothes might get torn. There were elementary schools near Tomoe where the girls were dressed in sailor-suit uniforms and the boys wore high-collared jackets with shorts. The Tomoe children came to school in their ordinary clothes, and they had their teachers' permission to play to their hearts' content without giving their clothes a thought. Trousers in those days weren't made of anything durable like today's jeans, so all the boys had patches on their trousers and the girls wore skirts or dresses made of the strongest material available.

Totto-chan's favorite pastime was crawling under the fences of other people's gardens and vacant lots, so it suited her very well not to have to think about her clothes. There were a lot of barbed-wire fences in those days, and some of them had wire right down to ground level. In order to get under one like that you had to burrow like a dog. No matter how careful she was, Totto-chan would always manage to catch her dress on the barbs and tear it. Once, when she had on an old muslin dress that was really quite threadbare, the whole thing got shredded from top to bottom. Although it was old, she knew Mother was very fond of that dress, so Totto-chan racked her brains about what to say. She hadn't the heart to tell Mother she had torn it on barbed wire. She thought it would be better to think up a lie that would make it sound as if she couldn't help tearing it. She finally hit on the following story.

"As I was walking along the road," she lied, on arriving home, "a lot of children I didn't know threw knives at my back. That's why my dress got torn like this." But as she spoke she wondered how to answer further questions her mother might ask.

Thankfully, all her mother said was, "It must have been awful!"

Totto-chan heaved a sigh of relief. Mother obviously realized that under chose circumstances she couldn't help getting Mother's favorite dress torn.

Naturally, Mother didn't believe her story about the knives. Knives thrown at her back would have injured her as well as tearing her dress, and Totto-chan didn't seem at all frightened by the incident. Mother realized at once it was a fabrication. However, if was unusual for Totto-chan to go to such lengths to make up an excuse. She realized Totto-chan must have felt badly about the dress and that pleased her.
But there was something Mother had wanted to know for some rime, and this seemed a good opportunity to find out.

“I can see how your dresses can pet torn by knives and things like that," said Mother, "but how do you manage to tear your panties too, day after day!"
Mother could never understand how Totto-chan's lace-trimmed panties got torn every day around the rear. She could see how panties could get muddy and worn thin by going down slides or falling on one's bottom, but how did they get torn to shreds?

Totto-chan thought about it for a while, then said, "You see, when you burrow under a fence you can't help catching your skirt as you go through, and your panties when you back out, and you have to do an 'Excuse me, may I come in!' and a 'Well, goodbye then from one end of the fence to the other, so your panties and things are bound to tear.”

Mother didn't really understand, but it sounded rather amusing. "Is it fun?" she asked.

"Why don't you try it?" said Totto-chan, astonished at the question. "It's great fun and you'll tear your panties, too!"

The game that Totto-chan liked so much and found so thrilling went like this.

First you had to find a large vacant lot surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. "Excuse me, may I come in?" consisted of lifting up the spiked wire, digging a hole, and crawling under. Once inside you lifted up a neighboring bit of barbed wire and dug another hole, this time backing out saying, "Well, goodbye then." It became quite clear to Mother how Totto-chan's skirt got drawn up as she backed out causing her panties to catch on the barbed wire. The process would be repeated over and over again—burrowing under the wire with an "Excuse me, may I come in?" and then backing our through a fresh hole with a "Well, goodbye then," tearing skirt and panties every time. Totto-chan happily zigzagged back and forth burrowing under the barbed-wire fence from one end to the other. No wonder her panties got torn.