I believe we had no afternoon session in the old-fashioned school; and
the boys had two or three pet games to play in leisure hours. One of
them was played in this manner: each one is provided with a number of
pointed iron sticks a few inches long. The leader pitches one of his
sticks in soft soil; the second follows suit, aiming to root out his
predecessor's by the force of pitching in his own close to it; then the
third, the fourth, and all around the company. Another of the games was
played with square chips of wood, on which were painted heads of men,
demons and all sorts of fanciful figures. A triangle was drawn on hard
level ground and at a distance from its base a parallel line; from which
line the boys each in turn threw a common lot of the chips, contributed
by all, into the inside of the triangle. It must be done with the same
nicety of aim and attitude as in throwing quoits. A habit established
itself among us of the players coming down to the ground on all fours
immediately after the act of throwing; it was the consequence of bending
too far forward in order to get in all the chips at the peril of
neglecting the centre of gravity. The chips that flew outside of the
triangle were gathered by the next player and those in the inside
allowed to be taken by the player, should he be able to throw a chip
from his hand and lay it on them one by one. If he failed at any moment,
the next player gathered together all the remaining chips and played his
turn. A modification of this game consists in throwing the chips against
a wall, and counting good those only that remain inside a straight line
parallel with the foot of the wall, and turning over to the next player
those on the outside. The game is played by girls as well as by boys,
although they rarely play together.
We also used to play hide-and-seek, blind-man's-bluff and other games
that are familiar in this country.
Later in my school days the government underwent great changes, and it
adopted the common school system of the West. My father was to pay a
school-tax and I to attend a new school, where instruction was not in
penmanship alone but extended over various subjects. Text-books on
arithmetic, Japanese geography and history had been compiled after the
American pattern, but no grammar appeared; the educational department
left the language to be taught by the purely inductive method. The fact
is that the Japanese language has not been systematized; should one
attempt it he would find it a tremendous task.
When I was on the point of leaving for America my brother put into my
hand a Japanese grammar in two thin volumes, written by a literary man
in Tokio, and said that it was being used in schools. I have them still
by me and privately consider the attempt not a very great success. The
gentleman tries to follow the steps of the European grammarian; he
cleverly makes out "noun" and "pronoun," "verb" and "adverb"--even
"article," (which, in good faith, I never in the slightest suspected our
language was guilty of possessing) from the chaos. Upon the whole, the
book has the effect of confusing instead of enlightening me; after my
dabbling in languages, in Japanese I prefer to be taught like a babe.
Japanese dictionaries are for the purpose of hunting up Japanese
meanings of Chinese letters, answering to your Latin and Greek lexicons.
So much of Chinese has been introduced into our language in the course
of centuries, that it is now impossible to read one line in a Japanese
newspaper, for instance, without coming across Chinese characters. In
books for women and children and in popular novels Japanese equivalents
are written beside Chinese words. In getting lessons we made little use
of the dictionaries; once learned by dictation from the teacher we
relied on our memory and that of others; hence frequent review was
needed to retain them. As the new school system took root, the school
books began to have vocabularies and keys; and the Chinese classics
pursued by advanced students their "pony."
Just at present a movement is on foot to simplify our tongue in its
complication with Chinese. People generally suppose the two languages
are alike; many of them have asked me if I could interpret to them what
the down-town "washees" were so merrily babbling about over their
flat-irons. It is a mistake; Japanese and Chinese are totally
different, strange as it may appear. And yet I had to learn my Chinese
in order to read our standard works. If the common people could
understand Chinese as well as the learned persons, I believe we could
get along very well with our language as it is; but they do not. It
would be very inconvenient indeed if, for instance, in this country the
"educated" people should use long words all the while, or employ French
expressions freely in talking and writing. Just such a pedantry exists
in my native country, and truly educated men are crying out for
reformation. There are two parties. One party thinks it can do it by
using unadulterated Japanese, while the other deems nothing short of the
Romanization of the whole fabric--that is, the adoption of the Roman
alphabet in spelling Japanese words--could accomplish the end. Opinion
is equally divided between them; the second party may appear slightly
stronger on account of its members for the greater part being students
of other languages beside their own. Both these parties issue
periodicals to advocate their theories and at the same time to carry
their ideas into practice. These are worthy efforts; as yet they are
experiments. We are told that the growth of a language is a matter of
generations, that language has life like everything else, and that it
must undergo changes despite feeble human efforts.
But to return. Happily our former schoolmaster was hired by the new
organization and still took charge of us. He was a gifted young
gentleman, a writer of lucid sentences and also something of a poet. He
encouraged us greatly in polishing our Japanese-Chinese composition. It
was his custom to select the best composition from the class, on a given
subject, copy it on the blackboard and point out before the class what
elegant epithets could be substituted for vulgar ones. It was a pleasure
with him to do this, whereas in mathematics he did not show much zeal.
Above all, he inherited from his father the art of fine penmanship. His
brother, too, had a well-formed hand quite like our teacher's; evidently
it was a case of hereditary genius.
At times our beloved master voluntarily offered to recite to us records
of famous battles and heroes that adorn the pages of Japanese history.
He did this from the love of telling them; the boys were as fond of
hearing as he was of telling. He had in hand no book to help him; the
gallant exploits of the brave and handsome, the rescuing of the virtuous
fair, the crash, dash and rush of horses, lances and swords he called up
from memory and decked with his teeming imagination. On such an occasion
his language was prolific, his voice modulated according to the shifting
shades of the subject matter; in short, his whole man, heart and soul,
went to the making of the story. His eyes and expression! they often
told half his story. Many a time the bells surprised us at the midst of
his soul-stirring recital, and suddenly called us back to the unromantic
light of modern day and to the homely exercises of school. The stories
were told to us serially, in the hours of intermission and were a sort
of optional course. They were so popular that very few were found
playing about the grounds when the eloquent romancer proceeded in his
narrative.
Yet he was not a man of weak indulgence toward the boys; his sense of
duty was equally strong. If a youngster was seen undertaking to do
anything naughty he would give him a stern look, his cheeks were
inflated, his eyes showed the white plainly. The whole room was then
silent as a tomb. But if a fun-loving fellow ventured, perhaps, to
thrust out his little tongue roguishly or let out a giggle behind his
hand, then the teacher irresistibly relaxed the corners of his mouth,
and in another moment the hall rang with the hilarious laughter of
reconciliation and good-fellowship.
Later I came under the instruction of different masters, but he it was
who led me in infancy so carefully by the hand, as it were, to the first
step of the ladder of knowledge, and he it will be who shall remain the
longest in my memory.
At school the common mode of punishment was to let the culprit stand
erect a whole hour together, facing his own class or a class in an
adjoining room. Although no dunce-cap was on his head, a roomful of
staring eyes struck a burning shame into his soul. Nevertheless, urchins
there were who considered it a supreme delight to be taken off the
troublesome exercises and carried to the next room on a visit, where
they had made many acquaintances at a previous banishment. Indeed, they
had become so inured to it that they thought nothing of it afterward.
Once the whole school, except a few good children, incurred the
teachers' displeasure. I have forgotten what the offence was; all were
prevented from going home after school and ordered to stand up till
dark, each with a bowl full of water. There they stood like a regiment
of begging saints with the bowls in the outstretched arms, which if they
moved the water ran over the brim, and the delinquents would have been
whipped. At first we thought it capital fun, because so many were in
company to commiserate; we laughed aloud, bobbed and courtesied to the
teachers in mockery; but in time we had to change our minds. The result
of standing still like a statue began to tell upon us; our limbs began
to ache and feel stiff; the jolliest member gave a cowardly sob; and the
patient fellow in the corner, hitherto unnoticed, attracted public
attention by dropping the burden. The china went to pieces. He blubbered
out, as if that was sufficient apology. Through the intercession of some
kindly folk we finally came home to supper and comfort.
We were continually threatened with another method of punishment, though
I doubt if the teachers would have inflicted it on its. It was an
intolerably cruel one: the offender was compelled to stand up with a
lighted bundle of senkoes until it burned down close to his hand. The
senko is a slender incense stick burned before the shrine of Buddha and
of our ancestors, and manufactured by kneading a certain aromatic powder
to a paste and squeezing it out into innumerable very slim, extremely
fragile, brownish rods. When dry, these are gathered into good-sized
bundles and put in the market. A few cents will buy you more senkoes
than you need. As the bundle burns away slowly--slowly to prolong the
agony, the fire encroaches on the skin and the flesh. Unless the
offender surrenders himself to the heartless will of his pedagogue he
must suffer injury from the heat. This punishment was actually in
practice in old days when the tyrannical masters had their way, but went
out of fashion at the dawn of civilization.
Our teachers carried flexible sticks, which they played with while
teaching, or used in pointing at the maps; they never whipped anybody
with them to my knowledge; but in going their rounds among the pupils,
if any were engaged in conversation or in any way inattentive, flogged
the table before them in such a manner as to cause the poor fellows to
jump into the air.