AT HOME
Introduction--Dinner--Rice--Turning to Cows--A Bamboo Dragon-fly--A
Watermelon Lantern--On a Rainy Evening--The Story of a Badger.
Our family consisted of father, mother, grandmother, and two children
besides myself, at the time when I was six years old. I don’t remember
exactly what business my father was in, but my impression is that he
had no particular one. He had been trained for the old samurai and
devoted most of his youthful days to fencing, riding, and archery.
But by the time he had come of age, that training was of no use to
him professionally, because, as quickly as you can turn the palm of
your hand, Japan went through a wonderful change from the old feudal
régime to the era of new civilization. So my father, and many, many
others like him, were just in mid-air, so to speak, being thrown out of
their proper sphere, but unable to settle as yet to the solid ground
and adapt themselves to new ways. My mother came also of the samurai
stock, and, like most of her class, kept in her cabinet a small sword
beautifully ornamented in gold work, with which she was ready to defend
her honor whenever obliged to. But far from being mannish, she was
as meek as a lamb, and was devoted to my father and her children. My
grandmother was of a retiring nature and I cannot draw her very much
into my narrative. But she was very good to everybody, and her daily
work, so far as I can remember, was to take a walk around the farm
every morning. She was so regular in this habit that I cannot think
of her without associating her with the scent of the dewy morning and
with the green of the field which stretched before her. She died not
many years after, but I often wonder if she is really dead. To me
she is still living, and what the great poet said of Lucy Gray sounds
peculiarly true in her case, too.
“--Yet some maintain that to this day
She is a living child;
That you may see sweet Lucy Gray
Upon the lonesome wild.
“O’er rough and smooth she trips along,
And never looks behind;
And sings a solitary song
That whistles in the wind.”
Only you would have to make Lucy seventy years old to fit my
grandmother.
The introduction being over, let us attend a dinner, or rather
give attention to a description of one. We do not eat at one large
dining-table with chairs around it. We each have a separate small table
about a foot and a half square, all lacquered red, green, or black, and
sit before it on our heels. A rice bucket, a teapot, some saucers, a
bottle of soy, and so forth, are all placed near some one who is to
specially serve us. We used to sit in two rows, father and grandmother
facing each other, mother next to father, with the young sister
opposite my brother and myself. The younger children usually sit next
to some older person who can help them in eating. No grace was said,
but I always bowed to my elders before I began with “itadakimasu” (I
take this with thanks), which I sometimes said when I was very hungry,
as a good excuse and signal to start eating before the others.
Rice is our staple food and an almost reverential attitude toward it
as the sustainer of our life is entertained by the people. And I was
told time and again not to waste it. Once a maid, so my mother used to
tell me, was very careless in cleaning rice before it was cooked. She
dropped lots of grains on the stone floor under the sink day after day,
and never stopped to pick them up. One day, when she wanted to clean
the floor, she was frightened half to death by finding there ever so
many white serpents straining their necks at her. She really fainted
when the goddess of the kitchen appeared to her in her trance and bade
her to take all those white serpents in a basket and wash them clean.
As she came to herself, she did as she was told, trembling with horror
at touching such vile things, some of which, indeed, would try to coil
themselves around her hands. But as the last pailful of water was
poured on them, lo! what were serpents a moment ago were now all turned
into nice grains of rice ready to be boiled. Now if there is one thing
in the world I hate, it is a serpent; the mere mention of it makes my
flesh creep. So you see I took care to pitch every grain of boiled rice
into my mouth with my chop-sticks before I left my table.
Another story was told me concerning the meal. The Japanese teach home
discipline by stories, you know. This was a short one, being merely
the statement that if anybody lies down on the floor soon after he
has eaten his meal, he will turn into a cow. Now a number of times I
had found cows chewing their cuds while stretched upon the ground. So
I thought, in my childish mind, that there must be some mysterious
connection between each of the three in the order as they stand:
eating--lying down--cow. So, naturally, I avoided the second process,
and, after eating, immediately ran out-of-doors to see what our man,
Kichi, was doing.
Kichi worked on our little farm, and I usually found him cleaning his
implements after the day’s work. We were great friends, and he used
to present me with toys of his own making, which were very simple but
indeed a marvel to me. Once he picked up a piece of bamboo and made a
chip of it about a twelfth of an inch thick, a third of an inch wide,
and three inches and a half long. Then he sliced obliquely one-half
of one side and the other half of the same side in the opposite
direction, so that the edges might be made thin. He also bored a small
hole in the middle and put in a stick about twice as thick as a hairpin
and about four inches long, the sliced side being down. He then cut off
the projecting end of the stick, when it was tight in the chip. The
dragon-fly was now ready to take flight. He took the stick between his
palms and gave a twist, when lo! it flew away up in the air.
I was delighted with the toy, and tried several times to make it fly.
But when I used all my force and gave it a good long twist, why, it
took such a successful flight that it hit the edge of the comb of our
straw roof and stuck there, never to come down. I was very sorry at
that, but Kichi laughed at the feat the dragon-fly had performed, and
said that the maker was so skilful that the toy turned out to be a real
living thing! It was perched there for the night. Well, I admired his
skill very much, but did not want to lose my toy in that way. So I
made him promise me to make another the next day, reminding him not to
put too much skill in it.
It was summer, the season of watermelons. We had a small melon patch
and an ample supply of the fruit. Here was a chance for Kichi to try
his skill again. One evening he took a pretty round melon and scooped
the inside out so as to put in a lighted candle. So far this was
very ordinary. He scraped the inner part until the rind was fairly
transparent, and then cut a mouth, a nose, and eyes with eyebrows
sticking out like pins. He then painted them so that when the candle
was lighted a monster of a melon was produced. How triumphant a boy
would feel in possessing such a thing! I hung it on the veranda that
evening when the room was weirdly lighted by one or two greenish paper
lanterns, and watched it with my folks. I expressed my admiration for
Kichi’s skill, and with boyish fondness for exaggeration mentioned
the fact that a toy dragon-fly of his making had really turned out
to be a living thing. All laughed, but of course I made an effort to
be serious. But no sooner were we silent than, without the slightest
hint, the melon angrily dropped down with a crash. I screamed, but,
being assured of its safety, I approached it and found the skull of
the monster was badly fractured, in fact, one piece of it flying some
twenty feet out in the garden. The next morning I took the first
opportunity to tell Kichi that his toy was so skilfully made that it
sought death of its own accord.
Well, I started to tell what I did evenings, but when it was wet I
had a very tedious time. Nothing is more dismal to a boy than a rainy
day. To lie down was to become a cow. So one rainy evening I opened
the screen, and, standing, looked out at the rain. But this was no
fun. The only alternative was to go to one of the rooms. Now there
is no chair in a Japanese house, and to sit over one’s heels is too
ceremonial, not to say a bit trying, even for a Japanese child. So
my legs unconsciously collapsed, and there I was lying on my back,
singing aloud some songs I had learned. Presently I began to look at
the unpainted ceiling, and traced the grain. And is it not wonderful
that out of knots and veins of wood you can make figures of some living
things? Yes, I traced a man’s face, one eye much larger than the other.
Then, I had a cat. Now I began to trace a big one with a V-shaped face.
A cow! The idea ran through me with the swiftness of lightning, and
the next moment I sprang to my feet and shook myself to see if I had
undergone any transformation. Luckily, I was all right. But to make the
thing sure, I felt of my forehead carefully to see if anything hard was
coming out of it.
The room now lost its attraction. And I ran away to the room where my
grandmother was. Opening the screen, I said:
“Grandma!”
“Well, Bô?”
“May I come in? I want you to tell me the story of a badger, grandma.”
I was never tired of hearing the same stories over and over again from
my grandmother. There was at some distance a tall tree, shooting up
like an arrow to the sky, which was visible from a window of her room.
It was there that the badger of her story liked to climb. One early
evening he was there with the cover of an iron pot, which he made with
his magic power appear like a misty moon. Now a farmer, who was still
working in the field, chanced to see it, and was surprised to find
that it was already so late. He could tell the hour from the position
of the moon, you know. So he made haste to finish his work, and was
going home, when another moon, the real one this time, peeped out of
the wood near by. The badger, however, had too much faith in his art
to withdraw his mock moon, and held it there to rival the newly risen
one. The farmer was astonished to find two moons at the same time, but
he was not slow to see which was real. He smiled at the trick of the
badger, and now wanted to outwit him. He approached the tree stealthily
and shook it with all his might. The badger was not prepared for this.
Losing his balance, he dropped down to the ground, moon and all, and
had to run for his life, for the farmer was right after him with his
hoe.
I laughed and grandma laughed, too, over her own story, when the paper
screen was suddenly brightened.
“The badger’s moon!” I cried, and climbed up to my grandmother.
“Yes, I am a badger,” said a voice, as the door was opened. And there
stood my mother with a paper lantern she had brought for the room.