action several times and is just heading back in my direction, the train suddenly hurtles past. Right before my eyes the white dog tumbles down, split neatly in half. The body of the instantly killed beast was round and bright red, like a tuna sliced crossways for sashimi.
I have no recollection at all of anything subsequent to this awful spectacle. It probably threw me into such a shock that I lost consciousness. But later I have a vague memory of a great number of white dogs in succession being brought before me, carried in baskets, held in people’s arms, led on leashes. It seems that my father and mother were searching for a dog like the one that had been killed to give to me. According to my older sisters, I showed no gratitude for their efforts. On the contrary, whenever I was shown a white dog I would fly into a mad rage, crying and screaming, “No! No!”
Wouldn’t it have been better to bring me a black dog, perhaps, instead of a white one? Didn’t the white ones simply remind me of what had happened? In any event, for more than thirty years after this incident I was unable to eat sashimi or sushi made of fish with red flesh.
The clarity of my memory seems to improve in direct proportion to the intensity of shock I underwent. My next recollection is also a bloody one—a scene in which my brother is carried home with his head wrapped in blood-soaked bandages. He was four years older than I and, since I was not yet in school, he must have been in first or second grade. He had fallen from a high balance beam at the gymnastics school when he walked out on it and was blown off by the wind. He had come within a hairbreadth of losing his life. When the youngest of my older sisters saw him in his bloodied condition, I clearly recall her suddenly bursting out, “Let me die in his place!” It seems I come from a line that is overly emotional and deficient in reason. People have often praised us as sensitive and generous, but we appear to me to have a measure of sentimentality and absurdity in our blood.
It is a fact that I was enrolled in the nursery school attached to the Morimura Gakuen school, but I barely remember anything of what I did there. Just one thing I recall: we had to make a vegetable garden, and I planted peanuts. I think I did this because, having a weak digestive system at that age, I was never allowed to eat more than a few peanuts at a time. My plan was to grow a lot of my own. But I don’t remember reaping much of a peanut harvest.
I think it was around this time that I saw my first movie or “motion picture.” From our house in Ōmori we’d walk to Tachiaigawa Station, take the train that went toward Shinagawa and get off at a station called Aomono Yokocho, where there was a movie theater. On the balcony in the very center was one section that was carpeted, and here the whole family sat on the floor Japanese style to watch the show.
I don’t remember exactly what it was that I saw when I was in nursery school and what I saw in primary school. I just remember that there was a kind of slapstick comedy I found very interesting. And I remember a scene in which a man who has escaped from prison scales a tall building. He comes out onto the roof and jumps off into a dark canal below. This may have been the French crime-adventure film
Zigomar
, directed by Victorin Jasset and first released in Japan in November 1911.
Another scene I recall shows a boy and girl who have become friends on a ship. The ship is on the verge of sinking, and the boy is about to step into an already overfull lifeboat when he sees the girl still on the ship. He gives her his place in the lifeboat and stays behind on the ship, waving goodbye. This was apparently a film adaptation of the Italian novel
Il Cuore (The Heart)
.
But I much preferred comedy. One day when we went to the theater, they weren’t showing a comedy, and I cried and fretted about it. I remember my older sisters telling me I was being so stupid and
I have no recollection at all of anything subsequent to this awful spectacle. It probably threw me into such a shock that I lost consciousness. But later I have a vague memory of a great number of white dogs in succession being brought before me, carried in baskets, held in people’s arms, led on leashes. It seems that my father and mother were searching for a dog like the one that had been killed to give to me. According to my older sisters, I showed no gratitude for their efforts. On the contrary, whenever I was shown a white dog I would fly into a mad rage, crying and screaming, “No! No!”
Wouldn’t it have been better to bring me a black dog, perhaps, instead of a white one? Didn’t the white ones simply remind me of what had happened? In any event, for more than thirty years after this incident I was unable to eat sashimi or sushi made of fish with red flesh.
The clarity of my memory seems to improve in direct proportion to the intensity of shock I underwent. My next recollection is also a bloody one—a scene in which my brother is carried home with his head wrapped in blood-soaked bandages. He was four years older than I and, since I was not yet in school, he must have been in first or second grade. He had fallen from a high balance beam at the gymnastics school when he walked out on it and was blown off by the wind. He had come within a hairbreadth of losing his life. When the youngest of my older sisters saw him in his bloodied condition, I clearly recall her suddenly bursting out, “Let me die in his place!” It seems I come from a line that is overly emotional and deficient in reason. People have often praised us as sensitive and generous, but we appear to me to have a measure of sentimentality and absurdity in our blood.
It is a fact that I was enrolled in the nursery school attached to the Morimura Gakuen school, but I barely remember anything of what I did there. Just one thing I recall: we had to make a vegetable garden, and I planted peanuts. I think I did this because, having a weak digestive system at that age, I was never allowed to eat more than a few peanuts at a time. My plan was to grow a lot of my own. But I don’t remember reaping much of a peanut harvest.
I think it was around this time that I saw my first movie or “motion picture.” From our house in Ōmori we’d walk to Tachiaigawa Station, take the train that went toward Shinagawa and get off at a station called Aomono Yokocho, where there was a movie theater. On the balcony in the very center was one section that was carpeted, and here the whole family sat on the floor Japanese style to watch the show.
I don’t remember exactly what it was that I saw when I was in nursery school and what I saw in primary school. I just remember that there was a kind of slapstick comedy I found very interesting. And I remember a scene in which a man who has escaped from prison scales a tall building. He comes out onto the roof and jumps off into a dark canal below. This may have been the French crime-adventure film
Zigomar
, directed by Victorin Jasset and first released in Japan in November 1911.
Another scene I recall shows a boy and girl who have become friends on a ship. The ship is on the verge of sinking, and the boy is about to step into an already overfull lifeboat when he sees the girl still on the ship. He gives her his place in the lifeboat and stays behind on the ship, waving goodbye. This was apparently a film adaptation of the Italian novel
Il Cuore (The Heart)
.
But I much preferred comedy. One day when we went to the theater, they weren’t showing a comedy, and I cried and fretted about it. I remember my older sisters telling me I was being so stupid and
Similar Books
The Birds of the Air
Alice Thomas Ellis
The Rebels' Assault
David Grimstone
The Golden Fleece
Brian Stableford
Jace
T.A. Grey
Mating Rights
Jaide Fox
The New Champion
Jody Feldman
Pretty Is
Maggie Mitchell