Totto-chan : The Little Girl at the Window by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi (Kodansha)
This is an autobiographical account of Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, one of Japan’s most popular television talk show hosts. The story is about her first two years at an elementary school called Tomoe Gakuen which was established in 1937 but was burned down in 1945 at the end of the Second World War. The story is told in the third person: however, it is not only the story of her elementary school years, but also focuses on her teacher, Sosaku Kobayashi. For Kuroyanagi, whose nickname was Totto-chan as child, it wasn’t until she reached adulthood that she understood the lessons that were taught by Kobayashi at Tomoe. What at first seemed like happy childhood memories turned out to be valuable life lessons.
Kuroyanagi starts off her semi-memoir with the memory of being taken to a new school with her mother not realizing how worried her mother was. The reason why her mother was so worried was “although Totto-chan had only just started school, she had already been expelled. Fancy being expelled from the first grade!”
The school itself was unusual and when Totto-chan saw it for the first time she couldn’t believe her eyes. The first thing that caught her eye was the gates of the school. At her previous school, as with most schools in Japan, the gates would be made of concrete pillars with a plaque of the name of the school on it. At Tomoe Gakuen, there gate consisted of two poles with leaves and twigs still on them. What was more amazing was the school itself. Classes were held in abandoned railway cars.
Once Totto-chan saw the “train” school, she ran towards it and was about to go into one of the classrooms when her mother caught up with her and said to her, “You can’t go in yet.” “The cars are classrooms and you haven’t been accepted here yet.” She was told that they would first have to see the headmaster and talk to him.
The headmaster, Sosaku Kobayashi, is the man who changed the course of Kuroyanagi’s life. In the postscript following the main story, Kuroyanagi gives a brief explanation of Kobayashi’s teaching method. Kuroyanagi says, “He believed all children are born with an innate good nature, which can be easily damaged by their environment and the wrong adult influences.” She goes on to say, “His aim was to uncover their “good nature” and develop it, so that the children would grow into people with individuality.”
Once the headmaster and Totto-chan are alone, the headmaster says to Totto-chan, “Now then, tell me all about yourself. Tell me anything at all you want to talk about.” So Totto-chan talks about the train she took to get here, wanting to become a ticket-collector, how pretty her homeroom teacher was at her previous school. The headmaster let Totto-chan talk and talk until Totto-chan herself ran out of things to say. What Totto-chan didn’t realize as she couldn’t tell time yet was that it was time for lunch. She and her mother came to the school at 8am and it was now noon. This seven year old talked to the headmaster for four hours straight. This was the first time an adult sat and listened to her and didn’t fain boredom or restlessness. After their conversation, the headmaster said to Totto-chan, “Well, now you’re a pupil of this school.”
This is not just an entertaining account of one celebrity’s childhood but its also an hommage to her teacher and founder of Tomoe Gakuen, Sosaku Kobayashi. The episodes Kuroyanagi reminisces about are entertaining and funny but also fills me with sadness, especially on reading about the destruction of the school during the fire-bombing of Tokyo. It is no wonder that Ministry of Education has formally approved its usage in Japanese schools even today! ~Ernie Hoyt