Memories of Wartime Koishikawa

English translation

AI-assisted English translation. The Japanese original remains authoritative.

AI-assisted English translation. The Japanese original remains authoritative.

Originally published: 2021-02-03

This material was published on the Japanese website. Dates and notices in the text reflect the original publication.

Memories of Wartime Koishikawa

佐藤　宏子, Professor Emerita, Tokyo Woman's Christian University

1. What Is a “Supreme Moment”?

The theme I was given was “unforgettable memories,” or “a supreme moment in life.” Several events came to mind. The awareness, in Alaska's uninhabited wilderness under the midnight sun, surrounded by mountains more forbidding than the Alps, that human existence was close to nothing. The surprise and joy of falling in love through words, and of words answering them being born within me. Perhaps these are not things one ought to tell others. Or perhaps a “moment of bliss” is something felt in the arms of the person one loves, forgetting the sorrow-filled world outside, as the German composer Alexander Zemlinsky's beautiful little piece “Selige Stunde” sings.

Although not such romantic moments, when one has lived for nearly ninety years, there are unexpected occasions when one experiences a moment of quiet joy. These are moments when encounters, experiences and social events revive in memory and make sense of the way one has lived and seen things.

2. Koishikawa and Me

I now live in a place called Sengoku in Bunkyō Ward, but I have neither local nor family ties to this land. However, eighty years ago I lived for a little over four years, from December 1940 to March 1945, at “35 Nishimaru-chō, Koishikawa Ward,” now Sengoku in Bunkyō Ward. Almost nothing remains here to recall the old Kago-machi, Nishimaru-chō and Maruyama-chō. There is an old, enormous ginkgo tree that survived the air raids, and a Tudor-style mansion, once the residence of a major company's president, that has become a Tenrikyō church—little more.

Across Hakusan-dōri lay 大和郷, lined with extremely luxurious residences. Alongside the mansions of zaibatsu families and titled people were lantern makers and braided-cord artisans' workshops that seemed to belong to the Edo period, and the 寿々本 variety theater. Butchers and fishmongers each stood in pairs, one catering to the great houses and the other to ordinary people; an upscale food shop faced Nishimaru-chō Market. In a hollow there were even row houses called a “slum.” Daily life unfolded before a microcosm of Japanese society's class structure.

In the spring of 2010, an acquaintance told me that they had built an apartment building for older people in this area, and I decided to have a look. I had lived for sixty-five years in a detached house in the Daizawa area of Setagaya. But after seeing all my relatives to their graves and finding myself alone, even caring for the not particularly large garden felt burdensome as I approached eighty, and I had begun to think about how I would live in old age.

The new apartment building was unappealing. It was well equipped for older people, but almost no attention had been paid to architectural design. No one had moved in yet, so I was shown rooms of different types and sizes. Just as I thought, “Now, I should find an excuse to make my escape,” I was taken to the top floor.

The northwest-facing room had a veranda almost as large as the room itself. Below stretched low-rise housing from Sugamo to Ikebukuro, and beyond it a wide sky reaching toward Saitama. At that moment I found myself saying, “I wouldn't mind living here.” Eight months later it became my home, and I still live there.

I cannot explain even to myself why I decided then to live here. But I feel that the view below, with its rows of dark roofs on low houses, may have overlapped with the sight of this area reduced to a burned wasteland in the Yamanote air raid of April 13, 1945.

3. 明化小学校

In January 1941, I transferred into the first grade at 明化小学校. My father, a bank employee, had been reassigned, and I moved from a school in Matsuyama, Ehime Prefecture. War between Japan and the United States began that December, so I have few memories of calmly taking lessons in a classroom. I imagine the teachers had little time for lessons, having to arrange ingredients for school lunches, keep pupils safe and organize fire precautions. I liked reading, and teachers often asked me to tell stories from books I had read to fill in for lessons. “Osato-chan's stories” were quite popular. The last “story” was toward the end of the first term of fifth grade. I was telling how 少彦名命 used a stalk of barnyard millet or foxtail millet as a spring and leapt away when the teacher hurried back into the classroom and announced that lessons would end that day: a group evacuation to Naruko Onsen in Miyagi Prefecture had been decided upon.

Alongside enjoyable memories from elementary school, such as growing potatoes at the school's farm in Ōizumi Gakuen, there were things I disliked. One was worship of the imperial portraits. Photographs of the Emperor and Empress hung on the auditorium wall, normally covered by something like pleated satin curtains. At ceremonies for the Emperor's Birthday, Meiji Day and Empire Day, I was ordered to pull the cord to open them, and I disliked being made to practice bowing. A child's simple question was: why must the soldiers die for this person? That question has not changed for me even now.

Two memories connected with the war are unforgettable. One is the demolition of houses called “compulsory evacuation.” Houses facing what is now Sengawa-dōri were removed on the grounds of preventing fires from spreading during air raids. Pupils from fourth grade upward were mobilized. Adults attached ropes and pulled houses down; the elementary-school children sorted the timber; women loaded it onto horse-drawn carts. Many classmates injured themselves by stepping on nails. It was futile work that made me feel vividly what a waste of labor it was.

I remember it as the autumn of fourth grade. All the pupils were gathered in the auditorium to hear people who had returned from America on an exchange ship. The speakers were three middle-aged men. The first two gave spirited talks that seemed confident of a Japanese victory, but the third said: “Boys and girls, listen carefully. America is fighting in earnest too.” He explained how Americans were conserving supplies and raising money for the war. It was the moment when, in my child's mind, I recognized Americans as human beings, different from the red and blue demons depicted on posters.

4. The Great Tokyo Air Raid

It is an irreverent thing to say, but the Great Tokyo Air Raid remains in my memory as a sky of a beauty I had never seen. An air-raid warning sounded and my parents urged me into the shelter, but I remember being sleepy and burrowing back into my bedding. They woke me again, then gave up trying to take me to the shelter and did not scold me for clinging to the window and watching the sky. Though it was midnight, the sky was a beautiful blue, and countless sparkling red things danced all across it. Later I learned that metal foil used in the incendiary bombs had been shining in the flames, but it is a sight I can never forget. Later still, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, I saw a chair designed by 倉俣史朗, with many artificial red roses suspended in clear acrylic. I remember feeling a strange sense of recognition when I learned that one of his inspirations had been the sky on the day of the Great Tokyo Air Raid, which he saw at the age of nine. Since then I have wondered whether memories of war can be passed on to others.

5. About O-chan

O-chan was two years younger than I. I do not remember how we became friends, but the home of the teacher I visited once a week for koto lessons was near hers in Maruyama-chō, and I think we gradually became close on my journeys there and back. As the youngest child in my family, I felt as though I had gained a little sister. I last saw her in the summer of 1944, when I stood outside the school to see her leave with the group evacuation from 明化小学校. Her father was a field-grade naval officer; I believe he was head of the Imperial General Headquarters' press department at the time of Japan's defeat.

I had been evacuated to my paternal grandmother's home in Kagawa Prefecture, so I did not return to Tokyo until the end of 1945. Our Koishikawa house had burned down in the April 13 air raid, and the house in Setagaya to which my parents and older brother had moved became our new home. Even so, as a sixth-grader I insisted on graduating from 明化小学校. One reason was that I thought I would be able to see O-chan again.

The day before school began, my brother told me of the deaths of O-chan and her family. A few days after the defeat, she had apparently been brought back to Tokyo ahead of the others by a subordinate of her father. That night, after she returned home, she and her younger brother died by poison, and their parents by a Japanese sword. Their house was soon demolished and absorbed into the garden of the neighboring house, whose owner was the landlord. No trace remains today. The question “Who is truly responsible for the war?” has never left my mind.

6. In Closing

You may wonder why memories of a few childhood years during wartime carry such weight. But when I look back over the life I have led as a “contrarian,” questioning Japan's course, its politics and the nature of its society from then until now, I am reminded afresh of the great power of the memories of my childhood in Koishikawa.