Before the war with America began, the family—with the exception of Daddy—visited Mother’s hometown in Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan. It was Mother’s first trip home since getting married.
On their way back to Tokyo, they took an Ueno Station-bound train from Aomori, the mainland prefecture directly south of Hokkaido across the Tsugaru Strait. Totto pressed her face against the window and watched the scenery zip by. Two middle-aged men seated in front of her were having an animated discussion about horses. “That chestnut mare was a winner,” one said. “I shoulda bought that colt—it was goin’ for cheap,” the other regretted.
Not long after the train departed, the landscape filling the window suddenly turned bright red. Apple orchards.
“Apples! Apples!” Totto cried. Mother also let out a squeal. The bright red fruit was growing everywhere. It looked so beautiful, and so delicious, that Totto and Mother couldn’t help but swoon.
“What shall we do?” Mother said. “We can’t very well get off the train here.”
Just then, one of the men in front of them asked, “You want apples?”
“Oh, yes! We would love some apples! We haven’t been able to find any in Tokyo for quite some time. They aren’t available anywhere.”
“We’re getting off at the next stop, so how ’bout this. Why don’t ya write down your address for me? I think I can help.”
Mother quickly tore a page out of her notepad and jotted down their address in big letters. She handed the memo to the man, who tucked it into his pocket and hurried off the train with his companion at the next station.
About two weeks later, fresh apples arrived at Totto’s house, just as the man had promised—two large wooden crates of them. The bright red fruit peeking out from the chaff looked wonderful, and they were so sweet and delicious that they nearly brought tears to Totto’s eyes.
That was how Mother became friends by letter with the apple gentleman. His name was Mr. Numahata, and he evidently ran a large farm in Suwanotaira in the eastern Sannohe district of Aomori Prefecture. Later on, he also sent potatoes, kabocha squash, and many other vegetables to Totto’s family.
Once, Mr. Numahata wrote Mother asking if his eldest son could stay at their house. The son was moving to Tokyo for university and had no place to live. Mother agreed, but the young man was drafted right before he was scheduled to come to the big city. Less than a year later, they heard he had died in battle.
Even after the war, whenever Totto saw news footage of college-aged draftees marching in uniform, she kept her eyes peeled for a glimpse of the young student who was meant to have stayed with them.
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Books Are Friends
Daddy was the reason that Totto became such a big reader. Though he left Mother mainly in charge of raising the children, he seemed to believe it was his job to read to Totto. Each night after she crawled into bed, Daddy would appear with a book under his arm as if he had been waiting for his cue and pull up a chair next to her. This was the sign that he was about to start reading.
He mostly read her novels, even though Totto was still at an age where children’s books might have been more suitable. Each night, he took her little by little through titles including Cuore (Heart) by Edmondo De Amicis and Little Lord Fauntleroy by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Totto was especially taken by Cuore.
Totto knew Daddy was doing his best, but she did not think he was very good at reading aloud. Eventually, she decided that when she got older, she would become a wonderful storyteller so she could read bedtime stories to her own children.
Books also helped Totto greatly during her stay in the hospital. As long as she had something to read, she was able to take her mind off the pain, itchiness, and fear. Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise that she was forced to extend her hospital stay, for it was then that she became an avid reader. By the time she was released from the hospital, she was ready to move on from picture books and children’s stories and start to peruse Daddy’s bookshelves.
Totto still vividly remembers the experience of reading A Dark Night’s Passing by Naoya Shiga for the first time.
“Let’s see,” she said, picking up the brown-covered book and flipping through a few pages. Daddy’s books were all thick and heavy and had no pictures, no matter how many pages you turned. The print was small, too, but as it was customary at the time for the words written in kanji, or Chinese-derived characters, to come with accompanying ruby annotations, she was able to pronounce most of them if she read slowly. And while there were no illustrations, the characters in the story were all described in such great detail that Totto enjoyed picturing their clothing and hairstyles in her head.
Noticing how happy reading made Totto, Daddy and Mother bought her a complete set of a literary anthology for children called Nihon Shokokumin Bunko (Literature for the Younger Generation) which included more than ten volumes. Totto was particularly fond of the one containing notable works of world literature. It featured a rather sophisticated collection for a children’s series, including works by Leo Tolstoy, Romain Rolland, Karel Čapek, and Mark Twain, along with the poems of Carl Busse and an autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.
Totto’s favorite among these was Dot and Anton by Erich Kästner. The friendship in the story between the rambunctious rich girl named Dot and the poor but kind boy named Anton who looks after his mother captivated her imagination.
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At Totto’s house, the children were forbidden from buying snacks without permission, but they were allowed to put books on their parents’ tab. Totto would go to the bookstore and pore over the tightly packed shelves, taking one volume out at a time until she found a winner. The next step was to approach the man behind the counter and ask, “Would you add this to my parents’ tab, please? My name is Kuroyanagi,” before racing home with the book tucked under her arm.
At some point, however, the shelves at the store began to undergo a drastic change. Empty spaces started to stick out conspicuously, like missing teeth on a comb. This, too, was due to the war, as the paper on which books were printed fell victim to wartime shortages, leaving publishers unable to produce new ones. It broke Totto’s heart to see the bookshelves emptier and emptier with each successive visit.
One day, Totto stopped by the store on her way home from school to find the shelves nearly empty. It was almost as if the shop were selling bookshelves rather than books. The children’s section was especially sparse. Still, Totto scrutinized the slim pickings huddled at the end of the shelf until she found a collection of stories in the rakugo comedy tradition.
“Oh well,” she sighed, expecting little. But to her surprise, the book was wonderfully entertaining.
One story was about a dim-witted homeowner who sets traps around his house to keep robbers away, only to end up getting caught in them himself. Another told the tale of a rich young woman who can’t find a husband because she is always breaking wind. She finally marries, but on her wedding night lets out a bigger blast than ever before. The wind blows her bridegroom out of bed and spins him around their sleeping chambers seven and a half times before knocking him unconscious. Every character in the collection was wacky and had their own share of silly quirks. They filled Totto’s heart with laughter and a renewed admiration for the magic of books.
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Fifteen Soybeans
Tokyo winters during the war were much colder than they are now.
“We’re cold, sleepy, and hungry,” Totto and her friends took to chanting as they walked to and from Tomoe Gakuen. They sometimes added a simple melody, too, and sang it as if it were their very own theme song.
While the rationing of rice had begun before the Pacific War, it didn’t take long once the fighting commenced for restaurants to start shutting their doors one after the other. As the war stretched on, rice rations turned into distributions of sweet potatoes, soybeans, corn, and coarse grains.
By the time the rice in Totto’s lunch had been entirely replaced by soybeans, her hunger became almost unbearable. Come Sports Day, it seemed as if the white rice in everybody’s lunch boxes had vanished all at once. Totto thought back to the sweet inari sushi her mother had made her the previous year and felt crestfallen.