| Witches |
August 4, 2018
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| Modern society is full of unreasonable things. We sometimes get angry with those things. We know that it can make us stressed, and it might damage our health, but it can't be helped. He thought that it was unfair: those people who irritate us were healthy and we might become sick because of their behavior. He came up with the 'anger-free idea'. It was simple, to think that they were witches. If they were not humans, he wouldn't need to get angry at them. On this day, he went to a hotel. He was a member of a volunteer guide group that would guide people around this provincial city's historical sites and cultural areas. This time, he was asked to guide people around to 'Kenji Miyazawa' related places. Kenji Miyazawa was a poet and a children's literature writer. He lived in this city about one hundred years ago. It was a difficult era. After the Edo samurai period, the new government proceeded into modernization. As the transition was really rapid, the risk of war increased, it seemed to be sacrificing democracy and poor farmers' lives. Kenji Miyazawa wanted to improve farmers' lives. He was an eccentric child who loved collecting various stones. Maybe instinctively he felt nature and the universe in them. He was gradually  interested in religious things. He came to love music, he practiced the cello and the organ hard. He tried to spread Esperanto. He was a cosmopolitan, and emphasized diversity. Because of this, his works were loved in this country and around the world. He used a lot of onomatopoeia, and it made an original rhythm and uniqueness. His stories depicted humanity with both seriousness and humor. At the hotel lobby, he met the tour conductor and said hello to her giving her his name card. But, the woman just nodded and started to explain the day's schedule. Throughout it all, she didn't express any gratitude or appreciation to him. The group left the hotel and moved to the first place by chartered car. It was a university's old building that Kenji Miyazawa had studied in. Now it was his museum. The entrance required some fee. The tour conductor said to the clerk that she would like to pay for all the members and she needed a receipt. The clerk said yes and asked the name and the number of visitors. She told him her company's name and the number, six. It was strange because the tourists were six people, but there were two more, herself and him. "Is she going to make me pay by myself? But, she wouldn't pay for herself either," he thought. The male clerk seemed to show a perplexed expression. But she passed through the gate and the others followed. Maybe in some cities, museums had exemption for guides. But even so, she should have asked. She was pushy, he thought. Another feature about Kenji Miyazawa was that there were many people who researched about him. He was not a 'researcher' but he liked to know about him. Miyazawa's fans were earnest. He was pleased that the tourists listened to his explanations earnestly. Different from her strict professional atmosphere, the tour conductor's time management was lax. She didn't announce the gathering time for each facility, so after several places, their schedule was rather behind. He had to skip some of his explanations. The last place was the publishing company where Kenji's first children's book was published. After his explanation, there was big applause from the tourists. As for the tour conductor, she complained that the schedule was behind. She hurried the tourists to get in the car. The door shut and the car started. Looking at the car leaving, he found that she didn't express any appreciation to him. He thought she was definitely a witch. On his way home, he was pedaling his bike. When he approached the intersection, he lessened his bike's speed. He knew that this road would meet a narrow road. When he was about to enter the new road, there appeared a car going at a fast speed from his right. He gave a sharp break, but he lost his balance and fell down. The car passed just in front of him and stopped. The driver in the car said, looking down at him, "Are you OK? But, you shouldn't have been riding in such a fast speed." He was speechless. It was the guy who shouldn't have driven at such a speed on such a narrow road. He stood up. Fortunately his body was not hurt. He saw a boy in the back seat looking at him with worried eyes. The car started. He shouted in his mind, "Wizard!" While pedaling again, he was thinking about the boy in the car, maybe he was the driver's son. He hoped that the boy would grow up suitably under the mean father's care. Kenji Miyazawa didn't have kids. He didn't marry, but he left many stories for kids. He left the words, "Without the whole world's happiness, there can't be individuals' happiness." He especially liked the poem, which was written on his personal notebook at his bedside when he died at the age of 37: ' ... A person who will go and see, if there is a sick child in the east, and look after him, Who will go and help, if there is a tired mother in the west, to carry bunches of reaped rice, Who will go and say, if there is one who is going to die in the east, "You don't need to be afraid," Who will go and say, if there are quarrels or lawsuits in the north, "Stop it because it's worthless," Who will shed tears in the drought, Who will pace around unsettled in the cold summer, Who will be called stupid by people, Who won't be praised by people, Who won't be cared by people, Such a person I want to be.' He had a second thought about the witch and the wizard. Maybe the tour conductor had a sick child or a sick mother or too busy to concentrate on her work. Maybe now she was regretting about her attitude to him ... Maybe the father just wanted to show to his son how he was strong, even though he realized that it was not the right way ... If he respected Kenji Miyazawa, he should quit the witch idea, he thought. |
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*can't be helped :しかたがない
*provincial :地方の
*onomatopoeia :擬音
*exemption :免除
*lax :ゆるい
*unsettled :心が乱れた