Children of
the Darker Side of the Miracle
By:
Yuki Allyson Honjo
Isun no
mushi ni mo gobu no tamashii.
(The Soul of a Fly.)
I
n William Eugene Smith’s 1971 photograph, Tomoko Uemura in the
Bath, a teenager’s sightless eyes look up at the heavens. Her
bare body is sexless as a child’s, her limbs truncated by fetal
mercury poisoning. Her mother cradles her body as she bathes her
daughter in half light.
This photograph,
first published in Life magazine in an article on the
impact of mercury poisoning on Minamata village, became the touchstone
of the darker side of the Japan’s transformation from a third
world nation to the world player it is today. Chisso Corporation,
a petrochemical and plastics company, dumped an estimated 27 tons
of mercury compounds into Minamata Bay, and resulted in the deaths
and illness of thousands whose diet was dominated by the fish
from the local waters. According to legal documents, nearly three
thousand people were certified to have Minamata disease as of
2001, and other research suggests that up to two million people
were affected by the dumping. .”
Likewise,
A Rabbit’s Eyes, first published in Japan in 1978, is
a children’s novel about those left behind in Japan’s race to
get ahead. The story literally takes place in society’s trash
heap, a waste disposal plant outside of Kobe: “the smell was horrible.
When the ash was being removed, white dust would rain down upon
the school and the nearby homes alike.” The novel follows the
experience of pretty Ms. Fumi Kotani, “who had gotten married
only ten days earlier, [and] was a recent graduate” who starts
her first teaching job at the school by the waste disposal plant.
...The book will probably work for children.
Haitani tells a compelling story of hope in a hopeless environment...
In Japanese,
the phrase “San-kei” (three k’s) is shorthand for undesirable
jobs: kiken, (dangerous), kitanai (dirty), kusai
(smelly), and perhaps, kitsui (tough) and kane
ga nai (low paying) for good measure. Indeed, the jobs at
the waste processing plant embody all of these traits. The workers
are poor, dirty, and sometimes abandon their equally dirty and
troubled children. The disposal plant children, perhaps tainted
with their parent’s status, are likewise regarded with contempt
by other students and teachers. The Assistant Principal slaps
one child to the floor and “the other teachers didn’t criticize
him for his violence. . .[for] even the female teachers, who first
felt sorry for [the student], began to think that the violence
toward him was unavoidable.” Nor are the children particularly
loveable urchins:
| Glancing
down at the boy’s feet, he initially thought he saw some
kind of colorful fruit, but when he took a second look,
he unconsciously let out a yell: it was a frog crushed
in two, the twitching innards scattered on the floor like
red flower. . .When he pushed Tetsuzo aside to get to
work, however, he discovered another crushed bullfrog
under the boy’s right foot.
|
Ms. Kotani
is the voice of middle class Japan—she is college educated, travels
around Japan, and carries with her the pre-conceptions of her
background. A daughter of small town doctor, she is embodies the
existence that modern Japanese now take as their right. But more
than a place holder, she is a far more nuanced character than
she first seems. She has her flaws—she often acts immaturely,
forms snap judgments, cries easily, and is occasionally thoughtless
toward her equally thoughtless husband—but she is essentially
well-meaning and kind. She tries to understand her students, especially
the aforementioned Tetsuzo, who displays savage behavior—he bites
her and then another student, tearing flesh away to the bone.
Tetsuzo, for
all his anti-social behavior, fascinates Ms. Kotani. He is silent,
and says nothing “no matter how many times he was slapped.” He
keeps flies as pets, which at first horrifies the young teacher.
But as his grandfather explains, “If I took him to the mountains,
he’d start collecting bugs. If I took him to a river, he’d want
some fish. But I can’t take him anywhere, and the only place he
knows is this trash dump, so there’s nothing here but some bugs
and flies. It’s natural that he’s raising them.” Testuzo killed
the frogs as the other children had fed them his beloved pet,
an inch long fly nick named the “Golden Lion”. The strange silent
little boy has near encyclopedic knowledge of flies, their habits
and their taxonomy.
Ms Kotani
is surprised on how little she knows about flies and their habits.
“Even though flies are intimately connected with our lives,” she
finds that there was little information on or understanding of
the insects. The flies, of course, are a rather heavy handed metaphor
for the lives of the children in the plant. Ms. Kotani copies
from a book on flies: “After their parents bring them into the
world, flies spend their entire lives alone—without friends, without
families, and without homes. . .they themselves prey on nothing,
feeding instead on the refuse of society. It is neither a heroic
life, nor a cruel one; rather it is an extremely modest life,
like that of common people.”
Just as each
species of fly, upon close inspection, has a myriad of surprising
details and particularities, each child in school has some sort
feature that makes him or her unique and important to the world
at large. This includes the mentally handicapped and occasionally
incontinent Minako, who is initially termed “heavy baggage” by
the other teachers. Somewhat predictably, through the lives of
these garbage plant children, Ms. Kotani, discovers her own voice
and purpose. She begins to question authority—her husband, her
school, and eventually school authorities.
As a children’s
book, the prose is sometimes clumsy and simple and themes are
repeated to drive the point home. At times, the sincere declarations
of good will, which work in Japanese and in less cynical times,
falls flat: “If we don’t say anything, the school’s gonna think
that none of the parents support you. What we have to say is fair
enough, so we’re thinking of heading down to see the Principal
right now and giving him a piece of our mind.” The author resorts
to time tested tropes: the student who blossoms under the understanding
of a teacher, the importance and dignity of every life, the importance
of teamwork, and the gruff man with a heart of gold and a dark
past.
The book will
probably work for children. Haitani tells a compelling story of
hope in a hopeless environment. And the author’s experience of
seventeen years as an elementary school teacher and child advocate
is evident. While the English version stumbles at times, this
story of the importance of each small life, even one of a fly’s,
is one that can be read by all ages. 
