Asakiyume mita

For wakanomori's third-year Japanese class, he's having students read something from a different decade each week, starting with the present and working back over the course of the semester until 1900. A couple of weeks ago, they read a portion of a children's story from 1942, 白い子猫 (White Kitten), written and illustrated by Nakajima Kikuo.

In the story, the next-door neighbors have moved away, leaving behind two white cats, whom protagonist Ichiro and his little sister Hanako adopt. There are ups and downs--which mainly seem to consist of threats to the cats (the original pair are male and female, and soon there are kittens), plus deaths and seeming deaths--so maybe not the most fun reading, but the illustrations are wonderful slice-of-life brush drawings, full of personality:

Here Shiro ("White"), the dad cat, has learned to recognize Ichiro's footsteps and comes running to greet him when he comes home from school.



And here Shiro plays with Ichiro while Ichiro is bathing--look at the old-style bath!



Shiro's son Kojiro ("Little Shiro") sits on Father's shoulder while Father reads.



And the set behind the cut are the best: Kojiro sees a spider on the shōji, jumps at it, poking a hole in the shōji, and then peeks through and sees Yuki, his mother, in the other room, and leaps through to join her.

( Kojiro's shōji adventure )

Japan's been at war for seven years when this book comes out, but you'd never know it from the story or illustrations. There is NO sign of war--no soldiers, no rising-sun flags, nothing. Ichiro and Hanako are having a tranquil childhood in a big house, without a care in the world (except for cat deaths and threatened cat deaths).

Wakanomori is providing me with all kinds of interesting items these days. For today, have some cat kanji. It looks made up, doesn't it? But it's a bone fide form of seal script--that is, stylized kanji used for signature seals.　The source is 篆楷字典 (Tenkai Jiten), a dictionary of seal script (tensho) and kaisho, a very clear, blocky style used in inscriptions.

Last week, on a stretch of highway between my town and the next, I hit a cat :(
I stopped and ran back to him, but though he looked completely whole, there was no life in him. He had a coat like dark clouds.

Yesterday, I was coming home in the evening on that same stretch of road, and the sky looked something like this:


(Not my photo; a manipulation of the first photo here)

--watercolor dark and light, as if last week's cat was stretched out there, relaxed, just dozing.