My grades weren't good, but that spring, I passed the entrance exam to middle school. I dressed in new hakama trousers, black socks, and lace-up shoes. I replaced the blanket I had been using with a cloak stylishly left unbuttoned and open in front to travel to the small city on the sea. I took off my traveling clothes at a dry goods shop in town as a guest of distant relatives. At that shop with the old noren curtain falling off at the entrance, they took good care of me.
By nature, I easily become enthusiastic about anything. After I started school, I'd put on my school cap and hakama trousers to go to the public bath. When I saw my reflection in the window glass along the way, I smiled and gave myself a slight bow.
However, school wasn't the least bit interesting. The school campus was at the edge of town, and the buildings were painted white. Right behind the school was a flat park facing the strait. I could hear the sounds of the waves and the rustling pine trees during class. The halls were wide, and the classroom ceilings were high. All of that made me feel good, but the teachers persecuted me.
Beginning the day of the school entrance ceremony, I was belted by some phys ed teacher. He said I was a smart-aleck. This teacher was in charge of my oral exam when I took the entrance exam. He was kind to me and said I probably hadn't been able to study well because my father had died. I only hung my head. My heart hurt because he was the lone compassionate teacher. Later, I was smacked by various teachers. They'd punish me for a variety of reasons, among them were grinning and yawning. I was told the teachers concluded in the staff room that I yawned too much during class. I found it strange they discussed such nonsense in the staff room.
One day, another student who came from the same town called me over to the shadows of the sand dunes on campus. He warned me that my attitude came off as cocky and would result without fail in beatings. I was astonished. After classes were dismissed that day, I rushed home along the shore and sighed as I walked while waves licked the soles of my shoes. As I wiped the sweat off my forehead with the sleeve of my Western-style uniform, a surprisingly large gray sail passed unsteadily before my eyes.
This middle school is on the eastern end of Aomori today, unchanged from the past. That flat park is Gappo Park. It was close enough to the middle school to be considered its backyard. Except during winter blizzards, I cut through this park on the way to and from school and walked along the beach. This backstreet was used by few students and energized me. Mornings in the early summer were the best. The dry goods shop where I stayed was owned by the Toyoda family of Tera-machi and had a long-established, preeminent store in Aomori for close to twenty generations. The father died a few years ago. I was more precious to this man than his own children. I'll never forget that. I visited Aomori two or three times over the past few years, visited his grave each time, and always stayed with the Toyoda family.
One spring morning when I was a third-year student, on the way to school, I felt lightheaded for a short time and grabbed onto the cylindrical handrail stained red. A river wide like the Sumida River slowly flowed under the bridge. I never had the experience of feeling dizzy in the past. I felt like I was being watched from behind and struck certain poses for some time. To each of my actions, he was bewildered and stared at his hands or watched while scratching the back of his ear but soon concocted an explanation. He was not convinced my actions were spontaneous or instinctive. After my senses returned on the bridge, I was unsettled by loneliness. When I had those feelings, I thought about my past and my future. Stumbling over the bridge, I remembered various events and dreamed. In the end, I sighed and thought, Maybe, I'll be a great man.
…
I had intimidating thoughts like, You must surpass the masses, but, in fact, I studied. After entering my third year, I was always at the top of my class. It was hard to be first in class without being called a grade grubber. I did not accept this ridicule and learned techniques to tame my classmates. Even the captain of the judo team, nicknamed Octopus, obeyed me. A large pot for wastepaper stood in the corner of the classroom. Occasionally, if I pointed to it and said, "Octopus, can you get in the pot?" Octopus stuck his head inside and laughed. His laughter echoed to produce bizarre sounds. The good-looking boys in class hung around me, too.
I stuck spots of adhesive plaster cut into the shapes of triangles, hexagons, and flowers on the pimples on my face, but nobody laughed. These pimples plagued me. Their number kept growing. When I opened my eyes each morning, I checked the state of my face by patting with the palm of my hand. I bought different medicines and dabbed them on my face, but they had no effect. When I went to buy medicine at the drugstore, I wrote the name of the medicine on a slip of paper and pretended I was asking if they sold that medicine for someone else. I thought pimples were a sign of sexual desire and was so ashamed everything before my eyes went black. I even thought about dying. The bad reputation of my face reached a peak among my
