Since my daughter started kindergarten, I have written two articles about the current preschool education in Japan, and those who have read it will already know about it. We will not discuss whether this educational concept of "guiding children to perceive the world" is good or bad, at least I think it is at least a normal state of education now, so that children can preserve their innocent thinking and childlike discovery.
In the past, Japan also had a dark history of education, and a generation of people who had lost their minds in the form of abnormal education was raised. While they have brought great war disasters to the people of all countries in the world, these people who have been poisoned by militarist education have also paid a heavy price for this, and even their corpses are overseas, and they do not deserve sympathy at all. Let me introduce two Japanese writers to experience how they adhered to the goodness of human nature and avoided being poisoned and cloned by souls in that crazy era in the island nation.
The stories of these two writers, one of which I saw on the Internet, and the other that I learned about when I traveled to Japan, I have compiled them here, echoing the history and comparing them with the present, which may be a little inspiration for my friends.
I'll start with what I saw on the Internet.
Shuji Terayama was a famous Japanese writer, poet, critic, film director, singer, etc. in the last century. He became famous at a young age, and he has multiple labels on his body, which is even more powerful than the current Han Han.
Shuji Terayama was born in 1935, at a time when education in Japan was not normal, as mentioned above. In the name of education, a generation of people without individual thinking has been cloned, most of whom are civilians, but they have a highly unified ideal of life, roughly for the glory of the country, to create glory and other goals, without understanding and pity for the fate of individuals. When Shuji Terayama was very young, his teacher taught him the same way, how strong our country is, how unparalleled our navy is, how good our nation is... We have to work hard, we have to show infinite loyalty with all our blood, we have to carry forward the spirit of bushido, we have to be loyal to this, we have to be loyal to that, we have to be loyal to that, we have to be loyal to the supreme...
In the era of madness, abnormal people are often caused by abnormal education (source network map)
We have also seen in film and television dramas since we were children, in anti-Japanese films, every time the Japanese army is defeated, the final outcome is often to commit suicide by disembowelment, they never pity innocent lives, and even despise their own lives. This kind of behavior is not innate, but it is they who have been instilled with this educational ideology since childhood, which drives them to have the courage not to fear death.
But what sets Shuji Terayama apart from ordinary people is that he questions the ideas instilled by his teacher. He didn't understand why this land had to be loyal to Japan instead of the land, even though it was born before the country, and he didn't understand why he had to show allegiance to the grand concepts and the lofty figures. And the teacher could not give him a convincing explanation for all the doubts he raised, so the relationship between him and the teacher was not harmonious, and he could be regarded as a "problem teenager" of that era.
In addition to being confused by his teacher's words, Shuji Terayama was born into a military family, and his father often fiddled with firearms at home, pointing his gun out of the window, at his son, at his wife, at everything around him, and with a "bang, bang" shooting sound from his mouth. He also couldn't understand his father's callous behavior, and he regarded everything around him as an enemy.
Scenery of Shodoshima
What made Shuji Terayama even more strange was that his mother was equally ruthless, and although her husband pointed a gun at herself and at her son, she did not dissuade or oppose it, except for one time when her husband pointed his gun at the shrine with the emperor's tablet, and his mother suddenly went crazy and snatched the gun from her husband's hand regardless of the danger. It was the only act of rudeness she had shown to her submissive husband, but it was to protect the ethereal thing, which puzzled Shuji Terayama.
Soon after, Shuji Terayama's father received a military order and went to the battlefield. He lamented that his father had turned him into a war criminal not at all because of this military order, but because of his self-belief that "the country is home", and that he voluntarily chose to become such a person. He felt sorry for his father's plight, but he didn't sympathize, so he secretly decided to live a good life and realize his ideal values as a goal.
After his father went to the front to fight, Shuji Terayama accidentally found a small vial of the highly toxic potassium cyanide behind the soy sauce in the kitchen. At this time, he was greatly surprised, and guessed that his mother was probably prepared to take poison with her to commit suicide after learning the news of her husband's death in battle. He couldn't understand his parents' almost crazy thoughts, so he hurriedly threw away the potassium cyanide, thinking that if his father wanted to die, he would go, and if his mother wanted to die with her, she would also die, and I must survive.
In the winter of that year, near the end of the year, the news of his father's death came, and Shuji Terayama's mother, in addition to grief, picked up the scissors used by the tailor and poked him in the throat, and a tragic sense of the ruin of the country and the family enveloped the broken family. He pushed his mother away and fled into the snow, and since then he has broken off his friendship with his mother. Later he said: I should never be possessed by the dream of family imperialism centered on the shrine. I just want to live.
It is precisely because Shuji Terayama always maintains a clear mind and the belief in living that he was able to hide in the heavy snow in that war-torn years, and was not buried by the dust of the times, and only then did he have his own brilliant artistic achievements.
Twenty-Four Eyes Movie Village
Now I will talk about the second writer, whose name is Sakae Tsukui. One of her masterpieces translated into Chinese is called "Twenty-Four Eyes". It was an anti-war work that became a household name in Japan, and was later made into a film by Japanese director Keisuke Kinoshita, which won numerous awards and was released in many countries, and was widely acclaimed.
This summer, I took advantage of my vacation to visit Tsukui Sakae's hometown, Shodoshima Island in Kagawa Prefecture. Visit this island in the Seto Inland Sea, which has a literary museum dedicated to Sakae Toshinoi, and the village where she once lived today has been built into a film and television base for "Twenty-Four Eyes", which is a real restoration of various scenes in the play, which is very quiet and beautiful, and is a good place to visit, and has become a landmark attraction on Shodoshima Island.
Sakai Sakae Literature Museum
Standing in the main scene of "Twenty-Four Eyes", I leaned back to the classroom, looked out at the sea, and revisited the fact that under that militaristic education, a remnant who belonged to a small island in paradise also did not escape the fate of being cloned souls and being devastated by war.
The protagonist of the novel is a young female teacher who, after graduating from normal school, comes to teach at an elementary school on Shodoshima Island, and the islanders call her "Oishi-senseishi".
Wind chimes in memory of Mr. Oishi
There are only 12 students in the school on Shodoshima Island, and the children's bright, clear-eyed, and innocent appearance is loved by Mr. Oishi. Relying on the beautiful scenery of Shodoshima, the sound of the wind and the shape of the clouds, and the colored oars stir up the water waves. Walking on the seashore at dusk, reminiscing about the people of the past, the waves go and the waves return, the color of the moon, the light of the stars...... Life here is just so good.
Shodoshima Island is not only beautiful, but also the people here are even more beautiful, the residents of the island are peaceful and friendly, and these children are playful and innocent. After Ms. Oishi's foot was injured, the children hiked a long mountain road to visit her. Mr. Oishi took a group photo with the children on the beach, which became a poetic and beautiful picture.
School Classrooms
School corridors
School Faculty Room
Teacher Oishi was extremely repulsed by the militaristic textbooks in the school, but she was unable to change it and was powerless to resist, so she had no choice but to resign. As the war began, her students could not escape the fate of becoming war machines, and the girls were married early, or died of illness at a young age due to the war, or were forced to leave home because of the war, and never heard from them. Male students, on the other hand, were integrated into the "big collective" and died in the war for the sake of so-called "noble ideals", and everyone experienced the hardships of the era, and no one was spared. Although there is no description of the bloody slaughter of the war in the whole work, the bright and clear light in the eyes of the students has disappeared.
Wait for Mr. Oishi's son to say, "Mom, we surrendered." Won't you cry? She said, "No, I'm only going to cry for the dead."
As Sakae Sakai writes at the end of the novel, the color of the sea and the shape of the mountains have not changed, and tomorrow will be what it is today. This reflection on the war, thinking about the future, portraying human nature, pity for students, and opposition to militaristic education are all expressed by learning the lessons of today tomorrow.
The author himself took a commemorative photo
When I traveled to Shodoshima Twenty-Four Hitomi, I also had the feeling that "tomorrow will be what it is today". I hope that it will always be the way it is today, that there will never be any more children who have been poisoned by militaristic education, that children will not be cloned of their souls, and that their eyes should be as different as the changing clouds on Shodoshima.
Shuji Terayama and Eijun Tsukui grew up in the same era background, one chose to escape in the heavy snow, lurking in the darkness in order to realize their personal ideals, and the other hid on a small island and was powerless to fight and change the established fate, still abiding by the kindness of human nature, what a precious quality!
Both writers are respectable. I would like to share the above story with my friends.