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out the word “Idiotic!” and I was happy. The reason I had started laughing was that I felt the same way. To me, the whole thing was absurdly funny. When I heard my brother’s opinion, I felt relieved. I wondered if my sister would be at all consoled by that ceremony in the main hall. She died at the age of sixteen. For some strange reason, I remember the Buddhist name she received after death in its entirety: To Rin Tei Kō Shin Nyo. (“Peach Forest Righteous Sunbeam Sincerity Woman”).

Kendō
    IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS of the Taishō era, kendō swordsmanship was added to the regular curriculum beginning in the fifth grade. It was a two-hour-a-week class, beginning with instruction in wielding bamboo swords. Then we learned how to parry and thrust, and finally we put on the old, sweaty fencing outfits that had been in the school for generations and embarked on real contests—best two out of three.
    Usually the fencing instruction was given by one of the regular teachers who was especially well versed in kendō. But sometimes a fencing master who ran his own school would appear with an assistant to polish and correct what had been taught. They would pick out the most promising students to be given lessons, and occasionally the master and his assistant would use real swords and demonstrate the basic techniques of their school’s style.
    The fencing master who came to Kuroda Primary School was named Ochiai Magosaburo. (Or it may have been Matasaburō. In any case, it was a typically swordsman-like name that I can’t remembercorrectly now.) He was an imposing and exceptionally strong man, and when he demonstrated his swordplay style with his assistant, his power was awesome. The students gathered to watch all held their breath.
    I was one of those singled out as meriting closer attention by the master. He offered me a personal lesson, and I suddenly became enthusiastic. I squared off with him, raised my bamboo sword over my head and shouted
“O-men!”
(“To the face!” or “En garde!”). But as I charged toward him, I felt a sensation of lifting off the ground, my feet kicking in the air, while a deft movement of Ochiai Magosaburo’s muscular arm grasped me at his shoulder height. I had been taken completely by surprise. My respect for this swordsman naturally rose beyond measure.
    I went straight to my father and begged him to enter me in Ochiai’s fencing school. He was overjoyed. I don’t know if my interest had occasioned a resurgence of the samurai blood in my father’s veins or the reawakening of his military-academy teacher’s spirit, but, whichever it was, the effect was remarkable.
    This happened at about the time that my brother, for whom my father had cherished great expectations, began to go astray. My father had spoiled me up until this time, but now he seemed to transfer his hopes from my brother to me and began to treat me with great attention and strictness.
    My father was more than agreeable to my devoting myself to kendō, and insisted that I take calligraphy lessons as well. Moreover, I was instructed to be sure to pay my respects at the Hachiman shrine on my way back from my morning kendō lesson at the Ochiai school, in order to develop the proper spirit. The Ochiai school was far away. From my house to Kuroda Primary School was far enough to fatigue a child’s legs, but to the Ochiai school was more than five times as far.
    Fortunately, the particular Hachiman shrine my father ordered me to visit every morning was next to Kuroda Primary School and more or less on the route from the fencing school. But, following my father’s orders, I had to go to the Ochiai school in the morning, visit the Hachiman shrine on my way back from the fencing lesson, return home to eat breakfast and then go off to Kuroda Primary School. After school, I had to go to the calligraphy teacher’s house, which luckily happened to be on the way from school to my house. And then I was to go to Mr. Tachikawa’s