Samizu Matsuki. The early years

SW HOKKAIDO

Wartime Childhood

From Hokkaido women 

Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan where I was born, and where I lived my first 18 years, has a history similar to that of Australia - a land of banishment. Since most of the early inhabitants were cut off from the cultural continuum, mainland influences were largely rejected or simply ignored by the inhabitants. A proud ”Hokkaido-ness” characterized as a “rough and tough” independent culture and life style evolved. Hokkaido women were expected to be as independent and strong as men.

Literacy at Age 1

"Thanks to my parents, I learned to read when I was one year old.

No big deal it seems; kid has got to use as much brainpower & concentration to master baby talk as to learn to read. When I was a teacher, I met some teachers who taught babies to read."

1976036

I remember when I was a child, a very young child, looking at a picture of St.
Francis talking to a little bird and thinking what a silly old boy he was. I thought it
was unfeasibly sweet. I thought my father, who was trying so hard to explain it to
me, was a funny man.

Perhaps the unnaturalness of the painting itself, with its peculiar medieval clarity
of the halo, also helped. The whole thing felt unnatural, false, and ridiculous.
The moon in the dark blue sky was the only thing that really struck me.

Not only because of my own youth, but also because those medieval painters
who could only capture this soft and indescribably happy feeling as a clear form
with a strange attention to detail may have been, in the end, only church appointed modern craftsmen who had nothing to do with sensitivity.

Expressions that do not possess "truth" become soulless dead things in this
sense, and this bliss of life is coagulated into a surface of dull cruelty. The
"relationship" between the little bird and the saint is obliterated, and only the
exterior situation, without any illustrative meaning, is fixed there. I wonder how
much better Chardin's piece of bread can express the truth. In other words,
where there is no "love," there is no meaning of expression.

1976033

Alexander the Great was a hero of my childhood.   There was a time when "power" was slowly rising inside me. From late elementary school through middle school and high school, I was constantly gaining the highest degree of power, quite literally.

There was a very strong romantic self-absorption, a Machiavellian darkness, and a Bismarckian entanglement. As a teenage politician, I was very good at what I did. At least until "sex" began to wreak its havoc.

1976012

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INSERT  - now I am with my uncle nearly 50 or more years ago in Northern Japan
listening to the tales of Dark Forest and talking crows

====================

From: Samizu sister Ibuki – Dad and Books
"When I was a child, there was a custom in every house to take the tatami mats out to dry at the end of the summer for cleaning. One by one, I had to brush each book and turn the pages apart to expose them to the wind and sunlight. It was an atmosphere that had to be handled with great care.

"Before we knew it, we had stopped drying our books, and the number of books we had dwindled each time we moved. Eventually, there was a group of books that my father would wrapup in a furoshiki cloth and borrow such as a travelogue of Europe and the United States for children, "Zenta and the Three Equals," a nostalgic bookfrom the library in Sapporo.

" He would scold me if I stepped over a book or left it unattended, but on the other hand, he would let my sister Samizu use the margins of the book to draw pictures and misbehave, which is interesting because it shows his attitude toward children in the days when there was no paper.

Moving to Noboribetsu From lights upon the sea Page 20.

Sami and siblings wondered about the Parental arguments: They thought the parental secret was something to do with getting divorced; my parents did not seem to get along very well, then.

Masue: “They’ll go to sleep pretty soon anyway. Please come back to the table and tell me all about__”

Satoru ”All right, but I'm waiting till it's sure that no one's listening. Too early yet”

He suddenly strikes the paper sliding door. Several footsteps
running away can be heard.

”Hahahaha. Mother; now I finally convinced them that I could see through __”

They both laugh, rather loudly.

Pg 21

Late that night after midnight Sami walks into the dining room and turns a light on, then listens to faint footsteps. Her sister Fumi appears. 

"Did you get anything?” she asked
Samizu: "Sort of”
"Please tell me.”
"It's not what we've been thinking.”
" Pipe business?"
"Oh no. Of course not. You must know.”
“Oh good for a moment I was worried”
“Why worry?"
“Because if it's what I think it is, it never gets serious.
You know that, too."

Page 22

CHAPTER 4 FROM MINING TOWN TO Coastal town
What it was, my parents’ secret was to be a matter relative to my father's
being transferred to another town. One which we'd never heard of.

We were told the town was located facing the ocean, a former fishing town
now trying to build up the town finance by turning into a tourist town.

My mother especially seemed upset - she has just turned those awful lands
into healthy soil condition, working diligently for nearly three years.

Doesn't like the idea of abandoning it to the wilderness. It’s not near to any
people. They are practically all employed by the iron mining company and
they possessed neither knowledge nor capability to undertake peasant
works.

She began to disappear toward the hills our gardens occupied, more often than needed. I know why - she was driven there to appreciate her works for as much aspossible before moving to the place by the beach.

Mostly she will speak to each plant she has helped grow with tender manner as if talking to fragile children. “Be a good girl now” she would say to her sweet peas, just begun to  bloom.

Page 25.
Moving to the shore.

I and my sister Fumi spent much time largely imagining how the new place would be.
We all were very curious about life on a beach. We had only very
few occasions where we could get close to that great expanse of the water,
the Ocean

To my mind it was more intimidating than not. The waves more or less
reminded me of some angry wild beast charging at you without relent.

Maybe perfect for those mysterious Ainu hunters who worship the bear, a
ferocious animal. I too waited, lingering on my usual play place, the river,
longer than usual.

….“But don't worry, I'll come back and visit here sometime” -- My sister was
busy saying “goodbye” to her many human friends. She has been a popular girl in 

school - years later she told me.

------------------------------------end

SAMIZU 1945  RECOLLECTION

So first Americans came in to Noboribetsu aboard water landing airplanes. They landed on lake with tons of medical stuff. 31 crew

"We all ran to shore to watch. My father was one of the few males not purged. Educated enough not to fear white people. He worshipped DaVinci, Walt Whitman. A liberal education.

He went to them; he and his best friend - a doctor. In Mid August... 14 ? 1945 during the Bon festival The Americans were really tall, taller than the Japanese.

END OF WAR

From : Dad and Ghosts by Samizu Matsuki, Written as part of a family remembrance of her deceased father Satoru.

In the text Samizu focuses on her war time childhood during 1940 & 1945

It was 1940, a time when the entire country of Japan was celebrating the 2600th anniversary of the founding of Japan. My family and I were in Kanoya, Yubari City, living with relatives, on a small cliff that was hidden from the city.

It was the day of the memorial event. My sister Ibuki, a neighbor boy and I were standing by the suspension bridge in the canyon, waiting for the "two-bladed" plane to fly over. This "two-bladed" airplane was a special event because it was a state-of-the-art airplane. Of course, as children, we didn't know about the Red Baron, who was gaining fame at the time.

We were all dressed up and waiting at the base of the suspension bridge for the plane to appear. We  were informed of the flight path in advance. The residents were supposed to wave the Japanese flag when the plane passed by.

My mother put an improvised flag in our hands, but none of us had a chance to wave it.

Because suddenly, high in the sky, from beyond the mountains, a plane appeared without a sound. I could not help but notice that there were three blades instead of two, and as I strained my eyes, I saw  a  human figure hanging from a black umbrella come down from the sky and tumble down to the opposite side of the mountain.

Of course, we screamed and ran into the house to report to my mother that someone had just been injured. Then, I saw two black eagles flying into the middle of the swift current that was curling just below the bridge. From then on, the black eagles seemed to me to be the strangest birds in the world.

This incident stirred my childhood so much that I followed my mother around asking her, "What happened to that man? It seemed that she finally got tired of it and avoided the question with an ultimatum "up" look on her face. In those days, my mother's eyes were big and round, and when she  glared at me with a close-up face, she looked like an angry cat or owl, an effective expression of anger.

But when my father came home in the evening, he had an answer to my question. That man was my   father. The best evidence of this was the black bat umbrella of my father, with its ribs sticking out in  places. .... My mother ignored us and quickly took my father to the back room.

Ibuki and I looked at each other "That man was our father!” we silently said to each other.

One day, my father took me to the backyard because I was afraid of ghosts. In the yard, there was an old black tree with a blue mountain range behind it.

My father stood me in front of the old tree and said, "Here, count to three and open your eyes," in a hide-and-seek tone. Then he seemed to have gone into hiding, shuffling his feet somewhere.

When I opened my eyes after counting to three, I saw an old bird on the branch of an old tree, about the size and color of a black buzzard, staring at me with a stern look in its eyes and a raised beak, much like an orderly. Then it let out a muffled cry and flew away at a speed that I couldn't believe for an old bird.

Then my father's laughing voice came from behind me, "What do you think? It's a ghost called Doppelgänger. It's the most amazing ghost in the world.”

Since then, I have been saved from the habit of being afraid of ghosts.

+++++++++++++++++

1945 It was right after the end of the war, when he was again walking around in the midst of everyday life. My father had finally emerged from the chaos of the war, and for me, who was around ten years old at the time, the phenomenon of this new person joining the family was itself an interesting everyday event.

At that time, the process of the collapse of the old system, which was the background of the direct responsibility of the war effort was underway, and the embryonic period of the new system based on American democracy was interwoven into the fabric of society.

At that time, one of the policies of the Ministry of Education was to incorporate literary materials into the curriculum that had been ignored or impeached during the war,

This was both the Taisho liberalism of Natsume, Akutagawa, Dazai, Fumiko Hayashi, and others from

Japan. The literature of the former enemy, such as "Tom Sawyer" and "The Tale of Wakakusa," were  introduced one after another.

Liberalism was emerging

As ten-year-olds, the most popular books in our classroom were Kenji Miyazawa's "Matasaburou of the Wind," "Wildcat," and "Gusuko Budori. One of them was a short story called "A Bunch of Grapes," which led to my father's "psychic powers" that I observed. ….

ART EDUCATION

FROM Early art edu

Like many Japanese intellectuals in 1920s and early 1930s Japan, Samizu's parents, schoolteachers Satoru and Masue Matsuki enjoyed access to classical and recent western music, arts, writings and philosophy Their first child, Samizu, was introduced early on to these arts and philosophies

Samizu wrote

“My father was a Schoolmaster with Petrarch, Dewey-Binnett tradition,which is not so unique in his generation. Education Taisho Jidai is his field of study

He, and all of our family for that matter, suffered to the greatest extent in  comparison to average Hokkaido households during the war. This because of his pacifist convictions, which did not fare very well then with prevailing militarism and nationalism.

His best friend was jailed and shortly after tortured to death. My father went underground. The rest of my family - mother and kids... 3 of us then - began a nomadic lifestyle, hopping from one Uncle’s or Aunt’s place to the other, nearly every two months.   my father was in  hiding. 

 Military Police came by daily to check our house for him   So funny! They used to wear long leather boots. They can really sneak in to catch you We noticed they come with long shovels We purposely added small stones so when they shoveled them up, we can hear it. Meanwhile my mother hides everything. Then they come in, take a look, say okay nothing there .

You see? We got lots of cooperation from ordinary people. Military police here were local people They had orders to carry out. He doesn't want to do it?

In the meantime I continued my education. My mother was very strict about that. But because we moved around Hokkaido so much , I went to 4 elementary schools

Elementary Schools 6yr old yo to 12 year old

Ikushun-Betsu Elementary School 1st and 2nd grades 6yr old . In Mikasa – up the Ikushunbetsu River

Toyako Elementary School 2nd, 3rd, 4th grades. https://www.gaccom.jp/en/schools-39605/students.html

Abira Elementary School 4th and 5th grades.    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abira,_Hokkaido

Ueno NE of Sapporo Elementary school 12 yrs old. 5th and 6th grades: