Country Teacher, by Tayama Katai

Country Teacher, by Tayama Katai, published in 1909, is based on the true story of a school teacher named Kobayashi Shuzo, named Hayashi Seizo in the novel. The protagonist is a young man undergoing the rites of passage as he struggles to fit his ideals into the real world of education, economics, writing caring for his aging parents, and his own severe illness and death. The author contrasts the young man's essentially miserable life and death with the battle victories Japan celebrates in its war with Russia.

The book's first words, "The ten-mile road was a long one" (3) is symbolic of the arduous journey Seizo endures throughout his life and death. Although his life is marked by signs of hope now and again, all those hopes are essentially unrealized. It is as if life sets him up with such hopes in order to knock him down even further into despair. If there is any positive conclusion to be drawn from the book, it is that the protagonist is able to endure his suffering with some measure of dignity at times, although just as he has come to accept his lot in life, he is stricken with tuberculosis and died an unpleasant death.

The author himself, in an essay from his memoirs included in this work, leaves no doubt about the fundamentally dark message of his novel:

My immediate thought [upon hearing of the death of the man upon whom the protagonist is based] was that on the day of the fall of Liaoyang---the most glorious day in Japan's international history, a day when tens o

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ly, this idealism meets the hard wall of reality. We read that Seizo yearns to be a poet but his family is "poor, and he had gradually come to realize that it would be quite impossible for him to go off to Tokyo to finish his studies." He is forced to teach in an elementary school. Everything---even nature---seems to be conspiring against the young man to thwart his dreams. On a trip to town, The road grew steadily worse. Even walking carefully it was now impossible to avoid the wet. However carefully he tried to place his feet, Seizo could not stop the mud spattering from his worn-down geta. . . . A wind sprang up and the rain now came down sideways, drenching his sleeves as well (17). The idealism of the protagonist is contrasted with the pessimism of his friend Ikuji, with Seizo expressing the view that though "circumstances" can weigh heavily on an individual, the individual can overcome those circumstances with "the power of his mind" (25). The life of the young man will prove him profoundly incorrect. The pressure of helping care for his parents grows, making it more unlikely he will ever be able to fulfill his artistic ambitions. Seizo's relationship with the priest gives him hope that he will be able to fulfill his i

Category: Literature - C