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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 of thousands of people were filled with tremendous joy---there was a young man dying such a lonely death, dying without achieving anything and without even going off to the war (xiii-xiv).

The message here is clear. Although from the distant perspective of national history the day of victory was a glorious one, the real life of one individual, representing thousands of similar unknown individuals, is one of misery, failure, and a lonely death. The book ...

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Country Teacher, by Tayama Katai. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 04:23, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1690426.html