When I Was a Boy in Japan

by Sakae Shioya

Like all ambitious boys, I now began to dream of my future.

In a daily paper to which we were subscribing, there was a story appearing in serial form, which I happened to read, and in which I became immediately interested. It was a scientific novel, with a revenge motive. The title, the author, the plot—all are now forgotten except the vague idea that the hero in the end, by his high inventive ability, built a wonderful machine, by means of which he poured poisonous gas into the castle where his enemy lived, and thereby took his vengeance upon him. I was simply fascinated, and wanted to be an engineer.

The first one to whom I confided my intention was Tomo-chan. Of course I did not and could not depict an engineer as the one in the story, wrapped in the glowing splendor of his intellectual triumph. I might have tried it if she had given me a chance to do so. But too soon her peculiar and perhaps truer view of the profession came on me like a blow.

“Why, isn’t an engineer a sort of carpenter?” she asked. Reduced to such a lowest term, even my hero looked shabby, and from that very moment I dropped him entirely.

I was not, however, fortunate enough to find a substitute worthy of my admiration, and I had to go without any. But this time my mind seemed to be able to present to me a proper object of my ambition. All my thought gradually drifted toward the province of science (I little knew then that it was the same engineer story which influenced me). Of all branches of learning, science appeared to me to be the most substantial, most worthy of serious study, and most certain of arriving at the secret of the creation. The study, however, of a small portion of God’s work, such as a leaf of a tree or a nameless insect, did not appeal to me. No, any section of the earth was not large enough to lay down my life for. I wanted to take in the earth, the sun, the moon, the planets, and the stars—in fact, all the universe at once! So I fixed upon astronomy as my special study. The immensity of the field and the purely theoretical nature of the subject, coupled with the transcendency of the pursuit over the triviality of worldly affairs, had all its charm over me. It was simply great.

I went again to Tomo-chan to tell her of my intention. The idea of an astronomer was apparently beyond her grasp. She could not think of any occupation such as carpenter, mason, and so forth, to associate with an astronomer, and it did not take her long to admit that it was grand.

This was my first triumph, and now I approached my aunt to see what she would think of it. She was one of those women whose mind never soared above the world even for the sake of observation. She could not conceive the idea that this earth—which, by the way, was flat, according to her view—revolves every day. I went into a whole length of explanation by the help of a lighted lamp and my fist, to show how the revolution would cause day and night, but to no purpose. So I changed my tactics and told her the story of a little girl, who, in her own way, understood this fact. She lived at the foot of a high mountain, on the summit of which there was a lake. The little girl could not understand how water could be found in such a high place till she was told one day about the diurnal revolution of the earth. “That must be true,” she said, “and so the mountain dips into the sea in the night and carries the water from there!”

But it was not my purpose to convince her about such a matter, and so I proceeded to acquaint her with my intention. I soon found that it was not exactly in the line of her approval. She presented to me at once her worldly view of the profession, how out of ordinary my choice was. The astronomer was to her a man who sleeps when all should be up, and is awake when all should be in bed. He looks always at the sky, and does not know often that he is about to tumble into a ditch. He has to perch on a roof or a tree-top like a sparrow, to watch the stars while everybody is enjoying some nice thing in the house.

This, however, had no effect of a wet blanket upon me. I knew that she was teasing me for the mere fun of it. Her humorous eyes were ready to take in any change in my surprised countenance, which on my part I partly assumed to please her.

In the end, however, she frankly admitted that the constantly increasing number of new studies in these enlightened days bewildered her greatly, and she could not tell which profession was sure to lead one to success. Perhaps I was right, she said, in choosing a study which only a few might attempt.