When I Was a Boy in Japan

by Sakae Shioya

Two days passed, in the course of which I became surer of my choice and was ready to face my parents. I had a secret suspicion that my father might have some plan already laid out for me. If he had had anything in mind outside of a scientific pursuit, I should have been non-plussed. But, luckily, I found I was ahead of him; indeed, he and my mother, too, seemed to trust everything to my natural inclination, and had only a vague but bright future for me without any particular road leading to it. So, when I laid before them, side by side, my desire or rather my determination to become an astronomer and a future college professor, with an income four times as great as my father’s,—I reserved the poetic side of my choice for my own meditation,—I made such a deep impression on them that it surprised me altogether. My mother, bending over her sewing by lamp-light, silently passed her hand over her eyes, while my father picked up a paper which had been read all through, with a slightly drawn “Um,” in his throat, which in his case was to be interpreted as indicating some pleasant feeling. My mother was the spokesman in such a case when my father’s silence was meant for consent. She told me that one must go heart and soul into any sort of study in order to excel in it. I simply nodded, and presently went to bed with a light heart, after bidding good night to the dear little stars who would be my constant companions hereafter.

I could not meet my uncle till Sunday, but Tomo-chan told me that he heard everything about me from my aunt, and was very enthusiastic over my intention. Indeed, he was always enthusiastic over new things, though his enthusiasm was usually rather short-lived. But I was glad that my news struck him in that light. That morning I found him reading a paper, but as I approached he looked up, and, removing his spectacles, and combing his beard with his fingers, surveyed me awhile as if to see if I was capable of my word. But really he was waiting for the return of his enthusiastic mood. I felt that Tomo-chan was smiling over my situation from the next room, though I could not remove my eyes from my uncle.

“Astronomer, eh?” he said at last.

“Yes, sir. Going to be one.”

“That’s grand. You will be the fourth or fifth in that line in our country. I should take one of those new studies if I were young enough. But astronomy is indeed fascinating. Do you know that the moon never shows her other side?”

Here he rose up and began to pace the room. His enthusiasm served to bring back a flood of the shallow but ready knowledge which he stored up in a corner of his head. And he did not let me speak a word till he had finished a lecture on the solar system.

“Look here,”—he turned to me with the look of a man who made a sudden discovery,—“do you know of the solar eclipse we are going to have on the 20th?”

Of course I did. It was still two weeks thence, and the moon was as opposite as could be, but I had already darkened a piece of glass over a candle and begun to observe the sun at least once a day.

“This is the total eclipse and its rare opportunity. You may not see it again in Japan in your lifetime,” he went on.

In my lifetime was too strong a phrase, but I was very sorry to miss the chance, as the zone of the total eclipse passed some fifty miles north of Tokyo, and I had—no money.