When I Was a Boy in Japan

by Sakae Shioya

“Perhaps in your lifetime, too,” I ventured to suggest.

“Yes, indeed. I did not think of myself,” he laughingly said. “Well, then, let’s go!”

“Go?”

“I will take you and Tomo with me.”

In the adjoining room Tomo-chan was seen just raising both her outstretched hands, opening her mouth, and rolling her eyes—all bespeaking her joy and surprise. I wished very much to answer the signal but for the presence of my uncle, who kept staring at anybody or anything near him, and this time at me, while revolving some new plan in his mind.

For the intervening days I was busy making preparations for the expedition. I had to buy half a dozen pieces of glass, frame and darken them in a variety of shade; to adjust my watch to keep time; to study the constellation where the sun was, and note the stars of the first magnitude visible on the day; and to make four or five copies of a drawing with a graduated circle in the centre for the sun, and two other concentric circles for the orbits of Mercury and Venus. The difficult part of the business was how to record time for the beginning of the eclipse. We needed two, at least, for this. Tomo-chan was glad to offer her service, but she did not want to look at the watch but at the sun. Well, I had no objection to that, as long as she could tell the right moment. But as I was a little in doubt on that point, we spent several nights in drill by means of a shaded lamp which cast a bright disc on the wall. No sooner than I moved an opaque one and touched the other, she had to press my hand. But too often the movable disc was a quarter of an inch inside the other when the belated touch passed on to me. So I had to train her eyes first by giving a signal at the time of contact by means of a pinch. And if she did not perceive it still, she got pinched still harder. She was very unteachable in this respect, but still wanted to look at the sun rather than the watch!

So the day of the eclipse arrived. It was a hot, clear day in July, and most fitted for the observation. We took an early train, as we had a long way to go, and then we must settle somewhere to watch the beginning and the end and the most precious middle. In the central part of the zone of the total eclipse there was a government observatory temporarily erected, and we wanted to get as near to it as possible. But we did not take into account the rather slow service of the train, and the hour for the eclipse had come before we got into the zone, and were, of course, in the train. As nothing could be done under such circumstances, we gave up the initial observation, and all the three just looked at the sun through the soot-covered pieces of glass. We did not know that we were a gainer and not a loser by this till late, except Tomo-chan, who had already earned enough pinches merely to be ready for the occasion.

The train was a few miles within the zone when my uncle thought it wise to stop at a small village and make an observation there, as the sun was fast being overshadowed. We settled in a nice tea-house, whose front room in the second floor with an open veranda was just the sort of place for our purpose. And there, after a quick lunch, we awaited the hour. Tomo-chan and I had a board and a sheet of paper which I had specially prepared, to note the location of the visible stars and to draw the shape of the corona.

I never knew that the light of the sun was so strong, for till the luminous surface was reduced to a very thin crescent, no change was observed in the sky. But all at once, as the shadow of a man passing on the street became weirdly faint, the color of the sky turned into warm steel-black and the purple stars began to shine! And in no time the crescent was changed into a mere speck of silver light, and in a second, as it burned itself off, a beautifully soft fringe of twilight appeared. That was the corona!

I now assiduously set about to take down the exact shape of it. There were only thirty seconds of this precious moment. So I just put down important points on the paper, noting carefully the position and the distance, and tried to take a clear impression in my mind to be traced out later. Tomo-chan was working, too. But her process was just the opposite of mine. Evidently she wished to follow my picture, but as mine was no picture, she turned to the sun with a sigh, and, though she finished it in time, she had a picture of a heavenly corona twisted considerably by an earthly wind!