Sheltering from Rain under the Slide

雨やどりはすべり台の下で　(amayadori ha suberidai no shita de, Sheltering from Rain under the Slide, 1984) is a children's book by OKADA Jun (岡田淳).

A sudden rain storm makes a group of primary school children break off their baseball game and shelter under the large slide in the park in front of the block of flats where they all live. One of them suggests that the rain had been magically caused by Mr Amamori, who had been walking by at that moment and opened his umbrella a moment before the unexpected rain arrived. Amamori is an apparently unemployed middle aged man, who avoids contact with other people in the building. Another child reacts to the other's suspicion that Amamori was a wizard.

"You said, back then, I guess he really is a wizard, didn't you? 'Really is' means there was something before this?"

"What? Well, ......" Ichirou, playing with the rubber ball, glanced at Kyouko. "Just, somehow or other," he dodged the question.

Teruo didn't ask any more, but went on, "The truth is, when I heard you say 'wizard', it was a surprise. What I mean is, there was a time when I wondered whether he wasn't a wizard."

Everyone looked at Teruo in shock. Two or three had their mouths hanging open. Teruo went on, "The rain doesn't look like letting up yet, so perhaps you'll listen to my story."

One after the other the children tell stories of their experiences, all with a larger or smaller magical element, and all featuring Mr Amamori, as the apparent worker of the magic. The children are all of different ages (from 6 to 12) and the different stories reflect their different characters. Some of the stories are poetic fairy tales, others are closer to fantasies reflecting the wishes of the narrators. Readers can read the stories as stories, and also as reflections of the different storytellers. It is never stated as such, but there are hints that allow us to interpret the stories, if we want, not as a narrative of real events, but as a collaborative story telling competition. At the end, the final story puts a different perspective on the figure of Amamori, who is moving out that day.

Two Minute Adventure

A boy who loves stories of knights fighting dragons is transported from his Japanese school life to another world where he must fight a dragon to save the kingdom. That probably sounds like the laziest fantasy fulfillment story you could write. I'm not sure why 二分間の冒険 (Nifunkan no bouken, Two Minute Adventure, 1985) by 岡田淳 (OKADA Jun) is so much better than you'd expect from that description; but it works very well.

The hero Satoru is on an errand across the school grounds, with instructions from the teacher to be back within two minutes, when he is summoned by a black cat, Dareka (Someone), whose voice he can hear in his head. Dareka gets Satoru to remove a thorn in his paw (or at least mime the action, as Satoru cannot see any thorn there). As a reward he grants Satoru one wish. When Satoru, pressed to decide, says "Give me time!", Dareka transports him to another world, where he can stay until he grows old, but still be back within the two minutes. And indeed Satoru  might have to stay, since Dareka now decides to play a game of hide and seek with him. The cat has transformed himself into something else, "the most certain thing in this world"; he will take Satoru back to his world when Satoru catches him and says "Got you!"

Alone in the middle of a forest, Satoru can think of nothing but to set off in some direction and hope he finds something. Night falls before he can find his way out of the forest. Fortunately after a while he spots light ahead in the darkness. He finds a group of children his age. In fact they all look like children he knows from school, but they have no memory of him. They have gathered to send off Kaori, a girl from their village. Every year the village sends two children to become victims to the dragon that rules the country, chosen by an arrow fired into the roof of their houses. This year however, both arrows had landed in Kaori's house; so the second victim is unclear. When Satoru appears, the other children think he might be the one meant; and Satoru agrees to go with Kaori, thinking that if the dragon's power is so absolute, he might be Dareka, so that catching him would solve his and Kaori's problem at once.

A world with yearly victims sacrificed to a monster sounds familiar; but this world is a little stranger than that.

"What you said, it sounds like you it's only children living in your village?" Satoru asked, tipping the last crumbs of bread into his mouth.

"Children?"

"I mean, people about our age ...." Satoru replied, surprised. "Do you understand the word 'adult'?" he tried asking back.

Kaori tilted her head.

"Who were you born from?"

"Born?"

This was no good, Satoru thought, and looked for a different line of question.

"Um, I mean, the people last night, they were living with you in the village, yes?"

Kaori nodded.

"Apart from them, who was living there?"

"No-one."

"No-one? Well, when did you all start living there?"

"When ....? Always."

"Always? There must have been someone looking after you?"

Kaori didn't seem to understand Satoru's question.

"I mean, the meat and bread we just ate - did you make it?"

No, Kaori shook her head.

"Who made it?"

"No-one made it. It just is."

"It just is? Even though no-one makes it? Does someone bring it for you?"

"I don't know. I've never thought about things like that."

...

"Well what did you do in the village from getting up in the morning to going to bed at night?"

"We played."

The story developes into a fight against the dragon; but it avoids some potential clichés, casting an ironic light on the idea of a chosen hero. In addition, the oppressive fear running through the group of children, who are each waiting for the moment when they must face the dragon, is conveyed more vividly than we might expect. In this and other ways what looks like an easy fantasy becomes a little more disturbing.

The God of the Bottom of the Class

 岡田淳  (OKADA Jun, born 1947) worked as a teacher before publishing his first children's books. So it is not surprising that more than one has a school setting. びりっかすの神さま (Birikkasu no kamisama, The God of the Bottom of the Class 1988) is a fantasy set in the fourth year class of a Japanese primary school, when the children would be about nine years old.

The main character Hajime is new to the school. His mother had moved to the area after the sudden sickness and death of his father, who had devoted his life only to getting ahead, something that Hajime's mother does not want for her son. The new class has a teacher keen on using tests to drive the children to do well. There are tests every day; and each child's place in class is decided by how well they are doing in the tests. Unsurprisingly, it's an unhappy class, especially the children at the back (the ones doing worst in the tests). But as Hajime introduces himself to the class, he makes an unusual discovery.

'I am -'

Those were all the words he had got out, when he caught sight of something really strange.

In front of his eyes, about a metre away, all of a sudden a transparent man appeared. The man was about twenty centimetres tall, wearing a worn out suit and a shabby tie. There were tiny wings on his back. He was flying through the air with lazy flaps.

He didn't just fly through it. His eyes met with Hajime's. His face was long, his hair dry and unkempt, his expression timid. His eyes still meeting with Hajime's, he blinked, and flying forward about fifty centimetres, he suddenly jolted with surprise. At that moment he vanished from sight.

 Hajime observes this little spirit, and finds that it appears at the desk of children who come last in a test. Although he himself has no special difficulty with schoolwork, he deliberately comes last to get the spirit to come to him, and gradually learns to communicate with it by his thoughts.  The man calls himself 'Birikkasu', the name for the person at the bottom of the class. He thinks that he was called into being by the unhappiness of children who were last in the many tests the class teacher gives.

So far, Hajime is the only one able to see Birikkasu; but his neighbour at the back of the class Miyuki finds out that he has been deliberately getting low marks. When she challenges him, he tells her everything. Next day, when Miyuki too, as often, gets the lowest mark, she too finds that she can see Birikkasu, and with that, communicate in her thoughts both with him and with Hajime. Gradually the whole class gets drawn in: the children cooperate to raise the grades of the worst students, and those that could do better hold back, so that a whole group of children can get the same lowest mark at the same time.

For the teacher, the improving average of the class should be welcome in principle; but the strange uniformity and the change in behaviour of the children becomes more and more disturbing. (The story is a comedy; but rewritten from the teacher's point of view it would be more like The Midwich Cuckoos.) Soon he is on sick leave and the children are left to decide among themselves what kind of real efforts are worthwhile, as the school sports day approaches.

This is an amusing and skilfully written book that handles with a light touch the kinds of real pressures that small children experience.