Introduction
group from the recollection of his sixth year. On the eve of the beginning of the spring season, known as the Setsubun festival, Sachio came home late from his play and found a holly twig with a sardine head at the gate.
“After dinner we all sat around the hearth, and my father explained the significance of the festival. After the ceremony of scattering toasted beans to drive out devils, he picked up twelve beans from the floor and arranged them by the fire in a row. Counting from the right, they represented the twelve months of the year. As they burned, father explained that those that crumbled into white ash signified fair weather, while those that turned into black charcoal, rain. He said the weather that year was to be favorable to the crops, and we all rejoiced.”
In the spring of 1873 Sachio was sent to a village school, where he proved to be an average country lad full of energy and spirit, but with no particular bent toward learning. In 1877, however, of his own will he became a pupil of Shumpo Sato, local scholar, under whom he acquired a comprehensive knowledge of Chinese classical literature. Farm life, family life, school life—all were simple, pleasant, and serene in that castle-town, but the political unrest and the changes brought about in Japan’s contact with the West-
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