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　 　　　　If you have a lot of time to spare, would you please read these pages through?

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　

　　　　　　　　　　　 　　 　The trace of my mind 　

　　　　　 　The infancy　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　
　 　I was born as a second son of a peasant in the south of Kyoto prefecture on 4th June, 1942. 　Because I was three years old at the end of the Second World War, I can not remember anything about it.　 Though little children always liked to have sweets, at that time only a few kinds of sweets were sold at the country shops, and then I was not given any money to buy them.　Only when our father fortunately won the distributions including a chocolate bar or two which were perhaps one of the grant of the American army, each of us (brothers and sisters) had only a small bite of it.　But reared on a farm, fortunately I could eat strawberries, silverberries, watermelons, grapes, persimmons, oranges, and chestnuts grown in our fields.　Therefore I can remember the taste of them.
　　Since I had begun to have the discretion in my childhood, we had taken the rice of which a half was barley, and I had wanted to refuse to eat it. 　In my postgraduate days I remembered eating it and talked about it to one of my friends who teaches philosophy at Kobe Gakuin University now, and on hearing it, he said to me, ‘Don't be a silly.　At that time I had eaten not such a rice but a soybean meal,’and admonished me for my vanity.　It was true that it was very happy to have such a rice at that time.
　　The family in which my father was born produced Japanese tiles and sold them. 　 And he was good at making them.　 But taking the opportunity of The Farmland Reform Act, he decided to buy a small hill, clear it for cultivation, sow the nuts of green tea, and produce green tea.　This meant that he wouldn't get any money for several years at least. 　Therefore we were in dire poverty. 　He depended on the small salary of our eldest sister who worked at the office of Nishiwazuka Agricultural Cooperative Association.

　 The elementary school days 　　　　　

　　Brought up like a weed grows, I was a very hopeless naughty boy.　 Having a lot of stories of thoughtless, blind, rash and violent behavior in my elementary school days, I would not like to attend the meeting of my old classmates.　 Because my elder sister's husband often said to me, ‘You were a group of the most naughty boys in the history of Nishiwazuka Elementary School,’ I think our teachers took great pains to educate us.　 When such naughty boys graduated from it, they were much reformed by them, parents and community.
　　After attending the opening ceremony of the school year in the second grade, I rode a lorry for bank protection with some friends of mine, and was badly wounded on the left cheek.　 As it had been raining from the morning, the construction work was stopped. 　When our lorry began to run down faster and faster on the down slope because the rails were wet with rain, all of my friends who didn't know how to brake it were seized with fear and jumped out of the running lorry. 　But I was still on it. 　 When it came to the steep curve in the rails, I was spilt from it to the bed of a brook.　 And I got a deep cut on my left cheek, which was caused by the edge of one of the large stones for bank protection on the bed of the brook.　 As I felt it strange, and touched my left hand to it, the fingers reached the throat through the cut of the cheek. 　It seemed to be a wonder that my head had not been broken in two.
　　Though my father often said to me, ‘Don't ride a lorry’, I did in spite of his order.　 But when I was taken to hospital on his back, he, who always smashed me with the fist, didn't so much as blame me for neglecting his order.　 It did make me feel awkward that I was not blamed for the great folly or mischief which I had done. 　This gave me the small occasion to obey his order and advice. 　Since then the scar on the cheek has made me recognize itself as a big wound of my mind and instigated me to correct my life.　　Fortunately it made a backward movement as I grew up, and faded away a little. 　
　　Again it was in the second grade that as our teacher told us to examine us in singing a song in the next school hour and ordered us to enter the music room at the beginning of a class, I, who am tone-deaf, climbed a big pine tree on the margin of our ground after the class.　 As a pupil informed her of my folly, she ran to the spot and, turning pale, cried to me again and again during the school hour,‘Masayasu, climb down.’　My naughty classmates seemed to be making a noise in the music room. 　Now I remember I was not scolded scathingly by her after climbing down, for, much frightened to see me climbing the high pine tree, she might not feel inclined to scold me for it. 　 But her education in this manner made me feel awkward and made a chance to make me feel that I did wrong. 　I think it is a kind of good education that a teacher doesn't scold scathingly a pupil who thinks he did wrong..
 　　The schoolmaster saw me standing in the teachers' room twice or thrice a week, and only said to me, ‘Again?’　And he sometimes cast a glance at me with his eyes turned up over his spectacles from his desk when he was at his work.　 This made me shrink up, too.　 He knew that not only a scolding but also a glance brought me a good influence.　 Therefore I have been fearful of a man in spectacles since then and the fear comes back in my mind whenever he casts a glance at me with his eyes turned up over his spectacles.
　 　I was a newspaper boy in the 6th grade. 　About 250 peoples died by the great flood damage in Minamiyamashiro (the south part of Kyoto prefecture) which cataracts of rain caused before the dawn on August 15th, 1953 when I was a 5th-grade pupil. 　A lot of landslides made us feel the fear of hell in the dark, destroyed all of my father's rice fields, and put my family into poverty because he didn't get any rice harvest in the autumn and needed a lot of money to restore his destroyed rice fields. 　I got up at 5 o'clock in the morning, walked the road of temporary construction for two miles to take the newspapers, and finished delivering them at 7 o'clock. 　And I continued doing so till the end of the 8th grade. 　The labor and its experience made me develop fortitude and endurance.　 Though we have little snow in winter now, I can remember that we had heavy snow twice or trice a year in my boyhood, and that it was very difficult to deliver the newspapers in the next morning after the heavy snow.