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Japanese · Botchan

三

Chapter 3

174 sentences · 16 notes

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  1. 1

    At last I went to school.

    いよいよat lastいよいよ · adverbmodifies 出
    学校school学校 · nounoblique complement of 出
    へtoへ · particleparticle marking 学校
    出went出る · verbmain verb of the sentence
    た(past)た · auxiliary verbauxiliary of 出

  2. The first time I stepped into the classroom and climbed up onto the platform, it felt strange somehow.

  3. While I lectured, I found myself wondering whether even I could actually pull off being a teacher.

  4. The students are a rowdy bunch.

  5. Every so often one of them bellows out "Sensei!" at some absurd volume.

  6. That word — sensei — hit me hard.

  7. Back at the physics school I'd called out "sensei, sensei" to my own teachers every day, but calling someone sensei and being called it yourself are worlds apart.

  8. It made the soles of my feet itch, somehow.

  9. I'm no coward.

  10. Nor am I timid, but unfortunately I'm short on plain nerve.

  11. When someone shouts "Sensei!" at me, it feels like hearing the noon cannon go off in Marunouchi on an empty stomach.

  12. I fumbled through that first hour somehow, half-heartedly.

  13. But at least no one hit me with a question that really stumped me.

  14. Back in the staff room, Porcupine asked me how it went.

  15. I gave him a curt "Mm," and that seemed to set him at ease.

  16. 3

    Heading out of the staff room for second period, chalk in hand, I felt like I was marching into enemy territory.

  17. In the classroom this time, the class was nothing but bigger louts than before.

  18. Being an Edokko, I'm built slight and delicate, so standing up on that platform I just don't have the presence to push people around.

  19. In a fistfight I'd take on a sumo wrestler if I had to, but I have no knack for lining up forty of these big louts and cowing them with nothing but my tongue.

  20. Still, I figured showing weakness to country boys like these would become a habit, so I lectured as loudly as I could, rolling my r's a bit for effect.

  21. At first the students sat there dazed, as if I'd smoked them out, and seeing that made me all the more pleased with myself, so I kept laying on the shitamachi swagger — until the toughest-looking one, right in the middle of the front row, suddenly stood up and said "Sensei."

  22. Here it comes, I thought, and asked him what — and he said, "It's too fast, I can't follow, could you go a bit more slow, please, huh."

  23. "Could you, please, huh" is a mushy sort of phrase.

  24. If it's too fast, I'll say it slower, I answered, but I'm an Edokko, so I can't speak your dialect — if you don't follow, you can just wait until you do.

  25. At that rate, second period went better than I'd expected.

  26. Only, on my way out, one student pressed some geometry problem on me that looked beyond me, saying "Could you please explain this one, huh," and that broke me out in a cold sweat.

  27. With no way out, I said I didn't quite follow it and would teach it next time, and hurried off — at which the students all whooped and jeered.

  28. Somewhere in the noise I could hear a voice saying "can't do it, can't do it."

  29. Idiots — of course even a teacher can't solve everything.

  30. What's so strange about admitting you can't do what you can't do?

  31. If I could solve things like that on the spot, would I really have come out to a backwater like this for forty yen a month, I thought, heading back to the staff room.

  32. How'd it go this time, Porcupine asked again.

  33. I said "Mm," but that alone didn't sit right with me, so I added that the students at this school were a thick-headed lot.

  34. Porcupine made an odd face at that.

  35. 5

    Third period, fourth period, and the hour after lunch were all much the same.

  36. In every class I taught that first day, I slipped up a little.

  37. Teaching, I decided, isn't nearly the easy job it looks like from outside.

  38. My lessons were all done, but I still couldn't go home — I had to sit there twiddling my thumbs until three o'clock.

  39. At three, students from my homeroom clean their classroom and come to report it, so apparently I have to go inspect it.

  40. After that I check over the attendance book, and only then am I finally let go.

  41. Even if my body's bought and paid for by a salary, is there any law that says I have to be chained to school through every free hour, staring down a desk?

  42. But since everyone else went along quietly with the rules, I figured it wouldn't do for me, the new hire, to be the only one whining, so I put up with it.

  43. On the way home I complained to Porcupine that keeping everyone at school past three no matter what was plain foolish, and he laughed, "That's right, ha ha ha" — but then turned serious and said, "You'd best not go around complaining about the school too much."

  44. "If you're going to say it, say it to me only — there are some pretty odd characters around here," he added, sounding for all the world like he was giving me a warning.

  45. We parted ways at the crossroads, so there was no time to ask what he meant by it.

  46. 7

    Then when I get back to my lodgings, the landlord comes along saying he'll make the tea.

  47. Hearing "make the tea," I figured he meant to treat me, but he brews my own tea without the slightest hesitation and drinks it himself.

  48. At this rate, he's probably carrying out his own private "I'll make the tea" routine even while I'm out.

  49. As the landlord tells it, he's fond of paintings and antiques, and eventually took up dealing in them quietly on the side.

  50. "And from what I can see, you yourself seem to have quite the artistic bent."

  51. "Why not take it up as a little hobby yourself?" — an absolutely outrageous pitch.

  52. Two years ago, running an errand for someone at the Imperial Hotel, I was once mistaken for a locksmith.

  53. Wearing a blanket over my head to go see the Great Buddha of Kamakura, a rickshaw man once called me "boss."

  54. I've been mistaken for all sorts of things over the years besides, but no one has ever yet grabbed hold of me and called me a man of refined taste.

  55. Usually you can tell just from a person's looks and manner.

  56. You can spot a man of taste even in a picture: he will be wearing a hood or holding a poetry slip.

  57. Anyone who seriously calls me a man of taste is no ordinary rogue.

  58. I told him I hated the sort of thing idle old retirees busy themselves with, and the landlord just laughed "heh heh heh" and said, "No, no one likes it from the start, sir, but once you step into this world you can hardly step back out" — and went on pouring himself tea, sipping it with some strange flourish of the hand.

  59. Truth is, I'd asked him the night before to buy some tea, but I can't stand it this bitter and strong.

  60. One cup of it and I can feel it hit my stomach.

  61. When I told him to buy something less bitter next time, he said "certainly, sir," and squeezed out another cup for himself.

  62. The man just drinks whatever he pleases, thinking of it as somebody else's tea.

  63. Once the landlord finally withdrew, I looked over tomorrow's lesson and went straight to bed.

  64. 9

    After that, day after day I went to school and worked by the rules, and day after day I came home to the landlord popping out with his "I'll make the tea."

  65. After about a week I'd more or less gotten the hang of how the school worked, and had mostly sized up the couple who ran my lodgings.

  66. Asking the other teachers, I gathered that for the week or month after receiving your appointment, you fret terribly over whether your reputation is good or bad — but I felt nothing of the kind at all.

  67. When I slipped up now and then in class it felt rotten in the moment, but after about half an hour it vanished clean away.

  68. Whatever the matter, I'm the sort of man who can't manage to worry for long even when I try to.

  69. I was utterly unconcerned with what effect my classroom slip-ups might have on the students, or what response that effect might draw from the principal or the vice-principal.

  70. As I've said before, I'm not a man of especially steady nerve, but I'm remarkably decisive.

  71. I was resolved that if this school didn't suit me I'd just go off somewhere else at once, so neither Badger nor Red Shirt frightened me in the slightest.

  72. Much less could I bring myself to spend any charm or flattery on the brats in the classroom.

  73. School was fine on that count, but my lodgings were another matter.

  74. If the landlord had only come to drink tea I could have put up with it, but he brought all sorts of things besides.

  75. The first thing he brought was, of all things, seal stones — he lined up about ten of them and said the whole lot for three yen was a bargain, wouldn't I buy them.

  76. I told him I wasn't some second-rate painter touring the provinces and had no use for such things, so next he brought a hanging scroll of flowers and birds by some fellow called Kazan or other.

  77. He hung it in the alcove himself and asked wasn't it fine work, and when I gave some noncommittal "I suppose so" in reply, he launched into a worthless lecture about how there are two Kazans, one such-and-such Kazan and one such-and-such other Kazan, and this scroll was by the latter one — and then, "What do you say, for you I'll make it fifteen yen."

  78. "Do buy it," he pressed.

  79. I refused, saying I had no money, but he was terribly stubborn about it — the money, he said, could wait as long as I liked.

  80. Even if I had money I wouldn't buy it, I said, and drove him off then and there.

  81. The next time, he hauled in an inkstone as huge as a demon roof-tile.

  82. "This is a Tankei, a Tankei," he kept saying two, three times over, so half in jest I asked him just what a Tankei was, and he launched straight into a lecture.

  83. Tankei comes from upper, middle, and lower strata. Everything quarried nowadays is from the upper stratum, but this is certainly from the middle. — just look at this "eye."

  84. Having three eyes in the stone is a rare thing, he said.

  85. "And It produces ink beautifully, too. — do try it," he said, shoving the great inkstone right in front of me.

  86. When I asked how much, he said the owner had brought it back from China and was set on selling it, so he'd make it a bargain at thirty yen.

  87. This man is a fool, without question.

  88. School itself seemed likely enough to go on peacefully somehow, but subjected to this barrage of antiques, I doubted I could hold out for long.

  89. 11

    Before long even school began to wear on me.

  90. One evening, out for a walk through a place called Ōmachi, I came across a sign next to the post office that read "Soba," with "Tokyo-style" added underneath.

  91. I'm extremely fond of soba noodles.

  92. Even back when I lived in Tokyo, passing a soba shop and catching the smell of the spring onions would always make me want to duck through the curtain.

  93. Between mathematics and antiques I'd forgotten all about soba until now, but seeing this sign, I couldn't just walk on past.

  94. Since I was already there, I decided to have a bowl and stepped inside.

  95. Once inside, the place wasn't up to its sign.

  96. Having gone to the trouble of claiming "Tokyo," you'd think they'd keep it a bit cleaner, but whether from ignorance of Tokyo or lack of money, it was filthy beyond belief.

  97. The tatami had changed color, and on top of that was gritty with sand.

  98. The walls were black with soot.

  99. Not only was the ceiling grimed with lamp soot, it was so low I found myself instinctively hunching my neck.

  100. Only the price list, pasted up with the soba dishes' names written out grandly, was brand new.

  101. No doubt they'd bought up some old building and only opened for business two or three days before.

  102. First on the price list was tempura.

  103. "Hey, bring me tempura," I called out loudly.

  104. At that, three men who'd been huddled in a corner slurping and sucking away at something all turned to look at me at once.

  105. The room being dim, I hadn't noticed at first, but once our eyes met, I saw they were all my own students.

  106. Since they greeted me first, I greeted them back.

  107. It being my first soba in a good while, and delicious besides, I polished off four bowls of tempura soba that night.

  108. 13

    The next day, walking into the classroom without a thought in the world, I found "Tempura Sensei" written across the blackboard in letters as big as the whole board.

  109. Everyone burst out laughing the moment they saw my face.

  110. Finding it too ridiculous to bother with, I asked what was so funny about eating tempura.

  111. One student answered, "But four bowls is a bit much, sir, huh."

  112. Whether I eat four bowls or five, it's my own money buying my own food — what's it to anyone? — and with that I got through the lecture quickly and went back to the staff room.

  113. Ten minutes later, when I went out to the next class, there it was on the board: "Item: Four Bowls of Tempura Soba."

  114. "But no laughing."

  115. So it read on the blackboard.

  116. The first time hadn't particularly bothered me, but this time it got under my skin.

  117. A joke carried past a certain point stops being a joke and becomes plain mischief.

  118. It's like a toasted rice cake burnt black — nobody's going to praise it.

  119. Country boys don't understand this kind of timing, so they figure they can push a thing as far as they please.

  120. Living in a town so small you could see the whole of it in a single hour's walk, with nothing else to occupy them, they've gone and blown up the whole tempura affair as if it were the Russo-Japanese War.

  121. Pathetic bunch.

  122. Being raised on this kind of thing from childhood is exactly how you end up with these disagreeably twisted little runts, like a maple bonsai stunted in a flowerpot.

  123. If it were done in innocence I could laugh right along with them, but what is this.

  124. Mere children, and yet with such a nasty streak of malice in them.

  125. I said nothing, wiped "tempura" off the board, and told them: is this sort of prank really so amusing — it's a cowardly joke.

  126. "Do you even know what 'cowardly' means?" I asked, and one of them answered back, "Getting angry when people laugh at what you did yourself — that's what's cowardly, isn't it, sir, huh."

  127. Nasty little brat.

  128. To think I'd come all the way from Tokyo just to teach the likes of him made me thoroughly miserable.

  129. "Cut the smart talk and study," I told them, and went ahead and started the lesson.

  130. Then, going out to the next class after that, I found written up: "Eating tempura makes one want to talk back."

  131. There's simply no getting the better of them.

  132. I got so angry that I declared I wouldn't teach such impudent brats, and marched straight back without another word.

  133. The students, apparently, were delighted to get out of class.

  134. At this rate, the antiques dealer is starting to look better than the school.

  135. 15

    As for the tempura-soba business, once I got home and slept on it a night, it stopped bothering me so much.

  136. I went to school, and the students turned up too.

  137. It made no particular sense to me.

  138. For about three days after that all was quiet, but on the evening of the fourth day I went to a place called Sumita and ate dumplings.

  139. This Sumita is a hot-spring town, about ten minutes by train from the castle town, or thirty minutes on foot, and it has restaurants, hot-spring inns, a park, and on top of that a red-light district.

  140. The dumpling shop I went into stood at the entrance of the district and had a reputation for being very good, so on my way back from the hot spring I stopped in for a taste.

  141. This time I hadn't run into any students, so I assumed no one would know, but the next day at school, walking into the first-period classroom, I found written up: "Dumplings, two plates, seven sen."

  142. As it happens, I had eaten two plates and paid exactly seven sen.

  143. What a troublesome bunch.

  144. Sure enough, expecting something in second period too, I found: "Red-light district dumplings — delicious, delicious."

  145. An utterly exasperating lot.

  146. Just when I thought the dumpling business had died down, this time it was "Red Towel" that became the talk of the school.

  147. I wondered what on earth it meant, and it turned out to be a thoroughly trivial story.

  148. Ever since coming here, I've made it a fixed habit to go to the hot spring at Sumita every day.

  149. Everything else out here falls hopelessly short of Tokyo, but the hot spring, at least, is genuinely splendid.

  150. Since I've gone to the trouble of coming, I figured I might as well bathe there every day, so before dinner I go out, combining it with a bit of exercise.

  151. Whenever I go, I always bring along a big Western-style towel, dangling from my hand.

  152. The towel got dyed by the water, and its red stripes bled out, so at a glance it looks crimson all over.

  153. I carry this towel with me always — going and coming, whether on the train or on foot.

  154. So it seems the students have taken to calling me "Red Towel, Red Towel."

  155. Living in such a small, cramped place, people really do fuss over the smallest things.

  156. There's more still.

  157. The bathhouse is a newly built three-story building, and for eight sen the first-class option lends you a robe and includes someone to scrub your back.

  158. On top of that, a woman brings out tea in a fine tenmoku bowl.

  159. I always went for the first-class option.

  160. Then people started saying it was extravagant of me to use the first-class bath every day on a forty-yen salary.

  161. None of their business.

  162. There's more yet.

  163. The bathing pool is built up of stacked granite blocks, partitioned off to about the size of fifteen tatami mats.

  164. Usually there are thirteen or fourteen people soaking in it, but every so often there's nobody there at all.

  165. It's deep enough that, standing, the water comes up to about chest height, so swimming in the bath, for exercise, is a genuinely pleasant thing.

  166. Whenever I saw the pool was empty, I'd delight in swimming laps around the whole fifteen-mat expanse of it.

  167. But one day, coming down briskly from the third floor and peeking through the low entrance, wondering whether I could swim again today, I found a big sign pasted up, written boldly in black: "One shall not swim in the bath."

  168. There can't be many people out there who swim in a hot-spring bath, so this notice may well have been freshly made up specially for my benefit.

  169. After that I gave up swimming there.

  170. I'd given up swimming, but I was startled to find, going to school, that as usual, "One shall not swim in the bath" was written up on the blackboard.

  171. It began to feel as if the entire student body had turned into detectives, all of them shadowing me alone.

  172. It thoroughly soured my mood.

  173. Whatever the students said, I'm not the sort of man to stop doing what I've set my mind to, but when I thought about why on earth I'd come to a cramped little place where you couldn't even turn your nose without bumping into something, it left me thoroughly wretched.

  174. And then, going home, there was the antiques barrage waiting for me, same as ever.

The particulars

The text
坊っちゃん, Natsume Sōseki. Botchan.
Translation
Public-domain Japanese (Natsume Sōseki, d. 1916; published 1906). English translation © 2026 1732 Studios, LLC.
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Digital narration, directed by 1732 Studios.
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Every word of the text, by letter.
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Two whoopie pies and a pine. An inside joke.