Sixteen-years-old in the bloom of youth. From my head, my hair — as dear to me as life itself — had disappeared. I could not venture out. I quit my sewing job at the temple. Just like that I was shunned by my peers and acquaintances. But I still had to farm. There was nothing we could do but hide our heads and faces under hand towels and make our way out to the fields. Life continued like that until I was eighteen years old. Even though I was a young lady, I lived in a totally different world.

From childhood, I lived with this ever-present social pressure. It was very hard for us, but we prayed to God that I could move past it into adulthood. However, accompanying my growing up, the hardships suffered by us as parent and child did nothing but intensify. My mother’s three younger brothers became gamblers, squandering the household resources and went to jail one after the other. I came to feel that I was stuck in this village — in these terrible, shameful circumstances — for the rest of my life.

Then I thought that becoming an elementary school teacher or a nurse, or getting a similar woman’s job, would be my only way out of this village. I had always wanted to be an elementary school teacher. Even though I was eighteen years old, had attended elementary school for less than three years and the private school of Chinese classics for seven, I hadn’t received a systematic education like regular school. Nothing recommended me as a candidate for normal school, so there was nothing I could do but prepare for the entrance examination of the specialized sewing course and hope for the best.

So I studied to be a sewing teacher with Ms. Amano, who taught at Sakurai Higher Elementary School, as a teacher of the specialized sewing course, taking the October entrance exam twice, when I was nineteen and then twenty, and failing both times. I had a friend, Ms. Kobayashi. She, like me, had failed the tests twice. Like sisters, we encouraged each other to try a third time, only to both fail again. However, Ms. Kobayashi passed the entrance examination for the six-month training course instituted for assistant teachers annexed to Okazaki Women’s Normal School, and she joined the school.

I knew that my failure resulted from the fact that, even though I had worked hard, I was lacking in basic knowledge and had little experience of the general school curriculum.