Just as we had paused to take a breather, we received an urgent telegram. I rushed straight to Tokyo, without a moment’s delay, and was told, “There are already two schools of this same nature in Aichi Prefecture. One of them, originally a girls’ higher school, already has many students and is a corporation with 150,000 yen in funds. Moreover, it is located in Nagoya and has therefore a much better chance of getting the necessary permission. That means, you in Anjo need to come up with a total of about 100,000 yen in additional funds to avoid your application being rejected. So you’ve got to please hurry and reorganize the corporation.”

The application from Nagoya was from the Sugiyama Educational Corporation. In those days, as regards a women’s technical college within Aichi, there was only the Kinjo School, straddling the fence between private and public.

However, either way, we couldn’t obtain that 50,000 yen. A deeply disappointed Mr. Terabe, the school principal, suggested that it would be better to give up on the application than to keep struggling. I was forced into a desperate situation; I couldn’t give up or change my mind. Even with my eyes closed, I couldn’t shake the image of my dead mother.