Kawabata Yasunari, a Nobel Prize winner, wrote two kinds of stories
for children: those which were not written for, but can be read by children,
and those which were intended for child readers. Kawabata said that he
wrote stories for children to cure the unhealthiness in his artistic novels.
This book consists of nine stories, one first appeared in Shônen Kurabu [Boys' Club], and the other eight in Shôjo Kurabu [Girls' Club] from 1929 to 1936. Among them, only "Kyûchô no Tantei"
was for boys. The story is as follows: a hard-working boy named Seiichi
becomes blind by a sudden accident, and has to leave school. Fumio, a class
president, visits Seiichi's house and tells him what they learned at school.
One day, some equipment for science experiment at school is broken. Fumio
and others wonder who did that. When Fumio goes to Seiichi's house, Seiichi
tells Fumio that they might have done a certain experiment on that day.
However, the experiment was impossible because of the loss. Fumio wonders
why Seiichi knows about the experiment, and suspects that he is responsible.
However, it turned out that the schoolmaster is responsible for the loss.
The schoolmaster saw Seiichi standing at the window of school building
and trying to listen to the teacher's preparation of the experiment. Knowing
Seiichi's interest in science, the schoolmaster did the experiment for
him, and, after that, he toppled the table by accident and broke the equipment.
A reprint of the original edition was published by Holp Shuppan in 1974, although Kawabata himself was reluctant for the reprint. |
