My Sweet Home in Maizuru
The house where the writer was born is in
three areas: Nishi-Maizuru (
Naka-Maizuru (
thousand people. Although Nishi-Maizuru and
Higashi-Maizuru are now prosperous,
Naka-Maizuru is not so flourishing.
Before the Second World War, Naka-Maizuru had
an important naval port, and a
big shipbuilding company was established soon after its end.
Later, the
naval port changed into a naval base of the Self-Defense Forces. However, the
area of Naka-Maizuru is not as prosperous today as Nishi-Maizuru and
Higashi-Maizuru
because the shipbuilding business grew
dull.
In fact, Naka-Maizuru
is the writerfs hometown. His house, which was handed over to
his motherfs
acquaintance about thirty years ago, is still on a hillside, which is about
thirty
meters high. The amount of land occupied by his house is about
300‡u. The land owned by
the writerfs family (the
Murai family) is over 2,000‡u, including a forest which is about
1,700‡u. When one looks up at the house from the foot of
the hill, it looks like a Japanese
castle. The writer had a very good time
during his boyhood in the house which looks like
a
castle.
Take, for example, some enjoyments of the four
seasons. In spring, his house was
decorated with beautiful azaleas covering
its bank. A cool gentle breeze usually blew
through the house in summer. He
could enjoy the moonlight on the long verandah in
autumn and ski on the
bright snow in winter.
Letfs explain about
the form of his house. It was a rectangular shape, the length of which
ran
from east to west. Two entrances were in the west part of the house. When you
entered
the front door in the southwest, you would find the ggenkan,h a
small entrance hall which is
an important place where visitors can take off
their shoes before entering the house and the
family membersf shoes are kept
in a shoe cupboard. (gGenkanh may be unfamiliar to
Westerners who do not
have any custom to take their shoes off in their houses.) The front
door in
the northwest was called gkatte-guchi,h which was not a formal entrance but a
private one. Next to each front entrance hall, there was a six-mat room, one
of which, the
northwest room, was a dining room. In the center of the house,
there was an eight-mat
bedroom, where he slept, with a closet and a Buddhist
altar. Next to the bedroom, there was
an eight-mat room which was a drawing
room in the style of shoin,
traditional Japanese
architecture. (A shoin means a study.) Gorgeous
sculptures were curved on a ranma, an
openwork screen above the sliding partitions between the bedrooms.
Furthermore, a
precious hanging picture scroll was always hung in a tokonoma, an alcove. In the east of
the house, there was a toilet. He used to be afraid of the toilet while
young when he had to
use it at night. A long wooden corridor lead from the
toilet to the bedroom next to the formal
entrance. He would make use of this
passage by playing table tennis when he was a child.
In the northwest of the
house, there was a cooking stove and a bath. The fuel for them was
firewood
fifty years ago. His grandmother cooked rice and heated the bath by burning
firewood. A small shed was reformed into his study when he was twelve years
old. He studied
there late at night every night until he entered the
university.
He was not interested
in the second floor because some lodgers used it. On the second floor,
there
were two bedrooms with closets with a view; one was an eight-mat bedroom and the
other was a ten-mat one.
Meanwhile, the roofs of his house greatly
attracted the writer while he was a child.
They were made of black tiles and
were threefold. The top of the roof commanded a fine view
of a mountain on
the other side, the houses below and the sky. He sometimes climbed the roof
when he was a child and would do mischief by putting his hand into a nest
under a tile now
and then. Although he was looking up at the sky balancing
on the roof, he was lucky not to
have fallen to the ground.
Finally, two special stories will be included for
you. One is that his house was never
locked during daytime because the house
standing on the hillside alone was not in danger.
Moreover, all the
neighbors were so friendly that few incidents happened. Another special
story was that when he was six years old, to tell the truth, he fell from
the roof of the second
floor, which was not the highest roof luckily. The
place where he landed was an earth ditch,
not a concrete one, so he had a
lucky escape. He remembers the scene vividly even now.
Although his mother
sold the house so that she could live with him in
mind as gMy Sweet Home in Maizuru.h