It happened several years ago when grandma suddenly remembered a Japanese song. I followed her “graduation” cue to find a song. She listened to the music playing in the mobile phone, and soon began to sing along, the vicissitudes of the female voice and the mobile phone accompaniment is fully integrated.
She said she didn’t know what the song meant or what it was called when she learned it.
“What kind of song is this? “She asked me, frowning.
“… It’s the national anthem of Japan, ‘The Generation of the King.'”
1
Pidou Town Jiaxinzi Primary School was established in 1932, and now it has merged with Gezhen Pu primary school and rebuilt. The site of the old school is on a low slope. Three flagpoles and basketball stands in the open space, which can be vaguely distinguished from the playground. A long row of walls, painted with rectangular blocks of blue paint, reveals the school Windows.
My grandmother used to study in this school.
1931, the Mukden incident, four months later, the northeast fell. Puyi entered Xinjing, playing the Manchukuo national anthem issued by Japan. At the time of grandma’s birth, the place of her home was named zhujiatun, one of the “Guandong Dongzhou Pizi nests”. There was an emperor and an emperor at the same time.
From downtown Dalian, I went to the Sandwich Society and returned to my grandmother’s old house. The bullet train drove for an hour, but did not get out of The then Guan Dongzhou. The yard of grandma’s family is close to the old platform. There are some withered roots of plants in the yard. The room on one side looks very old, but the yard is no longer inhabited.
The South Manchuria Railway Corporation was a product of Japanese colonial ambitions. The Japanese took It as their foothold, intending to make it a perfectly planned colony. Manchu railway has been in Dalian for nearly 40 years, involving workers, farmers, businessmen, medical students, factories, harbors and urban construction.
Kanto hall in manchurian attached to the education, in addition to a few by the local squire and other people to raise funds to set up, the rest by manchurian management. The Japanese run schools for Chinese villagers, known as “ordinary schools”, are a four-year primary school.
In the Sandwich Community, a total of three schools were built, respectively in The Sandwich Community, Zanzi River and Cui Jiayao. The house that grandma read was built on a separate piece of ground. There were no houses around, and they were all Japanese orchards.
2
Grandma said that at that time, the family was poor, living in a mud house under the brick mud, there was a wall has not been smooth. The family had no money, so they used a pair of shoes very carefully. The children in the village walk barefoot in the hot weather and have poison bags on their feet in the summer.
On weekdays, my father goes to the salt farm to make salt, my mother goes to the field to work, and my grandmother often holds my sister who is seven years younger than her. Grandpa attaches great importance to education, he told to learn to write. My brother, who was three years older, went to a private school to learn Chinese characters, recite ancient poems, and came back to teach my grandmother how to write “Spring sleep does not wake to dawn.” It became the only ancient poem she knew. Later, private schools were closed into films, private schools were strictly banned, the teacher also disappeared.
In 1942, grandma was officially enrolled. On the day she went to school, her brother led her and the two of them traveled two miles.
In front of the school stood a high tablet engraved with the names of the rich gentry of the church. Surrounded by rows of pine trees. The school has only one floor, but the wood floors are shiny and the glass fans are big. Each of the large rooms is a wood-paneled classroom, with corridors built along the road leading to the toilet.
Grandma remembers that a teacher sat her down to test her knowledge. “Can you count?” The teacher asked. Grandma nodded and began to count. Before she could count 20, the teacher told her to stop. “All right, come to class.”
The school is divided into two periods, spring and fall. All the teachers graduated from Japanese schools, and there were no grandmothers in the village. Teachers came from Pikou, every day by small train, to the classroom with a board teaching. Hold the board and ask questions, and whoever does not obey will be punished.
When grandma went to school, her textbooks were already in Japanese.
“Walking exercises are all Japanese. It’s also called speaking Japanese in class. From the name of the person you are, the name of the hand, the name of the finger, the nose of the whole body. Memorize it in Japanese first. At first, classes were held in small warehouses. Not until next year.”
Grandma recalled, one or two grade teacher strict, but also to play. Class is not allowed to slip, who’s head turned to look out of the window, the teacher’s big board on the table hard on three times.
“Ah marijuana, ah marijuana…” My grandmother told me that the head of the waiting church was called “Adama.”
According to the regulations, the school held a daily Meeting, students must worship the City of Japan, jianguo temple and the fake palace, all lined up to stand quietly, recite the national training, do Jianguo gymnastics. Every Year on July 15, the day of the founding of the Temple or other statutory festivals, there were elaborate sacrificial ceremonies: salutes to the Emperor of Japan and the Puppet emperor, the raising of the national flag, the singing of the two national anthems, and the reading of various rescripts, including the Rescript on the People’s Rescript.
At the end of the meeting, the group singing while walking back to the classroom.
Grandma read in these rules. She got up in the morning, watered the garden, fed the chickens, ate, and walked two miles to school. On the way, many of them were children from the same village, some with their parents. The school faces the meeting, the students stand quietly on the playground, the headmaster and teachers look on. The Japanese flag is raised in schools, sports are held, and each person walks with one hand in his hand.
“The national flag is flying, red, blue, white, black and yellow.” The “Manchukuo” national flag appears in the illustration of The first lesson of a Japanese textbook used in Northeast China.
The colors contrasted in her mind. “The flag was red, blue, white, black, and yellow all over the ground. And I’ll draw the flag, red, blue, white, black, with stripes, and then all yellow.” She continued, “Now that we are liberated, we are the five-starred red flag and representative. Why is that? It is the blood of the martyrs.” Grandma tapped her fingers twice on the table as she spoke.
3
Zhujiatun was a small village near the sea. There were no Japanese soldiers stationed there, only Japanese skilled workers and some Japanese fruit farmers who occupied the land for cultivation. Skilled workers worked in a salt factory and lived in bungalows with few people. In the village, Japanese fruit farmers are four or five households, master the technology of growing apples, are relatively rich. Japanese growers would sell apples. Grandma said she still remembered Abe’s name as the family selling apples near the school.
According to the population statistics in 1935, there were 1.03 million people in Guandong Prefecture, among which there were nearly 170,000 Japanese. The Japanese government encourages people to emigrate in order to find living space for the country’s rural population. By the time of Japan’s surrender in 1945, agricultural immigrants from Japan had moved to northeast China, totaling 106,000 households or 318,000. But that figure is not accurate according to the authors, who put it at 350,000.
Most of these Japanese farmers were nowhere to be seen after the war. Only eighteen thousand returned to Japan. I asked my grandmother if she had any animosity toward the Japanese. Grandma’s narration is often plain, “Those are the common people.”
Because of the railway, the old house was electrified at that time, there were electric lights in the house, people would come to the house to collect electricity. Once, it was a Japanese man with a small child who came to collect electricity. When grandma’s family gave dates to the children, neither the children nor the Japanese would accept them.
In 1928, Ando Kihein, president of Mukden High School for Women, published an article saying, “The education of the Chinese people should appear as a messianic posture, and gain the trust and understanding of the Chinese youth through education. We firmly believe that we can help each other and build a happy land for the king with Japan.” The sixth instruction of The Chief of Staff of Dongjo of kwantung Army on Japanese immigration also said: “We must have a correct understanding of Japan-Manchurian relations… The construction of the Promised Land can be expected.”
But grandma said, “At that time, Chinese people’s lives were not their own.” Near Zhujiatun there is a hill where the deceased Zhu is buried. Many of the refugees starved to death, died of fatigue, had no name, and had no grave or tablet. Tuen Mun long to see a look, called people to be carried to the graves buried. The Japanese wouldn’t listen.
The bayonet of 38 big cover gun is illuminated by the sun on hillside, glance seems to be able to stab a person’s eye. The bayonet of 38 big cover gun is illuminated by the sun on hillside, glance seems to be able to stab a person’s eye.
A special school for Japanese children is set up in Pikou.
They usually play in the courtyard of the staff dormitory, which is rarely seen by villagers. Fruit farmers’ children are wild and often wander in the street. As children in Zhujiatun walk to school, they meet Japanese children wearing wooden clogs.
The Japanese child in Xinano picked up the earth and threw it on the walker and onto his grandmother. She had learned some Japanese words, looked over her shoulder, and called out, “Oh Cassam!” (Japanese for “mother”) The child is so scared that he looks around in panic and runs away at once.
The children of Japanese fruit farmers, however, do not know how to restrain, always to cause trouble. Grandma said she took a few people, gathered around the fruit farmers’ children and began to beat them to the ground. “Shouted the Japanese children, and a group of grandma and her friends ran as fast as they could to the corn field. They were so familiar that no one could catch up with them. After the fruit farmer’s children were beaten, they never dared to come in for trouble again.
When grandma was six years old, she went to Heihe with her mother to visit her uncle. The Japanese built fortifications on the edge of the Heihe river and forced the Chinese to work. Uncle’s group of workers were massed in ma’s shack. Masons cannot make beds; men sleep on the hillside. The carpenter had a bed only when he came, and the days were hard.
At Heihe, grandma saw the Japanese troops for the first time. Armoured vehicles rumbled past, heavily loaded vehicles rolled up the dust and threw alight marks on the ground. The Japanese infantry marched past, bayonets on their backs, up the hill. The bayonet of 38 big cover gun is illuminated by the sun on hillside, glance seems to be able to stab a person’s eye.
Grandma said that she was beside her mother, watching and shaking. Later, when she saw more, she stopped shaking.
4
Japan has set up two educational systems in Guandong prefecture. For the Japanese in Guandong prefecture, complete schools were set up. However, the education of Chinese people mainly stays in the primary education stage, carrying out moral education and popularizing Japanese, so that students can have a pro-Japanese mentality, and few opportunities are given to higher education.
Grandma’s younger sister was born in 1945. She went to the same school, but not before the founding of the People’s Republic. She likes the quietness of the countryside and often goes back to her old house from Beijing. She was a teacher and married to a soldier.
“Aunt, have you ever heard of the Song ‘The Generation of Kings’?” I asked her.
My aunt thought for a moment and replied, “No.”
But grandma learned the song thoroughly. In 1943, she sat rigidly in a wooden classroom, listening to her teacher. Wooden partitions were removed to form a large classroom for music lessons. There were two wooden organs in front of them, and the woman’s feet were on the pedals. First came the sound of “hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo,” followed by the sound of music behind the keys.
The female teacher sang first and then said, “Whoever sings well will come to the front”. The music was sad, but it was sung many times in meetings and graduation ceremonies.
Grandma didn’t know the meaning, but her voice was good and the syllables were accurate. The teacher asked her to sing in the front.
“Did you know it was the Japanese national anthem?” I asked grandma.
“I don’t know. Just say to sing. They don’t know.” Grandma said.
The lyrics of the song, translated by Chen Dongsheng, read: “My emperor has flourished, and generations have come. The gravel is diagenetic and covered with moss. The country will prosper and its people prosper.” (2) It is not necessary to change the way of life.
In the fall of 1945, Japan was defeated. Schools in Nishiki in Guandong were closed, and the Japanese fled home in disarray. Villagers went to Japanese shops and homes to “take” things and were later taken away. Later, the Sandwich Group’s school was set on fire and the timber-schoolhouse burned to the ground.
The fire started during the night because there were no homes around the school and no one was injured. The whole fraternity gradually learned about this, but it was not clear who had started the fire. The fire remains unsolved today.
My grandmother never went to school seriously after that. Before the school burned down, she had dropped out and gone home to work with her sister. Six months after the Kuomintang entered the village, students were mobilized to go to school, but grandma did not go. After liberation, semiliterate class, grandma only read a few weeks. At the age of nineteen, my grandmother got married and left home to spend her life with her husband, my grandfather.
Both of grandma’s sisters finished school. One of my aunts said, “Your grandma is a great woman, but it’s a pity that she didn’t study much. It’s too hard.”
My grandmother is old, her sisters are old, and even my parents are getting old. It seems that only the village is not old, it is like a piece of quiet dull mud, can not sing their own songs.
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