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Cover of 小さき者へ (Sasakimono e)

Upper intermediate · JLPT N2

小さき者へSasakimono e — A Letter to My Little Ones

by Arishima Takeo (有島武郎, 1878–1923)

  • JLPT N2
  • 10,114 characters
  • 7 parts
  • about 84 minutes

小さき者へ is a short work written as a letter. A father writes to his three small children, for them to read when they are grown, after their mother has died the previous year. Writing late at night while they sleep in the next room, he goes back to the blizzard-bound day of her first labour in Hokkaidō. He confesses that, restless and dissatisfied with his work, he came to resent his marriage and treated his wife and children harshly. He then follows the family through the mother's tuberculosis diagnosis, the move south to Tōkyō and her stays in hospital. Along the way he also remembers a poor neighbour, Mr. U. The tone is intimate but solemn, and the letter carries grief, guilt and gratitude. Throughout, the father insists that sorrow can give strength. For a learner, the reward is a single, emotionally direct voice telling a clear and moving story. The challenge is its Taishō-era written style: 然し, 〜ねばならぬ, archaic negatives and imperatives, dense kanji vocabulary, and long sentences that move between memory and the present moment of writing.

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Contents

  1. A Father's Letter and a Stormy BirthA father begins a letter to his young children, to be read when they are grown. He expects they may laugh at his old-fashioned ideas, but he hopes they will know how deeply they were loved. He mentions that they lost their mother last year, and recalls having casually written that his own happiness lay in his mother still being alive. He then recalls the blizzard-bound day seven years earlier when their mother went into a long and difficult labour.
  2. A First Child Born, a Father UnsettledAfter a long and dangerous labour, the mother gives birth to her first child, who is revived with a bath of wine and finally cries. The father is overwhelmed with emotion and feels his whole life has changed. He then admits that, restless and dissatisfied with his work, he came to resent his marriage and his children and treated his wife and children harshly in his frustration.
  3. Your Mother Falls IllFate punishes the father's selfishness: the mother is struck by a high fever and diagnosed with tuberculosis, and she has to enter hospital. The father struggles through exhausting days and sleepless nights caring for the three small children, and must keep them from touching their mother on visits. As winter closes in, the lonely mother insists on leaving hospital early, and the father comes home to find the children already crowding happily around her.
  4. Flight South and a Mother's TearsThe family flees the bitter northern cold for Tōkyō, taking the sick mother and three small children. After a brief respite at a seaside villa, the mother's condition worsens, one child falls ill with a high fever, and the father collapses too. Early in the New Year the mother learns the truth about her illness and resolves not to see her children again unless she is cured. She weeps bitterly as she leaves for the hospital, and the father tells the children that those tears belong to them alone.
  5. A Mother's Farewell and a Father's ReckoningThe children see their mother off by car and give a soldier's salute, not knowing they will never see her again. She fights her illness for a year and seven months, dies in August, and leaves a will refusing to let her children see her death, for fear of scarring their young souls. Writing late at night while the children sleep next door, the father reflects that her sacrifice taught him to find strength in his own weakness.
  6. A Common Grief and a Neighbour's FateThe father describes how the children's grief for their mother cuts him to the heart. He admits that the world thinks a wife's death too ordinary to matter, but he insists that this sorrow gives them strength and has deepened their lives. He then recalls their neighbour Mr. U. Unable to afford a doctor's medicine, Mr. U relied on prayer and kept working while ill. He died after a botched injection, leaving his old mother and young children behind. The father urges the children to remember him and to try to bridge the terrible gulf such lives reveal.
  7. A Father's Blessing in the NightLate at night, the father tells his sleeping children that he asks nothing of them except that they accept his gratitude, and that they must leave him behind and go boldly into life. Roses before their mother's photograph remind him of how she dressed for death before her first childbirth, a gesture he once laughed at but now takes seriously. He ends with a blessing, urging his little ones to set out without fear on the long, dark road ahead.

Before you read

  • Keep track of who is being talked about. お前たち always means the children the letter is addressed to, 私 is the father, and their mother is referred to from the children's point of view. Many sentences drop the subject, so ask at each turn whether the father is describing 'you', himself, or your mother.
  • Learn the literary negative and obligation forms before you start, because they carry the father's moral voice. 〜ねばならぬ means 'must', 〜てはならない means 'must not', 〜ずにおかない means 'cannot help but / will surely', and 知らん is a classical negative here. Expect blunt imperatives such as 行け toward the end.
  • Expect older kanji spellings. Common words appear in forms like 然し (= しかし), and names are sometimes written in kanji rather than katakana, such as 希臘 (ぎりしゃ, Greece). The portraits in the mother's room (ゲーテ, クロムウェル, ナイティンゲール, ミネルバ) are in katakana and are easy anchors.
  • Watch for the shifts in time. The letter moves between the present (the father writing at night, the children asleep next door) and past scenes of the birth, the illness and the move to Tōkyō. Time words and sentence-final tense usually signal the jump, so read the opening of each paragraph carefully.
  • Part 6 turns aside to the neighbour Mr. U. Before reading it, learn the names 天理教 (the religion whose prayers he relied on) and 古賀液 (the medicine injected into him). The father's call to remember him is one of the letter's central points.

Words to know

The most useful words from the notes across the story.

WordMeaningJLPT
頑是ないがんぜないtoo young to know right from wrong; innocent, helpless (of small children)Literary word used almost only of very young children.—
斃れてたおれるto fall dead, to diedictionary form: 斃れるWritten with 斃 rather than 倒 to show death, not just falling down.N4
一人前いちにんまえfull-fledged, grown-up (adult)Read いちにんまえ in this sense; ひとりまえ is a rarer variant.—
陣痛じんつうlabour pains—
産婆さんばmidwifeOld-fashioned word; the modern term is 助産師.—
晴着はれぎone's best clothes; formal kimono for special occasionsdictionary form: 晴れ着—
嗤いわらうto laugh at, to sneer atdictionary form: 嗤うThis kanji is used for mocking laughter, unlike 笑う.N4
恢復かいふくrecoveryOlder spelling of 回復.N3
我儘わがままselfishness, self-indulgenceUsually written in kana today.N3
罰するばっするto punish罰 is read ばつ alone; it becomes ばっ before する.N3
覚悟かくごresolve; readiness to face the worstN3
吹雪ふぶきsnowstorm, blizzardKanji: 吹 'blow' + 雪 'snow'.N2
悪んだにくむto hate, to resentdictionary form: 憎むNormally written 憎む; here the older spelling 悪む is used.N2
無沙汰ぶさたfailure to keep in touch; long silencePolite form ご無沙汰しています: 'I'm sorry I haven't been in touch'.N2
足跡あしあとfootprints; the path one has walked in lifeN2

Plot summary

Show the full summary (contains spoilers)

Writing to his three young children after their mother's death, a father recalls her long, dangerous first labour in snowy Hokkaidō. He admits that he later resented his marriage and treated his family harshly. The mother falls ill with tuberculosis. While she is in hospital, he cares for the children alone, and she comes home early out of loneliness. The family moves to Tōkyō, where her illness worsens. When she learns the truth, she resolves not to see the children again unless she is cured, and she leaves for hospital in tears while they salute her car. She dies a year and seven months later, and her will forbids the children from seeing her death. The father reflects on their grief and recalls the poor neighbour Mr. U, who died leaving his family behind. He ends by blessing his children and urging them to leave him behind and go boldly into life.

About the author

Arishima Takeo was a Japanese novelist and essayist associated with the Shirakaba (White Birch) literary group. He studied at Sapporo Agricultural College and later in the United States, and for a time he was a committed Christian. His best-known works include the novel 或る女 (A Certain Woman) and the stories カインの末裔 and 生れ出づる悩み. Troubled by his inherited wealth, he gave his family's farm in Hokkaido to the tenant farmers who worked it.

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