Assistant Teacher-Turned Author
There was a Japanese author who was highly made much of after WWII as he wrote some works which appealed to feeling of Japanese who were suffering severe conditions of living in the land half scorched by US air raids during the war.
He happened to become an assistant teacher of a branch school of a primary school in Tokyo in early 1920s. The branch school was situated near Shimo-kitazawa, Setagaya Ward, Tokyo. Shimo-kitazawa today is one of the most popular towns not only for young people but also for citizens who love unique culture of this commercial district close to an uptown residential area of Tokyo. The district is full of shops, office buildings, apartments, and so on without no vacant space.
But 80 years ago, there were mostly paddy fields, farms, and forests in addition to some farm houses and a small commercial street around Shimo-kitazawa.
There the assistant teacher met and taught children mostly from poor farm households. Though he just worked there for three years, he experienced various aspects of humanity through communications with poor school boys and girls.
And the most impressive thing he wrote about his experience is that a boy or a girl could be unhappy because he or she was not loved. For a child, receiving no love is the greatest cause for unhappiness.
Ango Sakaguchi (1906 – 1955) was a Japanese novelist and essayist.
From Niigata, Sakaguchi was one of a group of young Japanese writers to rise to prominence in the years immediately following Japan's defeat in World War II. In 1946 he wrote his most famous essay, titled "Darakuron" ("On Decadence"), which examined the role of bushido during the war. It is widely argued that he saw postwar Japan as decadent, yet more truthful than a wartime Japan built on illusions like bushido.
Works available in English:
“Sensô to hitori no onna” (1946). Transl. by Lane Dunlop as “One Woman and the War” in Autumn Wind and Other Stories. Rutland and Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1994, 140-160.
“Hakuchi” (1946). Transl. by George Saitô as “The Idiot” in Modern Japanese Stories, ed. by Ivan Morris. Rutland and Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1962, 383-410.
“Sakura no mori no mankai no shita” (1947). Trans. by Jay Rubin as “In the Forest, Under Cherries in Full Bloom” in The Oxford Book of Japanese Short Stories, ed. by Theodore W. Goossen. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 187~205.Sakaguchi wrote that the Empire of Japan had the first-rate military power before WWII though the living standard of its people was of the fourth class in the global standard. So, he thought it was not so strange that Japan exhausted and lost its military power through the wars against China, the US, and eventually the Soviet Union in WWII. As with living standard of the people, the nation naturally came to have the fourth-rate or less military power due to the defeat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ango_Sakaguchi
This sentiment was probably shared by most of the Japanese people after WWII. That is why Japan still sticks to the Pacifist Constitution enacted in 1947, though its contents were based on strong advice from General MacArthur who occupied and governed Japan after WWII till 1951.
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