my favourite class

I have just finished teaching my favourite class. They are second year students and I normally only teach first year students. I have only taught them once before, just after I arrived; I remember it was stiflingly hot. What makes them my favourites is hard to categorize but the feeling was instantaneous when I first taught them. Their focus is absolute but more than that, I can feel that they are with me, not against me (anyone who has faced a pride of teenagers will know the visceral distinction). They are a smart class but not too smart – the really smart ones have been bogged down by their book knowledge whereas my favourites are still agile of mind, making them more dynamic than the really smart ones. Smarter than the smart ones. I can play with them. They are a joy.

So I was walking around my favourite classroom (because it houses my favourite class) and all of a sudden a sadness began to seep in like the leak at the bottom of a boat. I felt a slight sogginess initially through my socks but the sadness’ progress was steady and by the end of the lesson I was sloshing around, knee deep in it. Let me say here that it is not entirely unusual to have bizarrely intense feelings come over me here in Nippon. It happens on my bike or mid conversation or at home or whenever – one minute I am feeling thusly and the next minute – the converse of thusly. Its alright, proof of sanity rather than madness I think. As an extremely irritating hippie once advised me, I usually just ride the wave, babes. Today however it irked me and I wanted to know why I suddenly felt so sad. Here are my thoughts.

The sadness was about Hiroshima and the bomb. This in and of itself is not so strange, because it is a desperately sad thing. It is strange however that it happened in class and not say, last weekend when I was in Hiroshima city for a conference. I know that when I say the Hiroshima to people outside of Japan it must still carry the taste of the bomb and the tragedy but to me the name only signifies the place. Hiroshima is just a city now – no connotation, it is where I can go for better bars and shopping and conferences. This time round I even arranged to meet with someone at the A-bomb memorial because it is central and convenient. When I went there I barely looked at it, its significance did not even register.

Maybe the fact that it didn’t register must have registered because sadness seeds were surely sown. It was not coincidence either that the sadness happened when I was with my favourite class. In fact I'm certain that they triggered it. They trigger it partly, I think, because the last time I taught them in sticky July and August, the significance of where I was and what happened here in August 1945 was very present, exacerbated by my reading every bit of info about the bombing I could get my hands on. It was then that I began reading the series Barefoot Gen – a manga about the bombing and its aftermath. I’m still reading it now but I am wary of it. The simple, cartoony pictures have a way of getting under my skin, it’s very disturbing. I made the mistakes, at first, of reading it while eating, while sick and with company. Now I only read it when I am feeling in top physical and mental condition, away from any food or people. Yes, so in part I associate that class with that time and therefore with the book. But deeper than that, the feeling of joy they give me feels inextricably linked to the horror I feel about the bombing. Like they are a memorial - is that morbid? That they are there and happy and smart and that they are people - diverse, interesting people as much as anyone anywhere makes me think about the bomb. People who drop bombs cannot think of their targets with the affection I feel for my favourite class. If they did, they wouldn't drop bombs.

But of course you don't hint that any of this is going on. You just wander around and teach as per normal while all these wild feelings bump and squeeze inside.