num_pages: 232
description: Tayama Katai’s novel Country Teacher, based on the diary of Kobayashi Shūzō, achieved popularity for its realistic descriptions of the lives rural commoners at the beginning of the 1900s. Seizō, the teacher, lived in his hometown of Gyōda, which was dominated by the ruins of the medieval Oishi Castle some 45 miles north of Tokyo. In his early months of teaching, he lived at home, walking to and from the school in Miroku village nearly 10 miles away. As his experience illustrates, the rapid expansion of Japan’s education system left teacher candidates in short supply in rural areas, meaning that teachers often had only a bit more education than their oldest students. At home in Gyōda on weekends, Seizō spent his free hours with male friends such as Ikuji and Ishikawa, mentioned here, talking about his dream of studying in Tokyo—a dream blocked by poverty. Like the diarist on whose life this work was based, Seizō would die of tuberculosis in 1904 just as he was beginning to think brighter prospects lay ahead—and as Japan was rejoicing over victory in one of its early battles in the Russo-Japanese War.
language: English
title: Country Teacher
titlecomplete: Country Teacher
genres: Japanese Literature, Japan, Fiction
ratings_count: 16
publisher: Univ of Hawaii Pr