topics: |  fiction | japan | education

Together with Gajbhaye:
One of my more memorable books from the last decade, an inspiring read.
The author is a leading Japanese actress.

w: Totto-chan is a children book written by
Japanese television personality and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Tetsuko
Kuroyanagi.
Originally published as a series of articles in Kodansha's Young
Woman magazine February 1979 - December 1980, the
articles were collected into a book (1981), which broke all Japanese publishing
records by selling more than 5 million before the end of 1982.

The book became an instant bestseller in
Japan. It is about the values of the unconventional education that
Kuroyanagi received at Tomoe Gakuen, a Tokyo elementary school founded by
educator Sosaku Kobayashi during World War II.

The Japanese name of the book is an expression used to describe people who
have failed.

Kobayashi's concern for the physically handicapped and his emphasis on the
equality of all children are remarkable. In the school, the children lead
happy lives, unaware of the things going on in the world. World War 2 has
started, yet in this school, no signs of it are seen. But one day, the school
is bombed, and was never rebuilt.

author bio

from Time:

    Tetsuko is more than just the most recognizable face in all of
Japan. She is a phenomenon, a conspicuous exception to the tradition of
servile and "wifely" women on Japanese television. Until Tetsuko, women on
the air were invariably hai hai girls, pretty poppets who decorated the chair
next to the male host and giggled on cue. But her debut as a talk-show host
eleven years ago changed all that. Her quick tongue, candor, spontaneity and
irrepressible curiosity were revolutionary and made her a significant role
model for ambitious women all across Japan.

Today, at 49, unabashedly unmarried and proudly independent in a country
where both conditions are frowned upon, Tetsuko thrives as a tradition
breaker.

That is the theme of Tetsuko's charming 1981 memoir, Totto-Chan, the
Little Girl at the Window, which has sold an extraordinary 6 million copies,
making it the bestselling book in Japanese history. The daughter of a father
who was a concert violinist and a mother who trained as an opera singer,
Tetsuko was thrown out of her rigid grammar school at the age of six because
she liked to stand at an open window and chatter with the swallows and street
musicians. She subsequently attended an experimental school in Tokyo that
allowed her to blossom in her own way. Her book, a tribute to that school's
liberal and humane sensibility, has stirred parents around the country to
calls for educational reform.