Botchan | Page 2

simple-hearted, pure as
crystal and sturdy as a towering rock, honest and straight to a fault,
intolerant of the least injustice and a volunteer ever ready to champion
what he considers right and good. Children may read it as a "story of
man who tried to be honest." It is a light, amusing and, at the name time,
instructive story, with no tangle of love affairs, no scheme of
blood-curdling scenes or nothing startling or sensational in the plot or
characters. The story, however, may be regarded as a biting sarcasm on

a hypocritical society in which a gang of instructors of dark character at
a middle school in a backwoods town plays a prominent part. The hero
of the story is made a victim of their annoying intrigues, but finally
comes out triumphant by smashing the petty red tapism, knocking
down the sham pretentions and by actual use of the fist on the Head
Instructor and his henchman.
The story will be found equally entertaining as a means of studying the
peculiar traits of the native of Tokyo which are characterised by their
quick temper, dashing spirit, generosity and by their readiness to resist
even the lordly personage if convinced of their own justness, or to
kneel down even to a child if they acknowledge their own wrong.
Incidently the touching devotion of the old maid servant Kiyo to the
hero will prove a standing reproach to the inconstant, unfaithful
servants of which the number is ever increasing these days in Tokyo.
The story becomes doubly interesting by the fact that Mr. K. Natsume,
when quite young, held a position of teacher of English at a middle
school somewhere about the same part of the country described in the
story, while he himself was born and brought up in Tokyo.
It may be added that the original is written in an autobiographical style.
It is profusely interladed with spicy, catchy colloquials patent to the
people of Tokyo for the equals of which we may look to the rattling
speeches of notorious Chuck Conners of the Bowery of New York. It
should be frankly stated that much difficulty was experienced in getting
the corresponding terms in English for those catchy expressions.
Strictly speaking, some of them have no English equivalents. Care has
been exercised to select what has been thought most appropriate in the
judgment or the translator in converting those expressions into English
but some of them might provoke disapproval from those of the
"cultured" class with "refined" ears. The slangs in English in this
translation were taken from an American magazine of world-wide
reputation editor of which was not afraid to print of "damn" when
necessary, by scorning the timid, conventional way of putting it as
"d--n." If the propriety of printing such short ugly words be questioned,
the translator is sorry to say that no means now exists of directly
bringing him to account for he met untimely death on board the
Lusitania when it was sunk by the German submarine.
Thanks are due to Mr. J. R. Kennedy, General Manager, and Mr. Henry

Satoh, Editor-in-Chief, both of the Kokusai Tsushin-sha (the
International News Agency) of Tokyo and a host of personal friends of
the translator whose untiring assistance and kind suggestions have
made the present translation possible. Without their sympathetic
interests, this translation may not have seen the daylight.
Tokyo, September, 1918.

BOTCHAN (MASTER DARLING)

CHAPTER I
Because of an hereditary recklessness, I have been playing always a
losing game since my childhood. During my grammar school days, I
was once laid up for about a week by jumping from the second story of
the school building. Some may ask why I committed such a rash act.
There was no particular reason for doing such a thing except I
happened to be looking out into the yard from the second floor of the
newly-built school house, when one of my classmates, joking, shouted
at me; "Say, you big bluff, I'll bet you can't jump down from there! O,
you chicken-heart, ha, ha!" So I jumped down. The janitor of the school
had to carry me home on his back, and when my father saw me, he
yelled derisively, "What a fellow you are to go and get your bones
dislocated by jumping only from a second story!"
"I'll see I don't get dislocated next time," I answered.
One of my relatives once presented me with a pen-knife. I was showing
it to my friends, reflecting its pretty blades against the rays of the sun,
when one of them chimed in that the blades gleamed all right, but
seemed rather dull for cutting with.
"Rather dull? See if they don't cut!" I retorted.
"Cut your finger, then," he challenged. And with "Finger nothing! Here
goes!" I cut