Maru 4 ~ What does it mean to have a teacher? ~

August 23, 2011 (Japanese) / February 13, 2013 (English)

Maru, whom I re-encountered last summer, had become the chief manager of a large franchise massage salon at the age of 22.

That night, as courtesy of Koseki-sensei, I was scheduled to get her massage before going out for drinks with her.

A few women were at the counter by the entrance. Among them was Maru.

One of the women politely approached me as I neared the counter. Looking into Maru’s direction, I said, “Hello. I have an appointment with the chief manager at seven.”

Blushed, Maru slightly bowed and greeted me, “It has been a long time.”

Gently, she introduced me to her staffs,

“This is my homeroom teacher.”

Those simple words carried the entire 8 years that have passed between us.

I now wonder why I remember that moment so clearly. Was that her way of distinguishing me from Koseki-sensei? Perhaps. He is her teacher. But she called me “my homeroom teacher” ... as if I were her only homeroom teacher.

I wasn’t sure if it was because of her profession, but Maru had become a tender young lady. Or, at least, she was behaving that way. It was far from the feisty image I had of her.

There might have been about five staffs in the salon. Many of them were clearly older than Maru.

I sat on the couch as directed. A few whispers were exchanged at the counter. I pretended not to notice. Soon, Maru came with the menu and knelt down by me. I knew well enough that she was simply being a professional and treating me like a regular customer, but I felt a bit embarrassed.

I couldn’t be a regular customer.

After she walked me through the system and various options, I told Maru that I would leave it all up to her.

When the massage began, perhaps a bit awkwardly, I began to ask numerous questions about her work.

She began to explain how she got there. She told me that it was not long ago that she began the job, that she began to receive countless requests for appointment and was given a shop manager’s position within half a year, and that now the number of her appointment request ranked 5^th in the entire national franchise.

Nothing was surprising.

She was much loved by Koseki-sensei’s own mentor as well and was given the recognition of “master of conversation” by the old man. Perhaps, what attracted many people was not only her massage but her ability to have a pleasant conversation with any individual.

Maru then told me an interesting story.

Just the other day, a younger employee came to Maru crying. When Maru asked, she said she was shocked because a male customer asked her for her email address.

“I can’t believe he was seeing me like that. I didn’t become a masseuse for that!!” said the girl.

Maru replied,


“Wait a minute. Are you then good enough as a masseuse so that people pay to see you just for your massage? First of all, isn’t it an honor for a woman to be thought as someone worthy of paying to see?”


Hard to believe those are the words of a 22-year-old.

But, yes, Maru would say that. That’s Koseki-sensei’s beloved mentee.

Tough and driven.



I felt as though Maru had just demonstrated what Kosei-sensei would call, “the capacity to live.”

 (To be continued...)


 
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Maru 3 ~ What does it mean to have a teacher? ~

August24, 2011 (Japanese) / November 1, 2012 (English)

“Frankly, it was difficult for me back then,” I told Maru. She nodded silently.

I told her everything: how I looked up to her mentor, Koseki-sensei as my new “big-brother” and often imitated his teaching style without fully trusting or understanding his eccentric educational values; how, at the same time, I wanted to be recognized as a competent teacher from other colleagues who seemed more traditional and proper and said all the right things; how, as a result, I lost the coherence of my words and actions as well as my students’ confidence in me….

I will never forget the unbearable lightness of my own words that I experienced back then. It is perhaps an axis of beliefs, if I were to describe in a word what I lacked back then.

Junior high school, caught in-between childhood and adulthood, is an unstable and difficult developmental period. That’s why I think adolescents, especially during this period, require adults whom they can trust and whose values they can always refer to navigate tumultuous adolescent days. As I have written in “Should be taught is character and principle,” it’s not the clear rules or guidelines that children really need from their parents and adults around them; rather, it’s the never-changing characters and principles that they can always come back to. That’s what gives children comfort; that’s what gives them the solid ground on which they could develop their own principles.

This was a perspective I did not have back then.

“How did I appear in your eyes back then?” I asked Maru.

After some silence, she said,

Now I think I should have listened to you because I’ve heard so much about you from Koseki-sensei. But, to be perfectly honest, I had no intention of listening to you back then.

Of course, I said.

Honestly, it was not easy for me to have her in my homeroom class. Now I think about it, this was a sign that she was “beyond my capacity.”

Maru began to practice kendo seriously in the 7^th grade upon entering Koseki-sensei’s junior high school team. In the 8^th grade, she earned a starter position in the team that was known throughout the prefecture. She went on to become the team’s irreplaceable ace and captain in the final year of her junior high school.

“She understands me more than anybody,” Koseki-sensei used to say.

That was Maru.

It was not surprising, then, that I felt uncomfortable having her in my homeroom class. I felt as though I was under a constant surveillance.

I would try my best to share “valuable life lessons” with my class, but I always felt that Maru saw all the private corners I had…my weakness, shallowness, and lies.

Looking back, the lesson the fourteen-year-old Maru was teaching me was the absurdity of trying to teach someone who already had a teacher.

(To be continued...)


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Maru 2 ~ What does it mean to have a teacher? ~

August 22, 2011 (Japanese) / November 1, 2012 (English)

I wonder what I would have done had I been Ai Fukuhara’s homeroom teacher in her junior high school.

She would frequently be absent from school due to her tours and camps. What kind of classroom environment would I create to receive her? How should I treat her? Like a superstar as she is outside the school, or as a “regular” junior high school student? Should the class make a big deal to welcome her back, or should they behave as if nothing different from any school day? How would I interact with this super junior high schooler continuously fighting against the pressure of the world while attending to other thirty some 14-year-olds struggling in their own ways to make sense of their small worlds? What kind of a dialogue would I have with her, what would I tell other students, what, if anything, could I do for her as a “teacher”?

In recent years, there has been a widespread notion in Japan that a “good teacher” is someone capable of seeing the world and interacting with children from their vantage point.

That’s wrong.

The “teacher’s vantage point” changes all the time depending on who is in front of him. It is a mere stupidity to have a pre-determined vantage point.

In many cases, I think that a teacher would have to lead students from a very high vantage point with a parent’s affection.

This summer, Koseki-sensei said something interesting when we were talking about teacher’s vantage points.

Referring to what I have written about Hannah Arendt, he said there is something symbolic about the parent’s act of holding the child high up in the air. I understood the symbolism as the adult showing the child what the world may look like from the adult’s vantage point.

But that’s not the only case. There are certainly cases when the teacher needs to see things from the student’s vantage point.

More importantly, there is yet another case. Once in a while, the teacher finds in front of him a student who is “way beyond the teacher” as Koseki-sensei would put it, and whom the teacher is compelled to look up even from his vantage point as an adult.

It is this last case that is most difficult for the teacher.

Maru, the fourteen-year-old girl was, for me, the exemplar of this case.

(To be continued...)

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