A Rabbit's Eyes

I came across this little book while browsing the Japanese lit section of my local bookstore and although I'd never heard of Mr. Haitani's work before it proved quite rewarding. The story of an inexperienced though extremely earnest young elementary school teacher in a bad part of Kobe who sets out to turn the homeroom from hell into a class of little angels; this book is quite a tear-jerker. The story is set on 'the wrong side of the tracks' at a dirty and neglected elementary school situated right next door to a garbage disposal plant. Most of the students are the children of the disposal plant workers, and they live and play amidst the filth and squalor of the plant; catching rats and pigeons, scrapping with each other, and sometimes scamming the other students for money to buy food when Dad gambles or drinks away his pay check. The view this book offers is a far cry from the spic and span, regimented image most people have of Japanese schools. The story begins with young Miss Kotani taking the reins of a first grade classroom only to retreat to the teachers' room before the end of the day in tears, after a student named Tetsuzo kills the pet frog the children were raising for a nature project. Although terrified of the boy (who later attacks her and one of his classmates as well) she is determined not to see him as a bad child, and with the help of a gruff but loveable senior teacher Mr. Adachi (known as the Yakuza teacher); she sets out to befriend him and the other disposal plant children. Over the course of the book she becomes close to the plant children, by listening to them and treating them with respect where previous teachers had thought of them as human garbage and refused to allow them to help at meal times for fear they would contaminate the school lunches. She shares their lives and learns that even the seemingly bizarre and uncommunicative Tetsuzo (he rarely says more than yeah, no, or uh-huh) has something to offer in the form of an encyclopaedic knowledge of flies which he later puts to good use to help a local business. Although the characters are somewhat cliched, the dialogue rather contrived (or perhaps just badly translated), and the plot as a whole sappy in the extreme, there's no denying that this is a very touching, heart-warming, and affirming book that will have you in tears for pages at a time. I recommend it highly to anyone who wants to have a good cry.

This has been one of the most popular novels that deal with the problems of education in Japan. As a teacher with more than 23 years of experience in Japanese school I have thought I could understand him very well. Now I am beginning to realize that so far I have not understood him. Once I began to understand that the life can be very hard for certain people, I began to understand him. Now my life is a little bit hard, becase I have a special kid as my son. If you have a certain handicap, then the life looks very different. Then you know the meaning of education and the role a teacher can have at school. Mr.Haitani is a man who knows the reality of life deeply. His background make him understand people in a difficult situation of life, and he also knows how love can help people and give them hope. Now his books are giving me hope and teaching me what to teach at school.