Chapter 177

Yamamoto left after attending the celebration reception and making a special trip to the Japanese building to meet all the Japanese students.

Sakai-sensei and the others were relieved to see Yamamoto off. Every one of them had come to China from their hometowns for a reason, and every one of them had written a pledge that they would either succeed or die.

In other words, there was no turning back. If they could not succeed in China, they could not go back to their hometowns, and they would rather die in China than go back with a defeat!

Mr. Kobayashi glanced at the crowd, turned around and went back to his room, he was going to go over the lesson plan again tonight, and from tomorrow onwards he would have to work even harder!

Sakai-sensei also went back to her room, seeing so many young female students after coming to China made her think of her own youth.

She was a woman who had lost her family. Her mother’s family had collapsed, her husband had gone bankrupt and committed suicide, and she had been thrown out of her in-laws’ home by her brother-in-law. She had no children, no skills, and was so old that she had to teach flower arranging, calligraphy, and the tea ceremony to Geisha in order to make ends meet.

It is important to realize that no matter how the world changes, there are only two industries that will never go bankrupt. One is the funeral business and the other is the flower street.

She didn’t dare to use her maiden name or her husband’s family name, so she barely managed to get by using Sakai as her family name.

So when she heard that there was a call for teachers willing to go to China to teach Chinese students, she rushed to apply.

In her imagination, China was a land of gold, where she would make enough money to return home rich and beautiful, and be accepted by her mother’s and husband’s families again.

But when she arrives in China, she realizes that it’s all a scam. There is gold everywhere, but ordinary people can’t make any money at all. She didn’t come here to make money either, Mr. Yamamoto only wanted them to use the knowledge in their heads to conquer the Chinese.

Mr. Yamamoto said, “To steal the universities! To snatch their schools, their students, their teachers all together!”

But it was too difficult.

Mr. Sakai came to realize that the people of this land possessed a very strong sense of self-confidence and pride. They had a glorious history, and some of them simply didn’t think their country would ever decline. They will not be conquered.

Even a tiny schoolgirl, she looked at them, the Japanese teachers, with mockery in her eyes.

All four of them knew that the female student named Yang Yuyan did not want to be Japanese at all. Her intelligence and wisdom allowed her to understand what Japan was doing to China, and her family lineage allowed her to be exposed to Japanese culture earlier than the average Chinese.

Mr. Sakai had inquired about it, and Yang Yuyan had always had a governess in her home. What kind of family would keep a tutor to teach a girl about culture and not how to marry?

Ms. Sakai couldn’t even imagine it herself. Because her mother’s family was also a large landowner who owned a lot of land in Japan, she always had a maid at home to serve her, and she was also educated from a young age. But she didn’t have a tutor either; she always traveled to her teacher’s home to study. But she had to take four or five courses, which was already very rich among her little sisters, and this meant that her mother’s family had high hopes for her to give her so much education. It was all so that when she married she would be a woman who could please her husband and would not be a disgrace to her mother’s family.

She had always thought that a family as rich as her mother’s was rare in China, that only in the big cities could there be such a rich family, and that it must be one of those prestigious families that had access to official residences.

But last time she realized that the Chinese schoolgirls, led by Yang Yuyan, were surprisingly rich, and that they were being educated for more than just marriage.

Yang Yuyan said, “There is no way I will not study, my mother will not allow me not to study.”

Fu Peixian said, “Of course it’s for academic advancement.”

The other female students said, “Because everyone comes to school, if I don’t come, then my family will fall behind.”

“I think it’s more valuable to get to know more people by meeting fellow students in college.”

“I think I can find more enlightened future husbands here; I don’t want to marry a traditional man who wants me to be threefold.”

In Japan, women go to school too. But the girls go to girls’ high school; they don’t go to college. After graduating from girls’ high school, they are going to marry. So they will learn skills such as cooking, sewing, and baking delicate Western sweets in the girls’ high school, which is to prepare them for marriage.

Ordinary women don’t learn more advanced skills like flower arranging or the tea ceremony in junior high school because they won’t be able to use those skills in their future family life.

Sakai-sensei used to pride herself on possessing such skills as flower arranging and the tea ceremony, for it was these skills that had enabled her to gain her husband’s favor in his family, which proved that she was an elegant woman.

But the Chinese female students, led by Yang Yuyan, had never taken these skills seriously; they only found them novel, but they did not find them remarkable or elegant.

That is not what they can do.

Almost all of them could write quite well, and they even had different schools of brushwork that they had learned.

At least half of them can draw quite beautiful ink paintings, the other half are good at Go, very few are good at both, and the few who aren’t good at it can appreciate it.

China has not been accepting Western culture for any shorter period of time than Japan, so almost all of these schoolgirls are ballroom dancers, most of them play the piano, and some of them like to listen to opera and even go to the opera from time to time. Even those who have never heard of opera can easily talk about it and Western culture and art, such as Yang Yuyan, who says she has never heard of an opera, and it’s not that she doesn’t have the opportunity or the money, but that she finds it boring and dull, but she has read Shakespeare.

Ms. Sakai, on the other hand, had no opportunity to try these things. Her mother’s family was against westernization, and her husband hated it even more. And when she was on her own, she never got to try them because she had no money.

It made her wonder from time to time: could she really conquer these Chinese schoolgirls?

What if they found out about her ignorance?

She didn’t talk about it to anyone. But every time Yang Yuyan nitpicked in class, she was overwhelmed with fear. She was afraid of this female student!

But more than these Chinese schoolgirls, she was afraid of Mr. Yamamoto!

She was even more afraid to let Mr. Yamamoto know how vain she was.

If Mr. Yamamoto knew, it would be her death.

She knew that the other three teachers were just like her.

They were all afraid that Mr. Yamamoto would find out about their incompetence.

Mr. Yamamoto would kill them in anger.

Then he would get others from Japan to continue his plan.

If his plan doesn’t work, then he will show his true colors.

He will kill all the Chinese here.

But in between, it would be them, the Japanese who had failed him, who would die by his sword first.

Mr. Kobayashi stayed up all night and went to class in the morning with thick dark circles under his eyes.

He thought about it all night and decided to continue the story of the samurai.

Because Yang Yuyan, the schoolgirl, seemed to like samurai stories, and she also knew Miyamoto Musashi.

If he talked about something else, he would probably be disrupted by her in class again. It would be bad if he couldn’t finish the lesson plan. If he continued with the samurai story, the lesson plan could be accomplished.

Having made up his mind, Mr. Kobayashi stood in front of the classroom door, took a deep breath, pushed it open, and stepped inside to see the students, led by Yang Yuyan, already sitting in the first three rows.

Yang Yuyan was speaking, “Actually, all the Japanese daimyo, ah, generals, had little boys as lovers! Do you know the very famous Toyotomi Hideyoshi? It is said that he was accompanied by his favorite lover when he died in Honnouji Temple.”

The rest of the class didn’t believe it, but of course, most of them didn’t know who Toyotomi Hideyoshi was.

“Who is this man?”

“Is he famous?”

“You’re making that up, aren’t you? Even if he is, how can all the generals be?”

“What’s a daimyo? A Japanese official position?”

“Are Japanese generals the same as Chinese generals?”

Mr. Kobayashi: “……”

He thinks for a moment, walks up to the podium, smiles and bows to everyone, “Good morning, students! Today, I’ll tell you about the famous Japanese war general, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and his subordinates, as well as some legends and stories about him, thank you!”