Nearly a decade has passed since I contributed an essay to Echoes: Writers in Kyoto Anthology 2 about the social progression of my son from nursery school to elementary school within the Japanese system. While facing so many “morning challenges” in those days, I’d sit at my desk after commuting to work and reset my brain by gazing through the window to watch the tall trees swaying. This quiet time is still important to me. Our office’s location on the university campus has changed, but each morning I still focus on the natural scenery beyond the window. The building and street are separated by a half-solid, half-lattice wall with greenery and an open space descending two basement floors. Opposite the windows is a long counter where we usually speak with university students, staff, and professors.
Although I rarely have direct contact with children these days, there is an elementary school located across from campus. Every day at approximately 3:30pm, students return home in assigned groups. Many pass by outside, and I can see the first graders’ bright yellow caps bobbing along beyond the top of the outer lattice wall like ducklings headed toward the river. The bright color affords them special attention and care from the older students, as well as the locals in cars and on foot. My colleagues and I can hear their voices as they tell jokes, play janken (the Japanese version of rock, paper, scissors), and sing songs, delighted to be free and with their friends. They often take turns seeing who can scream the loudest of all.
One day, we were surprised when two of these ducklings appeared at our office counter, where their heads were just about peeking over the top. Two little boys of about seven, carrying the traditional randoseru schoolbags on their backs, were asking for help. One of them exclaimed, “My lunch duty apron went over the fence!”
Japanese elementary school students are assigned to kyūshoku tōban (lunch duty) from Monday to Friday, every other week. They work together in groups to bring utensils and large vats of prepared food from the kitchen to the classroom, take turns serving their classmates, and return all items afterwards. Those on duty wear school-provided big aprons and puffy hats (similar to the one worn by the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man). Both items are dutifully packed into a drawstring bag of white or the same pastel color, all of which the child takes home to be laundered at the end of the week so it can be passed on to a different child in the following week for their turn at serving. In my son’s elementary days, it was common for him to hold the drawstrings of his lunch duty bag and continuously kick the bundle up into the air as he walked. I realized that the little boy at our counter might have been doing the same when he admitted that his grip had been unsteady and that his foot had sent the bag a-flyin’.
Three of us went down to the second basement level to search for the bag, with no luck. We finally realized that it had fallen directly onto a set of elevated pipes at the corner, so high up that not even my tallest colleague could reach it. But he did have a clever idea…
Schools throughout Japan, every department at our university, and many offices throughout the country have on hand a tool called a sasumata — a pole weapon developed over 400 years ago during the feudal Muromachi period featuring a long wooden or metal shaft with a U-shaped fork (like a two-pronged blunt “clamp”) at one end, used by samurai and the police to capture and restrain criminals without causing fatal injuries. I have never personally seen one in use, but the prongs on the modern version are more rounded. It could be quite effective at pinning someone against a wall. Alternatively, two sasumata could be used from alternating sides to simultaneously trap someone by their upper and lower body. Sasumata could still theoretically be used by schools, organizations, police, etc. to defend against intruders.
So, could this ancient tool be used in our predicament? Yes! We could borrow the one kept behind our university library’s circulation desk, located just down the hallway! We brought it back to the wall, and my tallest colleague extended the handle (which is approximately 6 feet or two meters long at its maximum length), and he was able to easily swipe the bag to the ground.
By the time we had returned to our office, the boy had gone home to tell his parents he was safe and to report what had happened, and our office had contacted the elementary school so everyone would be on the same page. Two teachers came to retrieve the bag to deliver it to the boy’s home. Thirty minutes later, the teachers, the boy, and his father were at our counter to thank us and bring closure to this very uniquely Japanese cultural incident.
The sasumata saved the day!
