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Childhood Memory: A Lesson in Discipline

This short story describes an incident in 1973 where the narrator's young brother Jiro stuffs rice balls into his mouth without eating the rest of his dinner. Their uncle Kazuya then forcibly takes Jiro outside, ties him to a large oak tree by wrapping rope around him, and says he needs to learn to eat properly like a man. The mother shouts at the uncle while Jiro screams, and the uncle calmly returns inside as if finishing a day's work, while no one speaks of it again.

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Dhapne Ann P. Estares
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405 views3 pages

Childhood Memory: A Lesson in Discipline

This short story describes an incident in 1973 where the narrator's young brother Jiro stuffs rice balls into his mouth without eating the rest of his dinner. Their uncle Kazuya then forcibly takes Jiro outside, ties him to a large oak tree by wrapping rope around him, and says he needs to learn to eat properly like a man. The mother shouts at the uncle while Jiro screams, and the uncle calmly returns inside as if finishing a day's work, while no one speaks of it again.

Uploaded by

Dhapne Ann P. Estares
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Shimenawa

By Naoko Kumagai
This is a story I was told.
It was August 1973. My brother Jiro was
four, sitting at dinner.
“E tadaki mas,” my uncle said. Jiro picked
up onigiri, a rice ball, with his hands and
mashed it into his mouth. Fish and rice on
his plate, untouched. He stuffed another
onigiri
in his mouth, bits of rice falling.
“Jiro-chan…” A warning from my mother.
Jiro opened his mouth wide, splayed his
tongue covered in tiny white beads of rice.
Kazuya stood up and roughly pulled Jiro out
of his chair.
“What are you doing?” My mother asked,
getting up.
Kazuya went out the back door, carrying
Jiro firmly under his arm. With the other
hand, he picked up a circle of rope hanging
on the fence by the shed. In the yard was a
large oak tree with heavy, twisted branches.
He wrapped the rope around my brother
once, then
pushed him to the trunk of the oak, winding
the rope around and around.
“He must eat his dinner properly.” My uncle
tied a thick knot at the end. “He needs to
learn to be a man.”
My mother was shouting at my uncle; Jiro
was screaming, the sound flooding the sky.
Kazuya went back into the house, relaxed,
and entitled, as if he had just finished a long
day’s work.
No one remembers the rest. My mother
never forgave my uncle. My father wasn’t
there.
Jiro can’t recall any of it. He jokes that the
incident is possibly the reason he always,
intuitively eats everything on his plate.

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