MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD AT KWANSEI GAKUIN

Ken Woodsworth

March 2001

The Old K. G. Campus

The old KG campus where I grew up was located on the edge of Kobe City, in Nada Ku, on the site of the present Oji Koen. Several hectares in extent, the campus was surrounded by a stone wall about two to three metres high and about sixty centimetres thick. One of our games was to walk along the top of this wall for some distance around the campus. It was a miracle that none of us fell off and was hurt. The main entrance gate was on the west side of the campus, near where the old chapel now stands, near the Hankyu Line Nada station. There were also gates in the north, east and south walls. These big iron gates were closed at night. It was a very secure environment for children. The whole campus within the walls was our playground.

The street leading from the main entrance went to the terminal of the street railway, Kamitsutsui Shuten. Later, this was also the first terminal of the Hankyu Line. It was about half a kilometre long: a busy street of small shops, groceries, clothing, and restaurants. There was an Udonya where we often stopped to eat a bowl of Shinoda (Kitsune Udon). Running along the west wall of the campus was the busy road leading up to a Maya San and the old temple there. On the south side of the campus was an old Shinto shrine, which is still there; rebuilt after the bombing in World War II.

Most of the university buildings were built of brick. There was a row of Japanese teachers' residences (Japanese style) along the road that led to the north gate. There were eight foreign-style residences for the US and Canadian teachers, built around three sides of a grassy quadrangle. These were built of wood, two stories high, with wide porches and attics. Each had a large garden. I was born in 1914 in one of these houses, which stood about fifty metres from the old chapel.

Most of the University academic buildings were in the central area of the campus. The buildings too were part of our playground. Sometimes, unknown to our parents, we would sneak into one of the buildings. We were agile at climbing up rain pipes and getting in through an unlocked window. Then we would play hide-and-seek (Kakurembo). The sports field was on the east of the campus, next to the middle school. Our Canadian school soccer team often played its matches on this field. We played against Japanese middle school teams and occasionally against a team of British sailors off a ship in port. One year our team won the Kansai championship. There was no public thoroughfare through the campus, so there was almost no traffic; only a few bicycles and only K.G. students walking through. So it was very safe for us as children. The campus was quite beautiful. There were many trees: pines, camphor, eucalyptus, magnolia, cherry, acacia; and also flowering bushes: oleander, azalea, hydrangea. There were even some fruit trees: persimmons (Kaki), bamboo, mulberry and loquats (Biwa). We even had a fig tree.

Students and Faculty

In those days K.G. only had men students. The students wore black uniforms, with a peaked, military-style cap, with the K.G. new moon crest at the front.

The University had been founded by U.S. and Canadian Christian Missions. Most of the heads of departments were foreigners. There were, of course, regular meeting off Japanese and foreign teachers, concerning academic matters. But there was little purely social intercourse. It was rare for Japanese to invite foreigners into their homes and vice-versa. At New Year's it was customary to visit each other's homes and leave calling cards on a tray that was placed at the front door. But callers did not stay to visit. All our playmates were Americans and Canadians.

Some Early Memories

One of my earliest memories was riding in a Rikusha from our house on the campus to go downtown in Kobe. When I was older we walked from the campus gate to the streetcar at Kamitsutsui Shuten. (The Hankyu Line did not run to downtown Kobe then). Our house was just inside the wall separating the campus from the road to Maya San. It was a busy road. There were always interesting things to see and hear. There were vendors, carrying their wares in big baskets hung on carrying poles across their shoulders; crying out their wares: tofu, fish, vegetables. Delivery boys rode bicycles down the road, carrying trays on their heads, with bowls of Udon or Meshi. There were carters shouting and lashing their half-starved horses up the hill. Pilgrims in white clothing tramped up the hill to Maya Temple. Mendicant priests would pass, beating their small drums. On week-ends there were parties going up to the hills for picnics, carrying big bottles of sake and coming down in the evening singing and shouting drunkenly. At night there was the comforting sound of the night-watchman's clappers. There were no cars. There was often a pervasive smell from the carts that collected night-soil to transport to the farmers' fields, to be used as fertilizer. We called the pits where the night-soil was dumped "honey-pots".

We often watched the students at sports activities. Baseball was popular. There was soccer. We watched archery, Kendo, Sumo, Judo. There was no swimming pool at the old K.G. campus. After K.G. moved to Uegahara, we swam in the new pool there. We wore loin cloths (Fundoshi) to swim. There was no American football.

Move to Uegahara

When we first learned as children about the impending move of the University to a new site Uegahara, we were quite unhappy at having to leave the beloved campus where we had grown up. But as the move got under way (was it 1929?), we found that there were many interesting things to do at the new site. Sometimes we were allowed to go for the day to the new site. We would climb on the back of a truck loaded with furniture and ride out along the Hanshin Kokudo. I was in my early teens then. The new site was quite undeveloped: just a few academic buildings and teachers' houses. Most of the area was still in farmers' abandoned fields. There were three large irrigation ponds, in which we swam. There was the Nigawa River to explore. There were many pre-historic burial mounds (kofun) scattered in the area, some on the K.G. campus, (there is still one there), and many more in the area above Nigawa Village and in the hills beyond. Sadly, these have all been destroyed by housing developments.

I came to love the new K.G. As teenagers we traveled to our school by Hankyu every week-day. On weekends I spent many happy hours in the hills above K.G., hiking in the mountains, up to the top of Rokko San and on over the Arima Onsen; swimming in the lakes where the Hankyu park is today, or in the Nigawa River. Sometimes we would ride our bicycles down to the ocean at Ashiya for a swim. There were still beautiful beaches there. In the fall, we sometimes went to Minoo to see the maple leaves and to eat maple leaves deep-fried in batter.

Militarization

I left K.G. in 1932 to come back to Canada for university. In the two or three years before I left, K.G., along with the rest of Japan was becoming increasingly militarized. There had been assassinations of prominent civilian politicians in the 1920's. The military extremists began to gain increasing control over political life. There was increasing propaganda against "dangerous thoughts", which meant any ideas that questioned the right-wing agenda. At that time my father was Dean of the Department of Law and Literature. Some of his students were arrested and interrogated by the police. He was much concerned about this and it was often a topic of discussion in the family and with friends. So began my early education in politics. After the Japanese Army seized Manchuria, the situation grew more tense. There was military training for the students at K.G. On one occasion the Army decided to use the K.G. campus for a mock battle. We were awakened early one morning by the shattering din of a machine gun firing at the corner of our house and soldiers running through our yard firing rifles. There were women in the streets and at the gates of the University asking passersby to sew a thread in stomach bands (Haramaki). These were supposed to save soldiers from bullets. The press and radio were full of news of the war in Manchuria and threat of war with China. The old security of childhood was over.

Remembering

The old K.G. campus is no more. The walls are gone. The old roads are not there. Most of the buildings were destroyed by bombing during the war. Perhaps fittingly, only the Shinto shrine and the Christian chapel, both restored since the war, remain as monuments of the past. The new K.G. campus has also changed greatly since my boyhood. So the old places are gone. But my memories of a privileged and rich experience of childhood will always be with me.