Novel
Twenty-Four Eyes
二十四の瞳
Sakae Tsuboi · 1952
Synopsis
A young schoolteacher, Miss Ōishi, fresh from a girls' normal school, arrives in an isolated seaside village and takes charge of the branch class of twelve first-year pupils, according to the publisher Shinchōsha's presentation. She comes by bicycle and in Western clothes, which at first worries the villagers, at least in the film that follows the novel; hurt by a prank, she receives a visit from the children, who have walked all the way to her home. The publisher Tuttle sets the story over twenty years, from before the war to after the war.
Context
The novel appeared in 1952. The publisher Tuttle describes it as driven by opposition to war and by equality among people, and Shinchōsha sees in it the true love between a teacher and her pupils, whom she finds again after the defeat when she returns to teach the same class, among the children of her former pupils. The text names only a coastal village; the film that Kinoshita Keisuke made from it in 1954 sets it on Shōdoshima, the author's native island. Akira Miura translated it into English, and its second edition appeared with Kenkyūsha in 1958.
Who it is for
A short novel, in simple language, for those who want to follow a Japanese generation through the war.
Prizes and reception
Adapted for the screen in 1954, it brought a keen enthusiasm for the whole of its author's work, according to her Japanese publisher.
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