The Smile of a Ragpicker: The Life of Satoko Kitahara - Convert and Servant of the Slums of Tokyo by Glynn Paul

Author:Glynn, Paul [Glynn, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2014-10-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

Storm Warning over The Sumida

Satoko learned a lot from Zeno about helping the poor without demeaning them. When he ran out of food and clothing, he gave them a holy card of the Madonna and Child or at least a warm smile and a kind word. He took her to unimagined backwaters of misery that mainstream citizens knew nothing about. Coming home tired one evening after a day with him, she ran into a crowd of well-heeled people pouring out of the Kokusai Theater. She stopped and watched them chatting away unconcerned. Anger surged through her and weariness vanished. “Don’t these people know what terrible things are happening to thousands of poor all around Tokyo?” she wrote indignantly into her notebook that night.

The problem of the poor of Tokyo became a consuming matter for her. She would go down to Ants Town in the morning to help the smaller children, and in the late afternoon gather the older ones in her home. Most had stopped going to school because they were treated as “dirty ragpickers”. The few who attended when they weren’t made to help at collecting and sorting were terribly behind in everything. She decided that her first priority was to get every child to school. First she would coach them individually until they were advanced enough to face a classroom. She gathered them in her home as there was not a suitable place in Ants Town. Her parents were bewildered but accepted it, though the mother insisted on Satoko’s daily delousing in the bathroom and fumigating the piano room used by the children.

Neighbors were far less understanding. They began visiting the geta shop to complain to the assistants. “She’s letting a vicious little gang of thieves into our neighborhood. Things will begin disappearing any time. They live like pigs, with parents too lazy to clean their hovels or move out of them. We’ll be catching their diseases next.” Some of the children had trachoma. All had lice. Satoko would hear the complaints secondhand, and her temper would flare up in defence of the Ants. Her mother changed and began to defend Satoko. She remarked caustically how Tokyoites, who helped one another in the grim days of the war, had quickly become so unfeeling toward people still down on their luck, above all toward children.

Many in Ants Town had been living hand-to-mouth for five years now and had despaired of ever again living in a real home or having a decent job. Shochu , the strong spirits distilled cheaply from rice, millet, barley, potatoes or even barnyard grass, became one way to drown betrayed hopes. But it was not the answer to their troubles; it caused more problems. Shochu drinking led to fights, sometimes with knives or blunt instruments, destroying friendships and even families. The first fights Satoko saw shook her badly.

Soon after going to Ants Town she noticed Hisa-chan. He was the oldest of the teenagers and a loner. Because his father was very hard on him he suspected all adults, including Satoko.

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