Lesson 6: Mr. Fujino

Lesson 6: Mr. Fujino

Lu Xun

Tokyo is just the same. When the cherry blossoms in Ueno are in full bloom, they look like scarlet clouds, but underneath the flowers, there are also groups of "foreign students from the Qing Dynasty" who are in a crash course, with big braids on their heads, so that the tops of their student hats rise up high, forming a Mount Fuji. There is also the dissolution of the braid, coiled flat, in addition to the cap, the oil can be seen, like a little girl's hair bun general, but also to twist the neck a few twists. It is really beautiful.

There are several books available in the concierge of the Chinese Students' Association, and sometimes it is worthwhile to go around; if in the morning, it is possible to sit in several foreign rooms inside. But in the evening, the floor of one room is often loud and full of smoke and dust; if you ask someone who is well versed in current affairs, the answer is, "That is learning to dance."

How about going somewhere else?

I went to the medical school in Sendai. Soon after I left Tokyo, I arrived at a post station and wrote, "Higurashi-ri. Somehow, I still remember the name. The next thing I remember is Mito, the place where Mr. Zhu Shunshui, a relic of Ming Dynasty, died. Sendai was a town, not very big, and it was cold in winter, and there were no Chinese students.

Probably, things are expensive. When the cabbage from Beijing was shipped to Zhejiang, the roots were tied with red ropes and hung upside down in fruit stores, and they were honored as "gumbo"; the aloe vera that was wild in Fujian was invited into the greenhouse as soon as it arrived in Beijing, and was called "agave". Not only was the school free of tuition, but several staff members also took care of my food and lodging. First, I lived in a prison where the inmates' food was not my concern, but I had to look for a better place to live because I was so kind. So I moved to another house, far from the prison, but unfortunately I had to drink unpalatable taro stalk soup every day.

Since then, I have seen many strange gentlemen and heard many new lectures. . The anatomy was divided between two professors. The first was osteology. He came in with a dark, thin man with a mustache and glasses, and was carrying a stack of large and small books. As soon as he placed the books on the podium, he introduced himself to the students in a slow and very staccato voice, saying.

"I am the one called Fujino Itsukuro ......"

A few people in the back of the room burst out laughing. He then went on to tell the history of the development of anatomy in Japan, and those books, large and small, are the works on this discipline from the beginning to the present day. At first there were a few books in wire binding; there were also engravings of Chinese translations, whose translation and study of new medicine was not earlier than that of China.

Those who sat at the back and laughed were repeating students who had failed in the previous year and had been in school for a year, so they were familiar with the history. They gave a lecture on the history of each professor to the new students. It was said that Mr. Fujino wore clothes that were so bad that he sometimes forgot to tie the knot; in winter, he wore an old coat and was shivering.

Their words were probably true, and I personally saw him once go to the lecture hall without a knot.

A week later, about Saturday, he sent his assistant to call me. When I arrived at the research room, I saw him sitting among the human bones and many individual skulls, which he was studying at the time, and later had a paper published in the journal of our university.

"Can you copy down my lecture notes?" He asked.

"I can copy a little."

"Bring it to me!"

He took it and returned it to me the next three days, saying that he would give it to him once a week thereafter. When I took it down and opened it, I was astonished, and at the same time I felt a sense of uneasiness and gratitude. It turned out that my lecture notes had been corrected from the beginning to the end with a red pen, and not only had many omissions been added, but also grammatical errors had been corrected one by one. I continued to teach him until I had finished teaching his subjects: osteopathy, angiology, and neurology.

Unfortunately, I was too inattentive at that time, and sometimes I was also very capricious. I remember that Mr. Fujino once called me to his study room, and pulled out one of the diagrams from my lecture notes, a blood vessel of the lower arm, pointed to it, and said kindly to me.

"Look, you have shifted this blood vessel a little bit. --Naturally, it looks better this way, but an anatomical diagram is not art, the real thing is like that, we can't change it. Now I've changed it for you, and from now on you have to draw it exactly as it is on the blackboard."

But I was still not convinced, and I promised verbally, but in my heart I thought.

"I drew the picture well; as for the real situation, I remember it in my heart."

When I returned to school at the beginning of autumn, my results had already been published, and I was in the middle of more than a hundred students, but I had not failed. This time, Mr. Fujimino was responsible for the anatomy practice and partial anatomy.

After about a week of anatomy practice, he called me again and said to me happily in a very subdued voice.

"I was worried that you wouldn't dissect the corpse because I heard that Chinese people respect ghosts very much. Now at last I am relieved that there is no such thing."

But he did occasionally make things difficult for me. He had heard that Chinese women wrapped their feet, but he didn't know the details, so he asked me how it was done and what kind of deformity the foot bones had become, and sighed, "I'll have to see it to find out. What exactly is going on?"

One day, the student council officers of my class came to my apartment and asked to borrow my lecture notes. I checked it out and gave it to them, but only went through it and did not take it away. But as soon as they left, the letter carrier delivered a very thick letter, and when I opened it, the first sentence was.

"Repent!"

This was a sentence from the New Testament, but it had been recently quoted by Tolstoy. At the time of the Russo-Japanese War, Tolstoy wrote a letter to the emperors of Russia and Japan, beginning with this sentence. The Japanese newspapers denounced his indignity, and the patriotic youth were indignant, but secretly they had already been influenced by him. The next sentence was about the anatomy test last year, which Mr. Fujino had marked on the lecture notes, and I knew about it in advance, so that I could have such a result. The end was anonymous.

It was then that I recalled an incident from the other day. When we had a class meeting, the officer wrote an advertisement on the blackboard, and the last sentence was "Please come to the meeting in full so that you don't miss it. At that time, I thought the circle was ridiculous, but I didn't mind, but this time I realized that the word was also mocking me, as if I had been given the title by the instructor.

I told Mr. Fujino about it, and some of my classmates who knew me well were also very upset, so they went together to confront the officer about his rudeness in excusing himself from the examination, and asked them to publish the results of the examination. The rumor was finally eradicated, but the officer tried his best to withdraw the anonymous letter. At the end, I returned the Tolstoyan letter to them.

China is a weak country, so of course the Chinese are imbeciles, and a score of sixty or more is not their own ability: no wonder they are confused. But then I had the fate of visiting the shooting of Chinese people. In the second year, Tim taught mycology, and the shape of bacteria was shown on film, and before the end of the class, a few films of current events were shown, naturally all about the Japanese victory over Russia. But there were Chinese people caught in the middle: a detective for the Russians, captured by the Japanese army and shot, and a group of Chinese people gathered around to watch; there was also one of me in the lecture hall.

"Hooray!" They all clapped and cheered.

This kind of cheer, which is common to every piece of watching, but in my case, it sounded especially harsh. When I came back to China afterwards, I saw the people who were watching the shooting of the prisoners, and they too were not drunkenly cheering, - whoops, I can't imagine! But at that time and place, my opinion changed.

At the end of the second academic year, I went to Mr. Fujino and told him that I would not study medicine and would leave Sendai. He looked as if his face was a little sad and seemed to want to speak, but he didn't.

"I want to go to study biology, and there is still use for the learning that sir taught me." In fact, I did not decide to study biology, because I saw that he was a little sad, so I told a lie to comfort him.

"I'm afraid that anatomy and other things taught for medical purposes are not very helpful in biology either." He said with a sigh. A few days before he was to leave, he asked me to come to his house and gave me a photograph with two words on the back: "Farewell," and said he wished to send him mine as well. But I had no more pictures at that time, so he asked me to take one and send it to him, and to correspond with him from time to time to tell him how I was doing after that.

Since I had not taken any pictures for many years after I left Sendai, and since I was bored with my situation, I was afraid to write to him because I would only disappoint him. As many years passed, there was no way to talk about it, so sometimes I wanted to write a letter, but it was difficult to write.

From his side, it seems that there was no news after he left.

But somehow, I still remember him from time to time, and among all the people I consider my teachers, he is the one who makes me the most grateful and gives me encouragement. Sometimes I often think that his fervent hope and tireless teaching to me were, in a small way, for the sake of China, that is, for the sake of a new medicine in China; in a large way, for the sake of scholarship, that is, for the sake of a new medicine to be transmitted to China. His character is great in my eyes and heart, though his name is not known to many.

The lecture notes that he corrected, which I once bound into three thick books, will be a permanent memorial in my collection. Unfortunately, when I moved seven years ago, a book case was destroyed and half a box of books was lost, which coincidentally was also lost. I asked the shipping bureau to look for it, but there was no reply. Only his picture is still hanging on the east wall of my apartment in Beijing, opposite my desk. Whenever I am tired at night and want to be lazy, I glance up at his dark, thin face in the light and see that he seems to be about to say something inspirational, which suddenly gives me a conscience and courage, so I light a cigarette and continue to write some words that are abhorred by the "decent people".

October 12.