少年H 上巻

This is the first of a 2-volume story about a boy living in Kobe in the years before and during World War II. His family are an awkward fit for the time: his mother is a devout Christian, and his father is a tailor of Western suits. The chapters are episodic, each about its own incident or theme. Some of them are about the ordinary life of H as a young boy in the Kobe of the time, but even in the slice-of-life chapters there are small details to remind us that a war is happening. Little by little, the daily lives of the citizens are affected. The young men in the neighborhood are drafted, materials are in short supply, the propaganda intensifies, everyone has to watch what they say and do, and the educational focus of the schools changes. It’s based on the real experiences of the author, but it isn’t strictly an autobiography.

The author/protagonist was born in 1930, and this book sticks close to what he could have known and experienced as a young boy at the time. This volume (the first half) ends in 1943, as he enters middle school, before the war comes to Japan itself. (Content warning for vol 1: suicide) I have not yet read the second volume but I expect it’s probably going to be heavier than this one.

There’s a lot of vocabulary. Because this book was written to describe things that happened a lifetime ago, even the scenes about ordinary daily life include a lot of detail and explanation. As time passes and the war heats up and starts to impact citizens’ lives, there are dialogues and explanations about political and military topics, both domestic and international. Sometimes there are song lyrics or newspaper quotes.

Nearly everyone speaks Kansai-ben. There’s a chapter where H visits relatives in another region, and they speak a different dialect.

I read the Aoitori Bunko version, which has full furigana, not realizing that the regular edition actually has extensive furigana anyway. The author strongly wanted this book to be accessible to everyone, and wanted children to be able to learn from it. It has been translated into English as “A Boy Called H.” There is also a movie version.