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Kyushu, like everywhere else, high school newspaper clubs tended to be dens of rebellion, and in our school no club was allowed to align itself with any other. The teachers’ greatest fear was of the students getting organized. Even if members of the newspaper club wanted to do something as harmless as carrying out a survey or collecting information, we had to clear it with the faculty advisor first. Unofficial gatherings were absolutely forbidden. This system was endorsed by the student council. The school laid down the law and used the yes-men in the student council to make it look as if we had made the rules ourselves. It might as well have been a prison. A colony under military rule. It was sickening.
    “All right, the truth is, I’m not really here to research an article.”
    “What, then?”
    “I just, uh, came to have a little chat.”
    “Can’t you see we’re busy here? No one has time for that sort of thing.”
    Inside the room, the girls were cutting stencils to use for mimeographing the script. Squeak , creak , creak , squeak. Half of them were ignoring Yoshioka and me, and the others were watching us. Kazuko Matsui was watching. She held a stylus thoughtfully against her cheek. She had eyes like Bambi’s. Eyes a man could fight and die for.
    I sneered and said, “How ridiculous can you get?”
    Yoshioka was taken aback. “What are you talking about?”
    “Shakespeare—where’s that at? Thousands of people are dying every day in Vietnam, and you’re doing Shakespeare. It’s ridiculous. Mr. Yoshioka...”
    “What?”
    “Look out the window at that harbor. Every day American battleships sail out of there to go and kill people.”
    He was flustered. Teachers this far out in the sticks didn’t know how to handle students with anti-establishment ideas. They couldn’t just slap you around, the way they did the usual deadbeat types.
    “I’m going to report this to the teacher in charge of your club.”
    “Do you like war, Mr. Yoshioka?”
    “What sort of thing is that to say?”
    Yoshioka had lived through World War II. He’d probably known his share of misery. His face clouded over. War was convenient. You could always use it in your arguments with teachers; it made them uncomfortable, particularly when they were obliged in class to say that war was bad. They’d always try to dodge the issue.
    “Yazaki, get out of here. We’re busy.”
    “Are you against war?”
    I wondered if he’d served in the military. Being small, and an arty type, he would have been bullied like hell.
    “If you’re against it, it’s cowardly not to speak out.”
    “What has that got to do with anything?”
    “Plenty. American troops are using our harbor. To kill people.”
    “That’s not for high school students to worry about.”
    “So who’s supposed to worry about it?”
    “Yazaki, deliver yourself of these opinions once you’ve graduated from college, got a job, married, and had children of your own. Once you’re a full-fledged adult.”
    Dipshit. “Deliver yourself,” my ass.
    “Oh. So you can’t be opposed to war unless you’re an adult? Does that mean children don’t die in war? High school students don’t die in war?”
    Yoshioka’s face turned beet red. Just then the running coach, Kawasaki, passed by with the judo coach, Aihara. I didn’t notice them. I was telling Yoshioka that not to do anything about something was the same as approving of it, and asking him if it was okay for a teacher to approve of killing people, when Aihara came up behind me, grabbed me by the hair, slapped me across the face three times, and threw me to the floor. “Yazakiiiiii! ” he shouted. Aihara was a bonehead from some crummy right-wing college, but he was also a scary guy with cauliflower ears who’d once been the national middleweight judo champion. “On your feeeet ! ” he screamed. First he knocks me down, then he tells me to stand up. This pissed me off, but the cauliflower ears and squashed nose