At the entrance ceremony today, the new elementary 1st graders are sandwiched between their new peers to the back and The Stage with The Flag to the front. They are drowned in the dreary droning of the haunting melody and words of the antiquated, imperialistic, controversial Japanese Anthem. It is a dirge that has always given me the eerie impression that it lingers in time: never starting or stopping, just existing. It fades in, gradually building to a see-sawing, moaning climax, before fading--or flowing--away, back to that place of shadow and light where it waits in time.
Don't get me wrong; there's beauty in it. It's just a beauty that harrows more than it inspires. I am relieved when it fades out, and the lost-looking new 1年生 are fished out of the dark by the nothing-but-sunshine-and rainbows Furubira Elementary school song: a song I'm so in love with that I not only want to learn it before I leave, but I kind of want to ask if I can sing it with the school--if I can bathe in their sometimes-screamy, midget-melodious light.
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