Site Ed. Note: The Gordon W. Prange Collection, University of Maryland Libraries, is the repository of 10,000 Japanese children’s books and many children’s magazines from the period 1945-1949. They are beautifully illustrated and in excellent condition. Children’s books from the Prange Collection were on tour at several sites in Japan throughout 2001-03. True to her passion for children’s books, Empress Michiko (1934- ) visited the exhibit at Waseda University Library, Tokyo, 2001. The following speech is fascinating for what it says of her youth during the war. However, we need her coming of age story as Shōda Michiko during the Occupation years before she met and married Crown Prince Akihito, the future Heisei Emperor (1989- ). The royal couple would have three children of their own, two boys and a girl, including present Crown Prince Naruhito.

Like so many other people, up to this day I have received numerous benefits from books. In childhood I enjoyed children's books as one sphere of play. Since I grew up, I have been reading grown-up books and, although their number is not great, I continue to enjoy some children's books. After marriage, I was blessed with three children, so I had the happiness of rereading with them the children's literature I had loved as a child, as well as the joy of getting to know new works of children's literature. I consider myself very fortunate.

If I had not had children, even though I knew about Little Red Riding Hood and Heidi of the Alps, and the jungle where the boy Mowgli lived, I might never have encountered Marie Hall Ets' boy who played hide-and-seek with the animals deep in the forest, or Leo Lionni's "Little Blue" and "Little Yellow," and I might never have known the history of Virginia Lee Burton's "Little House." It was after I had become a mother that I came to know J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, Rosemary Sutcliff and Philippa Pearce. But as I said earlier, I have gone through only a limited number of books, and I tack the capacity to speak from the viewpoint of the research scholar or the specialist. Again, regarding the present theme of children's literature and peace, I fear I can only make the connection between the two things in a roundabout way. Children's literature and peace are not necessarily bound closely and directly together. It goes without saying that no one book or number of books can be the key that will open wide the doors of peace.

Today then, on this occasion, if there is something I can do, it may be to look back over my reading experiences in my own childhood, to recall a few books that left "buds," as it were, in me, that burgeoned later into ways of thinking and feeling: Might I not try to talk about all that? Then, however little, I hope some thought can be devoted to all this in the context of "peace," which is the theme of this congress.

From the time they are born, people must build bridges one after another to all around them deepening their links with other people and things, thus creating their own world to live in. If such bridges are not built, or, even after building, if the bridge fails to fulfill its function, or if the will to build bridges is lost, people become helplessly isolated and lose their peace. I think, too, that our bridges must reach not only outward but inward, continuously connecting one to one's inmost self, discovering one's true self, and being an incentive to the proper setting up of the individual self.

Although I was caught up in evacuee life because of the war, the protecting hand of my elders was always there, so my childhood was a time of relative tranquility. Nevertheless, in that situation, the repeated changes (in my) environment were hard for a child to bear, and I sometimes felt ill at ease with my surroundings and was even at odds with my own self; I remember there were times when I was quite exhausted. At such times, how much did I enjoy and how greatly was I encouraged by a few books that I had by me, which, though they could not solve each and every problem, helped me to go on! Although I fear that my limited experience may not be of much help to anyone, I shall talk about it, just as it comes back to mind.

While I was still a little girl, I was told a story of a snail. Since my memory of it is blurred, I will talk about it following the book on which it was probably based: "The Sorrows of a Little Snail," by Niimi Nankichi.

Suddenly one day, a snail became aware that the shell upon his back was stuffed full with sorrows and went off to see his friend, saying he could no longer go on living and pouring out his tale of woe. But his snail friend said, "You are not alone in that. The shell on my back, too, is filled full of sorrows. The little snail went to another friend and then another friend and told them the same tale of woe, but from every friend the same reply came back. So the snail at last came to realize that everyone had his burden of sorrows to bear. "It is not only me: I, too, must bear my own burden of sorrows." The story ends when this snail decides to stop bemoaning his lot.

What age would I have been at that time? Since mother, (my) grandfather, who was mother's father, and my uncles and aunts read to me and told me tales up to about my second year in elementary school, I think I would have been between 4 and 7. At that age, I had not yet known anything you could call a great sorrow. For that reason, no doubt, when I learned that in the end the little snail had stopped bemoaning his lot, I simply thought, "Oh, good!" That was all. I gave no special thought to the matter. But afterward, time and again, that story kept coming back to (my) mind: It would seem that the sorrows that filled the shell quite full, and the sudden awareness of this, and the anxiety that made the snail feel he could no longer go on living, were all indelibly engraved on my memory. As I grew a little older, un-like my response to the first hearing, I could not simply conclude, "Oh, good!" and I even had at times some vague uneasy intimations that just to go on living was no easy thing. In spite of that, I certainly did not dislike this story.

The war broke out around the time I entered elementary school. This was in 1941. About the time I was promoted to fourth year, the war situation deteriorated and the schoolchildren respectively sought the help of relations or joined school groups, and were evacuated to the countryside. As for my family, my father and my elder brother stayed behind in Tokyo, while I and my younger sister and brother were taken by my mother to the seaside first and then to the mountains, moving from one house to another, and we greeted the end of the war at our third evacuation home.

Such repeated moves and changing (of) schools and so on are stressful for a child. Not a few memories come back to me of finding myself at something of a loss during this period of evacuee life, trying to adapt to different surroundings, different customs and different dialects. However, I, who had been rather delicate up till then, grew strong and healthy from living in the country. I did such things as raising silkworms and cutting grass for fertilizer, and incidentally, I even rose to the challenge of fulfilling the school assignment that involved bringing in 9 pounds each of wild geranium and meadow-rue leaves, gathered and well-dried for herbal use. To carry 9 pounds of dried plants by hand was too much for me. Mother tied the bundles on my back and then I carried them all the way to school. When there was no milk to be got, mother kept a goat for my little brother, and it made me so happy that the chores of minding it and milking it were left to me.

At that time when, apart from school textbooks, there was so little reading matter to be had, what a happiness it was to get the books that father, now and then, would bring from Tokyo! Since I had so few volumes, I would read every bit of them and prized them highly. There was one volume among them—I do not now recall the exact title—that was a book of Japanese myths and legends for children. Covering the early ages at the dawn of Japanese history, all these tales are found in two books written down in the eighth century, the "Kojiki" and the "Nihonshoki." No doubt my book was a retelling of (these) tales, adapted for children. Was it because I was a child myself? I read with absorbing interest these tales of the childhood of our race. I think that the myths and legends of any one country, while they may not be accurate, factual history, symbolize the people of that country in a strange and wonderful way. When we add to this the world of folklore, we can perceive, albeit faintly, how the people of the different countries and regions responded to nature; what was their view on life and death; what they valued; what they feared.

In the sense that it taught me how, aside from our individual families, the people have a common ancestry, the book of myths and legends that my father brought gave me something very like a root. Sometimes a book can give a child the root of stability and security. Other times, it seems, a book gives (one) the wings to soar and fly anywhere. However, the root which that book gave me then was only enough to enable me to dimly perceive where I belong. Later on, it would appear to be no more than the first stage in nurturing the greater root of self-definition.

Among the books my father brought me during the evacuation are three others that still stay in (my) memory. These belonged to my elder brother, and I had been wanting to read them some time, so I had asked my father to borrow them for me. All three volumes were included in the series "Library of Books for the Younger Generation." They were "Masterpieces of Japanese Literature" in one volume, and "Masterpieces of World Literature" in two volumes.

This series was first published in 1936, when my brother was 5 and I was just 2. The revised edition came out in 1942. Judging from my brother's age, the books, which mother had bought for him, would have been of this revised edition. "Masterpieces of World Literature" (included such selections) as Karel Capek's "A Postman's Story," Tolstoy's "What Men Live By," various tales from around the world and letters (by) a number of writers. There were also some poems of a level that children could understand.

Karl Busse, Francis Jammes, William Blake, Robert Frost ... also it was from the pages of this book that I first learned the name of India's poet Rabindranath Tagore. His poem "The Flower-School" was one of the selections. In later years, what was my joy when I rediscovered it in his collection titled "The Crescent Moon"! There, "The Flower-School" led me straight away to other poems (by) the same poet: "Baby's Way," "The Judge," "The Champa Flower."

Erich Kastner's "The First Despair" was an excessively sad poem. A little boy with a one mark coin tightly clutched in his sweaty fist, goes trotting off to buy some bread and bacon. All of a sudden he notices that the money he had in his fist is gone. One after another, the show-window lights go out, and everywhere the shops are closing. The boy's father and mother, tired out after a long day's work, are waiting for their child's return. That child has come as far as the house, turned his face to the wall, and goes on standing there perfectly still. The mother, who does not know this, begins to worry, so she goes out to look for him and finds him there. "Wherever have you been?" she asks him, but the child just bursts out sobbing and crying. "His suffering was greater than his mother's love:/Sunk in dejection, they both went into the house." With these words the poem ends.

In the "Masterpieces of World Literature" selection, apart from this "First Despair," there was another sad story by the Russian writer Sologub, called "Body Search." It is a story of a child from a poor home who is suspected of theft at school. He is made to undergo a thorough search of his person: his pockets, his socks and even under his clothes. While this is going on, the stolen article turns up elsewhere, and he is cleared of suspicion. That day, when he gets home, his mother listens attentively to all he has to tell, and then makes the bleak rejoinder: "Ah, you can't say anything. Remember, when you grow up, you'll have to face far worse than that. In this world anything can happen, you know!"

I remember that during the war, in order to raise the people's spirits, stirring tales of valor were the usual fare. In such a situation, why the editor of this series chose to include pieces like "The First Despair" and "Body Search" is a matter of deep interest to me. Is it that he thought it necessary, from a certain time in their lives, to prepare children to face the many inescapable griefs they would be troubled with as long as life would last? And also, did he perhaps feel he wanted children to learn, like the little snail in the story, that everyone has his own burden of sorrows?

The war came to an end in August 1945. Our family stayed on in the country for a little while, and then came home to our Tokyo house, which had escaped war damage. It was already my last year of elementary school.

At that time, I had only a few books. Those books, which had come to me through the hands of adults, and were in a sense quite educational, I read with far more than usual concentration, in what was a very special period.

Before entering on my life as an evacuee, the relative importance of my reading was not so very great. I did not have many books of my own. I used to freely go to the fairly well-stocked bookshelves of my brother, three years older than myself, and pick out whatever book looked interesting. My reading ability was acquired thus, mostly through books written with young boys in mind: stories of master swordsmen, detective stories, comics and what were called in the Japan of those days humor novels, which were both amusing and delightful.

A child starts reading, first of all, when he or she feels, "I want to read." Just like Heidi--who could not learn her letters at all under Fraulein Rottenmeier's guidance--through wanting so much to read the book Clara's grandmother had given her, and then (through) the additional motivation of wanting to read it to Peter's blind grandmother, was soon able to read any book she liked.

It is so important to familiarize oneself with the printed word at an early age. If I had not been able to stand up to a certain amount of reading, and if I had not felt nostalgic for the books and printed words that suddenly were gone from around me, I would not have been able to add reading to my memories of my evacuation life of more than a year and a half.

Looking back on it now, what did my childhood reading do for me?

Above all, it gave me pleasure and then laid the foundation for my later reading during adolescence.

At times it gave me roots, at times it gave me wings. These roots and wings were a great help to me as I threw bridges out and in, expanding bit by bit and nurturing my own personal world. Reading gave me opportunities to ponder joy and sorrow. It was through reading books, with many kinds of grief delineated in them, that I could come to know how deeply people other than myself can feel, or that I could perceive the many pains they bear.

When I think that there are children who go through so much grief and pain beyond comparison with mine, maybe I should refrain from saying that in my own sheltered childhood, too, there were such things as sorrows. But in any life there is pain and sorrow. The tears of every single child have their specific weight. For me, when I was caught up in my own small sorrows, it was a blessing to be able to find joy in books. Learning of life's sorrows adds to some extent more depth to one's own life, and deepens one's thought for others. Similarly, coming in touch with joy in books, the joy that was the wellspring of creative works by writers past and present imparts the joy of living to the reader, and when at times he is overcome by helplessness, may help restore his hope in life, providing wings for him to take flight once again.

In order that children may cope with life in this world of sorrows, as well as preparing them to endure sorrows, I think it is so important to foster in them hearts susceptible to joy, hearts sensitively turned to joy.

I would like to add one more thing, including my gratitude to books. Reading taught me that life is surely not a simple thing. We must recognize and face life's complexity, in person-to-person relations (and) in country-to-country relations.

It is truly regrettable that, having received your kind invitation, I cannot attend this New Delhi congress in person. For you, the organizers of the congress, Chairwoman Manorama Jafa and the members of AWIC, IBBY President Carmen Dearden, General Secretary Leena Maissen, and your supporters, the members of the various IBBY branches, the way to this 26th congress was surely not a smooth and easy road. Yet, beset by many complicated problems, with composure and unflagging perseverance, you continued preparations for this day. Believing that whatever the political situation in a country, as long as there are children, IBBY has a role to carry out, I have participated, although in this manner, in this New Delhi Congress '98. Please continue, as you have done up to now, IBBY's important work of linking books and children, in the belief that books are children's valuable friends and are a help to them:

Michiko, Empress of Japan. “Memories of Childhood ‘Friends,’” Japan Times Weekly International Edition, October 12-18, 1998. For images and full text in English and Japanese, see Her Majesty Empress Michiko of Japan: Building Bridges: Reminiscences of Childhood Readings. Tokyo: Suemori Books, 1998.