Charlie Canning (2.26.06)

Inoue Yasushi’s English Grammar Lesson

While there are those who profess a love for English grammar, most
of us would rather do without it. First of all, there are the
unfamiliar terms like gerunds, participles, and compound complex
sentences. As if that weren’t enough to confound one, there are
countless rules and even more exceptions to those rules. In fact,
sometimes the sheer number of exceptions to a rule makes me wonder at
the utility of having a rule in the first place.

Nevertheless, grammar has to be taught and somebody has to teach
it. Unlike some of my colleagues whose eyes light up when they are
discussing one of the finer points of grammar, I do not enjoy teaching
grammar. Grammar is only palatable for me – and for my students, I
imagine – in context. So when I have to explain something that comes up
in one of my classes, I usually try to use an example from a writing
class or something from literature.

Recently, I have been reading the work of Inoue Yasushi
(1907-1991), a writer of the Showa Period who wrote beautifully crafted
short stories and novellas. It was in one of his early works called
“The Hunting Gun” (Ryoju) that I came across one of the most
imaginative grammar lessons that I have ever read. The excerpt that
follows, on the difference between the active and the passive voice, is
from the “Saiko’s Letter” section of “The Hunting Gun:”


To love, to be loved – our actions are pathetic. When I was in the second – or third-year class of a girls’ school, during an examination on English grammar, we were tested on the active and passive voice of verbs.

To strike, to be struck; to see, to be seen. Among many such examples was a brilliant pair: to love, to be loved. As each girl, eagerly looking at the questions and thinking about them, licked the lead of her pencil, someone mischievously started passing around a piece of paper, and the girl behind me gave it to me. When I looked at it, I found a pair　of　questions: ‘Do you want to love? Do you want to be loved?’ And under　the words ‘want to be loved,’ many circles had been written in ink or　blue or red pencil, while under ‘want to love’ there wasn’t a mark.

I wasn’t in the least an exception, and I added one more small circle　under ‘want to be loved.’ Even at the age of sixteen or seventeen,　when　we don’t know fully what it is to love or be loved, we women seem to　know by instinct already the happiness of being loved.

But during that examination the girl sitting beside me got the　scrap of　paper, glanced at it, and without hesitation made a big circle with a　bold　stroke of her pencil in the place where not a mark had been left. She wanted to love. Even now I can remember vividly that at the moment I felt confused, as if someone had suddenly attacked me from behind, though somehow, at the same time, I felt a slight revulsion because of her uncompromising attitude. She was one of the duller students in our class, an inconspicuous and somewhat gloomy girl. I don’t know what she has grown up to be – that girl whose hair had a brownish cast and who was always alone. But now, while I am writing this letter, more than twenty years since that time, the face of that lonely girl somehow floats before me as if it were only a short while ago.

When at the end of their lives they lie quietly and turn their faces to the wall of death – the woman who can say she has tasted fully the happiness of being loved and the woman who can say that even though she was unhappy she has loved – to which one would God give the true, quiet
rest?

Yet, is there anyone on earth who can say before God that she has loved?

Yes, there must be. That thin-haired girl may have grown up to be one of those few chosen women. Her hair and clothing may be in disorder, and her body may be scarred, but she can say with pride that she has loved.
(70-71)


References

Inoue Yasushi. The Hunting Gun. Trans. Sadamichi Yoko and Sanford Goldstein. Tokyo: Tuttle, 1961.