a boy called h
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a boy called h is his first venture into full - length book form .
a boy called h .
nonfiction classics for students. . retrieved july 09, 2018 from urltoken urltoken
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nimura, janice p. , review of a boy called h, in washington post, august 6, 2000 .
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a boy called h .
nonfiction classics for students. . encyclopedia. com. (july 9, 2018). urltoken
bryan aubrey, critical essay on a boy called h: a childhood in wartime japan, in nonfiction classics for students, gale, 2003 .
catherine dybiec holm, critical essay on a boy called h: a childhood in wartime japan, in nonfiction classics for students, gale, 2003 .
review of a boy called h, in publishers weekly, vol. 247, no. 7, february 14, 2000, p. 182 .
rochman, hazel, review of a boy called h, in booklist, vol. 96, no. 12, february 15, 2000, p. 1084 .
in the following review, noguchi praises a boy called h for its
gradual development of understanding on the part of the narrator
but questions the accuracy of the story .
levine, steven i. , review of a boy called h, in library journal, vol. 125, no. 6, april 1, 2000, p. 113 .
this study guide consists of approximately 126 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of a boy called h .
… any astute reader should see a boy called h as a literary work. each chapter is neatly constructed to make a single point and could stand alone as a short story, complete with beginning, middle and end .
haruo ota is one of h' s classmates and the head boy. haruo is known as
blackpatch
because of a birthmark on his head. h calls him
donchan .
haruo lends h a book called the three treasures from his father' s collection .
told from the viewpoint of the father morio (yutaka mizutani) ,
a boy called h
follows a young boy named hajime senoh, nicknamed
h
. his father, morio runs a tailor shop. with the onset of world war ii, their family must endure difficult times. nevertheless, h is filled with curiosity and a sense of justice .
beautiful movie. a family full of virtues that try to raise a boy in troubled times .
the question, coming from a stranger in the street, was a shock to the boy .
told from the viewpoint of the father morio ,
a boy called h
follows a young boy named hajime senoh, nicknamed
h
. his father, morio runs a tailor shop. with the onset of world war ii, their family must endure difficult times. nevertheless, h is filled with curiosity and a sense of justice. ~ ~ based on the autobiographical novel
shonen h
by kappa senoh .
in the fourth grade, h experiences another side to the war besides the patriotism that is touted by the government and, increasingly, by the press. girly boy, a young man in the community that h is friendly with, gets his call - up papers. three days after girly boy leaves, the military police come to kobe looking for him; apparently girly boy has deserted. when h and some friends are playing, h discovers girly boy in an old shack. horrified, h realizes that girly boy hanged himself to avoid serving in the war .
told from the viewpoint of the father morio (yutaka mizutani) ,
a boy called h
follows a young boy named hajime senoh, nicknamed
h
. his father, morio runs a tailor shop. with the onset of world war ii, their family must endure difficult times. nevertheless, h is filled with curiosity and a sense of justice. based on the autobiographical novel
shonen h
by kappa senoh (published by kodansha, july 9, 1999) .
senoh kappa' s a boy called h, the english translation of shônen h, is the story of a bright, curious boy growing up in an unconventional family in kobe during japan' s
15 - year war .
it is a tale of loss of innocence, as the boy' s penchant for questioning everything is subject to the tightening constraints of the social, educational and political systems of a country increasingly entrenched in war and insistent that its entire population devote itself to ultimate victory .
rising sun: the decline and fall of the japanese empire, 1936 - 1945 (1970), by john toland, is a history of japan and its wars during the years covered by a boy called h. toland views the events largely from the japanese perspective .
siegenthaler, peter, review of a boy called h, in persimmon: asian literature, arts, and culture, vol. 1, no. 2, summer 2000. available on the internet at urltoken (last accessed december 23, 2002) .
this is the fascinating true story of a japanese boy' s growing disillusionment with the conduct of a patriotic war .
ever since first grade at primary school, the boy had been dressed in a sweater with the name
h. senoh
knitted on the chest .
in the winter of the previous year, when an actress called okada and a stage director called sugimoto had fled across the border into the soviet union, the papers had reported it and there' d been a great fuss, but not a word appeared about the deliver boy from the noodle shop. it must be because he wasn' t famous, h concluded. even so, it puzzled him how the police had got to know about him .
this work of oral history captures in the words of ordinary people exactly what it was like to live in japan during the time of japan' s war with china and the united states. as in a boy called h, many japanese express a view of the war that is very different from the official versions .
although a boy called h is an autobiographical novel, the story is told in the third rather than the first person. in this case, the point of view—the consciousness through which the story is told—is limited to h. other characters, and all situations and events, are seen through his eyes. and since h is a young boy, the style employed to convey his point of view is for the most part quite simple. the sentence structure is simple, and the vocabulary is appropriate for a boy of h' s age. also, the story is told in a straightforward, chronological manner. there are no flashbacks (except in chapter 2, when h tells of his parents' backgrounds) or other more sophisticated literary devices .
senoh apparently recognized the validity of a number of yamanaka' s claims about historical inaccuracies and revised later editions of shônen h, although the latter two concerns were not addressed by the author. a boy called h, based on the 18th printing published in september 1997, reflects only some of the changes. as of february this year, the 29th printing was issued .
a look at day to day life of a school boy during war, told through short - story - like chapters. very good !
mr. nakata is h' s physics and chemistry teacher. he and h dislike each other .
this is the fascinating true story of a japanese boy' s growing disillusionment with the conduct of a patriotic war. boy h' s father was a tailor, his mother a tambourine - banging christian in a country of very few christians. his childhood unfolded in the 1930s, when militarism was steadily strengthening its grip on japan; it ended when the nation lay in ruins. what set h apa
itchan is a close friend of h at primary (or national) school. h confides in him that he owns a postcard from new york and talks to itchan about the united states. itchan passes this information on to another boy, who writes
spy
on h' s desk in chalk. however, h and itchan are soon reconciled .
if taken as an artistic attempt to explain why japan continued along the path to what in retrospect can only be seen as its inevitable self - destruction, then a boy called h serves as a valuable aid for those who did not live through that process to be more compassionate with those who did. as such, it is well worth reading .
okubo is a friend of h in second middle school. like h, okubo does not believe the official versions of the war .
after a number of visits to his room, h found himself liking the delivery boy more and more and decided that as a mark of respect he' d give him the nickname
red label .
yet any astute reader should see a boy called h as a literary work. each chapter is neatly constructed to make a single point and could stand alone as a short story, complete with beginning, middle and end. senoh said on a tv talk show that the chapters were written so that they would not have to be read in any particular order. indeed, the author often explains characters and h' s current situation in a way that appears redundant to someone who is reading the book straight through .
a boy called h begins in 1937. h (short for hajime) lives in kobe with his father, mother, and younger sister. h is about seven years old. japan is at war with china, and this conflict forms the background for the early part of the novel. it can be seen when h befriends a young man who works at the noodle shop and is shocked when his friend is arrested by the police as a communist and made to join the army. another of h' s friends, the projectionist at the movie theater, hangs himself rather than be drafted into the army .
in 1997, senoh published his autobiographical novel a boy called h: a childhood in wartime japan. this work was his first venture into full - length book form. the novel was a best - seller in japan and other countries in asia, selling over two million copies. it was adapted for the stage, and a television dramatization was made in 1999. the novel was translated into english in 1999 .
a boy called h is carefully constructed to recreate the boy' s development. the first chapters artfully illustrate his early innocence, curiosity and exuberance with a series of anecdotes reminiscent of the adventures of tom sawyer and huckleberry finn. like mark twain, senoh kappa narrates the story from the perspective of the youth, so that we see all his questions and confusion about the complex social issues in the world around him, but in a way that allows the more informed adult reader to laugh gently at his foibles .
i was also intrigued by yasuo fuhata' s a boy called h (2013) a japanese film about a protestant christian tailor' s family' s experiences throughout the imperialistic surge and subsequent american occupation as seen through the eyes of the young son ,
h
( hajime). the child actors were quite compelling and it is an interesting story of survival and preservation among what many saw as mass hysteria. the there was the compelling coming of age story ,
when first published in japan in 1997, a boy called h quickly became a best - seller. over two million copies were sold, and critics hailed the book as an outstanding example of literature about world war ii, although there was also a feeling that the book was not absolutely reliable in its historical details. most of these details were minor. for example, in an incident that takes place in the book in the summer of 1942, h' s sister sings a patriotic song that was not published until 1945 .
at his new school, h joins the riding club and learns how to ride a difficult horse called kamikeru. but he runs foul of inspector tamori, who is in charge of military training. tamori is furious when he discovers in h' s notebook a drawing of a nude woman, copied from a painting by manet. to escape tamori, h joins the rifle club, where he learns military drills and target practice. this training culminates in an arduous night march .
sumiyama, a friend of h in second middle school, is kind to h when h' s house is burned down. sumiyama also enthusiastically practices how to fight and kill enemy soldiers if they should land in japan .
after the war began with china, the government expected the press to be loyal to the japanese cause, and restrictions were placed on it. any news regarding the economy or foreign events was considered to be a state secret and could not be published without permission. (in a boy called h, h frequently expresses annoyance and frustration at the number of things that are declared state secrets .) further regulations made it a punishable offense to deviate from official guidelines or to reveal any information considered helpful to the enemy .
he did his rounds on a bicycle, singing loudly as he pedaled along. that was what attracted h: whenever he heard the delivery boy singing he' d jump on his own bike and pedal off after him .
iwao hayashi is a friend of h. they are in the same grade at primary school. hayashi is a champion wrestler; he is also intelligent and like h is good at drawing .
throughout a boy called h: a childhood in wartime japan, h continues to have troubling thoughts that explore the ethics of war. his musings are mature for a person his age, probably in part because his parents are thoughtful and deviate from the norm. keeping his thoughts to himself, or occasionally confiding to a few like - minded adults (including his father), h questions the official party line and finds discrepancies in news coverage of the war. in some cases, h realizes that his views differ from those of his friends or his teachers. in riskier instances, he is silent, as when he is interviewing for a slot in school and is asked about his opinion on the war. a reviewer in publishers weekly suggests that this discrepancy
holm is a freelance writer with speculative fiction and nonfiction publications. in this essay, holm looks at how senoh captures the insidious effects of war in a young boy' s daily life .
muneo ogura is a close friend of h toward the end of his time at second middle school .
he remembered various things now: how his friend had looked almost angry when he' d called him
red label ,
and forbidden him to use the nickname; the large number of records and books that he' d had; and the awkward look on his face when h had said
something private to talk about .
no, he hadn' t been an ordinary delivery boy .
for those of us in a country that has never seen traditional warfare on its soil, it can be difficult to imagine the day - to - day realities of living in a nation under attack. even news coverage cannot come close to capturing the insidious ways that war can affect individual lives. kappa senoh' s fictionalized autobiography, a boy called h: a childhood in wartime japan, does a fantastic job of capturing the process of war and its increasing presence in the life of h and others. the book' s precocious protagonist does not flinch from making his views about war known to the reader, even though h feels he must keep his opinions to himself in many public situations .
boy h' s father was a tailor, his mother a tambourine - banging christian in a country of very few christians. his childhood unfolded in the 1930s, when militarism was steadily strengthening its grip on japan; it ended when the nation lay in ruins. what set h apart from other kids, despite the shared preoccupation with schoolmates, movies, and sex, was an unusually sharp eye and a precociously skeptical attitude that made him a bit of a loner in a conformist society .
set in 1950s tuscany, voice from the stone is the haunting and suspenseful story of verena, a solemn nurse drawn to aid a young boy who has fallen silent since the sudden passing of his mother .
but h' s life has its troubles .
maps and eggs
describes the futile efforts h and his parents make to curb his bed - wetting. and in
love ,
h learns to his embarrassment that the word love can have many different connotations. in
a boy and a sea ,
he and his friends row a dinghy too far from the shore and endanger themselves. then torrential rains drench kobe for days and lead to a serious flood. in his borrowed book the three treasures, h secretly reads children' s stories in a book he borrows from a friend, even though his mother disapproves of his reading fiction .
what !
h exclaimed in surprise .
is yoshie a man ?
yoshie was more common as a woman' s name .
done in white on a dark brown background, the name stood out even at a distance. but the boy, far from sharing his mother' s pride andpleasure, found the idea of wearing something so different from other boys' clothes a major embarrassment .
this is the fascinating true story of a japanese boy' s growing disillusionment with the conduct of a patriotic war. boy h' s father was a tailor, his mother a tambourine - banging christian in a country of very few christians. his childhood unfolded in the 1930s, when militarism was steadily strengthening its grip on japan; it ended when the nation lay in ruins. what set h apart from other kids, despite the shared preoccupation with schoolmates, movies, and sex, was an unusually sharp eye and a precociously skeptical attitude that made him a bit of a loner in a conformist society. though at times dark, his anecdotes are arranged with the lightest of touches and a sharp sense of humor. the total effect is of a rich, varied, and intensely readable novel, but one that involves real lives, actual events .
h didn' t know what an intellectual type of criminal was. but took it as a compliment .
not
ryohei koiso, a well - known artist, helps h in his studies after he graduates from second middle school .
hazel rochman, in booklist, commenting on how world war ii becomes increasingly real for h, noted that
the writing is quiet, almost detached at times, until you come to realize that the young boy is fighting emotional breakdown .
almost every evening after that, h went to the young man' s room .
also called h, hajime senoh is the son of morio and toshika senoh. as a young boy in primary school he is intelligent and mischievous. according to his father, hajime has a habit of saying the first thing that comes into his head. hajime learns ways of getting what he wants even if he has to be devious. when he has no money but wants to see a
puppet peepshow
at a fairground, he tries to scare off the adults who are watching it by telling them they can contract an eye disease by touching the lens. significantly, his favorite god in japanese myth is susanowo, who has a reputation for behaving badly .
with a smile, the other took a box down from a shelf, put some dark - colored beans in it, and ground them with a loud rasping sound. there was a smell rather like tobacco, which h found a bit disturbing, but he did his best not to show it .
uncle hadano is a civil engineer. he is a close friend of the senoh family, and that is why h calls him uncle, although he is not a blood relative. h is fond of him and regards him as another father. the affection is mutual. h stays with uncle hadano for a while towards the end of the war. uncle hadano gets sick with cancer and dies shortly afterwards .
a recurring theme in a boy called h is the extent to which the japanese newspapers during wartime did not report the truth. h gets frustrated with what he reads about the war because he senses, as does his father, that they are not getting the whole story. when the first air raids are made on kobe, the newspaper headlines read ,
the neighborhood association spirit beats the raiders .
this puzzles h because he knows that, in fact, the air raid had taken the neighborhood association by surprise and that, in practice, the hazards of putting out fires were nothing like the smooth drills they had been regularly practicing. also, someone is killed in that first raid, but the newspapers fail to report it. h decides that the newspapers
are just a pack of lies !
and he does not change his opinion from then on .
h' s father takes him to a restaurant, and h is allowed into the adjoining movie theater for his first taste of a film. not long after this experience, h gets a chance to make money of his own through an ingenious arrangement. he resells the paste that his father uses in his tailoring business to his school friends for use in their handicraft classes .
so from third grade on it was agreed that it should be just the letter h .
since pencils often had
h
engraved on them, it was one letter of the alphabet that everyone could read, and in no time
h
became his nickname .
h was startled; he' d never been shouted at like that by him before .
one of the best books i have ever read. it provides a highly descriptive and personal account of growing up in kobe during ww2. the author covers day to day details of his life as a student in a world that was becoming more difficult to live in by the day. food shortages, brutal treatment by teachers, work in the factories and h' s growing sense of disillusionment with those who were promoting the wartime propaganda are vividly portrayed. h also shows his own transformation from a young boy to hi
with a true nonconformist' s mentality, h makes it clear early on that he respects people who stand for their principles. though his mother has forbidden him to read anything but the bible and textbooks, she finds that he is secretly reading the three treasures (h loves books and movies). when she confronts an unsuspecting teacher about this, the teacher covers for h, saying that reading such books was good for h, and reading only the bible
wasn' t likely to do [ children ] much good .
h admires the pragmatism and forthright nature of the teacher. given such glimpses at h' s parents, it is easy to see how such a young protagonist developed such a questioning and intelligent nature. although his mother is an evangelist, she is at least willing to change her stance regarding h' s reading material after meeting with the teacher. h' s father also has a number of interesting discussions with h on the subjects of war, tolerance for other religions and cultures, and ethics. at one point, h' s father tells the boy ,
if you' re going to call religions that other people believe in' heathen,' you can' t complain if other people refer to christianity as heathen .
h, who knew what
informing
meant, felt his heart begin to thump suffocatingly .
h is indeed horrified, even if the tone of the narrative is relatively subdued. in fact, throughout the book, h seems to process many horrifying experiences in a subdued, almost clinical way. it is difficult to tell whether this is part of the author' s style or whether the protagonist, as reviewer hazel rochman suggests in booklist, sounds detached because
the young boy is fighting emotional breakdown .
h notes that the paper never reports on the incident. throughout the book, he' ll continually notice discrepancies between reality and what the news reports, especially as the war accelerates. and possibly, for the first time in his life, the concept of being an informant is really understood by the boy. he begins to fear that noodles will think h informed on him .
in an interesting scene toward the end of the book, h expresses sudden joy that the war is over. his friend is upset with h' s reaction and joy, since the friend' s family members are potentially dead or injured because of the war. the friend smacks h in anger, and h experiences a sudden catharsis .
suddenly, the tear spilled from h' s eyes too—not from regret at the defeat, but out of sheer, frustrated puzzlement as to what the war had been all about .
h fights with his conscience through much of the book. in showing this, senoh has made the book completely readable, since h is confronting aspects of the human condition others can relate to .
h' s own favorite was the young man at the noodle shop farther along from them on the other side of the main street. the grownups living thereabouts couldn' t quite place him .
seems he' s from tokyo ,
they' d say .
he looks too smart for a delivery boy .
yokota is a friend of h, and h considers him to be worldly - wise. yokota is one of the students who participates with h on the arduous night march and other military drills. he and h go on a secret riding excursion together and are consequently expelled from the riding club. yokota' s family home is burned down following the big air raid on kobe in 1945. not long after this event, his father is killed in action in the south pacific .
lurking behind the day - to - day experiences of the growing boy is the specter of the imperialism and militarism that characterized japanese society in the 1930s and continued until the japanese defeat in 1945. imperialism and militarism are apparent almost from the beginning, in the passing reference to the neighborhood celebrations that followed the fall of nanking, china, to invading japanese forces in 1937. h is affected by the war when he is only seven years old, when two of his friends are called up to the army. one of them commits suicide rather than enlist .
lieutenant tamori is the teacher in charge of military training at h' s second middle school. all the students fear him. he is known as
his lechery
because not only does he cultivate an imperious manner, he also makes inappropriate inquiries about the boys' sisters. tamori takes a dislike to h when he finds h' s sketch of a female nude in his notebook. in another incident, tamori hits h for what he regards as an insolent remark. h joins the rifle club to escape him. later he hears a rumor that some years earlier, tamori' s wife ran off with another man. this information makes h believe that tamori must be lonely, and he feels compassion for him .
it is immediately after the girly boy incident that h' s true feelings about war begin to become clear. h begins to have the courage to process such thoughts internally, even though they run counter to what the government would have the public believe about the war. with surprising clarity for a young child, and an unusual lack of fear at the circumstances, h reflects on the situation .
his friend hadn' t wanted to be a soldier, he thought to himself: suicide was the only alternative. he wondered if hanging himself had seemed better than being killed by a bullet on the battlefield .
morio is unfailingly kind and attentive to h, always ready to give him sound advice. even when h throws a rice pot lid at him and walks out of the house, morio does not blame him and welcomes him back with warmth .
you thought he was a woman, did you? he' s a famous tenor. of course he' s a man.' like a feather in the wind' is a famous aria .
yoshiko senoh, h' s sister, is two years younger than h. she likes to cling to her older brother, and h finds this attachment a nuisance. but in one incident yoshiko shows him kindness and he thinks better of her. this event occurs when she insists on eating with the fork that has one prong missing, even though it was h who broke the fork. yoshiko is evacuated to the countryside when the air raids start .
verena is a young nurse hired to help a mute young heir within an isolated castle in tuscany. the more she observes the boy, the more verena becomes convinced he has fallen under the spell of a powerful and otherworldly persona trapped in the castle' s stone walls, one that seems to be quickly approaching on her .
the defeat on guadalcanal was also initially reported as a success, until, as h found out, it was conceded that japanese forces had made a
sideward advance
( which as shillony shows is a translation of the japanese word tenshin and is the equivalent of the phrase
advancing in another direction
that h reads about) .
i think i' ll like it when i' ve had it a few times and get used to the bitterness ,
said h .
based on kappa senoh' s 3. 4 million selling autobiographical novel, this film set during the first half of the 1940s is a coming of age story with a twist, featuring a young boy named hajime (nicknamed
h
). their family is quite worldly compared to their community, his mother is a devout christian and his father is a tailor working with many expatriates in kobe. as patriotic world war ii unfolds, hajime' s understanding of the world is challenged but his survival spirit shines through .
h didn' t want to go home yet, so he pressed him to play something else instead .
the hero is dubbed
h
by his friends because his mother, inspired by a photograph she received from a foreign missionary friend, has knit the first letter of the boy' s name, hajime, into a sweater that he often wears. both of his parents are devout christians with many contacts in the foreign community of kobe, and both strive to live according to their principles, especially by showing brotherly love to all people .
while this reviewer might find that these
big questions
would have been dealt with more directly had h voiced them aloud, h does, on many occasions, struggle with the questions internally, giving the reader a good argument regarding the ethics of war .
set in kobe in the early showa period. hajime (yoshioka tatsuki), known as
h
, is an intensely curious boy with a strong sense of justice. he grows up loved by his liberal father morio (mizutani yutaka) and christian mother toshiko (ito ran), but the war soon casts its shadow on hajime' s life .
even though japan is not at war in the beginning of this book, the stage is being set as the author skillfully accents aspects of h' s life that will later prove to have a direct relationship, in some way, to war. early on, h' s mother is described as an ardent christian. the practice of christianity is not the norm during this period in japan. h' s mother came from a family of buddhists, and
no one had dreamed for a moment that she might become christian, and it caused quite a stir in the village .
later, h' s family is suspect in a general way, as wartime propaganda paints a picture of christianity as the religion of the
british and american fiends .
h' s family is considered unusual in the community of kobe, since h' s father is a tailor and has customers of all nationalities (kobe has an international population). as the wartime situation becomes more tense, h' s family needs to consider how openly they can practice their religion. h' s father wonders if he' ll still have international customers and how his business will fare .
hudson loverro, left, as a younger version of the character mr. thornton plays, with richard h. blake in the role of his father .
h' s transition from childhood to early adulthood is apparent in several major episodes. firing live ammunition with the school rifle club for the first time is a significant moment, for example. so are the many times when he questions the validity of reports he reads in the newspapers about the progress of war. but the most important episode is when the family home is set on fire following an american air raid with incendiary bombs. fifteen - year - old h immediately takes charge, giving his mother instructions about what to do and dousing a quilt in water so that they can put it over their heads as they flee. when his mother stops to pray, he tells her they must keep moving. in fact, she has fainted, and h' s slaps get her conscious again. then they come upon a woman whose son is badly injured. h almost faints at the sight of the blood, but he regains control of himself and offers the woman his flask of water, which she gives to the boy. but this is not enough to save him. for the first time h witnesses death, and h feels compassion for the dead boy—at least he is no longer in pain .
h is a nonconformist and a pragmatist. he is also a survivor. it' s no surprise, therefore, when h begins to pursue a career as an artist toward the end of the book. many artists, through their work, pursue an ideal of telling the truth, of speaking the truth and letting it be known. although the character h may hesitate, out of necessity, to voice his opinions, the author has used effective honesty in giving us a look at the difficult ethics and the surrealistic everyday life in wartime japan .
the military exercises continue. h fires live ammunition for the first time and discovers that he is a good shot. another military exercise involves students simulating leaping up from a hiding place in the ground and throwing a grenade at an enemy tank .
furuta is one of the members of the second middle school rifle club, and he encourages h to join .
i know it !
h burst out .
it' s a nice aria, isn' t it ,
he added self - consciously .
three men in black who' d got onto the roof from the drying platform leapt on him from in front and behind and pinned him down. there was a short struggle with loud cries of
hey! stop !
before someone called out
got him !
and the young man disappeared with them over the roof to the other side .
this movie portrays the life of a tailor and his family from their boy' s viewpoint. the locale is kobe, japan before, under and after the ww2. the husband and wife are protestant christians, minority in japanese society even today. the father looks confident as a tailor, always having positive view of life. the mother has strong sense of mission as a christian, sometimes excessively strong faith. for the boy, having such mother sometimes makes his daily life difficult, but thanks to his father who even takes him to his foreign clients, the boy learns a lot in life. as the nation goes towards militarism and fascism, tribulations come to the christian home. as people see christians close to foreigners and thus suspect them of spying. the father' s attitude for each issue is reassuring. from his attitude after the war, we can see it is not only his faith but also his pride as a professional tailor that support him. as a movie that portrays japan around the war, and as a movie that portrays a family, i think shonen h will be seen for long. since the plot is written from the child' s viewpoint, it has simple plot structure, without any side stories. therefore everyone may have own sentiment. as for acting performance, the boy and the girl act very well. when the girl is sent for evacuation, getting on the train, she is nearly crying. the boy quirks his face to make her laugh, and the girl' s face becomes half smiling and half crying. her face is unforgettable .
limited - time only: buy a season 1 colleggtible & get 50% off a second .
narrated and viewed from the perspective of a child in the family, shoonen h portrays the daily trials and societal difficulties of a christian family from just prior to the commencement of... see full summary »
h didn' t take the military secret bit too seriously: the charcoal man was known for telling tall stories .
h found himself liking the delivery boy more and more and decided that as a mark of respect he' d give him the nickname
red label .
the next time he went to visit, he told him about it. to his surprise, the smile was wiped off his face in a flash .
no, thank you !
he said in a loud voice ,
you stick to' noodles' —i don' t want any' red label .
'
right away, we are given a hint of the public paranoia that will increase over time. so early in the book, this instance of subtle public fear is an almost unnoticed foreshadowing of events to come, since it is combined with other apparently pleasant details of everyday life. h becomes friendly with a man from the noodle shop. when noodles (as h calls him) invites h up to his apartment to listen to records, h is so taken with the music that he calls noodles
red label ,
after the labels on the record collection .
although h' s parents were keen on education, they believed that homework should be done after the evening meal, and that those daylight hours when the children were not at school were a time for them to play. thanks to that, once h got back from school every day he was free to amuse himself in the hills or on the beach without interference. all in all, h' s days were a busy round of fun .
possibly the proprietor of the noodle shop had been taken in by the police as well, since the shop didn' t open again for about a week after that. and from then on, the neighbors took care never to mention noodles again. when h plucked up courage and asked the proprietor' s wife ,
where' s your delivery boy now ?
the woman looked annoyed .
h' s father morio also helps the boy understand other people' s reactions. when h asks morio why the usually soft - spoken young man at a local shop bellowed out a speech welcoming his draft notice, morio points out that
he probably has this basic idea that it' s a man' s duty to give up his life for his country ,
and even though his
mother and the others in his family don' t want to lose him ,
he
may well have wanted to declare to himself and everyone else that [ he ] … was a real man now .
h also sees morio himself slowly becoming more circumspect, even in his conversations with his son, since the child' s bragging that his father has a picture postcard of a tall building in america is enough to get morio dragged into the police station for questioning .
h was particularly fond of the sea. rushing out of the house wearing nothing but a loincloth, he would race down the street and plunge straight into the water .
no, i won' t tell anybody ,
said h .
herelet' s swear on it .
he crooked a finger and held it out .
he lowered the needle gently onto the record. there was a scratchy noise for a moment, then suddenly the sound of a male voice singing .
based on the autobiographical novel
shonen h
by kappa senoh (published by kodansha, july 9, 1999) .
so during the summer holiday h' s mornings were spent climbing in the hills and his afternoons swimming in the sea .
noodles slapped playfully at h' s head .
i can see you' re the intellectual type of criminal .
there are certain books a person must read about wwii, and i think this is one of them. it is about a boy growing up in kobe and the war going on around him. the boy, hajime, is unusually perceptive and his father is also very wise. his parents (especially his mother) are christians. hajime is good at art and ended up becoming an artist and writer. i looked at kappa senoh' s biography on google and his real name is indeed hajime senoh. i don' t personally believe that this book is strictly autobiog
h does not want to be a tailor like his father. instead, his greatest talent is drawing, and at the age of sixteen he resolves to become an artist .
the fellow looked taken aback for a moment, then said ,
it' s a friend i haven' t seen for a long time .
h, sensing that he was being treated as an adult, felt pleased and said ,
that doesn' t bother me. yes, please .
they always drank black tea at h' s home. he' d never once had coffee .
but while calogero’s father, lorenzo (richard h. blake), assures him that he was right to clam up — “you did a good thing for a bad man, ” he tells him — lorenzo (mr. de niro in the movie) grows increasingly alarmed when sonny begins taking calogero under his wing, giving him the nickname c and having him run errands, quite profitable ones. as boy grows to teenager, his hero worship only increases, and lorenzo and sonny engage in a tense tug of war for calogero’s soul .
the way h rode his bike, unfortunately, was not exactly graceful. they' d bought him, secondhand, an adult' s bike, and his feet wouldn' t reach the pedals if he sat on the saddle, so he had to put his foot through from the side. even so, he got up quite a good speed and would tail the delivery boy closely, singing along with him as he went .
sometimes plain old pasta with red sauce is just what the doctor ordered. “a bronx tale, ” which opened at the longacre theater on broadway on thursday, might be called the musical - theater equivalent of that classic comfort food. it doesn’t break ground or dazzle with an unusual recipe — like, say, mixing rap and american history — but it delivers reliable pleasures with polished professionalism and infectious energy .
living in a temporary dwelling with his family, h gets angry about everything he does not like. under emotional strain, he quarrels with his parents and leaves home. he intends to commit suicide by lying under a train but pulls back at the last minute. for a while he lives in secret in a building at the school. unsure of whether he will be allowed to graduate, he decides to study art. he seeks out a well - known artist, who allows him to work at his studio. the novel ends with h working as a sign painter during the day and studying at night with fellow artists at a studio .
later it turns out that noodles is captured right in h' s neighborhood; and that noodles is thought to be a communist informant. but when h hears the neighbors talking about the incident and tries to decipher their meaning, he is brushed aside .
' what' re dangerous thoughts? who' re the secret police?' h asked them anxiously, but the grown - ups suddenly clammed up.' keep your voice down,' he was told with a look of fierce disapproval .
this is an intensely real, human reaction—one that any reader who has taken a risk (or considered taking a risk) in voicing a dissenting opinion will recognize .
he sounded so firm about it that h said in a knowing voice ,
all right, i won' t. i expect you' ve got something private to talk about .
a few days after the bombing, h observes the area around hyogo station, which is completely leveled. dead bodies yet to be cremated are visible in the area. it is a sobering moment for h, who as a result of the air raid has been forced to lose any childhood innocence he may have had left :
' so this is war,' he thought as he gazed over the seemingly endless sea of destruction .
others tend to see h as an odd boy, although he has plenty of friends at school. but he is always questioning authority and asking awkward questions about why things are as they are. he is puzzled by the adults who say that everything that happens in the war is the will of the emperor, since h cannot see how the emperor can possibly be aware of all the things being done in his name. h' s instincts are pacifistic, and he does not want to join the rifle club because he feels it is too warlike. he makes up his own version of a patriotic jingle, neatly reversing its meaning. he becomes exasperated when he realizes that the newspapers are not telling the truth about the war.
a boy called h ( 少年ｈ ) is a 2013 japanese war drama film directed by yasuo furuhata . it is based on the book by kappa senoh , translated into english by john bester . 
a boy called h (少年ｈ) is a 2013 japanese war drama film directed by yasuo furuhata. it is based on the book by kappa senoh, translated into english by john bester.
a boy called h (少年ｈ) is a 2013 japanese war drama film directed by yasuo furuhata. it is based on the book by kappa senoh, translated into english by john bester.