n her way to and from the station, Totto-chan used to pass a tenement where some Koreans lived. Totto-chan, of course, didn't know they were Koreans. The only thing she knew about them was that there was a woman there who wore her hair parted down the middle and drawn back into a bun, and who was rather plump and wore white rubber shoes that were pointed in front like little boats. She wore a dress with a long skirt and a ribbon tied in a big bow on the front of her short blouse, and always seemed to be looking for her son, calling out. "MaSOW-chaan!" She was always calling his name. And instead of pronouncing it "Ma-sa-o-chan," as people normally would, she stressed the second syllable and drew out the "chan" in a high-pitched voice that sounded sad to Totto-chan.

The tenement was right beside the Oimachi train necks on a small embankment. Totto-chan knew who Masao-chan was. He was a little bigger than she was and probably in second grade, although she didn't know which school he went to. He had untidy hair and always had a dog with him. One day, as Totto-chan was walking home post the embankment, Masao-chan was standing on top of it with his feet apart and his hands on his hips, in an arrogant posture.

"Korean!" he shouted at Totto-chan.

His voice was scathing and full of hatred. Totto-chan was scared. She had never done anything mean to him, or even spoken to him for that matter, so she was startled when he yelled at her from above in such a spiteful way.

When she got home she told Mother about it. "Masao-chan called me a Korean," she said. Mother put her hand to her mouth and Totto-chan saw her eyes fill with mars. Totto-chan was perplexed, thinking it must be something very bad. Mother didn't stop to wipe away her tears, and the tip of her nose was red. "poor child!" she said. "People must call him 'Korean! Korean!' so ofmn that he thinks it's a nasty word. He probably doesn't understand what it means because he's still young. He thinks it's like baka, which people say when they mean 'you fool.' Masao-chan has probably had 'Korean' said to him so often he wanted to say something nasty to somebody else, so he called you a Korean. Why are people so cruel?”

Drying her eye, Mother said to Totto-chan very slowly, "You're Japanese and Masao-chan comes from a country called Korea. But he's a child, just like you. So, Totto-chan dear, don't ever think of people as different. Don't think, 'That person's a Japanese, or this person's a Korean.' Be nice to Masao-chan. It's so sad that some people think other people aren't nice just because they're Koreans."

It was all rather difficult for Totto-chan to understand, but what she did understand was that Masao-chan was a little boy whom people spoke ill of for no reason at all. That must be why his mother was always searching for him so anxiously, she thought. So next morning, as she passed the embankment and heard his mother calling out, "MaSOW-chaan" in her shrill voice, she wondered where he could be, and made up her mind that even though she herself wasn't a Korean, if Masao-chan called her that again, she would reply, "We're all children! We're all the same," and she'd try to make friends with him.

Masao-chan's mother's voice, with its combination of irritation and anxiety, had a special quality of its own that seemed to linger in the air for a long time, until it was drowned by the sound of a passing train.

"MaSOW-chaan!"

Once you heard the sad, tearful sound of that voice you could never forget it.