he children liked to call the headmaster "Issa Kobayashi." They even made up affectionate verses about him like the following:

That was because the headmaster's family name was Kobayashi, the same as that of the famous nineteenth-century poet Issa Kobayashi, whose haiku he loved. He quoted Issa's haiku so often, the children felt as if Issa Kobayashi was just as much their friend as Sosaku Kobayashi, their headmaster.

The headmaster loved Issa's haiku because they were so true and dealt with the ordinary things in life. At a time when there must have been thousands of haiku poets, Issa created a world of his own that nobody was able to imitate. The headmaster admired his verses with their almost childlike simplicity. So at every opportunity, he would teach his pupils verses by Issa, which they would learn by heart, such as:

The headmaster once improvised a melody for one, and they all sang it.

The headmaster often held haiku classes, although hey were not a formal part of the curriculum.

Totto-chan's first effort at composing haiku described her favorite comic-strip character Norakuro, stray black dog who had joined the army as a private and gradually earned promotion in spite of he ups and downs in his career. It ran in a popular boy's magazine.

The headmaster had said "Try making up an honest, straight forward haiku about something that is in your thoughts."

You couldn't call Totto-chan's a proper haiku. But it did show what sort of thing impressed her in those days. Her haiku didn't quite conform to the proper 5-7-5 syllable form. Hers was 5-7-7. But then, Issa's one about the fledgling sparrows in Japanese was 5-8-7, so Totto-chan thought it would be all right.

During their walks to Kuhonbutsu Temple, or when it rained and they couldn't play outdoors but gathered in the Assembly Hall, Tomoe's Issa Kobayashi would tell the children about haiku. He also used haiku to illustrate his own thoughts about life and nature.

Some of Issa's haiku might have been written especially for Tomoe.