Botchan (坊っちゃん)

**A NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR** NO translation can expect to equal, much less to excel, the original. The excellence of a translation can only be judged by noting how far it has succeeded in reproducing the original tone, colors, style, the delicacy of sentiment, the force of inert strength, the peculi

**BOTCHAN** (**MASTER DARLING**) **CHAPTER I**. Because of an hereditary recklessness, I have been playing always a losing game since my childhood. During my grammar school days, I was once laid up for about a week by jumping from the second story of the school building. Some may ask why I committed

**CHAPTER II**. WITH a long, sonorous whistle the steamer which I was aboard came to a standstill, and a boat was seen making toward us from the shore. The man rowing the boat was stark naked, except for a piece of red cloth girt round his loins. A barbarous place, this!

**CHAPTER III**. My teaching began at last. When I entered the class-room and stepped upon the platform for the first time, I felt somewhat strange. While lecturing, I wondered if a fellow like me could keep up the profession of public instructor.

**CHAPTER IV**. For us teachers there was a duty of night watch in the school, and we had to do it in turn. But Badger and Red Shirt were not in it. On asking why these two were exempt from this duty, I was told that they were accorded by the government treatment similar to officials of “Sonin” rank

**CHAPTER V**. “Won’t you go fishing?” asked Red Shirt. He talks in a strangely womanish voice. One would not be able to tell whether he was a man or a woman.

**CHAPTER VI**. I heartily despise Clown. It would be beneficial for Japan if such a fellow were tied to a quern-stone and dumped into the sea. As to Red Shirt, his voice did not suit my fancy.

**CHAPTER VII**. That very night I left the boarding house. While I was packing up, the boss came to me and asked if there was anything wrong in the way I was treated. He said he would be pleased to correct it and suit me if I was sore at anything.

**CHAPTER VIII**. On my way back from the fishing to which I was invited by Red Shirt, and since then, I began to suspect Porcupine. When the latter wanted me to get out of Ikagin’s house on sham pretexts, I regarded him a decidedly unpleasant fellow. But as Porcupine, at the teachers’ meeting, cont

**CHAPTER IX**. When I went to the school, in the morning of the day the farewell dinner party was to be held, Porcupine suddenly spoke to me; “The other day I asked you to quit the Ikagins because Ikagin begged of me to have you leave there as you were too tough, and I believed him. But I heard aft

**CHAPTER X**. The town is going to celebrate a Japanese victory to-day, and there is no school. The celebration is to be held at the parade ground, and Badger is to take out all the students and attend the ceremony. As one of the instructors, I am to go with them.

**CHAPTER XI**. The next morning on awakening I felt pains all over my body, due, I thought, to having had no fight for a long time. This is not creditable to my fame as regards fighting, so I thought while in bed, when the old lady brought me a copy of the Shikoku Shimbun. I felt so weak as to need