Behind the glossy photos

My brother, Mook, kindly dropped off a 1977 yearbook from our alma mater, St. Mary’s International School which was located in Setagaya-ku, Tokyo. He thought it might be good for this blog - supply some photos or jog some memories. While there weren’t really any photos in particular that I want to use, flicking through it certainly brought back some memories from those high school days - both good and bad.

I talk about it in one of the chapters of Love Letters To Japan, but I struggled at school. I had a problem with authority, in particular if it was unjust or heavy handed. I found it impossible to obey the commands of someone I did not respect. There were plenty of good teachers there but a couple of them were just not good humans and we clashed. That yearbook, for example, was handed out to students (who paid for them) a few weeks before the end of school. The tradition is that you hand your copy around to friends and everyone writes a few words (of sentiment or sarcasm) and signs them under their photo. It brings the book to life, personalises it. My copy was intentionally withheld by our home room teacher, Brother Henry, as a form of targeted and malicious punishment towards me for some mild indiscretion from earlier in term.

Weirdly his odious behaviour still reverberates today. The yearbook is empty, devoid of any personalised messages from friends of the year, because of him. He was known to hang around the locker room unnecessarily after gym and was commonly referred to as Brother Pervert. I could not tolerate his sadistic ways (I was not his only target - he preyed on the weak, the different or anyone who would not submit to his ways). It is not like me at all, I am a peace loving advocate of non-violence, but I have to admit that there was one time, after he had humiliated me in class, that I saw him standing at the top of the stairs and I seriously considered bull rushing him and pushing him down.

I remember the feeling. It all came back as I handled the leather bound book, full of pictures of the chess club, activities, high achievers, happy and innocent elementary school smiling faces in black and white. The surface level presentation of an institution. The stories that aren’t told, the ones like this one, and others - one of Henry’s fellow religious brothers (and my sixth grade teacher) - was later uncovered as a full blown pedophile who for years sexually molested eleven and twelve year old boys in his care while at camp in Kiyosato. His name was Brother Lessard, more commonly referred to by his students as Brother Lizard.

So, yeah, my years in Tokyo, were very special and close to my heart thanks to the culture and kindness of the Japanese people but in the background was the disturbing drone of my school life were I was also bullied by upperclassmen because of my mellow exterior and cheeky, feisty nature that was not going to back down to their attempts at submission. On multiple occasion two or three of them would gang up on my and pound, leave me in a crying ball on the ground. I never snitched or even told my parents. There was no point.

I bring this up because I believe that it is important to shed light on the dark side, in the hope that some courage may be garnered by other victims of oppression and violence in school. I got through it, started lifting weights and learnt some martial arts (not for long - it was too demanding! - but enough to be ready to defend myself). Importantly, too, I learnt to be able to identify assholes in advance and to not engage with them. And, with bullies, to not reveal even a hint of potential vulnerability - to project courage. The last time I was bullied was around the age of fourteen, when a guy who had been jibing me for the whole year flicked a ruler and hit me in the balls. Not only did it hurt like hell but it ignited a wild rage in me and I followed him into a deserted hallway and picked him up into a 90 degree position and slammed him into the wall. He fell to the floor in a stunned and immobile heap, whimpering. After that, nobody bothered me.

Funny, isn’t it. The faux leather bound volume that is made to be reviewed with fondness triggered these memories. Reality, beneath the surface, can be a dark, troubling place. As kids, in general, we are not prepared. And yet, somehow, we get through. ​