“Miesima Sigekiti.”
Hamamato bowed and went on. Miesima followed him with his eyes.
But although Hamamato invited Miesima, Miesima had no time to go. He had become a day-labourer, accepting the worst-paid work that came his way, and often walking as much as twenty kilometers to work.
It rained for a week after the day of the meeting with Hamamato.
One night when Miesima was lying on his mat, shivering with cold, a man in a thin white kimono suddenly appeared at the door of the hut.
“Where does Miesima live?”
Miesima, recognizing Hamamato’s voice, leapt up from his mat and threw on his kimono in the dark.
“Here I am. We have no electricity, that’s why it’s dark. Let’s go to Ozawa.”
Miesima and Hamamato set off for Ozawa’s house. He was the only one of the eleven who had electricity.[1]
While Hamamato and Miesima were talking in Ozawa’s house, their host went out to tell the other members of the local organization of Hamamato’s arrival, and soon seven of them were gathered in a circle around the dim electric bulb.
Hamamato, who seemed unaccustomed to sitting, began to speak standing up.
“The Suihei movement will very soon find itself in a blind alley.”
- ↑ The lack of electric lighting in Japan, where electricity is so widespread, is proof of the poverty-stricken condition of these people.
