Chapter 5 Apprenticeship

I finally found a job. But, to be precise, I don't know if that counts as work.As mentioned earlier, my family is in the restaurant business, but unknowingly, my father began to be urged by the hotel and the landlord to pay for the rent.In the end, I had to buy a liter bottle of wine from the hotel with cash.I couldn't find a job, and I wandered around all day, feeling anxious and feeling like I was sitting on pins and needles. If I know a craft, I can find a job, but I can't do carpentry, and I can't be a mason or stonemason.The reason why I want to rely on a craft to do work is because after the bankruptcy of Kawahoku Electric Co., Ltd., an employee of the same company, suffering from lack of food and clothing, came to my house with a quilt in his arms. The impotence of those who earn a living.This clerk is nearly forty years old, and because he has no education, he has the lowest salary among his peers.He sent his wife and children back to his hometown, and while he was looking for a job, he came to my house to sleep at night.

One day, I was wandering around in the alleys of Xiaocang, and saw a small printing factory posting an advertisement for "apprentice painters", that is, to recruit original lithographers.I have loved pictures since elementary school, and the scores of pictures ranked first in the whole grade.I thought I could still do the work related to painting, so I walked into that printing factory. The factory owner came out and said to me: "Apprentices are hired immediately after graduating from primary school. It is not easy for a person like you who is about to be twenty." At that time, I was very envious of those who were busy working in a narrow place. artisan.

I remembered that there was a man named Takasaki among the old neighbors.He was the younger brother of the owner of the largest printing factory in Ogura.I told my mother about it, and one night, my mother asked Mr. Takasaki to intercede, to see if I could be an apprentice lithographer in that printing factory.The work of that printing factory is divided into two types: letterpress and lithograph, but letterpress is the main one. In this way, I became a trainee craftsman at the Takasaki Printing Office.For me, it was the first time in my life that I saw a lithograph, and I didn't know how to do it. I was recruited as an apprentice painter at first, but there were no master painters in the printing office.The so-called original print is to apply oil-based medicine on transparent paper like transcription paper, and then draw or write with ink.If the fingertip touches the paper a little, the paper will be stained with oil from the finger; but it will become a black spot on the stone tablet.Dealing with these takes skill.

I was a complete layman when I joined the factory, so it was impossible for me to do anything.In the end, he became an apprentice to a real lithographer.The five or six-weight lithographic stones were picked up and put down from the manual printing machine, transported to the kitchen, and emery sand was added to wipe off the photosensitive part of the stone.This kind of work was originally done by teenagers who had just graduated from elementary school. I ended up being pushed around by guys younger than me.As I worked on it, I realized that it is impossible for a complete layman to paint original prints.The original prints I occasionally draw cannot be used, and have to be modified by ordinary workers who are not even painters. Therefore, I am always asked to grind stones.The place where the stone is ground is in the kitchen of the printing office, and every day it smells of pickled vegetables and slate stones that ooze white lye.

However, I don't want to be an ordinary lithographer.I felt that even if I worked here, I couldn't learn to be a painter, so I found a small lithograph printing shop where I could be a painter as an apprentice.The owner of this new print shop taught me from the basics to how to draw original prints.At the same time, advertising graphics began to emerge.Rather than using ink to draw the original print, I prefer to use oil paint to draw the base map, commonly known as "sketch". Nowadays, there are many advertising pattern magazines, and you can also see many foreign specialized magazines of this kind, but at that time, the only reference book was "Advertising World" published by Chengwentang.This magazine is my textbook for learning to draw patterns.

During this period, as my master's shopkeeper, I became obsessed with playing mahjong and ignored my work.There is no way.It forced me to draw the original prints, and even the patterns had to be taken over.Still, it made me learn to work pretty quickly.The house has two manual presses.Later, an octavo printing press was added, and a small printing house began to take shape. I work late every day and never come home before eleven o'clock at night.One winter day, as I sat on the plank floor, drawing an original print with my frozen hands, I felt a chill run down my spine.I told the owner's wife, she said she had a lot of work and couldn't go back, she wanted to stay and work, but she didn't even lend me something to cover my back.I felt very bad that night and developed a high fever.

At that time, my family had moved from the nearest house in the past to a remote place.Still open a restaurant, but this time it is much smaller, very pitiful.In such a place, it is impossible to prosper in business. This period was the most difficult period for my father.I couldn't tell if I was an apprentice or a fellow, and my salary was only about ten yuan.Because it was originally said to be an apprentice who does not get a salary and only teaches work, and the first six months are indeed for nothing.At that time, my father was still in the catering business, which was not bad. Although the business was sluggish, his father ignored him and began to show off his "political knowledge" to his colleagues.On one occasion, with the help of the local police department, a constitutional meeting of the restaurant union was held.Father seemed to have raised some questions to the police at the meeting, and he was quite proud of being elected as a trade union official.Whenever the trattoria union held a meeting, he hurried and gleefully attended it.My father never got rid of this good old man's disposition in his whole life.

Continuing with what I said earlier, I didn't feel well, got pneumonia, and was bedridden at home. I was seriously ill, and I couldn't afford to go to the hospital, so I relied on recuperating at home, and finally got out of the dangerous period.At that time, there was no penicillin therapy as it is now, so the death rate from pneumonia was quite high.Beside my pillow, I can hear the voice of asking for the bill.I still remember my father's face: his face stretched over the brazier, concentrating on how to raise money.Because he was already old, with his head bowed, and he dozed off at some point, with a long stream of saliva dripping on the ashes of the brazier.

I was determined to do everything possible to maintain the life of my family, and I was eager to get the wages of a regular worker as soon as possible.I couldn't improve my skills at the small printing office in Kokura, so I was transferred to Hakata Shimai Offset Printing Office, the largest in Kyushu at that time. Shimaizuka is a Hakata family. His grandparents, the Shimai Clan, were wealthy merchants. When Hideyoshi sent troops to Korea, he always called the Shimai Clan to go with him. At the Shimai Printing Office, I learned to draw patterns, but I still couldn't get the wages of a regular worker.During those six months, I was alone, leaving my parents for the first time.As an only child, I was separated from my parents in my life, only this time and the time when I was arrested and served as a soldier.

For fear of being incoherent, the March 15 Incident occurred in the third year of Showa (that is, 1928), and the April 16 Incident occurred in the fourth year of Showa (that is, 1929). The reporting of the Communist Party happened around this time. One morning in mid-March of Showa 4, a criminal came to my house and pulled me up while I was still sleeping on the bed.The parents were terrified and panicked.I put on a thick cotton robe and went to the second floor of the Kokura Police Station.Upstairs there was a round fire, and I waited by it for a while.Why they arrested me, I don't know at all, but I guessed a little bit in my heart.

That's because, as mentioned earlier, the literature-loving partners of the Yawata Iron Works accepted the illegally published "Battle Flag" distributed by others, and were noticed by the Special High Section of the Yawata Department.I think they must have brought me here as a member of the group.Later, I searched my residence, and found nothing on my sparse bookshelves that could be used as a handle. I was warming the stove, and the criminal came in and asked me, "Who are you?" "It's the man who was called here this morning." As soon as I opened my mouth, he yelled, "Bastard!" and immediately drove me to a cold place without a fire.In the detention center, I was locked with five or six suspects, and I was a so-called "thought prisoner" alone.Here, I lived with the suspects who abducted women, robbed, and swindled for more than ten days.Different from the current detention center, the detention center at that time was extremely unclean, with excrement and excrement piled up in the corners of the room.For the first two days, the stench made it impossible for me to eat. When we first came in, we ate rations in long faded wooden boxes.My throat was burning and I couldn't swallow.I didn't realize it was thirst.Only at this moment did I realize that eating was as painful as swallowing a stone.The toilet is just two boards built on top of the pots at the four corners, and you can defecate freely in front of your roommates. I was tortured with a bamboo knife, and the blush-faced guy named Kondo who caught me in was in charge, and he made me have to name my accomplices.Above the detention center is a martial arts training ground, and there is no need to have any scruples about beating people.Probably because I was less suspected, so I was not hung upside down, and I was not burned with cigarette butts. I was locked up in the detention center for more than ten days, and the cherry blossoms were already in bloom when I came out.Mother cried. After I was released, the criminal named Kondo came to my house many times.Every time he came, his father would let him drink for free. Only then did I experience the disgust of criminals.I wrote about this model in my later novel "The Wanderer". When I got home from the detention center, my father burned all my books.Although my father kept talking big and talking about politics, in fact, he was very timid and afraid of things.He said that after reading those books, his thinking would be affected, and he strictly prohibited me from reading novels. However, I can't care less about literature.I feel that if we don't settle down as soon as possible, the family will end up on the street.Seeing my father being forced into debt made me more determined.

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