Childhood. We all know it, we've all been through it, we've all lost it. Memory retains traces of it. We recall facts, incidents, fragments — but not what it felt like to be a child. Childish feelings are nameable to the adult, but not recoverable. They are on the other side of an impassable boundary between the adult's world and the child's.
As with individuals, so with nations. History, made by grownups and written by grownups, forgets its children. We scour the history books in vain, mostly, for the children of the past. The historical drama as it comes down to us has few child actors.
Last Wednesday was Children's Day. Drawing on archaeology and literature where history fails us, let us welcome the children of old Japan back onstage.