I.D Essay Book - When I was a Child Star (Part 4)

Here's the next part of Maaya's essay 'When I was a Child Star' and in this part she introduces us to the person who helped shape her life at Group Komadori.

Note: 1) 'Sensei' is the title of a teacher which is affixed to the person's name which denotes respect. One can call them by their name + 'Sensei' or just 'sensei' by itself. 2) Shitamachi is an area of Tokyo which is the core of 'Edo' (Tokyo's old name) and people born and raised in Shitamachi and who have been for generations are called Edokko (children of Edo) because they are the REAL Tokyo citizens. Just like Osakans are proud of being Osaka born and bred, Shitamachi are the real deal in Tokyo.

The Legendary Woman, Nishimura-sensei

The name of the teacher who has had the biggest impact on me since the day we first me is Saeko Nishimura-san. She did everything herself, not only acting as the representative of Komadori, but also as the site manager and the drama instructor for the children. So naturally she was very busy and if the numbers at Komadori had increased any more it would have been too much for one person to handle. After I joined the troupe recruitment of new members ceased. With 50 years of history since its formation, Theatre Group Komadori is a long established group which has raised many wonderful actors. It has existed as one of the pioneers of child theatre groups. It is a theatre group with particularly good lineage. When the founder died and it seemed like Komadori would have to be disbanded, Nishimura-sensei along with several other troupe members bonded together as ‘Group Komadori’ and quietly protected its name.

If one saw her, the most unforgettable point of her individual look was the bandana wrapped around her head. Not only that, the bandana was always the same pattern. It's probable that she owned many bandanas which were exactly the same and then changed the one she wore every day but at a glance it always looked the same.

Whenever I was with Nishimura-sensei, even if we had only visited a shop once before, the person behind the counter would whip out a gift of fruit, greeting her with ‘Thank you for your continued custom!’

Her age was unknown. Truly unknown...or rather, it was hard to tell. As I am writing this right now there is currently among my friends and associates not one person who knows how old Nishimura-sensei is. It is thought likely that there is a difference between us of that of a grandmother and grand daughter. She can use mobile phone emails, she is sensitive to fashion trends and is learning French – she is spiritually young. While Nishimura-sensei emits a presence which has even people meeting her for the first time calling her ‘Sensei’, she also has the heart of a young girl who is scared of both lightning and dark streets at night. She is a very elusive person at any rate. There are many anecdotes relating to her, with no limit to what I could introduce here if I told them to you one by one. As I would be able to fill a whole volume with just these stories, for now I will stop here.

However, I have to write that without her I would not be who I am today. Fundamentally, theatre groups and productions, all work concerned with ‘art’ is normally thought of as ‘business’. That’s true, and everyone has to be able to eat. However, the biggest reason that Group Komadori was a strange theatre group was because, for better or worse, their business concept was completely lacking. A true ‘Edo’ woman, who disliked both dishonest business standards and relationships formed out of duty, Nishimura-sensei held her love for her students as her top priority.

It’s easy to say ‘love’ and putting it down in letters here somehow makes it seem a little cheap but, when pushed to describe it, it was close to familial love. Nishimura’s first priority was not to raise good actors, but to raise good adults. She was always saying to the boys, “It’s going to be difficult to survive if you become an actor when you grow up. It’s alright for the girls, they can just become someone’s wife, but men will suffer. It’s better to join some kind of company if you can.” Just like any parent, she seemed to hate seeing us suffer. Always protecting us, sticking up for us, sometimes pushing us to stand alone, being very strict, she was just like a mother and a father. (Yes, she’s still alive)

It was because she was like this that we children naturally came to have a sense of being siblings, even those who had graduated. We are all very similar and we are often told, “Children raised at Komadori have the same DNA, don’t they”. I didn’t really perceive this when I was a child but as I’ve gotten older I have a real sense of just how special it is to have comrades like this. No matter where we are, we look out for each other, sometimes helping each other out or advising each other. Even now, if I’m having a tough time I want to see their faces.

Around Nishimura-sensei, who was stubborn but with the strength of feeling of two people, who was forceful but who we couldn’t come to hate, gathered mysterious and gentle people. People are shaped by who they meet and their environment. I think that the core of my being was created because I met Nishimura-sensei and was raised in the Shitamachi-like air that seemed to drift around her. The 15 years that I spent in the house of Group Komadori, my second family, was an irreplaceable, precious time.