The Reason I chose to be a Teacher and my Ancestry

The Reason I chose to be a Teacher and my Ancestry

There are many notable figures, such as Thomas Mann, Heinrich Mann, Herbert Spencer, and others, who achieved great things without ever attending university.

I entered university three years later than my peers. Since I managed to graduate on time, I was 25 when I finished, but I came very close to missing out on a college education entirely.

The fact that I never had to work a part-time job during my student years, could focus entirely on my studies, and was even able to go on to graduate school in the United States is solely thanks to my parents, who deeply understood the value of education.

From the beginning, I had absolutely no desire to seek employment at a regular company. Having completed the teacher training program and obtained my teaching license, I set out on the path to becoming a teacher without any hesitation.

To tell the truth, I didn't take the teacher training course at first. It required 1.5 times the usual credits, and I hadn't seriously considered becoming a teacher in the beginning.

While it was my mother who ultimately encouraged me to take it, my grandfather was actually an elementary school teacher who finished his career as the principal of Tenjinjima Elementary School.

Teachers were exempt from military service during the war. Although I did not live through an era of war myself, my mother did. Since her own father was a teacher, she knew better than anyone else that he had been spared from being sent to the battlefield.

My mother's side of the family comes from a samurai lineage, and the earliest ancestor we can trace back to is Shotaro Arase, who was in the Kokura Domain around the time of the Meiji Restoration. That was around 1870, roughly 150 years ago.

In my great-grandparents' generation on my mother's side, the couple was unable to have children. Consequently, an adopted husband from the Takashima family and an adopted wife from the Sugiura family married into the Arase family to carry on the lineage. Both the Takashima and Sugiura families were also of samurai descent. Masa Sugiura, who married into the family from the Sugiura line, was a woman with an artistic, geisha-like flair who enjoyed playing the shamisen.

I inherit an eighth of my DNA from Masa Sugiura, and I sometimes find myself wondering if my own artistic temperament might be her lingering influence.