Your next stop is the “Twenty-Four Eyes Movie Village.” “Twenty-Four Eyes” is Shodoshima novelist Tsuboi Sakae’s masterpiece. Set in Shodoshima, it tells the story of a female teacher, her twelve students, and how their lives intersected.

The 1954 novel was such a hit that it inspired a film adaptation just two years after its release. Shodoshima’s name became famous all over Japan. Its setting, a school perched on a cape, has been preserved to this day. And now, a movie remake project inspired the construction of a “Movie Village” as its set. You can visit many landmarks, starting with the true-to-life school building on the cape, as well as the Tsuboi Sakae Museum of Literature and movie theater.

To better enjoy your experience of the Movie Village, please listen to this summary of the novel “Twenty-Four Eyes.”

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The story begins two ages ago. Journey back in time, from the current Reiwa Period to the previous Heisei Period, and further…

…to the 3rd year of the Showa Period, 1928. In a small rural village in Shodoshima, an island on the Seto Inland Sea, there was a small school perched upon a cape that served as a branch campus for schools across the island. Oishi, a teacher, wore Western clothes and rode her bike to school. Her small country town sat at the tip of a long, narrow cape on an inlet. To visit the towns on the opposite shore, you’d either have to sail across on a small boat or trudge along the zigzagging mountain roads. Kids would go to the branch school until fourth grade, then commute to the main school 5 kilometers away after becoming fifth-graders because the commute was so miserable.

Twelve brand-new students awaited Ms. Oishi at school.

“All right everyone,” she said. “Please answer when I call your name.”

The first name she called was “Okada Isokichi-kun!”

The boy was shocked. No one’s ever addressed him so casually in his life. His response caught in his throat.

“Okada Isokichi-kun, are you here?” called Ms. Oishi.

At that moment a large boy stood up, taller than any of the others, and rather loudly said:

“Here.”

“Right, then,” said Ms. Oishi. “ Please say ‘present,’ Okada Isokichi-kun.”

Her eyes firmly on the boy’s face, she approached his desk. A second-grader suddenly burst out laughing. Then the real Okada Isokichi abruptly stood up, looking annoyed.

“Say somethin’, Sonki.”

“Do you all call him Sonki?” asked the teacher.

The entire class nodded as one.

“Fair enough. Well then, Isokichi Sonki-san.”

Another burst of laughter, but this time Ms. Oishi joined in, laughing as she jotted the nickname down on her attendance record.

She continued taking attendance, and by the time she finished with Katagiri Kotoe’s name, the forty-five-minute class period was over. From behind the lectern Ms. Oishi saw the personality shining through each of those twelve kids’ eyes.

Soon after, the teacher and her students opened up to one another. However, not long after the start of their second semester, Ms. Oishi fell into a hole dug by a prankster and severely tore her Achilles’ tendon.

“Wonder when Miss Teacher’s coming back…”

The kids worried about Ms. Oishi. They hadn’t seen her in school for over half a month. After talking among themselves, they decided to check on her at her house. However, they’d have to walk 8 kilometers to her place at Ipponmatsu. The journey tore their straw sandals; some of them bled as they walked barefoot.

Kotoe finally burst into tears. Her wailing spread to the others, and soon all of them were crying. Just then, a horn blared out as a bus raced by, kicking up a thick cloud of sand in its wake. Through the window, they saw the face of Ms. Oishi.

“Teacher!”

“Miss Teacher!”

The kids frantically chased the bus to the Matsubazue stop, where their teacher was waiting. Relieved at the sight of Ms. Oishi’s face, they went home together, ate kitsune-udon noodles at her house, and took a group photo in front of the pine tree at Ipponmatsu.

Twelve kids. Twenty-four eyes. They lived happily and grew up on barley and rice. Despite that, the passing of the years revealed a nation on the path to war.

Japanese men were brainwashed to believe that dedicating one’s life to battle as a soldier was an honorable thing. Day by day the flames of war spread, and as the maelstrom closed in on the small village, some of those young men enlisted in the air force.

“You can eat your weight in red bean soup if you join up as a flyboy.”

The boys, so young and achingly naive, were taken in by the promise of food. Sons of poor families aspired to the air force. They were hailed as heroes just for enlisting. Rich or poor, it didn’t matter – and if they became student soldiers against their parent’s wishes, or if they were only children, they’d be hailed all the more.

Ms. Oishi went to see them off on the day of their departure, the Ipponmatsu group photo firmly clutched in her hand.

“Please be safe,” She said, her voice small. “Don’t go dying for glory – come back alive, you hear me?”

“Don’t worry, Teach. We’ll come back victorious.”

No one could truly say if they’d ever come back alive, not anymore. Ms. Oishi wept and bid the boys farewell.
For years the war raged on, snuffing out countless lives, until the year 1945, when it finally ended.

Ms. Oishi returned to her old school one year after the end of the war. She was invited to a welcome party for her former students, but where there once were twelve, there were now only seven. Kotoe was dead – she’d been poor, so she was sent to work as a live-in servant, where she toiled to the point of heart failure.

The kids who once beat their chests and dreamed of being soldiers were gone. Isokichi came to the welcome party; he was blinded in battle and discharged from duty. One of them brought the group photo and passed it around. Isokichi turned his face as if he could see it. Next to him, Kichiji looked worried.

“Can you see it, Sonki?” he asked.

“I got no eyeballs, Kicchin, remember?” Isokichi responded. “But I can still see this photo. Look – there’s Teach in the middle. There’s Takeichi and Nita opposite of her, in front. There’s Maa-chan, to her right, and here’s Fujiko. They’re holding hands – Macchan’s grabbing her pinky. And then there’s…”

He pointed at his old friends. His aim got worse with each name. Kichiji couldn’t find the words, so Ms. Oishi did in his stead.

“Yes,” she chimed in as he named them. “That’s right. Yeah.”

She matched Isokichi’s cheer, even as tears poured from her eyes.

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What did you think? We only described a small taste of the entire novel. If you try reading the novel after visiting the Twenty-Four Eyes Movie Village, you’ll surely picture many things. The scenery outside your window right now is part of the set; please sit tight and enjoy the view until you arrive.