An excerpt from new book Anne’s Cradle: The Life and Works of Hanako Muraoka, Japanese Translator of Anne of Green Gables, by Eri Muraoka.

Although it was already mid-April, a cold snap had turned the day chilly and overcast. Here and there cherry blossom petals fluttered from branches that were already leafing out.

In the Muraoka residence in Omori, Hanako had finished cleaning up after dinner and was in the study, writing in the dim light of a small lamp shaded with air-raid blackout cloth. She had begun polishing her translation of Anne of Green Gables, a novel set in Canada, and was going over the section at the beginning where the orphan Anne arrives in Prince Edward Island and is captivated by its beauty.

Riding down an avenue of apple trees in a horse-drawn buggy, Anne gazes raptly at the canopy of snow-white blossoms arching overhead. As she does for everything she likes, she gives the road a new name: White Way of Delight.

What words, Hanako wondered, would convey to Japanese readers the inner world of this young girl endowed with such a rich imagination?

White Way means shiroi michi, she thought. Delight could be yorokobi.

Or what about kanki? Kanki no shiroi michi….

Hanako closed her eyes, conjuring up an image of trees adorned with pure white blossoms. The voice of a man singing as he passed by on the street reached her ears.

Cherry blossoms fall.

Those left on the branch

will soon be falling too

These words from a haiku by Zen Buddhist poet Ryokan Taigu (1758– 1831) were sung by Japanese soldiers when they sent their comrades off to the front. The war situation was rapidly deteriorating. Cast into a conflict they had no hope of winning, young men were perishing in foreign lands. Even in Tokyo, air-raid sirens whined frequently, followed by American bombers that sowed destruction. Three and a half years earlier, at the start of the Pacific War, no one had anticipated such devastation.

Canada, the birthplace of the book Hanako was furtively translating, was now an enemy. Slogans denouncing the Allied forces were used to whip up popular sentiment, and distorted accounts of Japanese military exploits had intensified the nation’s militaristic fervour with each passing day. What condemnation would society heap upon Hanako should it catch her translating a book from an enemy nation?

In 1942, three years earlier, Canadian missionaries from Hanako Muraoka’s alma mater, Toyo Eiwa Girls School, had been interned despite having committed no crime. In the same year, the leaders of the United Church of Christ in Japan had all been arrested for violating the Peace Preservation Law. Hanako and her husband, Keizo, Christians since their parents’ generation, were no longer allowed to go to church. Even if Hanako succeeded in finishing her translation, would it ever be published in Japan?

Trying to shake off her gloom, Hanako reached for the porcelain cup on her desk and took a sip of pungent, twiggy bancha tea. Lucy Maud Montgomery’s story brimmed with hope for the future. Hanako longed to see the book published in Japan to cheer the hearts of Japanese readers. With fresh resolve, she picked up her pen and focused once more on revising the manuscript.

*

A little over a month earlier, on March 10, a fleet of American Boeing29 Superfortress heavy bombers—what the Japanese referred to as B-29s— had launched a massive air raid on Tokyo, pummelling the city centre with firebombs and razing the densely populated Shitamachi area. Rather than relocating to the country for safety, residents stayed behind to defend their homes. Their efforts, however, were futile. Gusts of wind whipped the flames into an inferno, leaving in its wake a gruesome wasteland dotted with endless mounds of charred corpses.

Although the number of casualties exceeded that of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, government reports carried by the radio and newspapers claimed the raid had only caused a small fire in the government department responsible for the imperial stables. That night, however, the crimson sky blazing over the northeastern part of the city had been visible even from Hanako’s house in Omori, about ten kilometres away.

A few days later, a poet Hanako knew well came and told her the shocking truth. When he related that the cheerful, hardworking housewives belonging to the women’s associations in those areas—women who had cared for the elderly and cooked for those who had lost their homes—had all perished, Hanako shut her eyes, overcome with anguish. Desperation tinged her friend’s face, and he looked haggard and worn from wandering the blackened streets. “For years, they forced me to write things against my will,” he said bitterly. “And now look at me. I’m too broke to send my wife and children to the countryside where they’d be safe. The rich all flee while the poor are left to die in the city, unable to escape this catastrophe.” Thereafter, newspapers began referring to the city as the “Tokyo war theatre,” even though they were forbidden to criticize the war. The people were growing disillusioned with their leaders. Few now believed Japan would win. They simply longed for the war to end as soon as possible so they could sleep soundly again.

*

Having graduated that spring from elementary school, which the government had renamed “national people’s schools,” Hanako’s daughter, Midori, was now in middle school. The sight of her daughter dressed in patched monpe workpants filled Hanako with pity. Midori was only 12 years old. Had the world been at peace, she would have been enjoying her studies, losing herself in books, and cherishing whatever dreams and ideals sprang from her pure heart. Instead, her days were filled with mending threadbare clothes, making do without, and the constant fear of death.

As she sat sipping her tea, Hanako thought back to her own girlhood. Although strict rules had governed her life, her years in the dormitory, surrounded by foreign missionaries and immersed in their culture, had been rich and nurturing. Despite being poor, she had been able to create a beautiful inner world, composing poetry and reading literature.

Hanako’s one comfort was the children’s resilience, which they kept even in the midst of war. Her daughter, Midori, and her nieces and nephew who lived next door, remained uncowed by life’s hardships, continuing to grow straight and true. Haruko and Kazuho, the daughter and son of Hanako’s sister Umeko, and Michiko, the daughter of Hanako’s brother-in-law Noboru, seemed tough enough to accept the harsh realities of wartime deprivation. They never complained, and the little joys they found in daily life brought smiles to their faces. Each time Hanako witnessed that spirit, it renewed her strength to go on.

Whenever gloom threatened to engulf her family, Hanako came to the rescue using a technique for escaping despair that she had picked up from the book she was translating: the imagination game. On days when rations were scarce and their meal was meagre, she would encourage everyone to conjure up a feast. After all, they could enjoy in their minds whatever delectable dishes they wanted. They would spend the dinner hour happily chatting about a favourite drink, describing beautiful tableware, and discussing different cooking methods. During these dark times, when each day seemed to bring more sad news, Hanako looked for ways to ease the wounded souls of her loved ones.

*

At noon on April 13, 1945, news of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death kindled hope in Japan that the war might soon end. But his successor, President Harry S. Truman, followed Roosevelt’s lead. As if to proclaim his intentions, that very night air-raid sirens split the darkness that shrouded Tokyo.

 Two nights later, a thunderous roar jolted Midori from her sleep. Air raids were so frequent now that she slept in her clothes. In the study, Hanako grabbed Anne of Green Gables and the Japanese manuscript she was working on and tied them up in a furoshiki cloth. Tucking this bundle firmly under one arm, she dashed to the bomb shelter in the yard with Midori, Keizo, and their maid, Fumi. Keizo took with him their ration book, as well as a beautiful leather-bound, gilded Bible and a hymnal, both printed by the company his father founded. He also clasped a jar of sugar he had managed to buy on the black market for Hanako, who loved sweets. Sugar was precious, and the jar was firmly sealed with wax.

The four of them hunkered in the dugout like animals in a den, listening intently to the noises outside as if their bodies were ears. Keizo’s brow was beaded with sweat. Hanako worried about his high blood pressure as she gently dabbed his forehead with her sleeve. They heard shouts and the banging of buckets alerting people to a fire nearby. Cautiously, they emerged from their refuge.

Hanako’s sister Umeko and her husband, Iwao, rushed over, gasping for breath. “Papa! Hanako!” Umeko called out. (Everyone in the family called Keizo “Papa,” including his younger brother, Noboru, his nieces and nephew.) “It’s too dangerous here,” Umeko told them. “Iwao’s going to stay and help the fire brigade, but the rest of us should get away!” Strapped firmly to Umeko’s back was her six-year-old son, Kazuho, while beside her stood her daughter, Haruko, who was in grade six.

The family had already planned what to do if there was another large air raid: they would flee rather than stay to put out the flames. Tokyoites had learned a bitter lesson from the Great Tokyo Air Raid of March 10. Government-promoted bucket relays, diligently practiced during air-raid drills in every district, were effective in response to small air raids. But in a major raid, the opposite was true: staying behind to fight a fire multiplied the scale of the disaster. Hanako’s neighbourhood association had therefore decided that if this came to pass, women, children, and the elderly should be evacuated. On this night, the night of April 15, over two hundred B-29s appeared in the skies above Tokyo. In a massive three-hour blitz, they carpet bombed a broad swathe of the city from the districts of Shiba, Omori, and Urata to Kawasaki, Tsurumi, and Yokohama, devastating an area approximately ten kilometres long and three kilometres wide.

“Ume,” Hanako said, “you go on ahead and take Midori with you.” Recently, Keizo had been finding it hard to walk any distance because of his heart condition. Hanako would never think of leaving him behind, but she could not worry the others by telling them this.

“Listen carefully,” said Keizo. “Head towards Ikegami Honmonji. If the temple’s already full, go around to the field behind it. There should be a big air-raid shelter there.”

“But what about you, Mother?” asked Midori, peering at her anxiously. “Don’t worry, Midori,” Hanako said firmly. “We’ll be fine. We can’t leave right away, but we’ll come later. Just be sure to stick with Umeko.

Whatever you do, don’t get separated.”

Noboru’s wife and daughter now joined them in the yard. Like Iwao, Noboru had gone to help the fire brigade. Bombs whistled through the air, then burst and scattered in a shower of flaming fragments. “Just like fireworks!” the children cried excitedly.

“Off you go,” Hanako and Keizo urged them. “Hurry now.”

*

The main street, Omote Sando, which led to the temple, as well as the street behind it, were jammed with evacuees. It was hard enough for the children to stick with Umeko in the jostling crowd, let alone make it to the temple grounds.

Ikegami Honmonji was the main temple of the Nichiren Buddhist sect and had been built at the end of the thirteenth century. It was the resting place of its founder, Nichiren, a Buddhist priest of the Kamakura period (1222–1282), as well as the wife of Ieyasu Tokugawa (1543–1616), the first Tokugawa shogun, and the wife of Yoshimune Tokugawa (1684– 1751), the eighth shogun. Also buried there were the seventeenth-century painter Tan’yu Kano and many famous kabuki actors. Midori and Haruko looked forward to the temple festival held every year on October 13 to commemorate Nichiren’s passing. During the festival, the area was always packed with people and street stalls, but never had they seen it as crowded as this. Here and there, people had plonked themselves down by the side of the road. Some muttered prayers, while many of the elderly wished they were already dead and safely laid to rest. At that moment, a firebomb fell among the trees on the hill where the temple’s cemetery lay. Apparently even being in the grave wasn’t a guarantee of safety.

“It’s no use,” Umeko exclaimed. “We’d better go back and see if we can make it to the field behind the temple.” Buffeted by the crowd, Midori and Haruko struggled after her.

*

Back at the Muraoka home, Hanako and Keizo looked down the deserted street. All the young men had been sent to war, leaving Tokyo with a ratio of twenty-eight women for every man. Once the neighbourhood women and children had hurried off to seek refuge, only the firefighters and the police remained behind.

On the other side of the railway tracks, a pillar of flame rose from a munitions factory, which was really just a collection of small, family-run workshops. The fire was more than four or five hundred metres away, but it looked much closer.

“Are you frightened?” Keizo asked.

“No.” Hanako smiled, clutching her precious bundle to her chest. “Me neither,” said Keizo. “Not in the least.”

Though it began as a brief, illicit affair, their relationship had been forged through surmounting repeated hardships. In the midst of this conflict, they might be killed at any moment, but come what may, Hanako had vowed never to part with Keizo for as long as she lived. There was also a job she had to finish: translating Anne of Green Gables. Not for the income, but as a testimony to her life.

The book had been a parting gift from Miss Shaw, a Canadian missionary who had returned home before the war. Hanako was convinced it was no mere coincidence that this book had come to her. Its protagonist, Anne, an unloved orphan, was eleven years old when a mix-up brought her to Matthew and his sister, Marilla. This mistake would change her fate. All her life, Anne had longed to find people she could call family and a place she could call home. The tale opens just as her dream begins to come true. Like Anne, Hanako’s fate had changed radically when she was in her tenth year. How different her life would have been if she had not been taken by her father to enroll in Toyo Eiwa Girls School, founded by Canadian missionaries. As the daughter of an impoverished tea merchant, Hanako would never have become a translator and, most likely, would never have met Keizo. It was the education she received from the Canadian missionaries and their spiritual influence that had shone a light upon her path. She could not help but see the will of God in the way this book, borne across the sea by a missionary from Canada to Japan, had become her companion through the ravages of war. She shifted the bundle in her arms and hugged it tighter.

Flames moved in on Keizo and Hanako from three directions. The only way left to flee was toward Omori Station. Silently, Hanako bid farewell to her books. While she loved her house dearly, as a writer, her books were her life. Books she had read as a girl, books from her years as a translator. More than half were English publications.

Suddenly, the attack ceased. Over three hours had passed since the air- raid sirens first sounded. A member of the fire brigade stopped when he saw them. “Mr. and Mrs. Muraoka, you didn’t evacuate?” he asked.

“We were going to if it came to that,” Hanako replied. Flames still smoldered on the other side of a narrow river that ran beside the street in front of their house. Many houses had burned, but the Muraoka property remained untouched.

“We lost most of the neighbourhood,” the firefighter said. “We finally managed to stop the flames just up there. Fortunately there was no wind tonight. Still, you’re pretty brave.”

All the two of them could do now was wait. Hanako could not even focus on her work. Unable to quell her agitation, she kept stepping out into the yard and then back into the house again. Midori and the others finally returned at dawn. They were covered from head to toe in mud, even Kazuho, who was still strapped to Umeko’s back. They had reached the air-raid shelter only to discover that it had been turned into an army storehouse. Still, they had been able to shelter there with the rest of the crowd.

“Auntie, did you stay here the whole time?” Michiko asked. “You didn’t run away? You’re amazing! How could you be so brave?”

“Well, everybody left without closing the doors, you see,” said Hanako. “I couldn’t let thieves come in, now could I? But don’t worry, I locked everything up.” Although she could have danced for joy to know her family was safe, she kept her voice calm and went into the kitchen to make some onigiri rice balls.

*

It was not until 1952, seven years later (and about 15 years after Miss Shaw had given Hanako the book), that Hanako’s translation of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables was published in Japan as Akage no An, meaning “redheaded Anne.”

Excerpted from Anne's Cradle Copyright © 2021 Eri Muraoka, translated by Cathy Hirano, published with permission of Nimbus Publishing. 

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Learn more about Anne's Cradle:

The bestselling biography of renowned Japanese translator of Anne of Green Gables is available in English for the first time.

The name Hanako Muraoka is revered in Japan. Her Japanese translation of L. M. Montgomery’s beloved children’s classic Anne of Green Gables, Akage no An (Redhaired Anne) was the catalyst for the book’s massive and enduring popularity in Japan. A book that has since spawned countless interpretations, from manga to a long-running television series, and has remained on Japanese curriculum for half a century. For the first time, the bestselling biography of Hanako Muraoka written by her granddaughter, Eri Muraoka, and translated by the award-winning Cathy Hirano (The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up), is available in English.

Born into an impoverished family of tea merchants in rural Japan at the end of the nineteenth century, Hanako Muraoka’s fortunes change dramatically when she is offered a place at an illustrious girls’ school in Tokyo founded by the Methodist Church of Canada. Nurtured by the Canadian missionaries who teach her, she falls in love with English poetry and literature. This love of the written word develops into a passion for writing and translating children’s literature that sustains Hanako through devastating personal tragedies and the tumult of the twentieth century.

In 1941, after Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, Hanako abruptly resigns from her role of reading children’s news over the radio—for which she is known and loved throughout Japan as “Radio Auntie”. Branded as “enemies”, the peace-loving missionaries who nurtured Hanako in her youth and with whom she later worked have been forced to leave the country. But Hanako finds solace in a gift received from a Canadian friend: a copy of L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables.

Although it is a book from an “enemy nation”, the story of Anne Shirley brings back vivid memories of precious friends in distant lands, giving Hanako courage and hope for the future. Amidst the wail of air-raid sirens, she begins translating her copy into Japanese in 1943, fully aware that she risks imprisonment and even death if caught. Although she completes the majority of the work by the end of the war, it is only much later that a publisher decides to take a chance on a Canadian author previously unknown in Japan, unwittingly launching a cross-cultural literary legacy that continues to this day.

Anne’s Cradle tells the complex and captivating story of a woman who risked her freedom and devoted her life to bringing quality children’s literature to her people during a period of tumultuous change in Japan. Through the gift of Hanako Muraoka’s translations, generations of Japanese readers have fallen in love with a plucky redhead from Prince Edward Island