026. Valentine's Day 47 Years Ago
I first learned of the existence of Valentine's Day just after the New Year in 1973 (Showa 48). It was the third term of my first year in junior high school. I was told that Valentine's Day was the one day a year when women were allowed to confess their love to men.
Although I had never even heard the word Valentine's Day when I was in elementary school, when I went to the department store in front of the station after becoming a junior high student, a special chocolate sales section had been set up on the first floor, and a large crowd of women was swarming it. I clearly remember staring at them in surprise, wondering if all these people were going to confess their love themselves.
At that time, as a first-year junior high student, I think I firmly believed that confessing love was something men did. Where on earth do children learn such things?
At the special chocolate sales section, there was a service where they would engrave the name of the person you liked and your own name onto a heart-shaped chocolate about the size of an open palm. Rather than a service, the special sales section was actually set up for the purpose of selling heart-shaped chocolates with two people's names on them.
They would carve names like 'To my beloved Taro' and 'From Hanako' into the large heart-shaped chocolate using an electric machine with a pointed tip, similar to what dentists use to drill teeth. I believe we were supposed to write the message on a piece of paper and hand it to the craftsman beforehand. A large number of women were lined up in front of the craftsmen who did the engraving. It was an incredible scene of enthusiasm.
The following year, in 1974 (Showa 49), when I was in my second year of junior high, I gave chocolate to someone I liked on Valentine's Day for the first time. The recipient was a male student in his third year at the same junior high school, one grade above me. Since he would be graduating in just one month, I thought that if I didn't give him the chocolate then, I would never be able to see him again.
When I consulted my two close friends, they insisted that I absolutely had to give him the chocolate and confess my feelings, so they even accompanied me to the department store, and we had his name and mine engraved with that dentist-like electric machine. My heart was pounding.
I had never spoken to him even once, but I had a one-sided crush on him from seeing him speak at the library committee meetings we were both on, and from seeing him enter the gymnasium laughing with his friends, his white teeth shining against his tanned skin while wearing his kendo uniform hakama. I didn't even know which high school he was going to.
How to have his name engraved was a major problem for me at the time. I couldn't use 'To my beloved Taro' like the sample, so after much agonizing, I decided to have his surname followed by 'senpai' (senior). My group of three friends had a lively discussion, weighing whether it would be rude to call him 'senpai' when we had never spoken, or if I should use 'san', or perhaps 'sama', and this was the result of our collective wisdom.
The price of the chocolate, including the engraving, was 300 yen, or perhaps 500 yen. Even so, I remember it being a significant amount of money for a junior high student like me.
Now, on Valentine's Day itself, I had practiced many times since the previous week, but I was extremely nervous. My plan was to put the ribbon-adorned chocolate inside a book cover (there were many books with covers back then), press the chocolate side against my stomach, and pretend I was just going to the library to return a book while I waited there. I turned down my two friends who wanted to come with me, and dared to head to the library alone.
I had planned to wait, but when I arrived at the library, he was already there—perhaps it was his turn for library duty—and he was looking at books by the shelves alone. The more I thought 'now is the time,' the more my legs froze, and I couldn't bring myself to speak to him. Still, telling myself that if he left I would never be able to give it to him, I mustered my courage, took a step forward, and handed him the chocolate.
He looked surprised and his eyes went wide, but then he showed his white teeth, smiled, and said, 'Thank you very much.' Since we wore name tags at school, he seemed to have checked my name tag and remembered my name. I still remember his smile against the backdrop of the bookshelves clearly even now. It is a smile from 47 years ago.
I don't remember what kind of interaction we had after that, but I remember that he invited me to the school festival of the high school he went on to attend, so my group of three friends went together in the autumn of my third year of junior high. He was doing a sport that wasn't part of the club activities at a normal high school, and it was the first time I had seen that sport. He said he had chosen that high school for the purpose of doing that sport. However, I never dated him after that, and it ended without anything even beginning—the term 'faded away' doesn't even seem appropriate.
Valentine's Day back then didn't have things like 'giri-choco' (obligation chocolate), and I feel it existed solely for women to seriously confess their love. It was such a significant event that we would have our names engraved on a single large piece of chocolate. There was no White Day back then either.
My first Valentine's Day confession ended in failure.
I thought it had ended. However, recently, my mother at my parents' home collapsed and was hospitalized, so I stayed at my parents' home for a while over the New Year holidays. At that time, when I opened an old drawer to try and tidy up my old room a little, I found a box filled only with old letters.
It contained many nostalgic letters, including New Year's cards from my elementary school days, letters and postcards everyone gave me when I moved, and birthday cards. In an era without mobile phones or smartphones, I myself, the person who received them, was very surprised that elementary, junior high, and high school students at the time exchanged so many letters and postcards.
And then, I discovered a letter from him among them. I remembered being invited to the school festival, but the letter had completely slipped my mind. It was as if I were reading the contents for the first time. I will write about this letter next time. It is not that I am trying to be dramatic, but the content was touching even for me, now that I have reached the age of sixty.