桐壺186：作法よにめずらしきまで、もてかしづき聞こえ給へり。
この婿取りの作法はいまだかつて聞いたことがないほど盛大にもてなしたという評判であった。
N君：The event to invite him as a bridegroom earned a reputation of being held gorgeously to the extent that nobody had ever heard.
S先生：being 以下はよく工夫された作りになってはいるのですが、なんとなく仰々しいので having been held more gorgeously than anybody had ever heard に変えてみてはどうでしょうか。
It was widely said that the ceremony of adopting Genji as the husband for his daughter had been held more gorgeously than anyone had ever heard.
今日の英作談義は前回に引き続いて「The Saddest Day in my Life」の2回目です。
Soon after that it was decided that we should be evacuated to the country. Most of the pupils made a group evacuation. But I, a fifth grader, was evacuated to a small village (my mother's native place) in Yamaguchi Prefecture. The hamlet, which was called Usa and now belongs to Iwakuni City, is situated between Hiroshima and Shimane Prefecture, about 40 kilometers away from Hiroshima as the crow flies.
By the way, the name of Usa is derived from Usa Hachiman Shrine in Oita Prefecture. It is said that about four hundred years ago the other self of the God of the Shrine was transferred to the hamlet by an earnest request of the villagers. And by a strange chance, it was Usa Senior High School in Oita that I worked for as a new English teacher more than half a century ago.
There was no worry at all about air raids there. A blue sky with specks of white clouds, beautiful rice fields, and the murmuring of a stream. Now and then making their bodies glitter, Boeing B 29s, which were going to make an air raid on some city, were flying at an altitude of 10,000 meters above the village. The long white vapor trails in a blue sky left behind the bomber planes were beautiful enough to make us forget that we were at war.
But the life there was a very severe one. I had to put up with the bullying by the village boys almost every day. They bullied me just because I was city-bred. My only close friend was a boy named 'Shoichi,' who was also discriminated against simply because he was a Korean. So making friends with him gave them another good reason for bullying me. One day one of the boys pushed me on the stubbles of reeds. I can't forget the piercing pain I experienced then. The scar sixty seven years ago is still left on my right palm. The Korean boy one year older than I, whose family name I regret having forgot, was not only very kind to me but also brave enough to protect me from their violence. He went back to his home country soon after the war. Is he still alive ?
N君：疎開先の山村で見上げた抜けるような青空。都会育ちの少年がいじめられながらも懸命に生きる。
