ahh I love every bgm so far, but that one when she's saying goodbye to her classmates
so great
I've been researching about Hanako too...
Muraoka Hanako (村岡 花子) was born on June 6, 1893 (Meiji year 26) in Kofu, Yamanashi Prefecture (which area, @
D-chan2510, does have a dialect - "Nagano–Yamanashi–Shizuoka AKA Na-Ya-Shi" according to Wikipedia). She left her parents at the age of 10 in 1903 (this is where the drama begins) and attended a Canadian mission school in Tokyo called Toyo Eiwa Girls' School (this is the "school in Tokyo" they keep mentioning). The school was founded by Martha Cartmell, a female preacher of the Canadian Methodist Church.
At the school she studied waka/tanka poetry under Nobutsuna Sasaki as well as Japanese classics. Poet and translator of Irish literature Hiroko Katayama encouraged her to write childrens' stories, and she even considered becoming a poet. After graduating she taught English and worked for a publisher.
From 1932 to 1941 in Mt Atago she was in charge of radio show Kodomo no Shimbun broadcasted on Tokyo Broadcasting Corporation, which is now NHK. She was called "Auntie Muraoka." In 1939 a Canadian missionary gave her a copy of
Anne of Green Gables (published in Canada in 1908). Hanako loved it so much she translated it in secret during the war (remember the opening scene of the drama?) - dangerous also because English was the language of the enemy. In her biography Ikiru to Iu Koto, she describes her own childhood to be similar to Anne's.
After the war, morale was low and teachers were looking for uplifting Western literature to teach in school, and
Akage no Anne fit the bill. Thereafter, Hanako became famous as the translator of such a popular book. She died on October 25, 1968 (Shouwa year 43).
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