Galaxy Railway Night ()

Author: (Japanese) Kenji Miyazawa
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-04-01
Features: A yearning for a pure heart, a pursuit of eternal life, and a steadfast commitment to dreams in one's heart. The Japanese literary world generally believes that Kenji Miyazawa, with his obscure life and inner dreams, wrote delightful stories for children, social satire and commentary for the youth, and religious peace and compassion for the elderly.
"Classmates, this river we often call a river, and also call the trace of milk water flowing through it, is this faint white ribbon. Do you know what it is?" The teacher pointed to a large black constellation map hanging in front of the blackboard, the white, hazy band that stretched from top to bottom like the Milky Way, and asked the students in the classroom.
Kompnerula raised his hand. Four or five other classmates also raised their hands. Gianni was about to raise his hand but quickly reconsidered. He had read in a magazine that they were actually all stars, but recently, Gianni had been feeling very drowsy in class, not only lacking the time to read but also lacking books to read. So now, he felt hazy about everything.
However, the teacher noticed his movement. "Gianni, you know, right?" Gianni stood up energetically, but after standing up, he didn’t know how to answer. The student sitting in front, Chanelli, turned around and looked at Gianni, letting out a soft chuckle. Gianni panicked and flushed red.
The teacher asked again, "If you observe the Milky Way closely with a powerful telescope, what do you think it is mostly made of?" Of course, it’s stars. Gianni thought. But this time, he couldn’t answer immediately either. The teacher looked troubled for a moment, then turned to Kompnerula and called out his name: "Then, Kompnerula, tell me."
Kompnerula, who had just been so eager to raise his hand, stood up awkwardly but still couldn’t answer. The teacher looked at him in slight surprise for a moment before quickly saying, "Alright!" Then, pointing to the constellation map, he added, "If we observe this hazy silver river with a high-quality, large telescope, we can see many small stars. Gianni, right?" Gianni nodded, his face flushed. But at some point, his eyes filled with tears.
Yes, I already knew this, Kompnerula certainly did too. Kompnerula’s father was a doctor, and we had read that magazine at his house. Moreover, after reading that magazine, Kompnerula had found a very thick book in his father’s study, opened to the page about the Milky Way, and we had all stared in awe at the beautiful photo on the entire page, which was completely black and filled with countless tiny white dots. Kompnerula would never forget it. He hadn’t answered immediately because he knew that recently, I had to work hard both before and after school, so I had no energy to play with everyone at school, including Kompnerula. He deliberately didn’t answer out of sympathy for me.
Thinking this, Gianni felt that both he and Kompnerula were quite pitiful.
The teacher continued, "So, if we consider this Milky Way as a real river, those countless small stars would be like small sand grains or pebbles at the bottom of the river. And if we see it as a huge river of milk water, it’s closer to the Milky Way. In other words, these stars are tiny fat globules floating in milk. Then, what is the water in the river? It’s a vacuum that can transmit light at a certain speed, where the sun and the Earth float. That is to say, we all live in the water of the Milky Way. When we look around from the water of the Milky Way, just like how the deeper the water, the bluer it looks, we will see that the deeper and farther parts of the Milky Way are gathering more stars, which is why it appears white and hazy.
"Everyone, look at this model." The teacher pointed to a large biconvex lens filled with many glowing sand grains. "The shape of the Milky Way is the same as this. These glowing sand grains, we consider them as stars that can shine by themselves, just like our sun. Let’s assume our sun is roughly in the center here, and the Earth is near the sun. You can stand in the center at night and look around inside the convex lens. The lens on this side is thinner, so you can only see a few glowing sand grains, which are stars. The lenses on both sides are thicker, so you can see many glowing sand grains, which are many stars. Farther away, you can only see a white, hazy expanse, which is the principle of today’s lesson on the Milky Way.
"As for how large this convex lens is and the various stars inside it, I’ll explain to you next time during physics class when class is over. Today happens to be the Milky Way Festival, so go outside and observe the sky well. That’s all for today’s class. Please put away your textbooks and notebooks."
The classroom echoed with the sound of opening and closing desks and stacking books one by one. After a while, everyone stood up, bowed, and then left the classroom one after another.