9th Grade Recommended Reading List: "The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket" by Yasunari Kawabata

At the base of the embankment was a bobbing cluster of beautiful varicolored lanterns, such as one might see at a festival in a remote country village.

Not only were there crimson, pink, indigo, green, purple, and yellow lanterns,
but one lantern glowed with five colors at once.

These were the twenty children and their beautiful lanterns that I now saw before me. Wide-eyed, I loitered near them.

Different from the painted-over red lanterns, others (made of thick cutout cardboard) had their designs drawn onto the paper windows, so that the candle’s light seemed to so emanate from the form and color of the design itself.

I felt slightly jealous of the boy, and sheepish.

In the faint greenish light that fell on the girl’s breast, wasn’t the name “Fujio” clearly discernible?

The boy’s lantern, which he held up alongside the girl’s insect cage, inscribed his name, cut out in the green papered aperture, onto her white cotton kimono.

The boy’s lantern, which he held up alongside the girl’s insect cage, inscribed his name, cut out in the green papered aperture, onto her white cotton kimono.

The boy’s lantern, which he held up alongside the girl’s insect cage, inscribed his name, cut out in the green papered aperture, onto her white cotton kimono.

The girl’s lantern, which dangled loosely from her wrist, did not project its
pattern so clearly, but still one could make out, in a trembling patch of red on the boy’s waist, the name “Kiyoko.”

This chance interplay of red and green—if it was chance or play—neither Fujio nor Kiyoko knew about.

Even when you have become a young man, laugh with pleasure at a girl’s delight when, told that it’s a grasshopper, she is given a bell cricket; laugh with affection at a girl’s chagrin when, told that it’s a bell cricket, she is given a grasshopper.