FUKUYAMA, Hiroshima Prefecture—A teenager who has interacted with leprosy patients for years wrote an award-winning essay based on her immersive experiences and her “mission in life.”

The composition by Yasuyo Nobu, 16, a second-year student at Eishin High School in Fukuyama, was one of five works awarded the prize for excellence in the essay contest organized by Tsuda University in Tokyo.

“She (Yasuyo) assimilated herself in precious experiences and shared them with convincing words,” said a judge in the competition.

Yasuyo has been frequenting National Sanitarium Nagashima Aiseien on an island in the Seto Inland Sea off Setouchi, Okayama Prefecture, since her early childhood.

She said her father, Kazutoshi, 57, the principal of her high school, gave her the chance to socialize with leprosy patients.

Kazutoshi first became aware of the issues involving Hansen’s disease through news reports in April 1996, when the Leprosy Prevention Law was abolished. Feeling ashamed that he had not known about the issues, he began visiting the island every year in 1997 with his students.

Yasuyo usually accompanied Kazutoshi on his trips to the sanitarium.

She is now a member of a human rights club, where 27 students from her school and its affiliated junior high engage in various activities.

The four main categories for the activities are: Hansen’s disease; nuclear abolition; disaster relief and interactions with victims; and contribution to local communities.

Under the shared theme of “cherishing others,” its members believe that “human rights and peace are always inseparable.”

At Nagashima Aiseien, Yasuyo and others have had meals with its residents, listened to and recorded the patients’ stories for posterity.

She wants future generations to know about how the government discriminated against leprosy patients, isolated them from their families and hometowns, and deprived them of their rights to use real names or have children.

‘GENUINE BLISS IN LIFE’

This past summer, Yasuyo learned that Tsuda University was soliciting essays from high school students under the theme: “What is your mission in life?”

Although applicants previously submitted “letters addressed to someone,” essays were accepted in the latest contest.

The topic was selected in honor of Mieko Kamiya (1914-1979), a psychiatrist who graduated from the university’s predecessor.

Although she developed tuberculosis, Kamiya cared for residents of Nagashima Aiseien as the head of its psychiatric department while raising two children.

Her book, “Ikigai ni Tsuite” (Life mission), published by Misuzu Shobo Ltd., is still in high demand.

It starts with this passage: “Difficult-to-endure pain and sorrow, piercing loneliness and lonesomeness, never-ending sense of meaninglessness and fatigue. Why do people have to keep living with those things? They have no choice but to ask themselves again and again for what purpose they live.”

The novel coronavirus pandemic restricted interactions with residents at the sanitarium in spring this year, so Yasuyo devoted herself to reading books at a library named after Kamiya within Nagashima Aiseien.

Her essay, titled, “What Loving is Like: My Life Mission,” contains her thoughts after reading “Ikigai ni Tsuite” and “The Art of Loving” by German social psychologist Erich Fromm.

In “Ikigai ni Tsuite,” Kamiya writes about Koichi Kondo (1926-2009), who founded a harmonica band called Blue Bird with other blind residents of Nagashima Aiseien and was highly evaluated in the musical community.

Suffering from numb fingers, band members used their lips and tongues to read scores in braille.

“Simply watching the band’s practice in secrecy will quickly show you that its members’ pleasure arises from the genuine bliss of life,” Kamiya writes.

She also cites Kondo’s comment: “My heart is endlessly swayed by the pleasure and hope generated by us all, along with thin and gentle tones, beside a window in the evening.”

Yasuyo’s father told her that “you went to a Blue Bird concert during your childhood, climbed on the stage and was put on the lap of Kondo.”

Yasuyo referred to the way Kondo lived in the core part of her essay.

“The Art of Loving” defines “loving someone” as taking action, with no assurances, and fully committing oneself to the hope that affection will emerge in the hearts of others they love.

“As Fromm states, Blue Bird loved people through music and took action to devote itself entirely to the hope,” Yasuyo writes in her essay. “Ms. Kamiya found humankind’s true mission in life lies in that sort of behavior.”

Yasuyo’s essay was also inspired by her exchanges with Kim Tegu (1926-2016), a first-generation Korean resident of Japan who lived in Nagashima Aiseien.

The kanji in Yasuyo’s name was picked in tribute to Kim’s given name.

The student showed a photo of Kim smiling and recalled fond memories of the time she shared with him in her early childhood.

“Mr. Kim placed me on his warm lap, the most relaxing place for me,” she said. “He had forcibly had his fingers amputated but wrapped me with his fingerless hands.”

Yasuyo said she will never forget the warmth of Kim’s lap.

“I can find tenderness (in sanitarium residents) because they have overcome discrimination and prejudice,” she said. “Their hopeful words and eyes reflecting expectations for young individuals like us always give me an encouraging push on the back.”

Toward the end of her essay, Yasuyo details how she feels about the COVID-19 situation.

“People are divided by the coronavirus crisis, leading to widespread discrimination and prejudice and hurting certain individuals,” she writes.

“Because of this, building a society where everyone can live together becomes increasingly important. … As a person seeking to form such a living-together society, I want to love any kind of person on my own. That is now my mission of life.”

The essay competition for high school students started in 2000 to mark the university’s 100th anniversary. It was canceled 2020 due to the pandemic, so the 2021 event was the 21st.

Of the 175 English and 206 Japanese works submitted from across the country, two English and three Japanese compositions received the excellence prize.

“Contestants’ experiences vary and their writing abilities displayed in essays are all so great that it was difficult to decide which is better,” said Tsuda University Vice President Atsuko Hayakawa, the chief judge in the competition who heads the school’s Writing Center. “We thus did not award a top prize and instead chose five works for the prize for excellence.”