Photo/Illutration The covers of Tetsuko Kuroyanagi's “Madogiwa no Totto-chan” (Totto-chan: The little girl at the window), left, and its sequel (Provided by Kodansha Ltd.)

The school principal said to the little girl, “Now, you can tell me anything you want. Tell me everything.”

The girl started telling him about the speed of the train she’d just ridden, about a swallow’s nest at her previous school and about the need to blow her nose and stop sniffling before her mother yelled at her.

Tetsuko Kuroyanagi’s autobiographical “Madogiwa no Totto-chan” (Totto-chan: The little girl at the window) is a veritable masterpiece that gives readers a warm feeling.

One part I absolutely love is when Sosaku Kobayashi (1893-1963), the principal of Tomoe Gakuen--a now-defunct private kindergarten/elementary school in Tokyo--spends four hours listening closely to Totto-chan, who’d just been expelled from another school.

“You really are a wonderful kid,” Kobayashi would repeatedly remind his new student, who keeps getting herself into trouble.

Without his encouragement, “I don’t know what would have become of me,” a grateful Kuroyanagi said.

The book became a record-breaking best-seller in 1981. Now, 42 years later, a sequel was published on Oct. 3.

The new book starts right after Tomoe Gakuen was burned down in an air raid in 1945, and it follows Totto-chan and her family after they evacuate to Aomori Prefecture.

Kuroyanagi said she was reluctant to recall the wartime years, but she started writing when the Russian invasion of Ukraine began.

I read the book in one sitting and cried, predictably.

Totto-chan was still a bit of a problem child in the book, but she was surrounded by people who treated her with kindness and acceptance, telling her she was perfectly fine as she was.

The backdrop is a gloomy era, but it somehow warms the heart. Why?

“I would like you to read the book,” Kuroyanagi said with her signature smile at a news conference on Oct. 3.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Oct. 4

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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