‘From the Outside, It’s Impossible to Tell a Liar from a Truth-teller’

In every issue of Pen, the Naoki Prize-winning author Satoshi Ogawa presents a new essay in his series ‘A Non-Conformist’s Guide to Surviving Society’. In this series, Ogawa reflects on the often eccentric strategies he devises to navigate life’s everyday challenges. Below is the second installment, ‘The Hidden Toast’.

When I was in elementary school, I witnessed my younger sister, three years my junior, being severely scolded by our mother. The reason? She had secretly thrown away a slice of toast my mother had made for breakfast, hiding it behind the outdoor air conditioning unit on the balcony to let it spoil. In our house, it was an unspoken rule that we were required to eat all of the toast my mother made each morning, including the crust. There was a widely believed superstition at the time that children who skipped breakfast would end up delinquent.

Naturally, if we left food uneaten, we would face our mother’s wrath. But eating that dry toast first thing in the morning was a struggle. My mouth would be parched, and chewing through the crispy bread was a challenge. For my sister, still in the early years of elementary school, I imagine it was quite an ordeal. In the end, it seems that she secretly disposed of the uneaten toast behind the air conditioning unit, only for our mother to find it, leading to an intense scolding.

When our mother asked, ‘Why didn’t you finish it?’ my sister, on the verge of tears, replied, ‘I couldn’t eat it all.’ Our mother turned to me, saying, ‘But your older brother eats all his every morning.’ I simply nodded in agreement.

I remember that moment well. The reason I remember it so clearly is that it marked the first time I became aware that I was telling a lie. The truth was, I, too, could never finish my toast. But unlike my sister, I had learned to be better at hiding my dishonesty. I would wrap up the leftover toast in a tissue, stuff it in my pocket, and discreetly throw it in the trash can by the train station on my way to school. (Of course, I now deeply regret wasting food in this manner.) I had simply learned to lie better than my sister.

From that experience, my perception of the word ‘honesty’ changed. The people who are considered ‘honest’ might simply be good at lying. From the outside, it’s impossible to distinguish between someone who doesn’t lie and someone who simply knows how to lie well.

Years later, I recalled the toast incident. By then, I had become a university student and was working part-time at the front desk of a hotel. The manager, always smiling and appearing kind, frequently lashed out at the staff in the back office. Whenever I made a mistake, he would reprimand me by physically hitting a senior staff member, right in front of me, blaming them for not having given me enough guidance. Watching this, I made a decision: if he ever laid a hand on me, I would retaliate immediately and quit my job on the spot.

As the months went by, I found myself constantly on edge, wondering when it would be my turn to be hit. I would practice in my mind how I might respond if it happened. Six months later, the manager had never laid a hand on me.

One day, it suddenly occurred to me: the situation was strikingly similar to the toast incident. Just as I had been better at hiding the toast than my sister, the manager had stayed in his position for so long because he was skilled at choosing who to target. He would never strike someone who could cause him trouble; instead, he picked those who were defenseless and used them as outlets for his aggression. I thought to myself that those who commit sexual harassment or groping probably operate in much the same way, selecting people they know won’t speak up. When such cases come to light, the ones who are eventually fired or arrested are, in fact, the clumsier of the ‘villains.’ The real wrongdoers, on the other hand, continue their actions discreetly, never being exposed.

As someone who once secretly discarded my toast into the station’s trash bin, I now think that perhaps this is also the role of a novelist: to write about these hidden, invisible forms of evil, the ones that we are truly responsible for confronting.