In the first chapter, Katsu describes his childhood. He is born to his father’s concubine in her family’s home because he no longer favors her. For the first seven years of his life, he is raised by his father’s wife in the Otani family. After being handed over to the latter from the concubine, he also has a wet nurse. Despite having a different biological mother, Katsu considers his father’s wife to be his real mother. He laments that he was a troublemaker causing his mother much grief: “I grew up a real hell-raiser” (11). His mother suffered from health problems such as palsy, and he made things more difficult.

Because he is an active child, Katsu gets into fights. One such incident leads him to be punished by one of his father’s men: “He tied me to one of the posts in the veranda and whacked me on the head with a wooden clog. To this day I have a bald spot and a dent where he struck me” (10).

After another particularly difficult fight with multiple boys at age seven, Katsu wants to commit hara-kiri—a ritual suicide of the samurai by disembowelment. However, he is stopped by a rice dealer.