11. High School

After my father passed away, my mother, older sister and I lived together in Kurume where I enrolled in the local junior high school. Although money was tight and we lived modestly, I must say I enjoyed this fleeting moment of tranquility in our lives. Unfortunately, by my third year of junior high, my grandfather and his wife decided to adopt me.

Whatever their motivations, I was desperately against the arrangement, but my mother bowed to her father-in-law’s ultimatum. As a result, I had no choice but to move back to Kurakata, where I reluctantly took the entrance exam of a local high school. I didn’t really want to pass the exam at first; however, on the day of the test I happened to run into some old friends from elementary school. Seeing them, my mood lifted somewhat, and, with a little luck, I managed to pass. Two months later, in early April, my high school life began.

It was 1964, the year of the Tōkyō Summer Olympics. A generation that knew little of the destructive war that had ended only 19 years earlier had become adults. In the meantime, Japan steadily modernized: The transportation system, such as trains and buses, were improving. More and more families had a TV set, a washing machine, and a rice cooker; more leisure time to enjoy themselves. Society was changing, too: you could say there was more freedom and democracy. But, while the life of the average Japanese was tangibly much better than ever, my own went from bad to worse.

There were three live-in maids, plus an additional three or four apprentice nurses in our home at the time. They came into my grandfather’s employ in order to support their families once they had finished junior high school, the minimum compulsory education. We were all about the same age. While they did the housework, cleaning, washing and cooking, in our house, I went to high school.[1]

Now that I look back on it, I suppose that Hiroko must have been happy at first to have a daughter she could call her own, but such sentiments didn’t last long. For one, I was never able to warm up to her and refused to call her my mother no matter what a document at City Hall said.

Complicating matters were rumors about Hiroko that I had heard from my own parents. Looking back, I suppose I should have been more mature, more tempered in my judgment toward the woman, and given her the benefit of the doubt. That, however, was impossible for a sixteen-year-old high school girl who felt as if she had been kidnapped.

No sooner did I start going to high school than the harassment began. Hiroko did all she could do to stoke up envy among the young maids. One day I overheard her talking to them about what a good-for-nothing I was, how I never helped out with the housework. She then gave them firm instructions: none of them were to ever assist me, even if I asked nicely. And so, the very next day, one of Hiroko’s lackies prepared a miserable lunch on purpose and handed it to me with a cold, hard look.

One evening, Hiroko told me that it was time for me to take my bath. I had no reason to suspect that anything was amiss, so I went to the bathroom. In Japan, the head of the household customarily takes a bath first, and in our home that person was my grandfather. On this particular evening, however, he was out for a meeting, so Hiroko suggested that I go ahead and bathe.

As I put my leg into the bath, I was shocked to discover that the water was scalding hot, far too hot for anyone to take a bath. In those days, bath water was heated by a fire just outside of the house. If the fire burned too hot, the bath water could boil. If the fire burnt out, the water would cool. As you might expect, it was difficult to maintain the temperature of the water just as you liked it.

I called down to a maid to add some cold water from the well outside as tap water alone wasn’t enough to cool the water.

Hiroko stopped the maid, saying in a hushed tone, “You shouldn’t help Motoko. She needs to start pulling her own weight in our house.”

I was dumbstruck. Wasn’t I doing what she had told me to do in the first place? But that was typical of her in those early days. No matter what I did, she would manipulate it and use it as one more opportunity to criticize me in front of the others, further hardening their hearts against me.

Only then did I realize what was going on behind my back. I had never heard words so full of venom, but they encouraged me to stand up on my own two legs, to become independent. And from that day on, I did almost everything without any of the others’ help.

Now, going to school in the morning was no trouble at all for me in those days, but returning home always made me feel sick to my stomach. I never knew what to expect and just coping was a daily struggle. Hiroko would spy on me, waiting for any chance to embarrass or scold me in front of the others. If I received a letter, she would open it before I returned home from school. One day, a boy from my high school wrote to me, so she read it aloud before the live-in staff then laughed with derision. This constant—drip, drip, drip—of harassment and bullying almost drove me mad.

One day on my way back from school, my head was clouded with peculiar thoughts such that I felt as if I were losing my mind. It was so odd: I wondered why a person stopped when the signal turned red. And now that I had stopped, I no longer remembered how to walk. I just stood there at the crosswalk, disoriented. How on earth will I ever learn to walk again? I wondered. Should I start with my right foot or left? Now that I think about it, I was probably exhibiting signs of neurosis.

It’s no wonder then that I was often physically ill in those days. I once broke out in a terrible, painful rash. Even though my grandfather was a famous dermatologist, I couldn’t tell him or his wife. So, I just suffered in silence.

After several months of this abuse, I started to miss my real mother and sister and decided to travel to Kurume to visit them. It was just after the end of the first term of my first year in high school, and summer vacation had begun. The trip seemed to take forever, but at long last I had returned.

“Tadaima!” I called out when I arrived. “I’m home!”

My mother gave me a long hard look and, then rather coldly said, “You’ve changed.”

I happened to be wearing an expensive order-made dress. It was not the simple casual dress most high school students wore in those days, so when my mother saw me in it, she grew wary of me.

Hiroko had made me wear the dress the day before. I suppose that she had hoped to convey to my mother that I was being taken care of, but the extravagance ended up sending the wrong message.

And if the cold welcome wasn’t a rude awakening enough, I received another shocking blow the following morning. When I sat down at the table and started to have breakfast with my sister, my mother remained standing in a corner of the kitchen. I told her to join us, but for some reason she wouldn’t come to the table. Urging her to take a seat, I looked under the table to pull a stool out for her only to discover that there wasn’t one. Only then did it dawn on me, that my mother had not bought a chair for me. The one I was sitting on was hers. A cold sweat dripped down my back as I realized that I no longer belonged in her home in Kurume and should not have come back.

And so, thoughts filled with dread, I walked back to the station by myself and boarded the train for Kurakata. I do not know why, but I didn’t cry out. Instead, I trembled—the whole way back—terrified of the hardship the coming years had in store for me.

Mustering what little strength I had left within me, I resolved then and there that no matter how badly my step-mother treated me, I would just have to grin and bear it, if only to make life for my mother and sister easier. I no longer cared what would happen to me so long as the two of them were okay.

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[1] Unlike in the United States, high school in Japan lasts only three years, from grade 10 to 12.

A Silent Ovation is available in print and digital version at Amazon.

10. Taichiro Remarries

At the time when Taichirō was at his weakest, most despondent state following the death of his only son, Hiroko leapt into action, storming down to City Hall to have her marriage to my grandfather registered. And, if that wasn’t odd enough, she then went around our neighborhood presenting the document to our neighbors, as if to declare that she was now in charge. Unfortunately, none of us could do anything about it at the time as we were still in mourning and preoccupied with making arrangements for my father’s funeral.

In many Japanese families, the home or family business is usually succeeded by the first son or daughter. This ancient custom dating back to samurai times was supposed to have been abolished first after the Meiji Restoration[1] in the late 1800s and again during the post-war Allied Occupation—a time when many sweeping reforms were pushed through, including the Land Reforms of 1946—but in reality, it continued unabated among more traditional families such as mine. In our family, the responsibility should have fallen upon my elder sister, Tetsuko, who had been born in 1942 and was now eighteen years old.

Tetsuko, who began to talk at only six months, had always been considered precocious and intelligent from the time she was just a toddler. Nobody doubted that she could easily go on to medical school if she so desired when she got older.

Tetsuko, however, had ideas of her own. When she was about ten years old, she began to play the piano, using the Carl Bechstein piano her grandfather had brought back years earlier from Germany. She practiced for three to four hours a day. Even though she claims she can’t play at all now, our next-door neighbors remembered it well and told me that the sound of Tetsuko practicing in the afternoon filled the streets of our neighborhood like an elegant BGM.

 Tetsuko continued to play the piano in order to get into a college of music and even transferred to Fukuoka Jo Gakuin, a private Methodist girls’ school, in the third year of junior high school to have even more time to practice.

When our father fell ill, however, he expressed the hope that his first daughter would also become a doctor in order to continue the family tradition and take over the clinic in his place. All of our relatives agreed that it would be the best course for my sister. Even our grandfather and the scheming Hiroko approved of the plan.

So, at the age of 17, Tetsuko abandoned her musical aspirations and began to prepare for the medical school entrance exams.[2] It was no small feat as she had only a year to study. And though she wasn’t quite as prepared to take the exam as she would have liked, she managed to pass them nevertheless and entered Kurume University in the spring of 1961. My mother has said that Tetsuko probably could have entered the medical department at the more prestigious Kyūshū National University if only she had taken an extra year to prepare for the entrance exam. That said, her circumstances at Kurume University were rather good: our father’s death evoked the sympathy of his former colleagues at the college who welcomed her with open arms and gave her special attention while she studied.

Tuition at the private university should have been no problem, either, because there was a provision waving fees for sons or daughters of the college’s professors. Kurume University, however, had asked our grandfather, Taichirō, if he would cover the cost of her education as a sort of donation. Proud of his granddaughter’s intelligence, he did so willingly. I’m not exactly sure why the university made the request, but my mother told me later that she always suspected that it may have been due to some trouble that occurred between Taichirō and the university after my father passed away.

The news of Yūki’s premature death spread quickly throughout the academic community and his funeral was a grand yet solemn affair held at the university, where he had been a young and highly admired dermatologist. His research was well-known throughout Japan and he was considered one of the rising stars in his field.

In spite of the pride Taichirō felt towards his son, he never paid the bill for the funeral service. Many years later I heard that Hiroko had taken all cash offerings, known as o-kōden, the school had received from the 250 attendees.[3] The university, which had no money budgeted for such an occasion, was forced, nevertheless, to somehow cover the cost of the funeral. My mother told me that the university was able to raise money by soliciting donations from my father’s colleagues, coworkers, nurses and students.

As I have already mentioned, my sister, Tetsuko, entered college in 1961. By then we had already been kicked out of our home in Kurakata and had taken up temporary refuge in my father’s room in a boarding house near the university. It had a single four-and-half tatami mat room and was only about 80 square feet in size. There was a small sink at the end of a narrow hallway, but no private bath. Later, we moved into a modest apartment, but again had to share the bath or go to a sentō, public bath, down the road.

Although Tetsuko’s tuition at the university was taken care of, we lived in relative destitution now that we had no support from Taichirō. My mother, Chiyoko, became the center of our family, the sole breadwinner. She was a wise head of the household and I always followed her orders without questioning. And though she was no longer encumbered by family troubles and obligations, she now had to work to support the three of us.

Before long, my mother found a job as a life insurance salesperson. It surely wasn’t the kind of work a woman from her proud background could have taken up easily, but she had to do what she had to do. To help make ends meet, she would also sew our clothes for us by hand.

My mother had only been selling insurance for a few months when she made the mistake of going to people she knew as prospective clients. Naturally, word got back to my grandfather and his new wife and they were mortified. They forced her to quit the job as it was a disgrace to the noble Fujita family name.

Chiyoko was at a loss for what to do, but thank God, the head nurse at the university hospital came to our rescue. She introduced my mother to the nurses and asked her to teach them o-shūji, or Japanese calligraphy. At last, my mother could find her own way in life.

Despite our struggles, this was a relatively tranquil period for us. I was thirteen years old and entered the local junior high school. Tetsuko meanwhile enjoyed her college life and played in the “light music” jazz club at school as a pianist. She had a lot of friends among her classmates and seniors. Everything was new to her and she glowed when she talked to us about her classes, classmates, teachers and extracurricular activities. Her stories cheered us up and helped us forget the otherwise miserable situation we were in.

In the evenings, my mother would walk as far as she could to meet Tetsuko on her way home and I would tag along. It was during this time that I could sense my mother was gravitating more and more towards my elder sister and my relative position in the family waning.

Although our lives had undertaken a dramatic change, we were able to relax much more than could have ever been possible in my grandfather’s home in Kurakata. When I look back on those days now, I feel it might have been one of the most peaceful times of our lives. Little did I know, however, that dark clouds were gathering, and an ominous shadow was about to encroach upon my life in Kurume.

While my mother struggled to make ends meet, Taichirō, now in his mid-seventies, settled into a comfortable and relatively happy life with his new wife, who was 28 years his junior. Although his first wife, Kanamé, had been physically weak, she henpecked him to her dying day. Hiroko, on the other hand, was more attentive to him and would go on to greatly influence my grandfather’s life and career, I dare to admit, for the better. Her true colors, however, wouldn’t come out until much later.

For starters, Taichirō’s new wife introduced him to yakyū, or Japanese baseball. Before they met, he had only been interested in sūmo wrestling. Thanks to Hiroko, he began to learn all about the sport and often traveled to Fukuoka to watch ball games at Heiwadai Stadium. After the war, baseball was resurrected and quickly grew in popularity among the young and middle-aged generations. In those days, the local Nishitetsu Lions were one of the strongest teams in Japanese Professional Baseball and had won the Japan Series three years in a row in the late 50s.

I heard that whenever Taichirō attended conferences, he would make them change the TV channel from sūmo to baseball. Since he had become the head of the meetings, the others had no choice but to obey him and were often annoyed with his new hobby.

Also, at Hiroko’s encouragement, Taichirō set up the Kurakata Lions Club with Yoshiyuki Kaijima, one of the sons of the founder of the famous Kaijima Coal Mining Company which had mines throughout the Chikuhō Region. Taichirō called upon many old friends and acquaintances and recommended them to join the organization. Thanks to networking, his hospital became even more successful and the house was always full of people. The depressing atmosphere that had hung heavily in the house following the war and the deaths of his wife and only son was swept away and the mood became lighter. Hiroko entertained the guests. Her omotenashi, or hospitality, was one of her points of pride. The organization continues its charitable activities today.

Hiroko also started going to a cooking school run by a famous hotel’s chef. She managed her husband’s meals with great care. I remember her always preparing expensive, hard-to-find fruit—such as Muscat grapes, peaches, oranges—for Taichirō who loved it. His breakfast was usually oatmeal, which was very rare in Japan in those days, milk, an egg and some fruit. Thanks to the attention Hiroko paid to her husband, he was able to live to the age of 102 without ever being bedridden.

After my father passed away, there was some trouble regarding our inheritance. Hiroko was eager to get her hands on everything, and had been scheming from the get-go. My grandfather, Taichirō, originally wanted Tetsuko to take over the clinic and home. In the event that she was incapable of doing so, the responsibility was to fall on me.

When Tetsuko entered college, Taichirō agreed to pay for her tuition, which was a tidy sum and far too much for my mother alone to afford. At the same time, there was a problem concerning the inheritance tax we had to pay after my father’s death. My father had never had much money himself and didn’t think of putting anything aside for us. Because he lacked any sense when it came to finances, his father had the foresight to buy the plot of land next to his clinic and put it in my father’s name. Hiroko, however, had her eyes on the property and demanded that it be relinquished in exchange for the payment of my sister’s educational fees.

Around this time, Hiroko asked my mother to come to Kurakata with her personal seal. When she showed it to Hiroko, she was told it was no good because it wasn’t a jitsuin, which was an officially registered seal. In those days, ordinary people did not have much need for registered seals except on special occasions, such as buying property.

Hiroko told my mother that the seal she had brought was useless, then had one made herself and brought the new registered seal to the Kurakata City Office without telling anyone, something that would go unnoticed for a decade.

When I reached the age of fourteen, my grandfather and Hiroko proposed to adopt me as their daughter.[4] This was, I believe, his attempt to protect his son’s legacy. The idea should have been satisfactory for all involved. I would act as peacemaker. Taichirō would continue to pay for my sister’s tuition and I would take over the clinic and home once I had married. As for Hiroko, she would gain a huge fortune and a daughter, perhaps, who could take care of her later in life.

Naturally, I was dead-set against the idea as I disliked my grandfather’s second wife. I also hated the bleak mood of my hometown and did not want to return.

When I heard of their plans, I flew into a rage and rejected the idea outright, but no one was willing to listen to the opinion of a teenaged girl. My mother, too, seemed to be worried about the whole affair, but kept her thoughts to herself. One night that summer, she suffered from a serious stomachache. It must have been terribly painful, but I had run out of sympathy for her.

In spite of my wishes, the time passed mercilessly forward, marching as if it were heading into a doomed battle. My mother and I never found a peaceful solution to the adoption problem and when I graduated from junior high school, I was forced to leave Kurume. Reluctantly, I moved back to Kurakata and entered a high school in the town, leaving my sister and mother in Kurume where they continued to live.

At the time, I couldn’t fathom how my mother and sister would let me be adopted, but over time I have come to understand that my mother’s first priority had been to ensure that Tetsuko’s studies not be disrupted. In those days, though, I could not appreciate how precarious their situation was and for a long time I must confess I held a sense of uneasiness toward my mother.

I was watching on a documentary on TV about pandas recently. According to the program, the female panda gives birth only once every two years or so. When she does, it’s often to twins. What struck me most was the fact that a panda in the wild seldom raises the two cubs equally. If one of them is weak, she will abandon it and focus her care on the stronger one as it is believed she cannot produce enough milk to support two cubs.

As I watched the program, I couldn’t help being reminded of my own story. My mother, like the panda, had decided which daughter to keep as the prospect of raising two daughters on her meager income was a daunting one. By consenting to my adoption, her father-in-law, Taichirō, would take care not only of my educational and living expenses, but those of my sister’s, as well. It could not have been easy for my mother to consent, so I cannot really fault her. Despite what a piece of paper in City Hall attested, she was still my mother and nothing would have ever changed that. Blood, as they say, is thicker than water.

Over the years, I have come to believe that harmony should be sought after even if you must make sacrifices to achieve it. Peace at all costs, as they say. This is a Confucian idea, I suppose, and I have tried to follow the philosophy ever since because there often is little to no choice in a matter. That said, I considered myself weak and lacking in confidence at the time. I had neither the energy nor wisdom to stand up against the others. All I could do was obey, and hope for the best in spite of my grave reservations.

I can’t help thinking that things would have gone much more smoothly if only my grandmother, Kanamé, hadn’t passed away so early.

My own mother passed away in 2018. In late April, one year after she died, my sister and I visited Kaho to attend a relative’s Buddhist memorial service. On the way to the temple, I looked at the house my husband had built for us, which is located along the train tracks near Kaho Station. I couldn’t believe what I saw.

As the train was passing my old home, I noticed the mauve color of Japanese wisterias blossoms hanging over the wall of the house. It was the first time in many years that I could see them. Whenever I go to the area on business, be it Kaho or Kurakata, I usually take the train and always try to look at the old house as I pass to see how it’s doing. Usually, all I can see is the outer wall and the tops of several broadleaved trees growing in the garden.

It was a special flower for us. When the house was built, my mother gave us the potted plant as a housewarming gift as she knew my husband enjoyed gardening. He was pleased with the gift and put it in the center of our small garden and never failed to look after it.

After he died, the house was rented out. From time to time, I would have a niwashi, or traditional Japanese gardener, come in and trim the plants, but for the most part the garden was allowed to grow as nature willed.

I had almost forgotten about the wisterias, but over time, the roots extended towards the wall and continued to grow there.

When I noticed the wisterias hanging down over the wall, I couldn’t help feeling as if my mother was trying to tell me, “Motoko, I’m fine. You were always a good girl, looking out for your elder sister and me. Thank you for your thoughtfulness.”

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[1] The Meiji Restoration occurred in 1868 when practical imperial rule was restored to the Emperor rather than the Shōgun generalissimo and samurai warriors, who had been the defacto leaders of Japan for almost seven centuries.

[2] It should be noted that unlike America, where students first study basic sciences in undergraduate “pre-med” courses, Japanese students go directly from high school to medical school where they study for 6 years rather than four, but graduate from medical school two-to-three years earlier than their American counterparts.

[3] O-kōden (お香典) is a monetary offering given to a bereaved family at a funeral. Attendees are usually given a small gift, such as tea or simple sweets, in return known as a kōden-gaeshi (香典返し).

[4] In Japan where the eldest son often takes over the family business and home, adoption is a common means of keeping the wealth in the family name. If a family only has daughters, they will often adopt the husband of their eldest daughter. Similarly, if a family has too many sons, they may give one to a family who doesn’t have an heir.

9. Death of My Father

In the autumn of 1954, my father, Yūki, moved from Fukuoka to Kurume City in the south of the prefecture where he worked as a professor of dermatology at the university. He lived in a boarding house near his office, staying alone during the week as he always had and returning to Kurakata on Friday evenings to assist at his father’s clinic on Saturdays. He would go back to Kurume early Monday morning by “express train”, which in those days took about 90 minutes.

Even when he was home, he would continue to do his research, make dictations, or study English while listening to “Ringer Phone” records. Sometimes he enjoyed listening to classical music and would pretend to be the famous Wilhelm Furtwängler or Herbert von Karajan conducting an imaginary orchestra.

My father also listened to the music from movies, such as Doris Day’s “Que Sera, Sera” from the Hitchcock film The Man Who Knew Too Much. I remember humming along with the tune when I was only eight years old even though I had no idea what the lyrics meant.

“Que sera, sera. Whatever will be will be.”

Little did I know then that this song would help me get through the difficulties I would face in later life.

My father’s favorite pastime, though, was watching movies and he used to take me to a theater in town since I was the only person in our house who had any free time. The movies depended on whatever was popular at the time and we went almost every weekend. My biggest concern during these outings was whether my father had money on him or not. One day when we reached the theater, he suddenly turned to me and asked, “Have you got any money on you?” I was only six or seven years old, but I was shocked to discover that my father could be so unreliable. From then on, I always asked if he had money before we departed. Everyone in the family remembers this and still gets a good laugh out of it. “How undependable Yūki was!”

Another one of his pastimes was walking our dogs. As he approached our house on Fridays, the dogs would begin to bark excitedly and welcome him home. Shigeru would get particularly excited and bark loudly, begging to be taken for a walk. Despite being tired, my father would grip the dog’s leash. To be honest, it was actually Shigeru who took his master out for these long walks.

 I did not know whether my father liked saké or not, but I have heard that his drinking could be excessive. That said, he could hold his liquor better than most people, so I never really saw him drunk in our house.

He used to drink a big mug of beer at dinner when he came home. Since no one fussed over him much, I would sit at the table beside him. One evening, he wanted me to join him in drinking beer even though I couldn’t have been more than eight or nine years old. Unable to resist, I drank the beer he gave me. The moment I did, my face turned red and I became very chatty. My father called my mother and, unable to control his laughing, said. “Motoko’s drunk. Give her some medicine.” The taste of the medicine was so bitter that I vowed never to drink beer again.

Happy memories such as these, common in any family, sadly came to an abrupt end.

In the autumn of 1959, my father became severely ill. By the time he was operated upon, the stomach cancer was at such an advanced stage that the situation was hopeless. There would be no treatment, no cure, just a slow, agonizing goodbye. My mother moved to Kurume to be at his side and take care of him.

I was never told how serious his condition was, but a few months later in early 1960 my mother called Taichirō on the phone and asked him to let me go and live with them in Kurume during his final days. At the time, my elder sister was boarding with a family in Fukuoka where she was enrolled in a private high school. It would be the first and only time for me to live with my parents in peace without any interference from others.

With my mother at our home in Kurakata

Compared to Kurakata, Kurume was much larger, more modern and sophisticated. It was warmer, too. The world-renowned Bridgestone Tire Company and other major companies related to the rubber industry were located in the city, and the town was filled with the hustle and bustle of companies’ workers and their families.

In his final months, my father never got angry and my mother never dared go against his opinions which allowed the three of us to enjoy a peaceful, albeit short-lived, chapter in our lives.

After a ten-month-long battle with cancer, my father finally succumbed on the 8th of August 1960. His death was an agonizing one—both physically and emotionally—for he took many of his many hopes and dreams with him to the grave. Eager to not only continue on with his research, he had also wanted to solve the intractable troubles facing his family. This tragic theme would unfortunately be revisited time and time again like the mournful chorus of my life.

I was in the sixth grade of elementary school at the time of his death, but already felt much older.

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A Silent Ovation is available in print and digital version at Amazon.

8. Enter Hiroko

By the mid 1950s, ten years had passed since the end of the war but the social situation was still unstable and life in Japan was somewhat backwards. Women in those days still wore loose-fitting dowdy work trousers, called mompé. There were dirty-looking beggars and street urchins milling about here and there; homeless people camped out under bridges; injured veterans, still in their shabby old uniforms, wandered aimlessly about on crutches. They would play songs on out of tune accordions at the seasonal festivals in town. In those days, we could still see the debris of buildings or houses that had been destroyed in the bombings. Many which still stood had been painted black or had windows covered to hide them from America’s B-29 Superfortress bombers.

My grandfather’s dermatology clinic in Kurakata, however, was so successful that he was able to support a large number of people, including not only his wife and children, but their families, as well. He also employed more than ten male and female servants in his home.

People were always coming and going at our house. One of them was my grandfather’s butler who helped him with his letters or ran errands in his place. Another was a mercer, or dealer in fine textiles, who procured the silk for our kimonos and cotton for our western-style clothes. There were also run-of-the-mill street thugs and shake-down artists who would brashly demand a beer when they ate lunch or dinner in our home whenever they would come over to extort money from my grandfather.

My grandmother, Kanamé, was not what might be called the typical “good Japanese wife” for her husband. Taichirō would sometimes get annoyed with her temperamental character, but she took good care of him and her grandchildren regardless. Best of all, she always made a big show of the yearly events, such as the Tanabata star festival in July, the Tsukimi moon-viewing in autumn, and so on. Kanamé also introduced European events and customs into our home, such as Christmas meals and Christmas present exchanges. She even did sumo wrestling with her grandsons. Sometimes she gave us snacks which she would remove from the bosom of her kimono. These little surprises always delighted us.

I’ve heard from people outside the family that Kanamé could be rather strict and demanding of others. She had a rigid, unbending character, and because of it, she might not have always been as understanding of someone like her daughter-in-law—namely, my mother—as one would have hoped. Still, the time did eventually come when Kanamé realized that her daughter in-law was without fault. She also had several expensive kimonos made for her as a way of showing her gratitude.

In the early 50s, Kanamé suffered from lung cancer and had to be hospitalized at Kyūshū University Hospital in Fukuoka City. She was treated for the disease which, I suspect, must have been caused by the air pollution in the coal mining town. I remember visiting her and staying one night in the same bedroom with her. I couldn’t have been more than four or five at the time, but I can still smell the antiseptic solution of that room.

Early the next morning I took a walk around the hospital buildings. The outer walls had been painted black. Here and there the paint was peeling.

When I returned to Kurakata, I asked my mother why the buildings were painted black and why the hospital was so dark inside. She answered that it had been done so that U.S would not be able to find them from their bombers. I was too young to completely comprehend the situation. Nevertheless, in my own way, I could understand. In those days, we could still see a lot of traces of the war, but like the peeling of the paint, reminders of the violent past were disappearing.

After her treatment, Kanamé returned to our home in Kurakata but sadly passed away on June 5th, 1953 at the age of 63. Her funeral was conducted on a rather large scale in a temple and Taichirō had a large tomb built on a hill for her.

I’ll never forget the day of her funeral because it took place on my fifth birthday. Naturally, my birthday party was canceled and, even though I was only a child, I understood that I had to behave with respect.

After our grandmother Kanamé died, none of our birthdays were ever celebrated again. And the annual events we children had always looked forward to also fell by the wayside.

A year after my grandmother passed away, my father Yūki moved to Kurume University in the south of the prefecture to become a professor of dermatology while the rest of us remained in Kurakata. The biggest change to our lives, however, came the day that Taichirō introduced our family to a woman named Hiroko.

My father in a lab coat conducting a lecture about common psoriasis

I heard that Taichirō first met Hiroko through the proprietress of an inn and had been keeping her as a mistress in Fukuoka. From that day on, Hiroko began to frequent our home, lavishing us with gifts whenever she visited. One time she brought a cute white Persian cat and a pedigree Cocker Spaniel like the one that appeared in the popular Disney movie “Lady and the Tramp”. We were a little surprised by the extravagance of her gift, but happily welcomed the new pets into our home.

Hiroko was born into a wealthy family in Shimonoseki City and her mother, a graduate of Tōkyō Women’s Higher Normal School[1], had married three times. Rumor had it that Hiroko’s biological mother was uncertain as to who the real father was when she became pregnant early in her third marriage. So as to eliminate any doubt in her new husband’s mind, she gave the baby up for adoption. The elder sister of one of her maids who was childless took on the responsibility for raising the baby.

Hiroko’s biological father was a businessman who sold shipping supplies and materials. During Japan’s various wars in the late 19th and 20th centuries, he made a fortune—so much so that he could afford to donate a fighter plane to the Japanese Armed Forces. Hiroko once showed me a photo of the man. The spitting image of her father, there really should never have been any doubt in the matter.

Hiroko’s story was corroborated by the fact that many of her blood relatives went on to graduate from top-name universities. Her cousin’s son, for instance, graduated from the prestigious Keiō University and became a doctor; her younger sister’s husband was a professor of German at Tōkyō University, and so on. Later on, these relatives would sometimes visit my grandfather’s house where they talked about their work and interests. They had good taste and were all very stylish. Even as a small child, I could sense that their status was much higher than the others living in in Kurakata.

My own parents once met Hiroko’s mother, her younger sister, and their relatives in Tōkyō. Upon my mother’s return to Kurakata, she said that they were all good, sensible people. I suppose that the relationship between my parents and Hiroko’s relatives could have been better if only they had had more chances to meet with them. Unfortunately, things did not go well. I do not know what had happened between Hiroko and her relatives, but the relationship soured.

As you might imagine, Hiroko’s own life was filled with dramatic ups and downs. Discarded by her true, biological mother just after her birth in 1914, she was adopted by a respectable, yet stern woman. Later on, Hiroko’s adopted mother would sometimes come to stay with us in Kurakata to take care of my grandfather and me from time to time. Despite the severity of her character, she was actually a kind and proper woman and I’m certain that she had tried to raise her adopted child with a firm but kind hand. Even my mother and sister admitted that she could not be faulted.

Hiroko’s adopted father was a ship’s cook who sailed around the world and was frequently away from home because of his work. He had already died by the time Hiroko came into our lives, so I don’t know much about him. While they weren’t what I would say was affluent, they did lead a better, more comfortable life than most people in those days. Although she never talked about her adopted father, I got the feeling that they were not very close to each another.

When Hiroko was young, she went to a school which was located on the other side of the bay and had to commute by ferry. One day, a person who had got off the ferry before her said, “Oh? I just saw you at the other side of wharf. How did you get here so fast?” After this happened several times, she started to suspect that she might have a doppelganger, a twin sister perhaps, somewhere in the area.

I don’t know exactly what happened, but she eventually learned the truth about her adoption and discovered that her real family was unimaginably rich and lived in a mansion surrounded by a high clay wall.

Not knowing what to do at first, she eventually made up her mind to visit her biological parents’ home. When she rang the doorbell, a young girl who looked just like her answered the door. It was Hiroko’s younger sister. In the hall, Hiroko’s real mother appeared and with no emotion in her voice said, “I never gave birth to a girl like you. Now, go back to your own home.”

Nobody really knows what happened after this, but I heard that Hiroko eloped to Shanghai with a young man. This had to have been in the early 1930s when she was only 17 or 18 years old. As you can probably imagine, things only went from bad to worse for her from then on until she met my grandfather.

Now that the existence of Hiroko was no longer a secret, my sister and I went to visit her a few times at the elegant home she was living in. It was located in a nice neighborhood in Fukuoka City; her taste in everything left nothing to be desired.

My father Yūki, on the other hand, could not accept the idea of his father remarrying. Whenever he returned to Kurakata, my parents would quarrel about it.

Despite my father’s reservations, Hiroko eventually moved in with us in Kurakata. And her first order of business was to evict my aunt, the war widow, and her two children from the house. Somehow or another, they fell into her trap and eventually decided that it would be best for everyone if they moved to another town where they relied on another one of my aunts.

I was around seven years old at the time and I couldn’t quite understand what was happening. It broke my heart to see everyone fight and I often wished I hadn’t been born into such unhappy circumstances. It was then that I began to hate both the home and the city we lived in.

It’s no exaggeration to say that with Hiroko’s arrival my once happy and close-knit family unraveled and descended into hell.

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[1] Tōkyō Women's Normal School was founded in 1875 in Tōkyō’s Ochanomizu neighborhood. It has undergone a series of name changes over the years: “The Women’s Campus of Tōkyō Normal School”, “The Women's Campus of Higher Normal School”, “Women’s Higher Normal School”, and “Tōkyō Women’s Higher Normal School”. Today it is called Ochanomizu University and is one of Japan’s top institutions for higher learning.

7. Early Childhood

I have been teaching Japanese to foreigners for almost two decades now. Some of my students can speak Japanese very well, but, unfortunately, few of them can read or write, even the Japanese script, hiragana, which is relatively easy to learn. Whenever I think about that, I can’t help but remember my nanny.

When I still had to be pushed around in a stroller, in other words, when I was still too young to walk, a new nanny named Katsué-san came to our home to learn the manners of a big house. One of our distance relatives, she was very loyal to us and took rather good care of me.

The day after Katsué arrived at our home, my mother asked her to take me to a physician. As she was new to the area, I had to point out the direction with my hand from the stroller.

One night, my mother asked Katsué to read me a fairy tale. As she began reading the story, I noticed something odd. At last, I sat up and asked her to show me the book. Taking it from her, I started reading the story to myself. Only then did I realize she had been making a mistake reading the particle ヘ as “hé” rather than “é”. When I finished reading the story, I looked over to Katsué and discovered that she had fallen asleep. Who was really babysitting whom, I couldn’t help wonder.

The fact that Katsué could barely read hiragana was not surprising. In those days, there were a lot of people who could not go to primary school for one reason or another. Even though they were illiterate, they still managed to find work and lead productive lives.

When Katsué-san was in her twenties, she married a carpenter and moved out of our home. She must be in her late 80s now, but in my mind, she is still a naïve teenager.

As I write this, memories from those days have been flooding back to me.

A carpenter once came to repair the lock to my aunt’s room. A few days later, he returned to steal some money from her room. I happened to be returning from kindergarten at that moment and went upstairs where I noticed someone hiding behind the door. I told this to my mother and a few days later she took me to the police where I reported what I had witnessed. I learned later that the carpenter confessed everything.

My grandfather and grandmother were enthusiasts of sadō, or the Japanese tea ceremony, and often invited guests to our house. We children had to be quiet during these visits and whenever we got too noisy, my grandmother would threaten to put us in a dark underground storage room as a form of punishment. We were always afraid of getting into trouble during their tea ceremony gatherings.

My grandparents’ garden, which was laid out in the karé-sansui, or dry landscape style for the tea ceremony, expressed a natural scene of a mountain, river, waterfall and valley. They were all made of stones—there was no water—which suited the calm mood of the tea ceremony room very well. The garden’s stones and trees are still there today.

Because of the rampant poverty and hunger in the region during and after the war, our home was often the target of burglars. One night, my grandmother caught a thief. He had snuck into the tea ceremony room to steal whatever he could find that was of value. As my grandmother Kanamé was waddling down the breezeway towards the teahouse to prepare it for their tea ceremony lesson, she caught sight of an unfamiliar figure with one hand in her pot of sugar, the other hand in his mouth. Mesmerized by the sweet taste of sugar—so scarce in those wartime years—he must have completely forgotten what he had actually come to steal. As soon as Kanamé discovered him, she grabbed onto the belt of his kimono, pressed the burglar alarm, and shouted at the top of her lungs: “THIEF!!! THIEF!!!”

I once saw the sugar pot myself several years later. A rare article, it was made of green diamanté glass with cracks in it and shaped like a melon. I suspect that the sugar must have been Kanamé’s own stash that she hid in the teahouse for safekeeping. Life used to be simpler back then, something which we cannot imagine now.

Before summer arrived, a tatami-mat craftsman would come to change the straw mats that covered our floors. It was one of our yearly events. The servants would help the craftsman carry the mats to the garden where he would remove the old covers and padding, then sew on new ones, using a special needle, stitching awls, and picks. I always enjoyed watching the craftsman’s skillful way of sewing the mats which was so different from sewing clothes by hand. Unfortunately, the work is mechanized today and the cushioning is made from polystyrene foam rather than rice straw. In the past they were living things with souls; now, I’m afraid, they are just mass-produced floor coverings.

After finishing up his work, the craftsman would sprinkle lime on the wooden floorboards, and then all the servants would carry the new tatami mats back into the house. The floor was higher than most other houses, something my grandfather took pride in.

There were many children among my relatives and neighbors. Sometimes they played hide-and-seek in our house. There were a lot of rooms and closets, inner steps. There was no end to our “playground”. My sister once hid in such an out-of-the-way place that she couldn’t be found. After a while, we became hungry and gave up looking for her and went home, something that still makes us laugh today. We also played kick-the-can in the alleyway until it got dark.

As I have mentioned before, my grandmother was terribly sensitive to the cold and always kept a pocket warmer which contained volatile benzene. One day she forgot to remove the warmer from her clothes. She changed out of her kimono and left it on a futon. Her maid brought the futon out to the balcony and hung it on a wooden hanger. Before long, the futon and the wooden hanger caught fire. I was in the children’s room upstairs near the balcony and noticed black soot falling. When I looked down from the balcony, I discovered that the futon was on fire, smoke billowing from it. Running downstairs, I told my mother and with the help of the maids she threw water on the futon, dousing the fire. In olden times, causing a fire, even by accident, was considered a serious crime, but nobody was punished. I heard that my grandmother could be very unforgiving towards others but she never apologized for her own mistakes.

The drainpipes of our house were made of copper. One day, a pair of thieves tried to steal the drainpipes because they could make some money if they sold the copper on the black market. A maid encountered the two men in front of the house and cried out. When my mother heard her voice, she ran out of the house and chased after them in her sock feet, but failed to catch them.

The kitchen in our home was 15 tatami-mats in size, or about 30 yards square if my math is correct. It had hardwood flooring, rather than an earthen floor like most traditional homes had in those days. Three sides of the kitchen were covered with order-made cupboards that my grandmother had designed. One of them separated the kitchen from the dining room and had cabinets and drawers accessible from both sides. Food and dishes were placed on a shelf from the kitchen side, then taken from the dining room side. The cupboard was divided into the shelves for trays and big dishes and small drawers for spoons and forks, and so on. It was quite innovative for the times.

The kitchen’s southern side window faced the earthen floor. It also had a skylight in the ceiling such that it was relatively bright. A scrap box was placed beneath the bay window near a big sink and was connected to a garbage bucket outside the kitchen. The idea was quite good, but I don’t think my mother or the maids ever used the garbage shoot for sanitary reasons.

There was an island table in the center of the kitchen. The table had board shelves underneath it. When live-in servants and maids had their meals, the cooking table was used as a dining table. There was another gas oven countertop which was made of tiles as well as an old Japanese style cooking oven, known as a kamado outside the kitchen. It was used to cook rice.

I never heard about the usefulness and conveniences of it directly from my grandmother, but even though I was a child I understood how elaborate and new it was for the times. My grandmother might have been trying to bring the modern times into her home.

Unfortunately, the Japanese furniture was all made of wood and brown in color, rather than painted. When you see famous western-style houses in Japan which imitate the European-style, almost all of them are made with unpainted wood furniture. My grandmother’s elaborate kitchen was no different.

There was a dining room next to the kitchen which had a hori-gotatsu. This is a kind of pit in the center of the room, over which a low table is placed. In the winter, a charcoal-burning or electric heater is placed under the table to keep your feet warm.

Our cat was always hiding in the hori-gotatsu, and would bite or scratch at our feet whenever we sat down. When I was in kindergarten, there was a radio on a small cupboard. We would enjoy listening to popular radio shows every night.

There were two telephones in the house. One was at the hospital and the other was by the dining room. It was one of those old-style phones with a separate receiver and mouthpiece that you sometimes see in classic movies. You spoke into the mouthpiece and listened with the receiver which was attached by a long cord. In order to make a call, you had to pick up the receiver and tell the operator the number you wanted to be connected with.

In the room next to my grandfather’s bedroom, there was an oshi’ire closet with a peculiar door. Although it looked like a typical Japanese-style sliding door made of paper with a wooden frame, it had a bell attached to the back of it. Whenever someone slid the door open, the bell would ring. Even when you were on the other side of the house, you could hear if someone was trying to get into the closet, where a small safe was hidden. We called the safe “Charin” after the sound the bell made. It was used for keeping money and important papers. My mother was in charge of the safe and almost no one was to supposed to go near it but her.

I don’t know who named it, “Charin”, but it was a cute name and we were all fond of it.

Every summer, my aunts came back to our house with their children. My grandparents had eleven grandchildren altogether who would stay for a couple of weeks during the long school breaks. The family would become big and noisy during their visits and my mother and the maids had a hard time taking care of the lot of us.

Going on “bus hikes” with my cousins is one of my happier memories. Sometimes Taichirō would let his eleven grandchildren massage his legs and arms while he lay on the tatami mat. One of my mother’s hobbies was taking photos, so we have many photos from those good old days.

On New Year’s Day, we used to put on impromptu plays under the direction of an elder cousin in front of the whole family and live-in maids. I remember an elder cousin named Hiroshi played the lead character in the skit “Kunenbō”. This is a story about a tree that gives fruit every nine years. He directed the children and starred in the leading role of the planter of the trees. We enjoyed putting on these impromptu plays and the audience always gave us a big round of applause.

In September of 2012, I visited the City Art Museum.[1] It was the first time for me to go back in 21 years. While there I had the chance to see the outside of our old home. The curator of the museum was a generous person and showed me around many places which are closed to the public and are now being used for storage or office space.

Since I had brought my video camera with me, I was able to capture it all on tape. I was particularly interested in the outside of the buildings. There were both western style and Japanese style buildings, which today are still closed to the public. Not even close family members can see them.

As soon as the curator unlocked and opened the door to the passage leading to the entrance of the house, I was so surprised that tears fell from my eyes. I started to take a video, but I couldn’t stop crying. It felt as if I had found soldiers returning from a hard-fought battle. They quietly saluted me as I entered, generously showing me their proud exteriors.

The curator of the museum returned to her office, leaving me alone to reminisce.

The buildings have changed little over the years and the condition was not bad; far better than I had imagined. I had expected the weeds to have become thick and bushy, preventing me from walking through the passage. It was a clear autumn day and there was not a cloud in the blue sky. It allowed me to take some very good shots which contrasted the western-style and Japanese buildings and roofs.

While I was taking the video, my imaginary old soldiers began to whisper about the good old days. Our house was always busy, with people coming and going, chatting noisily in every corner.

Whenever a guest would come through the front gate and make his way along the gravel path, a maid would notice, and, looking through a window, find the visitor. She would report it to my grandmother, who would instruct the maids to prepare the tea. One of the maids would put china on a tray; another would boil the water and make tea. They were already using a coal gas oven in their kitchen back then because of the coal mine industry in the area. The other maid would lead the guest to a round, western-style guest room.

As I recalled these images I felt as if I could hear the sounds of pans clanging, china rattling, and steam whistling from a kettle. Above all I could hear the hustle and bustle of people busy at work.

When I walked around the backyard to the kitchen, memories of our pet dog “Shigeru” came back to me. I don’t know why, but my grandfather named the brown little puppy after the Prime Minister, Yoshida Shigeru. The Akita-inumix ended up living for over 15 years, witnessing all of the trials and tribulations of our lives.

Shigeru lived under the engawa just outside of our dining room by the well on a chain, with another young dog.[2] Shigeru was smart and loved by everybody. He understood the differences between family members and servants, and could tell people by the sound of their footsteps. He knew who his master was and who fed him. On the other hand, Shigeru seemed to be rather strict towards the younger dog as if it was his responsibility to inculcate the ways of the house.

Shigeru would sometimes escape from his chain, but before running away, would first dash up to my mother’s room on the second floor, gesture goodbye, then go back down the stairs and run out into the street. He did this every time he escaped.

One day Shigeru was caught by a dogcatcher, who sold dogs for their meat and fur. In those days there were a lot of stray dogs. Since they were a danger for public health, the municipal office hired dogcatchers to catch strays. My mother had to visit the pound to get Shigeru back. The poor dog’s body was still shaking when he returned home. Even though he had only been missing a few hours, he was a different dog and we couldn’t help but laugh at how haggard he looked. That said, everyone, including the servants, were relieved to have him back.

I played a trick on Shigeru once by pretending to be a stranger. I completely fooled him by wearing a disguise and changing the way I walked. As I came down the gravel path, he barked loudly, but as soon as he realized who I was, his tail wagged excitedly to show that he was sorry for his mistake. I enjoyed this immensely.

Shigeru kept good watch over our house and did an excellent job protecting us throughout his life.

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[1] The museum is located in the building that once housed my grandfather’s clinic.

[2] An engawa (縁側) is a Japanese style loggia, or a wooden-floored corridor that cuts off direct contact of a room with a garden. The en runs around the room on the outside of a building or house and resembles a narrow porch or sunroom.

A Silent Ovation is available in print and digital version at Amazon.

6. My Parents, Yuki and Chiyoko

My father, Yūki, graduated from the Medical Department of Kyūshū Imperial University in 1937 when he was only 24. As he had skipped the first year of junior school, he was one or two years younger than the rest of his classmates. When he was 29 years old, he married my mother, who was 24 and had graduated from Nihon Joshi University.[1]

My mother was the eldest daughter of a doctor in Yukuhashi City, which was due east of Kurakata on the other side of Mt. Fukuchi. Today the two cities are only an hour’s drive away, but in those days, it took half a day to travel between them by train.

Located in the eastern part of Fukuoka Prefecture and facing the Suō Sea, Yukuhashi City was once known as Little Kyōto and called “Miyako”, which is written with the same characters (京都) of the ancient capital of Japan. Several giants in Japanese history were born and raised in the area during the Meiji Restoration of the mid 1800s—including Suematsu Kenchō, the first person to translate the 1000-year-old novel The Tale of Genji into English; the founder of Japan’s first university, Fukuzawa Yukichi; Yasuhiro Banichirō, who had acted as one of the advisors of the Privy Council, and so on.[2] In any case, Yukuhashi must have seemed to my mother a far more sophisticated and agreeable setting than a filthy coal mining town like Kurakata.

Yūki and Chiyoko’s marriage was o-miai, or arranged, which was the norm among the Japanese in those days. Parents exchanged their children’s résumés and photos and fretted over the merits and demerits of the two families being joined in matrimony. My mother, whose family had deep ties to the region going back generations, had grown fond of the scholarly type and pinned her hopes on marrying someone who would one day become a professor much like the esteemed scholars among her relatives.

Chiyoko’s own mother, my maternal grandmother, had been an only child, so her husband had been expected to take over the family hospital. In addition to working at his own hospital, my grandfather was also the director of the hospital at Yahata Steel, which was one of Japan’s biggest steel companies at the time. It would merge with Fuji Steel in 1970 to become one of the largest steel companies in the world. My mother’s family lived in an official residence of Yahata Steel for a while and I once heard that this second home of theirs in Yahata had an automatic door. The maid would press a button and the door would open, something that must have seemed like a miracle of technology at the time. I guess you could say that my mother’s family had been well-connected and well-to-do for generations.

My mother’s grandfather, Yasuhiro Banzō, had also been a doctor. He studied medicine at Teki Juku, a school founded in Ōsaka in 1838 by Ogata Kōan, a renowned scholar of Rangaku or Dutch studies.[3] Banzō had been sent by a close relative who was a Confucian scholar to study medicine.

The school, which would become one of the predecessors of Ōsaka and Keiō universities, had a large number of famous and important alumni, many of whom became professors at Japan’s newly established imperial universities. Others, such as Fukuzawa Yukichi and Yamagata Aritomo, became political leaders.

When his teacher Ogata Kōan was ordered to relocate to Edo (modern-day Tōkyō) to be the personal physician to the Shōgun and consultant to the Tokugawa government, Banzō intended to follow him. His mother, however, had other ideas and made Banzō return to Yukuhashi where he established a private practice. Several years later, many of his friends from the Teki Juku moved to Fukuoka and worked as medical professors at the newly established Kyūshū Imperial University. They would sometimes come and visit my mother’s grandfather at his hospital. One of these friends of his was a Dr. Miyake Hayari (1867-1945), who was the first head of the Department of Surgery at Kyūshū Imperial University in 1910. Miyake befriended Albert Einstein when they happened to be sailing on the same ship together from Marseille, France to Kōbe Japan in 1922. Shortly before the ship’s arrival in Japan, a telegram from Sweden announced that Einstein had won the Nobel Prize, making “Aruberuto Ainshutain” a household name in Japan.[4]

My maternal grandfather with some of his nurses

While my mother’s great-uncle, Yasuhiro Banichirō, was also studying at the Teki Juku, he became friends with Yamagata Aritomo who would go on to serve as Prime Minister twice in the late 1800s. They were close friends and both of them married sisters from the countryside. According to my mother, Yamagata and her great uncle never suspected that they would become famous, so the brides they chose were ordinary women. When the men became successful later in life and gained important positions in society, they found that their simple country wives could no longer keep up. So, both men let their wives stay in Tōkyō while the men lived to the south in Odawara with their more sophisticated “second wives”. Such were the times.

I guess you could say then that mother Chiyoko had been born with a silver spoon in her mouth. A year after graduating from college, she married my father. Tall for a woman in those days, she was smart, but frank. She worked hard to obey her parents’ wishes whatever they were. I’m not sure how people looked upon her, but they must have admitted that she had been well brought up, compared with the people of Kurakata. Despite that upbringing and education, I’m afraid my mother was treated little better than a capable maid once she married into the Fujita family.

When my father Yūki was suggested as a possible match for my mother, her relatives expressed their reservations:

“That Taichirō wouldn’t happen to be nouveau riche, would he?”

Since my mother’s father was still anxious about the match, he visited people who were acquainted with Taichirō and sniffed around. My maternal grandfather met one good-natured man who was so pleased to hear about the match that he praised the choice and assured him that my father and his parents were good people. Only too late did they learn that you should never seek advice from such people when it comes to arranged marriages because they’ll never tell you the truth.

My parents married on March 15, 1942 and took up residence in a home Taichirō maintained in Fukuoka City to enable my father to continue his research at the university. In January of the following year, my elder sister, Tetsuko, was born. Before long, however, Kanamé, who had always been physically frail and emotionally demanding, requested my mother’s assistance. Although there were several maids at my grandparents’ house, my mother had little choice but to move back to Kurakata and live with her in-laws while my father stayed in Fukuoka.

Front row from left to right: my mother, Chiyoko, Kanamé, Taichirō, and father, Yuki (1942)

Japan had been at war with China since 1937 and America since the attack on Pearl harbor in December, 1941, so it was only a matter of time that my father would be drafted, too. When he got his call-up papers in ‘43 or ’44, his family went to see him off at the harbor. As was obvious from the simple uniform, his rank was much lower than that of the other doctors. Years later my mother confessed to me that she had been mortified because the others looked much smarter in the splendid uniforms of higher-ranking officers than her husband did.

I can easily imagine how hopeless my father must have appeared in his uniform. He wore thick-lensed spectacles to correct his myopia and had severe astigmatism in one eye. So terrible was his eyesight that he often could not tell his left shoe from the right and would sometimes put the wrong shoe on when he was in a hurry.

Moreover, he was never without his maids. Even as a young student, he needed two maids—one to sit near him, sharpening pencils with a knife, and another on the other side of the room to keep the background music going. His favorite music used to be kayōkyoku, or the Japanese pop songs of the 1920s and 30s. He would look things up in reference books and write down notes with background music playing all day long.

The maid would set the stylus onto the vinyl record then crank the handle of the phonograph to set it spinning. Sometimes she would even change the needle when it had grown dull. Naturally, both of the maids had to listen to Yūki’s favorite pop songs—again and again and again, sometimes more than fifty times in a row, day after day after day. To make the matters worse, Yūki was fond of one particular pop song and in the end the two maids grew thoroughly sick and tired of listening to it. Exasperated, one of them finally cried, “Yūki-botchan![4] I can’t bear to hear this song another time! I’ve had it!”

After my father entered college, a friend of his introduced him to European music, such as Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and so on and he became totally absorbed in it. I guess you could say that my father had a unique character; he was the typical absent-minded scholar, completely out of touch with the people around him.

How such a man could have ever been admitted into the Army was anyone’s guess, but after five years of total war even the least fit among us are needed. In the end, Yūki didn’t stay very long: after only two or three weeks, he was discharged. My father was in terrible shape—his skin sallow and pitted, he had lost a lot of weight and his uniform hung loosely on his thin frame. According to my mother, he looked like a withered gourd.

Everyone suspected that Yūki must have been more trouble to the Army than of any use to it. My grandfather, too, complained bitterly about his good-for-nothing son after he returned, but to tell the truth, Taichirō had actually begged a relative who was a high-ranking official in the Army to have Yūki discharged as soon as possible. He also had a professor from the university write a letter to the Army, claiming that Yūki was an indispensable doctor in Japan—Irreplaceable!—and must continue his groundbreaking research at all cost. Despite his public grumblings, Taichirō had been working behind the scenes all along to get his only son back.

Following some rest and recuperation, my father resumed his research at the university.

Throughout the 1940s and 50s, my father lived in Fukuoka City and worked at Kyūshū University’s Dermatology Laboratory.

All things considered; my parents’ relationship resembled that of a long-distance marriage. And like a typical business bachelor, my father would travel back to Kurakata on the weekends where he helped out at his father’s clinic on Saturdays and spent time with his family, but by Monday morning he was gone again. Despite his frequent absence, he managed to father his second daughter: me.

By the time I was born in 1948, Misao, one of my aunts who had lost her husband in the Battle of Leyte, Philippines in late 1944, had moved back to my grandparents’ house and was living with us. There was a total of four children in the house—my aunt’s daughter and son, my elder sister and myself—when I was young.

Since ours was a big household with a large staff, my mother, Chiyoko, had little time to take care of her two children herself. The person who actually looked after me was a nursemaid named Katsué. My mother was busy preparing everyone’s meals, and entertaining guests who visited our house in place of her mother-in law.

Chiyoko was also responsible for sorting through the paperwork at her father-in law’s clinic. When the national health insurance system was introduced early in the postwar years, she was the only person who could deal with calculating and managing the clinic’s books. Around the end of month, she would sit at a table in the living room, sleeve covers on her arms to keep them from getting stained with ink, and fill in each patient’s name, disease, and method of treatment on the application form.

As for her other duties, Chiyoko prepared and served kaiseki ryōri, a special meal eaten during the Japanese tea ceremony, which was a hobby of Taichirō and Kanamé’s

Life in Kurakata for my mother was far from easy and I remember her always being rushed off her feet, but she did a good job, working from morning till night, essentially free of charge. Only now can I appreciate how little time she had for raising her daughters, especially me the younger, quieter one.

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[1] Established in 1901, Japan Women’s University is the oldest and largest private Japanese women’s university.

[2] The Privy Council, or Sūmitsuin (枢密院), was a body of advisers and private counselors who were appointed by the Emperor. It was established in 1888.

[3] Rangaku (蘭学), or Dutch studies, was a foreign language curriculum focused primarily on medicine and other western sciences.

[4] “Aruberuto Ainshutain” (アルベルト・アインシュタイン) is how Albert Einstein is pronounced in Japanese.

[5] Botchan (roughly translated as “young master”) is a boy who has had a sheltered, comfortable upbringing, much like my father.

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