|
His
younger daughter—my
girlfriend then—arrived home to Nakatsu for the three-day
New Years celebration, known in Japan as Shogatsu. She'd been
away in Tokyo more than a year, closer to two. Mother, elder
sister, her husband and elder brother were gathered around the
kotatsu, a low, sunken table draped with a futon, electrically
heated underneath. Bowls of rice and miso, sliced sashimi, assortments
of pickles and meats, tall bottles of beer—all crowded
before me, threatening the table's edge. Mother, sister, husband,
brother, my girlfriend and I—conversed, they in faltering
English, me in worse Japanese. Her father was there, too, hunched
and craning forward, clicking chopsticks, chewing, his large,
yellow teeth askew in a slack jaw. He sat outside the kotatsu
on the straw tatami floor, cross-legged, dressed in a loose undershirt
and baggy, white pajama-like pants to just below the knee. His
prominent cheekbones jutted allusively so that I could readily
see the origin of his daughter's beauty. While my girlfriend
and I played footsie under the kotatsu, the family carried on.
I noticed he never acknowledged her arrival, or my intrusion.
It could be I’d missed something.
Hiromi-papa,
as the family calls him, once taught high school math. Retired
now, he spends
his days stretched out on the aging
tatami, turning the rice-paper pages of slim novels. Or else
he disappears into the carnival-jingle blare and bright neon
of a pachinko palace to try his luck. Our holiday visit occasioned
no interruption to his routine as we explored malls, worshipped
at temples, dined at fine eateries or sought the sulphur-soak
of nearby hot-springs.
"Hiromi-papa
no sekai," they say. Hiromi-papa's world. The
phrase brings a chuckle to each family member. They know
his predilections. Mother, a painter and sculptor of cats and
kimonos,
as well as local coffee house proprietor, shakes her head
and smiles—a bemused tolerance tinged with embarrassment.
At the end of a day, he arrives at the coffee house to do
the cash
in silence. Then they call him "Hiromi-papa, enumerator," and
chuckle some more.
His
world, not theirs. The family's name is Shimura; it is the
mother's family name, the name adopted
by Hiromi-papa
at marriage.
There were brothers in his family—none, unfortunately,
in hers. The Shimura name had to survive, so Hiromi-papa
kindly helped out.
Shogatsu
came to an end and the family gathered at the train station
to wish us good-bye. As we
waved one last
time from
beyond the turnstiles, I had to wonder at the absence
of Hiromi-papa.
*****
His
younger daughter—my fiancee—arrived home to
Nakatsu for the summer O-Bon festival, a yearly interval
of
ancestor worship. The family was busy preparing to visit
the Shimura
monument at a local cemetery. Incense in boxes, lilies
and chrysanthemums were all laid out.
"The
car is too small for all of us. He can go by bike," mother
said. "We'll take the flowers."
We
waited in the car while in front of us Hiromi-papa straddled
his bicycle, fiddling with the flap
on a box of incense.
He reached into his jacket for a lighter. Then,
withdrawing a
large bundle
of sticks from the box, he flicked the lighter
and passed the flame back and forth through
the
tips, getting full
coverage.
"Do
it there, father!" his elder daughter shouted from
the car window.
His
answer, a spurt of mumbling fading into silence, told us his
strategy was the better one.
With one foot up on
a pedal,
one hand gripping the handlebars, the other
holding the smoking incense sticks, he pushed off.
We
followed close behind through the maze of single lane streets—brick
walls, power poles and house entrances
flush with the curbs. Hiromi-papa held the incense bundle
aloft like
a smoke-spewing
torch. He wobbled slightly, then more
widely, which put me in mind of Japanese housewives performing
the traditional O-Bon
dance, their successive half-twirls,
their
rhythmic grace.
At
one point, he disappeared around a bend. Ahead at the corner
was a large, convex
safety mirror
designed
to warn
of oncoming
vehicles. In the reflection, a distorted
and weaving Hiromi-papa appeared, then
a sudden
flash of light burst
above his
head. Stray sunbeam, I thought, but
as we came around, there was
his bundle of incense flaring up in
orange and blue.
He
waved it about frantically, then snapped it down with his wrist
like
a ballpoint
pen gone
dry. Now he was dangerously
veering from curb to curb. Mother
emitted a small shriek while
the others
began tittering. The flames grew
larger and burned down fast, brushing his
hand so he
was forced
to wing the
bundle violently
away. The small sticks scattered,
diffusing the flame. Tiny explosions of smoke
and ash dotted
the pavement.
My initial
fear for him
subsided as the whole family shared
their amusement. With both hands
now in firm
control, Hiromi-papa
rode bravely
on.
Still
laughing, we arrived at the temple minutes later and found
a
shop across
the street that
sold incense.
The stones
and monuments
in this cemetery—packed tightly
between the temple and a noodle
shop—range
from mere slabs to virtual mausoleums.
The Shimura family's is something
in the middle, a tapering stack
of polished, grey granite blocks
about
five feet high engraved
elaborately in Chinese characters.
I watched each family member take
a part in the cleansing rite: decanting
small buckets of
water over the stones, laying the
flowers, and—Hiromi-papa's
role—planting the incense
in holders at the base and lighting
them one by one. Their cherry-maple
pungency
stayed with me long
after he got back onto the saddle
of his bicycle
and rode away.
*****
His
younger daughter—now
my wife—arrived home
to Nakatsu for her elder brother's
wedding. It started with the traditional ceremony in a Shinto
shrine conveniently located
on the second floor of a prominent
local hotel. As a spouse, I was allowed entrance, and once
the
new couple had performed
the rites, I joined the Shimura
side in a line facing the bride's family. From Hiromi-papa,
mother, elder son, elder daughter,
younger son, daughter, to me
at
the end—it was the form
of traditional patriarchy.
I politely participated in the inspection, trying to appear
as grave and
gracious as the others. Hiromi-papa
introduced me with his younger
daughter as "Mr. and Mrs.
Alan," leaving off my
family name. I could only smile
and wait
for the reception to begin.
It
was a two hundred person, sit-down dinner, with costume
changes, light
show, towering,
sparkling cake and karaoke
interlude. I
was called upon to sing the
only English song available,
Yesterday,
which seemed
to give
the guests much pleasure.
At least, no
one remarked on the unsuitability
of its message.
His
daughter and I made a cash offering commensurate
with
the closeness of
our relationship with
the groom, and received
in return a bag of gifts—tea,
rice-crackers, pottery.
She said, "Father
told me how very thankful
he was
we didn't have a Japanese-style
wedding like
this one,
because then he'd
be bankrupt!"
That
night a virulent illness
overran my body and I
thought about each
item I’d eaten:
two different soups,
each containing
seaweed and unknown ocean
food, a salad, sushi
of all varieties, a prime
rib platter, the cake—all
varieties of beer, sake,
whiskey-waters. Now I
couldn't lift
my
head without a throb
in my neck reaching down
to
meet the rise of nausea
in my belly.
My futon soaked up the
sticky sweat,
and
crawling across the
floor to the bathroom
was a frequent ordeal.
I knew
I'd
miss the hot-spring excursion
the family
had planned.
The
next day, prone upon the tatami,
I groaned
and flipped
rice-paper
pages to
Japanese
novels I'd never
be able
to read. "I am
become Hiromi-papa," I
mused, but where he was
I could only surmise.
Pachinko was likely,
until early in the afternoon
I
heard the rattle of the
shoji doors sliding open,
and saw him enter on
his knees holding a yellow-stained,
patterned box in
his two hands. Dressed
in his undershirt and
white, cotton bottoms,
he slid closer and carefully
placed the box in front
of me. He looked down
at it a moment as though
waiting, or preparing,
for
something. I felt a pang
as I realized that, in
the nearly two years
since we'd first encountered
each other, I hadn’t
once spoken directly
to him, nor him to me.
"What have you got there, father?" I asked.
"Photographs," he
said without looking up. "From when
Kano-chan was a
young girl."
He
lifted the lid, took hold of a
small stack
from the
many, and
one
by one
without a word
revealed
to me something
I
might never have
had the good
fortune to
see: a
history in
pictures
of the woman—and family—I married. |