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.
[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.