The Stories Clothes Tell: Voices of Working-Class Japan (Asian Voices) 1442265094, 9781442265097

Citation preview

The Stories Clothes Tell

The Stories Clothes Tell Voices of Working-Class Japan Tatsuichi Horikiri Edited and translated by Rieko Wagoner

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Rowman & Littlefield A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB, United Kingdom Copyright © 2016 by Rowman & Littlefield Unless otherwise noted all photographs are from the digital image archive of the Horikiri collection at the Kitakyūshū Museum of Natural History and Human History. Reprinted by permission of Mr. Tatsuichi Horikiri and Kitakyūshū Museum of Natural History and Human History All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Horikiri, Tatsuichi, 1925– | Wagoner, Rieko. Title: The stories clothes tell : voices of working-class Japan / Tatsuichi Horikiri ; introduced and edited [and translated] by Rieko Wagoner. Other titles: Nuno no inochi. English Description: Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield, 2016. | Series: Asian voices : a subseries of Asia/Pacific/perspectives | First published in 1990 as a monograph, Nuno no Inochi (The Life of Clothes) by Tokyo publisher Shinnippon Shuppan-sha; a new and expanded edition was brought out by Shinkagaku Shuppan-sha in 2004; the present volume is a translation of the 2004 edition. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016004884 (print) | LCCN 2016008454 (ebook) | ISBN 9781442265097 (hardcover : alkaline paper) | ISBN 9781442265103 (paperback : alkaline paper) | ISBN 9781442265110 (electronic) Subjects: LCSH: Costume—Japan—History. | Clothing and dress—Japan— History. | Working class—Clothing—Japan—History. | Japan—Social life and customs. | Japan—Social conditions. | Working class—Japan—Biography. | Japan—Biography. | Oral history—Japan. Classification: LCC GT1560 .H6613 2016 (print) | LCC GT1560 (ebook) | DDC 391.00952—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016004884

™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

Contents

List of Illustrations vii Notes to the Reader ix Timeline xi Maps xiii Introduction by Rieko Wagoner xv  1  Kasuri Mattress Cover from Home

1

 2  Koshimaki Petticoat of Eighty-Three Patches

5

 3  Echigo-jishi Costume for Boy Dancer

9

 4  How Many Diapers?

15

 5  Two Hanten Field Jackets

21

 6  Okiboda, the Pride of Women

25

 7  My Teacher’s Sunday Best

29

 8  A Weighty Quilt

33

 9  Life with a Mosquito Net

39

10  A Bed of Wood Shavings

43

11  The Meisen the Girl Could Not Wear

47

12  Dead Horse

51 v

vi

Contents

13  Female Coal Miners

53

14  Aunties and Uncles

61

15  Rich and Poor

65

16  A Beggar Girl

69

17  Noble-Minded Ladies

73

18  A Gown of Leaves for the Dead

79

19  Katatsuke-gasuri

83

20  A Lady in a Dilapidated Mansion

89

21  Female Workers in Textile Mills

93

22  Forbidden Tears

97

23  The Thousand-Stitch Waistband

101

24  The Rising Sun Kimono That She Wore

105

25  Gifts from My Mother

109

26  Akemi’s Song

115

27  Military Uniforms and Shoes

121

28  What Mompe Trousers Symbolized

129

29  A White Chima Jeogori 133 30  Sarasa Print Bed Quilt

137

31  Hanten Story

141

Afterword 157 Acknowledgments 161 Glossary of Clothing Terms 163 Selected Bibliography 169 Index 173 About the Author 179

Illustrations

 1.1  Kurume-gasuri fabric

3

 2.1  Patched koshimaki petticoat 6  3.1  Echigo-jishi hakama costume for boy dancer

11

 4.1  Diaper for an adult

18

 5.1  Nora-gi hanten field jacket

22

 5.2  A nora-gi hanten for landlord

24

 6.1  Okiboda fisherman’s coat

26

 6.2  Okiboda (or donza) from northern Japan

27

 7.1  A muslin haori for women

31

 8.1  Shina-fu seedbag 34  8.2  Yogi quilt 36  8.3  Oguso quilt batting

37

 9.1  A mosquito net (miniature model)

40

11.1  Meisen silk kimono for women

49

13.1  Mabubeko 56 17.1  Momohiki farmer’s pants

75

17.2  Michika jacket 75 vii

viii

Illustrations

19.1  Katatsuki-gasuri kimono for women

86

19.2  Katatsuki-gasuri kimono for girls

87

22.1  Celebratory flag

99

22.2  Celebratory flag

99

23.1  Sen-nin-bari waistband

102

24.1  Postcard from zegen 106 24.2  Naga-juban kimono underwear

108

25.1  Ration ticket for clothing

110

25.2  Inverness coat

112

27.1  Wool army jacket

122

27.2  Leather army shoes

122

27.3  Hōkō-bukuro 125 27.4  Imon-bukuro 126 28.1  Mompe pants for women

131

Notes to the Reader

ROMANIZATION Japanese words are all italicized except for place names, personal names, and other proper nouns. Japanese names are written as in English, with the given name first, followed by the surname. DATES AND PERIODS Both the Julian calendar and the traditional system of imperial regnal names, gengō, are used for dating in Japan. The current gengō, Heisei, began in 1989; therefore, 2015 is Heisei 27. Furthermore, there are chronological periods mostly defined with reference to the seat of the government; thus, the period when the government was located in Edo (present-day Tokyo) is called the Edo period, which comprised multiple gengōs. Since the Meiji Restoration (1868), the capital-based period names have been discontinued, and the gengō refers to both regnal name and the period name (i.e., one period per emperor). Therefore, the Meiji emperor’s reign is the Meiji period, and the Shōwa emperor’s reign is the Shōwa period.

ix

Timeline

The following timeline lists historical events relevant to this book. 1603–1867 Edo period 1781–1788 1782–1788 1853

Tenmei (the reign of the Tenmei emperor, Kōkaku) Great Tenmei famine Commodore Matthew Perry arrives in Japan, leading to the opening of Japan to the West.

1868–1912 Meiji period (the reign of the Meiji emperor, Mutsuhito) 1894–1895 1904–1905

The First Sino-Japanese War was fought between Japan and China primarily over the control of Korea. The Russo-Japanese War was fought over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria and Korea. It was concluded via the Treaty of Portsmouth with a complete victory for the Japanese, laying the path to the colonization of Korea and Manchuria.

1912–1926 Taishō period (the reign of the Taishō emperor, Yoshihito) 1910s–1920s 1910 1914 (1925

A period of relative peace and liberalization movement, which was later referred to as the “Taishō Democracy” Official annexation of Korea by Japan, lasting until 1945 Japan enters World War I against Germany and gains German territories in China and the Pacific. Tatsuichi Horikiri is born in Kagoshima, Japan.) xi

xii

Timeline

1926–1989 Shōwa period (the reign of the Shōwa emperor, Hirohito) 1929 1931 1933

1937 1940 1941 (1943 (1944 1945

1945–1952

(1946 1946 1947

With the stock market crash on Wall Street, the Great Depression spreads worldwide. Manchurian (Mukden) Incident occurs. Japan invades Manchuria (northern China) and the puppet state of Manchukuo is established in 1932. Japan withdraws from the League of Nations. Child Abuse Prevention Act The idea of the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” emerges as the guideline for Japan’s foreign policy. The Second Sino-Japan War starts in northern China. The war develops into the “Great East Asia War” and then “the Pacific War.” Japan signs the Tripartite Pact, creating the Rome-TokyoBerlin Axis. Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, and the Pacific War begins. Horikiri leaves for Beijing, China, as an employee of a construction company.) Horikiri is conscripted and serves in northern China until the end of the war.) Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Emperor Hirohito declares the end of the war. The Potsdam Declaration is signed, leading to Japan’s unconditional surrender. US occupation of Japan. General Headquarters (GHQ), under the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, General Douglas MacArthur, begins reconstruction. The Allied occupation force is closed after the conclusion of the San Francisco Peace Treaty in 1952. Horikiri returns to postwar Japan.) New yen currency introduced. Promulgation of the new “Peace” Constitution Land reformation to redistribute farmland to tenant farmers

1989–pres. Heisei period (the reign of the Heisei emperor, Akihito)

Map of Japan

Map of Kyuˉshuˉ

Introduction Rieko Wagoner

L

ocated at the northern tip of Kyūshū Island in Japan, the Kitakyūshū Museum of Natural History and Human History houses a unique treasure. Hidden away among the more popular dioramas and dinosaur fossils, behind the displays of ukiyoe prints and floats for local festivals, away from the hands-on research labs for children and an enticing gift shop, one may find the Horikiri collection, which contains more than thirty-five hundred items of clothing and related textiles. The collection is the product of a half century of dedication by one man who wanted to uncover and preserve the untold stories of people who had lived at the margins of society. When people today think of Japanese clothing, they almost invariably think of beautiful kimono worn by geisha, samurai, or kabuki actors. But a large portion of the population had to clothe themselves with very limited resources. The clothing in the Horikiri collection is of this kind, consisting of items such as farmer’s jackets, fisherman’s coats, field pants, underwear, diapers, and aprons, all worn down, patched, mended, and recycled. The collector, Tatsuichi Horikiri, was convinced these items could tell the stories of human experiences if only one bothers to listen to them. Horikiri was born in 1925 in Kagoshima, Japan. After graduating from Kajiki Industrial Technical High School at the age of seventeen, he was hired in 1943 by Kahoku Kōtsū (the Northern China Transport Company, which oversaw railroad and bus services between 1938 and 1945) and sent off to work in their construction division in northern China, then under the control of imperial Japan. Within a year, he had been conscripted and xv

xvi

Introduction

sent to the front in China, where he remained until Japan’s defeat in 1945. He returned to his homeland in 1946 and enjoyed a lifetime career in the construction business. During his working years, and more intensely after his retirement in 1980, Horikiri traveled throughout Japan, collecting vast quantities of used clothing and furnishings, all the while recording their “stories” to illuminate and contextualize the specimens. Although he received no formal academic training, Horikiri is a highly respected authority on the history of everyday clothing in the Meiji (1868–1912), Taishō (1912–1926), and Shōwa (1926–1989) periods, having published a number of books and articles on the items in his collection. His awards and recognition include a Japan Museum Association Award in 2001 and the Fukuoka Prefecture Promotion of Culture Award in 2010. Chapter 7 of this book has been adapted for use in a school textbook, and many Japanese youth today are familiar with Horikiri’s story. One of Horikiri’s most important publications is Ranrutachi no Henreki (Journeys of Scrap Clothes).1 This volume, printed in a limited edition of just eighty-two copies, contains four hundred two-inch-square pieces of actual cloth specimens from his collection, together with his annotations for each piece, discussing the materials and types of weaves of the fabrics, the purposes and ages of the garments from which they have come, and “stories” he was able to gather in connection with them. Today, as a research scholar at the Kitakyūshū Museum, Horikiri works tirelessly toward the goal of cataloging his entire collection, which he donated to the museum in 1992. The contents of this book were first published in the 1980s in the form of serialized essays appearing in two Japanese newspapers, Nishinippon and Akahata, and the magazine Senshoku α. The essays were then collected and published in 1990 as a monograph, Nuno no Inochi: Hito no Kokoro, Kurashi Tsutaete (The life of clothes: Telling [stories of] people’s “heart” and everyday life), under the imprint of the Tokyo publisher Shinnippon Shuppansha. A new and expanded edition under the same title was brought out by Shinkagaku Shuppan-sha in 2004. The present volume is a translation of this 2004 edition. Nuno no Inochi is the third of nine books and museum catalogues published by Horikiri. All of these are devoted to the topics of clothing and the history of “the common people” (shomin-shi). He addresses the question of how people in lower social strata lived during the Meiji, Taishō, and Shōwa periods—that is, the first half of the twentieth century. Who were these people? They encompassed peasants and fishermen, miners and factory workers, soldiers and prostitutes, and traveling entertainers—in other words, they were working-class people2 who rarely had enough to eat and barely had the resources to clothe themselves.

Introduction xvii

Most individual human experience is lost with the passage of time, but certain memories can be recovered through the physical traces left behind. These often take the form of artifacts, such as tools and implements, or intentional mementoes, such as photographs and keepsakes. For Horikiri, clothing is the medium of choice in his efforts to recover these memories, whether they be those of the “common people” or his own. In chapter 1, he relates an incident that convinced him that clothing—in this case, a futon—can serve as a powerful, visceral conduit through which past human experiences are brought to our awareness in the present. He claims that the clothes he has collected have kokoro, variously translated in this book as “heart,” “emotions,” “feelings,” or “story,” depending on the context. Ultimately, what kokoro connotes is the memory of lived human experience. Clothing is particularly intriguing in that it is worn in direct proximity to the user’s body. Experiences mediated by clothing can thus be very powerful and intimate, and perhaps for that very reason, their memories are often suppressed and hidden. Especially in the case of handmade garments that have been individually created for a specific user, as opposed to those mass-produced commercially, how can one possibly share such singular experiences with the rest of the world? Horikiri was determined to locate those submerged voices and to help bring them out of the silence to be heard. It is interesting to note that many of the people Horikiri interviews in this book are women. Not all of them are willing to open up and tell their stories, at least initially, but once they do, they are surprisingly candid. One senses their delight in confiding highly personal stories to the male interviewer they meet here for the first time. Horikiri’s success in coaxing the details of personal experiences, often painful, shameful, or otherwise very private, he speculates, resulted from his practice of spending ample time with the people he was interviewing, often at their homes. Most of them are of an older generation now with plenty of time on their hands, and the stories they tell relate to the distant past, often full of significant memories that have lost their painful edge. Horikiri never used a recording device but mostly relied on his extensive field notes to record the relevant information as well as to serve as the source of his later writings in the forms of books, essays, and catalogue entries. In some cases, his own personal conviction clearly inspired the informant. The notion that “life” inheres in such items as a futon or a jacket may seem far-fetched, but those who have had specific experiences while in close contact with the item may very well feel the sense of having shared the experience with the garment. As the final chapter suggests, it is not difficult to imagine that asking the right question can release a torrent of emotion from the person being interviewed. It is also reasonable to assume that Horikiri’s

xviii

Introduction

own background—his humble origins in rural Japan, his military service in China, his decades of work in the construction industry, and his reputation as a collector of antique clothing—helped to put people at ease since he could approach them not as a scholar but as a fellow citizen. In fact, the contents of his informants’ stories often resonate closely and profoundly with his own experiences, enabling him to empathize and earn his interlocutors’ trust. For this reason, the narratives in his account possess a “multivoicedness,” conveying the voices of both the interviewed and the interviewer. Horikiri’s own voice is equally as valuable for the reader to contemplate as the voices of the interviewed; his questions and criticisms, his analyses and interpretations often provide exactly the handle the reader needs in order to appreciate fully the conditions in which these stories and events have unfolded. History does not consist in facts alone but requires as well a measure of subjective imagination in order to capture the wholeness of experience. With his documentation and interpretation balanced by his own intuitive stance, Horikiri creates meaningful narratives that make the past come alive. After all, he has spent decades collecting clothing and stories, writing books and articles on the subject, organizing exhibitions, giving lectures, and otherwise trying to communicate his findings. But it is important to remember that his fundamental point of departure has always been his commitment to telling the stories of those who are voiceless—as he himself once was, as we will see in chapter 1. One might allege that Horikiri’s approach is subjective and unreliable, but to do so would be to miss his clear awareness of the limits of subjectivity and his engagement with issues of authenticity. Indeed, he comments on frustrations he sometimes meets in his fieldwork: The challenge in dealing with oral history, however, is not so much in gathering it as in authenticating it and determining its credibility. There are always those who are a little too creative in their storytelling or who get intoxicated from being the hero of their own tragic drama. At the same time, there are occasions when the truth shines forth in even a few words casually uttered. If the physical evidence of the clothing corroborates the truthful nature of their account—which was rarely the case—then I felt that I had succeeded in authenticating the story at hand.3

Yūko Tanaka, a prominent cultural historian and the president of Hōsei University, has highlighted the productive nature of Horikiri’s approach. As she explains in her essay, “Boro,”4 people in the past did not regard what we commonly call boro (rags or old, worn-out clothing) as trash to be discarded but, rather, as valuable resources to be cherished, preserved, or repurposed for other uses. She highlights the fact that in his discussion of the koshimaki petticoat of eighty-three patches, Horikiri

Introduction xix

describes that it was mended meticulously, washed thoroughly, and folded with the utmost care. Thus, she explains, Horikiri is not simply a collector of antique clothes but a cultural historian who is able to interpret the vicissitudes of human experience, both physical and emotional, through the medium of clothing. Tanaka also discusses the concept of “life” as it relates to clothing. She points out that although women in the Meiji and Taishō periods were trained in sewing, this was primarily so that they could mend their families’ clothing. Indeed, it was quite rare for them to sew completely new garments. In the evenings, they would sit and mend everyday garments by restitching, patching, and quilting them for reinforcement. When the cloth eventually became so frayed and thin that it could no longer take further stitching, they viewed its “life” as having gone, dedicated prayers for its sake, and then shredded it so that it could be used for purposes other than wearing—such as stuffing futon. Ascribing “life” to inanimate objects in this way, whether they be natural or man-made, is not at all uncommon in Japan, where people often anthropomorphize objects for various reasons. The word “life” (inochi) in Horikiri’s title thus accords with this notion of clothes being “alive” and full of “spirit.” At the same time, it calls attention to their inevitable subjection, like all living things, to the biological processes of birth, aging, and eventual death. Ultimately, the book celebrates the sum of the “physical, mental, and spiritual experiences”5 that constitute the “lives” of these clothes and the people who wore them. The stories in the book highlight a broad range of themes, loosely of the difficulties of life during the war, the nature of women’s experience in the midst of changing cultural and social customs, and the dynamics of memory, both personal and collective. The order in which these chapters were organized in the original Japanese monograph reflects the chronology of their original publication in the newspapers. In this translation, however, the chapters have been rearranged so as to offer a more natural progression by subject matter. The reader will find the topics covered to be quite varied, perhaps beyond what the title may suggest. The book does, of course, talk about clothing and cloth—what materials are used and how a given textile was made; how particular garments were designed, stitched, and repaired; how these items were used and when they fell out of use. It also talks about various social customs, practices, and events surrounding given items; for example, a child-size dance costume leads to a story about traveling entertainers and issues of child abuse, and the futon cover the author’s mother created introduces the system of cloth rationing during the war. Through these anecdotal accounts, Horikiri sheds light on such

xx

Introduction

varied topics as gender, family life, labor history, colonialism, war, poverty, and race relations, which convey a vivid impression of the experiences of working-class life in early twentieth-century Japan. In addition to this rich historical content, the reader will also witness the author’s perceptive intelligence and profound sense of justice and compassion. What could have been the source for such deep social awareness on the part of this young man, growing up as he did in rural Japan during the 1920s and 1930s in a family of limited means? Horikiri explains a few of the seminal experiences that shaped his orientation. For one thing, he delighted in literature from a very early age, especially so-called proletarian literature. The works of Yoshiki Hayama (1894–1945) and Kensaku Shimagi (1903–1945) were most influential for him. So too were the writings of the political activist Shōzo Tanaka (1841–1913), an elected member of Japan’s House of Representatives, who dedicated his life to exposing the negligence of the Ashio Copper Mine for the widespread pollution it had caused. It is also clear that Horikiri is an accomplished writer, given the sophistication of his writing in the original. His facility with highly expressive and evocative vocabulary makes the stories come alive in the reader’s mind. The period the book covers overlaps with the dark history of Japan’s imperial expansion and its wartime atrocities throughout much of Asia. In fact, in some chapters the war is an inescapable background, and in others it is the central subject. It is beyond the scope of this introduction to trace the historical path Japan took in its transformation from a vulnerable nation-state into an expansionist empire that precipitated the Pacific War. Nor does it intend to analyze and evaluate Japanese experiences of the war and its consequences. The reader interested in such topics may wish to consult some of the excellent and readily available works on the history of this period, such as John Dower’s Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II,6 Saburō Ienaga’s The Pacific War 1931–45,7 or James Orr’s Victim as Hero: Ideologies of Peace and National Identity in Postwar Japan.8 One factor that does call for the reader’s attention is the prevailing sense of victimhood felt by the Japanese after the war. Many Japanese felt they had been misled and indoctrinated, and many lost family members, means of livelihood, or the very beliefs by which they had lived. For soldiers and civilians alike, it was not hard to blame the wartime Japanese leadership as the very reason for their misery. Looking back on my own personal experience growing up in postwar Japan, I can certainly attest to this sentiment among the generation of Japanese who had firsthand war experiences. Even when they were talking about air raids, starvation, or actual combat experiences, their stories

Introduction xxi

were full of disparagement and condemnation of their leaders. It was simply a “stupid” war, as they often said. My father was drafted in July 1945. Possibly because he was a college student at Hiroshima Imperial University, he was spared from being sent overseas but was sent to Kumamoto and given the task of caring for “imperial” horses, which he was told he must “protect from enemy fire even if [he had] to die.” He would relate this with a bitter tone in his voice. After the end of the war, he went back to Hiroshima only to find that many of his college friends and teachers had perished in the atomic bombing, that the entire neighborhood of his apartment had been reduced to dust, and that death and destruction were everywhere, all over the city. He used to say he had seen ghosts and hitodama (spirits of the dead) floating in the city. In 1962, he received a fellowship to study at Teacher’s College at Columbia University. This was his proud moment. He had no qualms about coming to the former enemy country and benefiting from it. My great uncle and two uncles served in the military and fought in China and were lucky enough to return to tell their stories. One can easily understand that no one would boast about how many Chinese soldiers or peasants he had killed, but I recall their stories were always about how hungry, cold, and utterly miserable they were and how brutal their superiors were. Horikiri’s stories resonate with these anecdotes I heard growing up. My mother often told the story of how she saved her childhood house at the age of fifteen, running around with a broom on the roof, sweeping off the burning debris, while the whole family next door burned to death in the same air raid in the southern city of Ōmuta. Yet when the first American GIs appeared in town, she tells with excitement, people were full of curiosity and amusement observing the former enemy, how tall they were, how clean they were, how friendly they were, and so on. Nobody ever thought of them as “demons and animals,” despite all the propaganda the wartime government had tried to instill in people’s minds. To many Japanese, the American occupation army was first a liberation force and then a paternalistic protector. All of these stories led me to a certain understanding of the Japanese war experience. I could detect no obvious sense of regret expressed for their own support for or involvement in the disastrous war—“There was nothing you could do,” people would say. Despite their failure to acknowledge their own responsibility, their sentiment of being victimized by the wartime authority is nonetheless genuine and widespread, as is powerfully evidenced in Haruko and Theodore Cook’s Japan at War: An Oral History.9 It is this same sentiment—being a victim of circumstances, be it war or poverty—that informs and suffuses Horikiri’s book.

xxii

Introduction

What does Horikiri himself have to say about the war? His antiwar sentiment is palpable throughout his writing. He conveys a sense of guilt toward the Koreans and the Chinese and manifests genuine contrition toward those whom he had come to know (chapters 27 and 29). He observes that many Japanese were devastated, uprooted, and lost in despair (chapters 23, 24, and 30). He faces the tragedies of war squarely and recognizes the folly and malfeasance of the warmongers (chapters 1, 22, 23, and 28). However, what ultimately characterizes Horikiri’s attitude is that he sees war as a fundamental perversion of our entire humanity. He writes about how “war turns human hearts into stone,” not only during his military service in China but also after his return home (chapters 22, 27, and 30). Elsewhere, lamenting the suffering the war had caused for people regardless of their nationality, class, or gender, Horikiri uses the classical idiom 鬼哭啾々, kikoku shūshū, “even demons cry out plaintively,” to convey a sense of the depth of their despair.10 Horikiri lost two of his brothers in the war, yet he has no interest in visiting Yasukuni Shrine, where Japan’s war dead are memorialized. His is a humanist prayer, not a nationalist one. Horikiri was curious to find out how people lived in the past, in particular those whose experiences seldom found their way into later histories. He has tried to reconstruct their lives through studying the old clothing and furnishings they left behind. What he has found is, on the one hand, deep suffering and despair, but on the other, an extraordinary resilience and self-affirmation. From the diverse threads of the garments in his collection, Horikiri has woven a rich fabric, one that both recaptures the past and communicates his firm belief in humanity. Created with a sense of urgency, this is the gift he offers to posterity. NOTES 1.  Tatsuichi Horikiri, Ranrutachi no Henreki [Journeys of scrap clothes] (Kyoto: Senshoku to Seikatsu-sha, 1987). 2.  Horikiri includes in this group immigrants (or forced laborers) and beggars. 3.  Tatsuichi Horikiri, Nuno no Inochi (Tokyo: Shinkagaku-sha, 2004), 159. The full translation of this section is in this book’s afterword. 4.  Yūko Tanaka, “Boro,” Shōsetsu Tripper, Spring 2002, 136–40. 5.  American Heritage College Dictionary, s.v. “life.” 6.  John Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: Norton, 1999). 7.  Saburō Ienaga, The Pacific War 1931–45 (New York: Pantheon, 1978). 8.  James Orr, The Victim as Hero: Ideologies of Peace and National Identity in Postwar Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2011). 9.  Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook, Japan at War: An Oral History, reprint ed. (New York: New Press, 1993). 10.  Tatsuichi Horikiri, interview with the translator, June 2, 2015.

The Stories Clothes Tell

1

Kasuri Mattress Cover from Home

P

eople often give me a peculiar look when they learn that I collect old and worn-out kimono and other scraps of cloth. It must appear even stranger that the items I collect are so humble—mostly, they are just the simple work clothes of common folk. Sometimes I meet with outright disapproval for my collection of “rags.” This criticism may well be warranted from the perspective of these who know that one could expect to make a profit selling antique kimono of cotton and hemp, not to mention silk, provided that such kimono are of the formal variety—unlike the modest, everyday garments I collect. These critics inevitably look confused when I tell them I collect these everyday clothes because they are full of “feelings.” “What feelings?” they predictably retort. Almost without exception, the emotions these rags express are those of sorrow and grief; only a fraction of them tell you of the happy moments of their wearers. Scholarship on Japanese history has largely focused on members of the ruling class and other elite figures, with little attention given to the common people. To gain a sense of their experiences, one can turn to the excellent writings published in the field of folklore studies. Recently, there has also been a series of books that examines the lives of ordinary people from the Edo, Meiji, and Taishō periods. However, the number of such publications is minuscule in comparison to the number of books dealing with historical figures of the ruling classes or with events and developments led by them—despite the fact that it is those nameless people at the lowest layers of society whose labors have sustained the weight of those at the top and made their achievements possible. The ordinary and work clothes I have collected whisper to me the stories not only of misery but 1

2

Chapter 1

also, as I have come to firmly believe, their resilience and their generally positive outlook on the world. It was quite some time ago that I first learned that an old piece of cloth has its own “soul.” This realization came through a single incident that captured my imagination and led me to my lifelong endeavor of collecting the stories that old clothes whisper. In 1944, the year before the end of World War II, I was a youthful eighteenyear-old working for a Japanese transportation company in Beijing. Since my duties were all construction related, I often had to travel to various construction sites in remote locations. Not unexpectedly, this routine was interrupted by the arrival of my draft papers while I was in Beijing. I passed the physical exam, and while waiting to receive my orders to report to duty, my company sent me on an assignment to a remote village where they were building an observation tower near a train bridge. While I was there, an incident occurred in which a log came loose from the scaffolding and fell on the military phone cable, cutting off all communication. To make matters worse, at the same time there was an attack on the military detachment posted near this site, and their request for reinforcements did not reach the main camp because of this mishap with the phone cable. As a result, a number of soldiers died in the attack. Even though it was an innocent accident caused by a loose log put in by the local laborers, the outcome was grave enough to warrant my arrest. The work site was overseen by a middle-aged Japanese engineer who hated roughing it in remote areas and was back in Beijing on the pretense of filing some report when this happened. This meant that I was the only Japanese in the area representing the construction division. The army communications unit claimed that it was I who was responsible for this incident, and thus, without any investigation whatsoever, they handed me over to the Japanese military police. The police in turn claimed that I had intentionally caused the accident in order to disrupt army communications, and they began interrogating me in order to force a confession. They demanded that I confess I was connected to the Chinese Communist army and was receiving rewards for sabotaging the Japanese force. This was of course a complete fabrication. I vehemently protested my innocence, but they would not even listen to me. They subjected me to relentless torture even though they must have known I was innocent, and this continued for several days. Clearly, the military police were trying to make a culprit out of me in order to save face before the military detachment and communications specialists. Eventually, they released me. Once I was freed, I went straight to my lodging at the construction site. I spread out on my futon mattress on the floor. Every inch of my body was covered with bloody wounds and



Kasuri Mattress Cover from Home

3

bruises, and the pain was so intense that once I had lain down on the futon, I could not even lift my little finger. “I have done nothing wrong,” I thought, “and still they tortured me and called me a traitor.” Perhaps I should have simply been grateful for being released. But lying flat on my futon, I felt no sense of relief from surviving the torture, but rather was overwhelmed by the terrible injustice to which I had been subjected. Racked with pain, I happened to see my futon beneath me and suddenly felt a hot sensation well up in my chest. My mother had stitched the cover for my futon in preparation for my departure. She took apart an old futon and resewed the cover after carefully washing the batting and the cloth. Seeing the cover, made of typical Kurume-gasuri1 with its geometric ikat design of white against a navy blue background, my mind suddenly jumped back over all the difficulties of the past two years to find solace in the peaceful days of my family life at home. The images of my father, my mother, and my brothers, of the beaches and the river in my village, and of my friends and neighbors kept streaming before me as my eyes welled up with tears. “I am going to be enlisted soon,” I said to my futon, “and I will probably not come home alive. I am resigned to this fate, but why did they have to make me suffer like this? I am innocent!” I poured

Photo 1.1.  Kurume-gasuri. This type of kasuri dates from the mid-Meiji to early Sho¯wa periods, with the pattern of white geometric design against an indigo background, the same as the author’s futon. Source: Horikiri Private.

4

Chapter 1

out my anguish as if talking to the futon mattress; in return, it consoled me warmly by reminding me of days past and of the love and joy I had shared with my family. I spent the whole night holding onto those peaceful memories from my days of innocence, and somehow I managed to regain my mental strength. For that young boy of eighteen in a faraway foreign land, dejected and beaten, the only thing connecting him to family and home, to love and support, was that futon. This is how I came to be convinced that old cloth, worn threadbare from years of use, can be privy to the secrets of those who have used it. NOTE 1. Kurume-gasuri (or -kasuri). Kurume in Fukuoka Prefecture is one of the wellknown places for kasuri production in Japan. See the glossary for kasuri.

2

Koshimaki Petticoat of Eighty-Three Patches

W

hen people refer to the “good old days,” they are most likely reminiscing about the past with a warm sense of nostalgia. But I ask: Were those good old days really so good? To me, the phrase simply betrays a rather naïve notion of history as a gentle current of time with historical incidents floating along on the surface, while we reminisce about them fondly, without even being aware of those who were barely getting by at the bottom. For the masses, those “old days” were never good; theirs were an incessant struggle for survival. We are shamefully ignorant of the past, all the more so when it comes to the lives of those at the very bottom. This is why I collect the clothes of ordinary folk from the Meiji through the early Shōwa eras. These are fudan-gi, everyday clothes, and nora-gi, peasants’ field clothes, that silently testify to the hardships of everyday lives long past and to the beliefs that helped these forgotten people endure and survive. If I do not capture and record their memories, I fear they will be lost forever. Yet trying to collect oral histories to complement my garment collection has often proved to be quite challenging. People were rarely willing to tell their stories from those days. They seemed deeply ashamed of having been poor. It was no use trying to convince them that the cause of their poverty was not their lack of ability but the unfairness of the social system they were born into. In fact, their reticence often makes me wonder whether it isn’t somehow easier for them to blame themselves for their suffering rather than to try to improve their lives. Yet truth may be hidden in unspoken narratives. “Read between the lines.” This dictum can certainly be applied to oral history as well. One can often detect the true sentiments of a person in 5

6

Chapter 2

Photo 2.1.  Koshimaki, repaired with eighty-two pieces of cotton, all of them handstitched, showing the inside. From the Chikugo region of Fukuoka Prefecture.

what is buried away beneath the surface of his mumbled narration or voiceless resignation. I, for one, tried to detect in their reticence their sorrow and joy, their desperation and hope, their shame and pride. The koshimaki shown is a patchwork composed of eighty-three separate pieces of cloth. More precisely, it is a piece of tattered cloth that has been patched with another eighty-two mismatching pieces of fabric, carefully stitched on to provide repair and reinforcement. When I first saw it spread out in front of me, the impact of this garment was so powerful that it literally took my breath away. I had heard numerous stories about the misery that is born of poverty. Indeed, I myself grew up in the last generation to have experienced the aftermath of the Great Depression in the thirties, which so adversely affected poor villages all over Japan. Even that firsthand exposure to naked poverty in my youth did not prepare me for this encounter. I obtained this item just outside of Ōmuta in Fukuoka Prefecture. The man who offered it to me did not want to elaborate on where it had come from. I begged to find out who it had belonged to, hoping I could meet her and ask her what her life had been like back in those days. No matter how much I pleaded with him, it was of no use—he would not tell



Koshimaki Petticoat of Eighty-Three Patches

7

me. When I continued to plead, he abruptly took the garment back and started to pack up. I barely managed to persuade him to sell it to me by telling him I would not bother him with questions anymore. But as I was on my way out, the man relented and hesitantly speculated that it may once have belonged to a female laborer who worked at the Miike Coal Mine near Ōmuta. The koshimaki includes pieces of machine-woven materials from the early Shōwa period together with older materials dating from the Meiji and Taishō periods. This leads me to think it must have been created in the early years of the Shōwa period. But I suspect it must have belonged to a peasant woman, and not a coal miner, since there is no trace of coal dust in its fabric. Over the years of my collecting such garments, I gradually came to wonder what constituted people’s moral compass. Up to my early twenties, I subscribed to the naïve notion that morality was something constant and unchanging throughout the course of history. But looking at the society we now live in, I have lost my earlier certainty: Who bothers to craft their clothes with utmost care and attention so that they would last for decades when one can buy cheap, machine-made clothing whenever a new fashion arrives? What about food? What about family? What about work? Is it not the case that the harder something is to obtain, the more it is appreciated? If so, how can we truly appreciate today’s living conditions of affluence and ease? I would never call the items in my collection “boro” (rags), no matter how worn out or dirty they may be, nor would I ever let anyone else call them that. “Rag” connotes a thing that has completed its original purpose or has spent its life—something ready to be discarded, something devoid of value. Seeing and holding these tattered garments used by farmers and villagers in times past, I cannot help but feel that they still exude the warmth and vigor of the bodies they once protected, and these scraps are trying to tell us their stories, provided that we only listen closely and with open hearts. As I have said, the koshimaki took my breath away. This was not just because of its spectacular appearance, having been so thoroughly patched with so many different pieces of cloth, but even more so because of the tremendous care with which it had been treated. When I first picked it up, it appeared to be just a pile of worn-out floorcloths, the same as those I had often seen kept in piles in storage. As soon as I opened it up, however, I realized it was a koshimaki. It was also clear that the item had been assiduously washed and carefully folded up for storage. Moreover, the stitchery on the patchwork repairs showed the absolute diligence of the seamstress, far beyond what would have been necessary for an ordinary koshimaki.

8

Chapter 2

In anyone else’s eye, this koshimaki must have appeared to be a rag even back in the days when it was in regular use. The fact that it was so meticulously mended, so thoroughly washed, and folded up with such care1 leads me to believe that the woman who owned this garment possessed a deep sense of human dignity, not defeated or uncaring, despite the daily hardship of her impoverished and challenging life. This is why I insist that old cloth has a story to tell. NOTE 1.  Those who have learned how to handle kimono in Japan may share the sense that folding kimono is almost a ritual experience. Whoever is showing how to fold it would insist that one must always fold it in the exact same way. For a helpful diagram showing how it is done, see Liza Crihfield Dalby, Kimono (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), 151.

3

Echigo-jishi Costume for Boy Dancer

I

reached my destination after driving for several hours on Highway 253, starting from the city of Jōetsu in Niigata Prefecture. I had gone to visit the owner of an antique store who specialized in old hand-made tools. That was where I encountered this dancer’s costume. The store owner did not mention where he had acquired it, but he suggested that the hakama pants must have been part of a costume used by a boy dancer for the Echigo-jishi dance.1 He kept repeating that he didn’t really know and that this was only conjecture, to the extent that I almost started feeling suspicious. At first glance, though, it was very clear that the item was not something intended for everyday use. The shape of the hakama was unusual, with tight legs below the knees, like that of a tattsuke-hakama worn by the yobidashi, the announcer in a sumō wrestling match; furthermore, the color and the pattern, though somewhat subdued, exuded a gaiety beyond that of everyday life. The Echigo-jishi, or Echigo lion dance, originated in Nishi-Kambara in Echigo Province (today’s Niigata Prefecture). There are no detailed records as to when and how it began, but it had been maintained there for generations. There is even a song titled “Echigo Shishimai” (Echigo Lion Dance) in ji-uta.2 Way back when movies were still called “moving pictures,” musical accompaniments on various instruments, both Japanese and Western, added interest to movie viewing. Ji-uta songs were often performed in this context. “Echigo Shishimai” is one of the ji-uta standards together with “Genroku Hanami Odori” (Genroku Flower-Viewing Dance) and “Sakura” (Cherry Blossom) and often featured in the repertoire for movie accompaniment. 9

10

Chapter 3

Echigo-jishi first started as sato-kagura,3 traditional music and dance performed for religious occasions in villages, but it eventually became secularized as street performance called kadozuke. As a result, it became showy entertainment, peppered with acrobatic movements, as unscrupulous, profit-seeking entrepreneurs took it from its religious context and performed it door-to-door for money. The reason I say “unscrupulous” is because these entrepreneurs must have been abusing and exploiting their young dancers. The plight of these dancers was so dismal that various literary works began to depict their wretched lives and their valiant struggle in the face of hardships. No doubt they reflect the reality experienced by those boy dancers. It was clear to me that the store owner did not want to go into this topic. He must have felt uncomfortable admitting the existence of this exploitative practice, although he did acknowledge that the hakama most likely belonged to a boy dancer. I think he felt compelled to mention it because of a sense of guilt over the injustice of the practice of child entertainers in his own locality, however long ago it was. In fact, the shop owner at this point declared that he could not give it away to me and took it back to storage. The reason, he explained, was that he felt it morally wrong to expose the hakama costume to the curious eyes of casual viewers when it had already been subjected more than enough to the heartless spectatorship of show business. But, I protested, would that really be the case? Would people look at the costume only with the same voyeuristic curiosity they might direct at the tabloids? Certainly there must be people who would shed tears of pity at the sorrowful fate of those exploited boys. I tried my best to persuade him. After long negotiations, I finally succeeded in obtaining it, but the owner refused to accept any payment. The store owner seemed ashamed of the practice of child entertainers and thus refused to gain from the transaction. This, I believe, reveals the sense of moral justice of the people of his generation. The legs of the hakama were rather short and narrow, appropriate for boys, but the girth around the hips was disproportionately large. It was tailored that way, I imagine, so that the dancer could accommodate all his jumping and twirling. Furthermore, the stitching went beyond the level of ordinary thoroughness; it embodied the very idea of durability, perhaps so that the seams could endure the physical stress of the repeated rough movements of the dancer. If the costume had to be made this strong to withstand the physical wear and tear, then what must the life of the dancer have been like! It is known that the shishimai dancers were not necessarily the children of the dance troop’s family. Does that mean that the showmen “hired” children? If so, what were the terms of their “employment”? I imagine that we must think of these children not so much as hired employees

Photo 3.1.  Echigo-jishi hakama costume for boy dancer. Printed cotton; 42 in. high, 28 in. wide at the top; early Taisho¯ period. From Niigata Prefecture. The dahlia-like flower design covers the entire olive green ground. The ties at the top are pulled in together in the photo, although the opening is quite wide. The bottom ties fasten the leg portion of the pants securely just below the knees.

12

Chapter 3

but rather as “apprentices” who had been sent by their poor families to learn a trade, but also, and more fundamentally, to reduce their family’s food consumption. Indeed, up until the early part of the Shōwa period, most of the population was poor and the people’s standard of living was unbelievably low compared to our own experience of affluence in today’s society. Although we can understand the social desperation behind this practice, that does not make it any less appalling. Sending off young boys and girls to “eat in other people’s houses” was inherently abusive, in that it deprived them of love and care by uprooting them from their natal families and subjecting them instead to the “care” of someone whose only interest in them was economic. In the days before children’s welfare was regulated—the Child Abuse Prevention Act4 came into effect only in 1933—the human rights of boy dancers were regularly violated and manipulated according to the whims of adults. Social historians today have documented the working conditions of children, showing them to have been exploitative beyond our imagination. I cannot help but feel their deep sighs of desperation, hopelessness, and resignation firmly embalmed within the faded, dark cotton fabric of this hakama and rising up from the strands of its threads. Given that the hakama would be most likely from the 1910s or 1920s, it is astonishing to realize that this shameful practice continued until that recently. Today, the news of child abuse does not even raise people’s brows in Japan. Such monstrous incidents as beating young children to death occur with alarming frequency. Children suffered in the past and children suffer today, yet we cannot hold in the same regard those parents who abuse and kill their children in today’s affluent society and those parents in the past who had to send their young children to work as live-in maids, textile factory workers, or dancers. The Echigo-jishi costume serves as a poignant reminder, urging us to contemplate the plight of children who have been deprived of the fundamental conditions of life they deserve. NOTES 1.  Echigo-jishi. Echigo is an old name of a province, present-day Niigata. Jishi (or shishi) is “lion,” and the word refers to a particular type of street dance originated in Niigata in the eighteenth century. Most popular in the Edo era, it declined in popularity toward the end of the Meiji era but was revived in the early Shōwa. Lion dance is most commonly performed on New Year’s Day and is called shishimai in general. 2.  Ji-uta. One of the three traditional musical genres for singing developed in the Edo era. Sung with the accompaniment of shamisen (a three-string instrument; see note 3 in chapter 16).



Echigo-Jishi Costume for Boy Dancer

13

3.  Sato-kagura. Kagura is the oldest traditional Japanese music and dance performance, dedicated to deities for various purposes, going back to the eleventh century or earlier. As opposed to okagura, performed in the Imperial Palace, satokagura is typically performed at local shrines for ordinary people. 4.  This law was enacted to protect children under the age of fourteen in work environments involving entertaining, performing, peddling, and begging. Although the law provided sanctions against abusers, it is not clear how effective it was as a means of protecting the working children. The law was superseded by the Child Welfare Act of 1947.

4

How Many Diapers?

W

ay back when, if one were out in the fields during the busiest time of the farming year, one would always see young boys and girls with babies on their backs, running down the path to their mothers in the field. They were taking the babies to be nursed by their mothers. Those little children were very young themselves; if they had been any older, they would have been recruited to perform farm duties just like their older siblings. Peasant parents had to rely on their children to work in the fields and around the house, helping out as much as they could with whatever work was appropriate for their ages and abilities. Oftentimes, the babies had to wait until their mothers could find a convenient breaking point in their work. Husband and wife often worked in a pair. One could not afford to take a break too often, as it would affect the efficiency of the team. Mama, Baby is crying, feed him now. What are you saying, child? look at me getting rid of the weeds to get hold of money It’s not time to be bothered. Can’t you see?

This is a children’s song I can remember from my own childhood. Perhaps at one time the farmers sang it as they worked in the fields. The song conjures up the image of a desperate child pacing back and forth on 15

16

Chapter 4

the little path by the field with a baby on his back who is shrieking for its mother’s milk. Hurry Mama, Baby is crying.

There is no sign of mother straightening up from her work. Stop bothering me. Can’t you see I need to finish weeding here? I need to earn a living. I cannot take a break now.

This dialogue must have been repeated endlessly. The song obviously had a tune, but it must have been sung only by the parents as they worked. No doubt all the babysitting children could do was whine to their parents, to no avail. Many years later, I did hear a testimonial from a childhood friend of mine. He reminisced about his experience of babysitting his siblings. All day long, he would walk around carrying his baby sister in her day-old diaper on his back. He was so young that he had no idea how to change a diaper, but more to the point, he added, there was rarely an extra diaper to change her into anyway. What is the story of diapers (omutsu) from the early 1900s? I became curious. So when an old friend invited me to come meet his aunt, I planned to ask her about the use of diapers from her childhood. I went all the way to Kagoshima Prefecture to meet this old woman, more than ninety years of age. Not surprisingly, she would not warm up to me at first and insisted that she had no old garments to show. I was used to this kind of reaction of people clamming up when asked about the tangible traces of their past. Diapers are the kind of clothes which are easily turned into something else and indeed were extremely rare in their original form; for that reason, one has no choice but to rely solely on the stories told by those who had used them. To my question, she started somewhat vaguely, “Omutsu then were made out of old yukata [summer cotton kimono for everyday use].” Indeed, this is what people did when she was in her twenties raising her children in the early Shōwa period (1930s). But what I wanted to find out was what she did when she was babysitting her siblings, almost two decades before that. Although she was a bit hesitant at the outset, the old woman gradually relaxed and ended up offering various stories about diapers. One dealt with the complex dynamics between bride and mother-in-law, and others revealed insight into her early days, including such topics as diet and marriage and life as a tenant farmer.



How Many Diapers?

17

Back in the mid-Taishō period, diapers were mostly sashiko1 cloth made from scrap materials. People never had a large enough piece of intact cloth to use for a diaper, so they had to piece together multiple scraps, and since a diaper needed to be thick, they stitched the patch-worked pieces together in layers. She commented, “While working in the field, once you put your baby on your back, you could not put him down until your work was done.” Often, pee-soaked omutsu would dry from the warmth of the mother’s back. When it was really busy, a mother could only hope that the wet omutsu would dry up quickly. In those days, it was a common practice for a bride to return from her husband’s (i.e., his parents’) home to her own parents’ home for delivery and recuperation at the time of her childbirth. It was the custom that the bride’s mother-in-law would make diapers as a celebratory gift for her first baby, and the pregnant bride would take them home with her. It had to be an odd number of diapers, most typically five. If the mother-to-be brought home seven or nine diapers with her, her parents would praise the virtue of their daughter’s mother-in-law. By seeing the quantity of the diapers, the bride’s parents would be reassured—or worried, as the case may be—as to how well their daughter was being treated in the new house to which they had married her. In a way, the number of diapers indicated the strength and healthiness of the bride and mother-in-law relationship; sadly, however, not too many mothers-in-law were able to afford to make that many. My friend’s aunt went on saying, “Naturally, the young mother would want to assuage her parents’ fears and could prove how much she was appreciated in her husband’s household by having only a few more diapers, but even that was extremely hard to come by.” This is almost unimaginable from the perspective of today’s lifestyle, where disposable diapers are the norm. Here I can share one more anecdote about diapers. Toward the end of the 1970s, an old diaper from the Hokuriku Province came into my possession. It was an adult-sized diaper, my first such specimen. I pleaded with the person who had offered it to me that he really needed to take me to the original owner. I met her, a lady about a generation older than me who was very unwilling to talk about the item in question. I begged and begged until, reluctantly, she finally started to tell me the story. The diaper had belonged to the lady’s mother-in-law, who had been born in the middle of the Meiji period and was extremely meticulous and demanding: She used to say to me, a long time before she became ill and weak, that she had dedicated herself to the care of her own mother-in-law. So when she had a stroke and became hemiplegic, I did the same for her. I took care of her

18

Chapter 4

for six years. Even though she did not have much control over her speech ability, she sure did complain endlessly, mumbling about how inept I was in caring for her! I think I did everything I could possibly do to take care of that benevolent mother of my husband. Look at where we are now—you have to worry about the feelings of your own daughter-in-law!

Photo 4.1.  A diaper for an adult from the early Sho¯wa period. Made of cotton kasuri, the material is layered and stitched in sashiko style. The belt loops are to hold a tie to stabilize the garment on the body.



How Many Diapers?

19

We live today in a rapidly aging society, where the welfare of the aged is an extremely important issue. Granted, we now enjoy all the conveniences and resources readily available to us, but what does that amount to without the heartfelt commitment of a caregiver? This Meiji-born mother-in-law was a lucky one, indeed; she had a caregiver who so dutifully changed her diapers day in and day out. NOTE 1.  Sashiko. Quilt stitching on multiple layers of cloth to reinforce the durability of the material. Also refers to the traditional geometric design itself. See photo 6.2 also.

5

Two Hanten Field Jackets

T

here was once a time when what one wore—clothing, headgear, and shoes—was used to demonstrate the wearer’s social status and personal wealth. Take the example of nobility and military officials. To exhibit their prestige and power, they decorated themselves with numerous medals and ornaments that would cascade across their chests. The authorities used to bestow “court rank and honors” on these individuals to place them above ordinary folk. In contrast, the clothes and accessories that belonged to ordinary people were designed simply to do what they were supposed to do. In the state of poverty to which these people were reduced, “how it looked” was obviously not a concern that was on their minds. This does not mean, however, that these ordinary folk did not appreciate beautiful things or possess a developed sense of “beauty.” Quite to the contrary, one often finds that the tools and clothes these people had made ended up being “beautiful,” even though there was no intention of profit making on the part of their creators. Needless to say, such objects were produced within their creator’s means, materials-wise and time-wise, and were never thought of as works of art for art’s sake. After functionality, durability was the second important consideration for the work and home clothes these people created. In fact, I am convinced that the first priority in handmade clothing was that it should last. This was more important than anything else, I would say, more than its functionality and beauty combined. Some of the items in my collection seem to speak precisely of this point. Let me give you one such example— a specimen of a farmer’s hanten jacket, nora-gi. 21

22

Chapter 5

Photo 5.1.  Nora-gi hanten field jacket for a farmer. Cotton; early Sho¯wa period. This specimen shows the maki-sode design for the sleeves, tighter around the arms and thus easier to work in.

This nora-gi in the photo is constructed in the form of a hanten, most likely from the early Shōwa period (late 1920s). In places, it is extremely frayed and tattered. Those who had experienced the same kind of hardships that the wearer of this hanten must have endured would know immediately, but people today will need some interpretation. The area of the upper back is completely threadbare, clearly the result of its wearer—a mother—carrying her child on her back. The child’s squirming and shifting has chafed the back of the mother’s jacket to the point that it was eventually worn down to a gauzelike state. The child must also have fretted and kicked his feet, as is revealed by the marks in the area of the lower back. Both shoulders are worn out and have extra patches sewn in on the inside of the garment, indicating the presence of a sash over the shoulders rigged up for carrying the child on the back. This mother would have had to carry a shoulder pole as well. Despite the worn and

Two Hanten Field Jackets

23

threadbare state it is in, this nora-gi certainly does exude its own quality of “beauty,” however humble it may be. The pieces of cloth for the patches seem deliberately placed for their “design compatibility,” and the mending stitches are so firm and steady that they clearly reveal the mindfulness and care of the person who did it. This hanten was also thoroughly cleaned and carefully folded, as if to show “reverence.” It is truly a thing of great beauty, but its beauty is exuded from within and not from the appearance of its outer form. I have another example of a nora-gi hanten, which represents the other extreme—the demonstration of social status and wealth. Some time ago, I was traveling through the Tōhoku Province and happened to come to the Shōnai District in Yamagata Prefecture. I knew that people there produced sashiko cloth in their unique regional style, which they made into short-sleeved hanten style nora-gi. An acquaintance from Tokyo told me that if you are lucky, you might still find some of these in the area. Needless to say, I was eager to obtain a specimen. I went around to see several antique dealers but never found one that fit this description. With much disappointment, I went into one last store. I explained what I was looking for to the old shopkeeper. He said he did not think he had any sample of sashiko nora-gi, but nevertheless, he went into the back of the shop and returned with an armful of clothing. Most of these garments were made of colorful, synthetic materials. In the pile, however, I spotted one old haori jacket. It was clear from the feel that this haori was made from something other than pure cotton. A closer examination revealed that it was woven from a mix of cotton and silk threads. I assumed it was a women’s formal outing jacket, as I was spreading it out in front of me. But to my great surprise, it turned out to be a man’s nora-gi, complete with maki-sode (narrow sleeves). The store owner told me that the hanten had belonged to someone from a landlord family in the area, but they lost all their land after the Land Reform of 1947 and fell into financial despair. After the head of the clan passed away, the family had to put everything up for sale, at which time the store owner purchased this jacket in the late 1970s. I had never before seen a nora-gi made with silk. I imagine that the powerful landlord would have worn this when he went around to inspect his fields and talk business to his tenants. In that sense, one may argue that this was part of the landlord’s “work clothes,” but its function was not the same as that of his tenants, even though it may be patterned after a nora-gi. Silk was far beyond the reach of ordinary peasants, even for their formal outing wear. That the landlord wore a silk nora-gi was clearly to demonstrate his wealth, status, and power to all those beneath him. He may have considered himself to be engaged in agriculture, but I doubt that he had ever even stepped into a rice paddy in his bare feet.

24

Chapter 5

Photo 5.2.  Nora-gi hanten jacket for a landlord. This is a different hanten from the one described in the text but is equally luxurious for a field jacket. It has funazoko-sode (boat-bottom-shaped sleeves) wide enough to accommodate the sleeves of a kimono inside.

Made from a mixture of silk and cotton, the jacket in question is rather gay for menswear. What would it have to say about all the twists and turns of fate it must have witnessed during these times of upheaval, from the late Taishō period to the postwar era? The glory it once symbolized has all but gone, but the jacket itself still survives and bears witness to an agricultural society in transition.

6

Okiboda, the Pride of Women

I

n my many years of collecting, time and time again I have been impressed by the level of conscious care going into the design of these working garments and by the way their designers have introduced careful adaptations for particular functions. Take sleeves, for example: they often vary in shape, length, and size, depending on the different types of jobs for which the garments are worn or the specific climate in different parts of the country. Add to this the seemingly infinite variety seen in other components, such as collars, gussets, and more. The combination of these elements results in innumerable variations. The coat illustrated in photo 6.1 is an okiboda, a work coat that fishermen would wear on the boat during the cold season. Okiboda is the common name in southern Kyūshū, but in other areas it was called yanza or donza, and each region had its own unique characteristics in the design. In summertime, fishermen would wear a hanten jacket to cover the upper body and nothing but a shitaobi or loincloth below, since one would get completely wet from the waves anyway. I tried to count how many patches of cloth there were on this garment. The sum I came up with was one hundred plus. The household I grew up in was engaged in both fishing and farming. Unless there was a storm coming, men would go out fishing even in the rain. In the small boats that most of the fishing families had, there was no way avoiding getting splashed in the waves, and the okiboda would get drenched in seawater. Once it was completely soaked, an okiboda could weigh thirty pounds or more, and it was practically impossible for a woman, who was in charge of the laundry, to wring the water out. She 25

26

Chapter 6

Photo 6.1.  Okiboda, fisherman’s coat. This particular okiboda was still in use during World War II. The garment type continued in use a short while after the war. Like most other work clothes, this specimen is heavily patched and mended.

would drape the waterlogged coat over a fence or a stone wall until most of the water had dripped away, and then she would try to dry it further by draping it over a clothes pole.1 Because the okiboda was made of thick material and used in winter, it was naturally very difficult to dry. Sometimes, especially when the weather was not cooperating, it would take days to stop dripping. In a poorer household, where they could not afford multiple okiboda coats, a man would often have to wear the same cold and wet coat for days. I have seen some samples from northern Japan of donza, which had been mended fastidiously and were quilted with elaborate sashiko stitches. The southern okiboda seems to be a much cruder and more humble garment. I doubt that people ever paid much attention to how it would look. Instead, women would take pride in how many okiboda



Okiboda, the Pride of Women

27

Photo 6.2.  Okiboda (or donza) from northern Japan. Cotton sashiko okiboda (or donza), Taisho¯ period, from Hokuriku. The five distinct sashiko stiches covering the entire body create picturesque beauty.

they owned for their men. If there were more than one, then those lucky men could put on a dry one the next day. If there was only one, then no matter how well and beautifully it was made, the unlucky man would have to wear it wet from the day before. Because material was generally lacking, it was not an easy proposition to produce a new okiboda or even to reinforce an old one. Okiboda were customarily made out of pieces of worn-out kimono. Women had to secure enough of such material, which was rather hard to come by since everyone needed old cloth for one thing or another. When people cannot afford to buy new material,

28

Chapter 6

then old material, however worn out it may be, will always be in high demand. Women, who were in charge of selling the day’s catch, would always be on the lookout for old cloth for sale while carrying the catch around in a basket hanging from a pole on their shoulders. People made comments about the worthiness of a wife by how many okiboda she could produce. “That woman who married into so-and-so’s household, even though she’s from the mountain village, made so many okiboda for her husband. She knows how to be a fisherman’s wife!” People praised young wives in this manner, and the opposite was true as well. Those wives who did not provide enough okiboda would draw sharp criticism from the rest of the villagers. After the war ended, the population of our village increased almost threefold. There were those families who had returned from the continent, those who had lost their houses in the city in the air raids, prisoners of war who had been released, and so on. Many of these new residents tried their hand at fishing, since it seemed like the easiest way to secure food. The okiboda worn by these newfound fishermen looked more colorful and unique in design, as if to reflect all the different paths those men had walked before they arrived. I went around fishing villages some time ago, trying to document today’s okiboda, only to find out that they had stopped using such garments by the 1970s. Boats were now better equipped, and there was commercially produced waterproof clothing for fishing. Not too many people nowadays even know of okiboda, let alone have seen one being sewn by the fishing village women. NOTE 1.  For drying laundry, typically a bamboo pole supported by two posts in either end was used to hang clothing.

7

My Teacher’s Sunday Best

M

uslin1 fabric enjoyed great popularity for a couple of decades from the mid-1920s. It captured young women’s hearts, and they all yearned for clothing made of muslin. Its moment of glory, however, ended up being rather short-lived for whatever the reason might have been. I cannot think of the word “muslin” without feeling the tinge of a bittersweet memory from long ago. I was in my second year of elementary school. There stood a Shōkon shrine2 surrounded by old pine trees at the western periphery of my village. It was a rather crude structure with a single stone pillar. Once a year, a commemoration was held at the shrine to appease the souls of the soldiers who had perished in the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars. The event was far from “festive”; there were no food carts and knickknack stands. The schoolchildren were all taken to the shrine from school to listen to the principal’s speech. Each and every year, he would inevitably talk about how great our country was. He would add, “Those people who are enshrined here gave their lives to build the foundation of this great country,” and always concluded with the motto of “chū kun ai koku” (loyalty to your lord, love to your country).3 The rest of the year, the shrine ground was a playground for us village kids. It was just an open field of grass with old pine trees here and there and had no play equipment. Summer or winter, there were always kids hanging out there. Near the shrine was a small house in which one of the schoolteachers lived. She was very young and must have just finished school herself. She was my classroom teacher when I was in first grade. She would always call us by our first names with the diminutive suffix “-chan,”4 and we were all head over heels about her. 29

30

Chapter 7

Late one Sunday afternoon, six or seven of us were playing in this field when our beloved teacher happened to walk by. She was on her way home from an outing, and when she recognized us, she waved and invited us to her house. We were mesmerized, seeing her in kimono—we were accustomed to seeing her in her work clothes, kimono with hakama skirt over it, as most female teachers dressed back then. But on this day, she had her kimono alone with a haori coat, looking very pretty. We followed behind her with a sense of excitement. At her house, she gave us each a piece of candy and asked us various things. Just back from her outing, she had a faint, sweet scent of her makeup about her. As mischievous as we usually were, we all became quiet as if under her spell. We were enjoying this special moment with our young and beautiful teacher, getting all of her attention for ourselves and in much more intimate surroundings than at school! Alas, the enchanted moment was not to last long. We started horsing around outside her house, and then the horrible, stomach-wrenching incident occurred. The teacher had taken off her haori coat as soon as she arrived home and then proceeded to hang it over a long bamboo pole “clothesline” in her backyard to air it. As we were running around, one of us innocently ran into the bamboo pole—causing it to fall into a muddy pool of water from the previous night’s rain, together with the teacher’s formal haori. I ran and picked it up, but it was too late. The beautiful haori was completely soiled. We all turned pale and froze on the spot. Even though we were so young, we all knew how important that haori was and how expensive it must have been! What was worse, we all realized that we had just ruined the precious moment of goodwill she so graciously offered us by inviting us little brats into her home! The next moment, all the rest of the boys ran like bats out of a box, leaving me standing there alone, unable to move and wanting to cry. I was holding the soiled haori in my hand. Our teacher must have thought it odd that all the noisemaking suddenly stopped and had come out to the backyard to investigate. Seeing me standing there alone with her haori, she must have immediately understood what had happened. I could not open my mouth and just stood there, looking at her. Her pretty face was about to burst into tears. I could not stand it any longer and started to wail myself. I babbled away, talking nonsense, and protesting that I did not do it. Our teacher forced a smile and said, “Don’t worry. I don’t need to know who dropped it. It was my fault for having hung it here. You are brave because you did not run away . . .” I thrust the soiled haori into her hands, turned my heels, and ran all the way home. At the dinner table that night, I could not hide it any longer and confessed to my mother what had happened. My older sister was far more



My Teacher’s Sunday Best

31

Photo 7.1.  A muslin haori. Made of wool with a design of festive flowers and pink and peach triangles against a bright blue ground. The ties in front are handmade.

upset with me than my mother was. After dinner, my mother wrapped up some dried fish, left over from her day’s peddling, and went to my teacher’s house. My sister kept yelling at me all evening. Later on that night as I was lying in bed, I heard my mother report to my sister. “It is an extremely expensive muslin haori and it was all soiled with mud. But she says she is taking it tomorrow to the kimono cleaner5 in the next town to have it taken apart and cleaned properly. She said it was no big deal and that she felt much worse for my having come to apologize!” The teacher had also apparently praised me for not running away, although I did not hear that detail until much later. It was late autumn in the eighth year of Shōwa. Winter was approaching. NOTES 1. Muslin in Japan most often refers to plain-weave wool. Cotton muslin is called specifically wata-mosurin. The thin and soft quality of the fabric was quite popular, but once the government started enforcing sumptuary laws in 1937, its use dwindled.

32

Chapter 7

2.  Shōkon-sha. Shinto shrines dedicated to revere the spirit of Japanese soldiers who died in war. In 1939, the name was changed to Gokoku Shrine, while Tokyo Shōkon-sha was renamed Yasukuni Shrine in 1879. 3.  The idea was promoted through the process of Japanese militarism in prewar Japan. “Lord” in the phrase refers to the emperor. 4. Most typically, children were called by first name but without any suffix in the author’s area. The use of the suffix -chan makes the relationship between teacher and pupil more personable. 5.  Kimono cleaners are called araihari-ya (literally, “wash and stretch stores”). When a kimono is to be cleaned, especially a good kimono, it is done, often professionally, by ripping out the seams, taking the pieces apart, washing them, and air-drying them, keeping them taut with a special tool. Then the kimono is stitched back together.

8

A Weighty Quilt

S

hina-fu, also called mada-fu, is the name of a fabric woven from the fiber of shina tree bark.1 Besides being made into outerwear, it was also used for making things such as bags and nets. The grain sack I obtained in Yamagata Prefecture has been made of bias-cut shina-fu pieces sewn together to allow the greater stretch of the fabric. The owner’s name and the date, Meiji year 22 (1889), can be seen prominently written in ink on the bag. A local elder told me that people used these kinds of sacks as seed bags and would hang them from the ceiling to keep the mice away from the next year’s precious seed grain. He added that people wrote their names on these seed bags not to identify their ownership per se but as a warning from the master of the household never to open it for food, even during a famine. As I learned from another old man from Aomori Prefecture, whenever famine struck, people would resort to eating anything chewable—grass, leaves, roots, anything—to such an extent that an entire mountain could turn bare in just weeks. He had heard these stories as a young boy, when his village’s elders recounted stories of the Great Tenmei famine.2 Even under such desperate circumstances, it was the most important duty of the head of the family to preserve the seeds needed for planting the following year’s crop. This must have been a very painful duty to discharge, especially if he had to witness the suffering of his family members. Additional phrases can also be seen written on the grain sack from Yamagata, although they are now so badly faded as to be illegible. The local elder speculated that this additional inscription must have been something like an imprecation written by the owner, calling upon the 33

Photo 8.1.  Seedbag, hemp; 35 in. high, 18 in. wide; Meiji period. From To¯hoku Province.



A Weighty Quilt

35

divine powers to punish him in the event that he should open the bags to eat their seed grain. It is a rather ironic reversal, since divine power would ordinarily be invoked for protection and help—not for punishment. The shina-fu cloth was also used to make clothing, its coarse stiffness notwithstanding. There is a folk song from the Sado region in Niigata Prefecture referring to a shina-fu undershirt, and one of my contacts in Aomori Prefecture informed me that he had seen a koshimaki underskirt made of shina-fu. This is hard to imagine: no matter what one may have done to make it softer, the fact remains that shina-fu is made of bark fiber and is accordingly very rough and stiff and no doubt irritating next to human skin. Hemp, or asa, another coarse fiber, was also woven into fabric then. Nowadays, a so-called hemp kimono is in fact made of linen woven from very fine threads, which is called jōfu. This was available even in the olden days, but it was very expensive: only affluent people, mostly from urban areas, could purchase such kimono, and it was far beyond the reach of all but the wealthiest fraction of the rural population. The poor, who had to produce their own clothing, did weave hemp material also, but with far thicker threads, each the equivalent in thickness of up to twenty threads of the jōfu linen. Moreover, they wore the tough hemp clothing throughout the year, as opposed to in summer only, as is customary today. The quilt below—called yogi, a futon quilt in the shape of a kimono—is one such example of rough hemp fabric. The fabric was in great shape when I purchased it, although its indigo dye had faded away many years before. The dealer who had offered the quilt, predictably, was not willing to introduce me to its original owner. After some begging and pleading on my part, however, he agreed to take me to the original owner’s house. The owner was generous enough to meet with me and explained that the quilt had been stored away in their shed for a long time. His guess was that it had most likely been used by his grandfather. It took me by great surprise to realize just how heavy this quilt was. Perhaps it was because I had the preconceived notion that a night quilt was something fluffy and comfortable. This quilt had no elasticity at all but felt rather like a sandbag. The dealer explained that it was stuffed with discarded hemp fiber instead of cotton. Later on, I opened up a small portion of the seam to examine the inside. In addition to hemp, there were straw cuttings mixed in as well, and the mixture had compacted into a dense, heavy batting. Certain historical records indicate that people seldom had mattresses but slept instead on either a woven straw mat or a rush mat on top of a pile of loose straw and used a kimono of some sort they wore during the day for a cover. As for this heavy yogi, I would imagine that only an adult male could have slept under it without being squashed, since it is easily twenty to thirty times heavier than modern-

36

Chapter 8

Photo 8.2.  Yogi, a kimono-shaped quilt. This particular yogi, weighing 15 kg (33 lbs.), was in use until the early Sho¯wa period. Most farmers used kimono for a night cover.

day, down-filled covers. Still, the owner’s grandfather must have been relatively well off to have a bed quilt, however heavy it may have been. I found myself wondering about the patriarchal values of the past and whether in those days the weight of this quilt might have symbolized the duty of the patriarch toward his family. Cloth was, after all, a rare commodity, and people could not afford much bedding. They most likely shared the one and only futon together, and the father would have been the one to bear the weight of the quilt and provide spaces for children on either side to keep themselves warm. Once in bed, he may not even have been able to turn over on his side. * * *



A Weighty Quilt

37

Photo 8.3.  Oguso linen batting. In northern Japan, people used discarded hemp fiber, called oguso, as a substitute for cotton batting. In the south, it was common to sew together layers of rags from old clothes to use as the stuffing for a futon. These were common practices in both regions up until the beginning of the Sho¯wa era. There is also anecdotal evidence of fiber from ampela plants (Machaerina rubiginosa, a species of tropical sedge) being used to fill futon through the later part of the Meiji era.

Fathers today have much less presence in their families. The comfort level achieved by society seems to have taken away much of their patriarchal utility. The shina-fu seed bags and the weighty quilt are powerful testimony of a time when the father played a role, not of authority per se, but of obligation in family life. NOTES 1.  Tilia japonica, which commonly grows in northern Japan. 2.  Great Tenmei famine, 1782–1788 (Tenmei 2–8), one of the worst famines in Japanese history, which struck the Tōhoku region.

9

Life with a Mosquito Net

I

was once asked to write an essay on the use of cotton and linen in the olden days. One of the topics was the kaya, or mosquito net. I must confess that I could not remember the Chinese character used to write the word1, so I had to look it up in a dictionary. The dictionary had been published only about ten years earlier. To my surprise, the entry even included an illustration of a mosquito net. Do we live in a time when people need to see what a mosquito net looks like? Up until the 1960s, mosquito nets were an absolute necessity for summertime bedding. The mosquito net in summer, together with the irori2 fire in winter, was a symbol of the unity of the family. Now, however, it is vanishing from use since the younger generations have no need for them. Our environment has been more closely maintained, and pesticides have become more effective; furthermore, our sleeping quarters have become westernized and thus compartmentalized. It was these profound social changes, I suspect, that led to the necessity of including an illustration of the mosquito net in the dictionary. When I was growing up, children in fishing and farming villages had many chores around the house. In my village, most households were occupied with farming and fishing or with farming and something else on the side, such as peddling and delivering purchased goods. As soon as we got home from school, children had to attend to their chores, whether working in the fields, cleaning fishing equipment and tidying up the boat, haying the horses, or whatever. Parents had little interest in children’s schoolwork; they were too preoccupied with their own work to give it much thought, nor did they feel that school was particularly important. 39

40

Chapter 9

I grew up in the early thirties watching my elder brothers help around the house—and everyone else in the village for that matter—and thus I did not think it to be an imposition of any sort. The only complaint I had was that I did not have enough playtime. Every so often, I would sneak out and horse around with the other kids. Such occasions inevitably ended with a big scolding from my father at the dinner table. My mother would not cover for me in a situation like that. My father was always held in fear, but my mother, too, come to think of it, could strike fear into our hearts on certain occasions. At the end of spring, when the mustard flowers had finished blooming, it was time for the wheat harvest. In the evening, the mosquitoes would start to come out. We had no repellant or insecticide for mosquitoes back then, and people burned things like straw and orange peels to try to fumigate the mosquitoes. The truth was we were only fumigating ourselves! To this day, when I think of summer evenings I think of trails of smoke all over the village.

Photo 9.1.  Kaya, mosquito net. Made with thinly woven hemp fabric. Mosquito nets can accommodate three or four futon beds. Cords at the four corners are tied to hooks at the corners of the ceiling. The futon beds are placed on the floor inside the net, and people crawl into it to sleep inside.



Life with a Mosquito Net

41

Hanging the mosquito net on the first night of the season was always so memorable. After hanging the net from the four corners of the room, crawling into it felt like wandering into a different world, and my brothers and I would be running around all excited. As was typical of the time, we were a big family of eight. Three boys—my elder brother, my younger brother, and I—were sleeping together under one mosquito net. Ordinarily we had our designated spots to lay down our futons, but once the mosquito net was up, we inevitably started fighting for the best place to sleep. One of us would scream, one of us would cry, and one of us would be scolded. When we were finally down on the bedding, however, we were all fine and happy again. Even though we were poor, we had a strong sense of family: warm feelings toward each other and toward the whole—a sense of belonging, a sense of something invaluable. Life under the mosquito net conjures up a deep sense of nostalgia, but I would like to add that it also served, by necessity, as an opportunity to share and to put up with one another. Back then, there were no such concepts as “individualism” or “ personal right.” If you insisted on something, even before your father or mother got wind of it, your elder brother or sister would come and straighten you out. I would say that it was the elder siblings, even more than the parents, who played the greatest role in disciplining the younger siblings. The older children were quite aware of this responsibility. If you made a mess of any sort, your older sibling would attend to it instead of going straight to the parent. Only when they realized that the task was beyond their ability to handle would they go to a parent for help. I even suspect that what is commonly referred to as “bullying” today was nonexistent back then, simply because your older siblings would protect you as well as discipline you. Today, thanks to technological advances in taming the environment, we have succeeded in banishing mosquitoes from our houses, but in the process, we also seem to have lost the mosquito net—one of the key means of binding the family together. In the summer of 1945, when I was on the front lines in China, I suffered severely from amebic dysentery. The condition was quite horrendous. There was no army hospital, no army doctor, not even a medic anywhere nearby, no medicine, no help. I knew that somehow I had to mend myself on my own—not to mention avoiding being shot to death by our superior enemy. My trousers were completely soiled, and the stench was overwhelming. My lower body was covered in festering skin. My 145-pound body before entering the army had gone down to below 110 pounds by this point. A number of soldiers in my battalion were suffering from the same predicament. Presumably in order to secure the area, we were ordered to go out on patrol. Our post was nothing but a small tent with a tarp. We took turns

42

Chapter 9

taking naps to try and rest. When evening approached, clouds of mosquitoes would appear out of nowhere and attack us mercilessly, not allowing us to fall asleep for even a second. They headed straight to our exposed skin. We had to cover our entire bodies with a blanket to shield ourselves from the attack. Alas, this did not last long, since it was at the height of summer and we could not bear to remain shielded under the wool blanket for more than a few minutes at a time. Never have I wished more to have a mosquito net than I did on that miserable front in China! We all dreamed of sleeping in a mosquito net, of the cool and comfortable summer night. It was not only for the protection from mosquitoes, though. We were also reminiscing about the happy moments in our childhoods, the safe and peaceful family life, to which we might never again have the chance to return. We were at the very edge of desperation. Despite the scorching summer heat and the strong smell of grass in the sun, we were shivering inside in fear of dying, unknown in a faraway land. NOTES 1.  Even though Japanese and Chinese are two distinct languages, Japanese uses Chinese characters, kanji, as part of its writing system. 2.  Irori. A hearth cut into a floor indoors in traditional Japanese residential architecture. It is used for heating and cooking purposes, mostly using firewood for fuel. More common in northern Japan, its use nowadays is limited primarily to specialized restaurants and inns.

10

A Bed of Wood Shavings

F

or most of us today, sleeping is a pleasurable activity. In order to enhance this pleasurable experience, people seek out quality beds and bedding and indulge in creating luxurious and extravagant sleeping quarters. When you go to bed, you fall asleep; when you fall asleep, you are resting, and resting is pleasurable, is it not? For some, however, whose lives were simply a constant struggle for survival, such a normal proposition could not be taken for granted. Consider for a moment: for those in dire circumstances, sleep is something that is done for the sole purpose of restoring their physical energy, thereby enabling them to exert themselves during waking hours. Sleeping is then simply a temporary break in between work. From this standpoint, the mattress I am about to describe is bedding in its barest sense. To be sure, it is far from the image one may have of a soft, warm, and comfortable place in which to rest. If anything, this bed conjures up the image of a barnyard floor for livestock. When I was running my own construction business, I became acquainted with a number of tradesmen—carpenters, plumbers, plasterers, and the like. Most of them had gone through apprenticeships in their own trades. Among them was a man who owned a woodworking shop. He was born in Taishō 9 (1920). Before he even finished his elementary school, he was sent off to become an apprentice in a woodworking shop in a faraway town. This was during the early Shōwa period, so the law for mandatory education (up to the sixth grade) must have been more strictly enforced by then than it had been earlier in the Meiji and Taishō 43

44

Chapter 10

periods. Nevertheless, it must have been truly dire circumstances that forced his family to send him away so young. The practice of apprenticeship is a vast and complex topic in itself, often brought up in various arenas both for its positive contributions and its ills. One must keep in mind that there are aspects of the apprenticeship system that are not at all transparent to those who view it from the outside and that even for those who have actually experienced the system, their evaluations of the system span an entire spectrum, based on their own individual experiences. It is certainly an old-fashioned system, one that requires total self-sacrifice and subordination to the will of the master in a way that is not likely to be accepted in today’s social climate. However, those who have gone through the system and become independent at the end of their apprenticeship rarely speak disparagingly about their masters or criticize their methods of training. Clearly, these people feel deeply indebted to their masters and are forever grateful for that. A lowly apprentice, whether in carpentry, in plastering, or in any other trade, starts out as a peon or babysitter for the master’s children. He would also have to help out in the vegetable garden of the master’s house. People in those days always engaged in a little farming on the side, even those who had highly specialized skills, unless it was in the context of an urban setting. It was rare that one’s profession alone could provide enough for a living. An eleven-year-old apprentice boy would be assigned a variety of menial jobs, both around the house and in the fields, and had to work hours as long as any adult. In addition, there was a strict hierarchy among the craftsmen, senior apprentices, junior apprentices, and so on. From work to chores, assignments would be given according to the ranks of the individuals. The woodworking shop where my acquaintance had apprenticed was the largest business of its kind in the area, with a total of almost twenty workers, counting both craftsmen and apprentices. In this household, there was only one bath. Some of the craftsmen commuted from home, but almost twenty people, including the family members, had to take their baths during the course of the evening. My acquaintance, needless to say, was the last one in the pecking order, and until his turn came, it was his task to tend the burner for the bathwater. The hot water was fed from an outside burner, where he would sit and tend the fire. For fuel, they used the wood shavings that had accumulated from the day’s work, which they would pile up next to the burner. Wood shavings were easy to light but also quick to burn. Often, after the fire was burning brightly, my friend would doze off, exhausted from the day’s work, lying on the pile of wood shavings. If he let the fire die out—which would happen all too often given the nature of the fuel—he would be showered with verbal insults from his superiors. Sometimes, the frustrated bather would even



A Bed of Wood Shavings

45

reach out the window with a bucket of lukewarm water from the tub and dump it on him outside. On many occasions, he would find himself waking up the next morning lying at the foot of the burner, covered in wood shavings. Attacked by mosquitoes in summer or huddled up shivering in winter, he reminisced, he would sleep there through the night, being unable to move from the day’s exhaustion. He was well aware that he would not make it successfully through his training if he could not endure such a trivial challenge as sleeping in the wood shavings. Never mind being clean or comfortable. Despite his young age, he knew that his survival did not allow him to be concerned with such luxuries. Several years ago, there was a very popular television series in which a young heroine carried herself through life without succumbing to relentless misfortunes. My acquaintance mentioned that although he was lucky enough to escape such absolute misery himself, he had seen many cases around him of other young boys and girls who were tormented by a far worse fate than this much-adored television character. Within the limits of my own experience, however, I have observed that those who were forced into an apprenticeship in childhood would never speak ill of their masters or of their parents for forcing them into it. The woodshop owner, who told me his story, was obviously very dutiful to his parents, devotedly taking care of them in their old age. Whenever he talked to me about his master, he did so with a sense of genuine fondness. He added that at the time of the Bon1 festival and at the end of the year, he had never missed the customary visits to his master’s house while the master was still alive. NOTE 1.  Bon or O-bon. One of the major celebrated holidays in Japan. Combining a Buddhist belief and the indigenous ancestor worshipping, July 15 in the lunar calendar (typically August 15 in current practice), people welcome the visit of the spirit of deceased family members to this world and celebrate the reunion.

11

The Meisen the Girl Could Not Wear

T

here were people in those days who lived without a single opportunity to realize their innate talents simply because they were born to a poor family or their father did not have the appropriate social status to support them. This is in my memory from the 1930s. One of the main reasons those folks had so few chances to move upward in society was that there were no opportunities for them to receive an education. Those in the lower social strata, even when they showed great potential, not only lacked the financial means and the time needed to pursue an education but were also bound by blind tradition, observed for generations. The concept of being “born into poverty” had kept people within their boundaries1—whether explicitly drawn or only implicit—in all aspects of life. There was a tacit understanding about things that the poor either could not do or, conversely, must do because of their given social status. This was the “custom” espoused so firmly as the guide of conduct for life. Take the example of marriage. Obviously, marriage was not a decision between two people but rather an arrangement dictated by whether or not the two families shared the same social and economic status. The following is a story I was told by a lady I met in a certain town in Kyūshū. She was born in Meiji 41 (1909): The first time I bought meisen silk2 was the year the imperial reign changed to Shōwa (1926). Japan was at the very bottom of an economic recession then. Girls were being sold into bondage all over the country. I remember one rumor to this effect from our neighboring village. The family told people that their daughter had gone off to town to work in a textile mill, but it turned out she had in fact been sent to work in a brothel. This was clearly no time for a 47

48

Chapter 11

farmer’s daughter to even ask for an expensive meisen kimono. I must admit though that, young woman that I was, I could not help but dream about owning one even though we had no extra money whatsoever. The year I finished my elementary school, one of my relatives gave me a mushiro (straw mat) loom that had been left alone in their storage. I started weaving very simple straw mats on my own in between farm work and house chores. It started out with very crude mats good enough for home use only, but gradually I improved my skills, and eventually I became able to produce mats decent enough to sell. Of course, I handed all the income to my mother, but from time to time she would give me a small amount of change. There was no outlet for entertainment or pleasure shopping back then on which to spend money, so over several years, I had saved up all the change, accumulating a little over six yen, all along dreaming of a pretty silk kimono. One day, a friend of mine somehow managed to obtain Chichibu meisen3 and proudly showed it to me. I could not hold myself any longer. I begged my mother to give me just two yen. “Only two yen, please. I can pay the rest!” I pleaded. Let me tell you, I have never been happier before or after the day I purchased that roll of meisen. My first silk! I was so excited I could not even fall asleep that night. Sadly, however, I never got to wear the meisen kimono until much later, when I got married. I had to take the roll of meisen and sneak out after dark to my friend’s house on the other side of the village so that I could sew the cloth into a kimono in secrecy. I could not risk having people see me sewing or having the village seamstress make me a silk kimono. You never knew what the villagers might say about you if they found out. It was simply not proper for the poor to wear, not to mention own, a silk kimono. But a more immediate concern was that my parents had lots of debt, and if the lender found out about this, he would either harass my parents or, worse yet, take the kimono away from me. I was dying to wear it and go out, but for my parents’ sake, I never did.

The silk kimono the young girl dreamed of—and finally obtained with her own hard-earned money—was a forbidden luxury for someone of her social status. “But I was still happy just knowing that I had a silk kimono. That was enough for me, even though I could not wear it.” The lady turned to me and smiled, reminiscing about her youthful fancy back in those years of hardship. Meisen was most popular from the Taishō to the beginning of the Shōwa (1910s to 1920s). It was mainly used for women’s outing wear. For the wealthy, however, this was not the case: they could afford to wear meisen at home as well, or even to use meisen for bedding. There must be many stories behind every roll of meisen, which was produced abundantly. Yet how many girls were there who had to be content simply looking at the meisen they had acquired? Perhaps more than one would think. The unfairness portrayed in this lady’s story makes me feel great pity for those girls whose dreams were thwarted by social conventions.

Photo 11.1.  Meisen silk kimono for women. From the mid-Sho¯wa period (after the war). Early meisen sported stripes and plaid patterns but later ones were decorated with more flamboyant designs of flowers, butterflies, and such. Perhaps this may reflect a trend for liberation from the binding tradition of earlier fashion.

50

Chapter 11

NOTES 1.  The boundaries referred to here were not formally imposed but nonetheless difficult to cross because of lack of means in prewar Japan. The Meiji government abolished the occupation-based class system of the Edo period, but the social practices, particularly of the poor, did not change much until Shōwa. 2.  This is referring to a roll of material to be cut and sewn into a kimono. 3.  Chichibu is a town located in Saitama Prefecture, north of Tokyo, and is famous for its silk textile, Chichibu meisen, which attained its nationwide popularity during the Meiji era.

12

Dead Horse

O

ften, people question the validity of my assertions about the unimaginable level of poverty in the days before the war. I feel compelled to tell them stories of what I have witnessed to convince them. This is one such story. A few years after the beginning of the Shōwa era, around 1930 and onward, the effects of the Great Depression began to be felt in Japan. I can still vividly remember the economic conditions in those days. Poverty shrouded our village like an ominous shadow and suffocated the lives of people so thoroughly as to leave a clear impression even on the mind of a young boy. I had a friend whose family had to rely on a very small piece of land for food production, exactly like all the other farmer households around. There was no spare land for planting cash crops to make some extra income. In fact, when things got tough, it was not unusual for farmers to harvest rice and potatoes even before they were ripe, simply to keep food on the table. My friend had elder siblings staying at home who would otherwise have gone off to the city to work, but of course there were no jobs for them there. My friend’s father managed to earn just a little income by delivering things on his horse cart. The horse was kept under the thatched roof of the house, like another family member. Clearly, they could not afford to have a separate stable for it. One day in late fall, my friend’s father had to go pick up lumber from a nearby forest. On his way home, the lumber, piled up high on the cart, jiggled loose and tumbled down on both him and the horse. My friend’s 51

52

Chapter 12

father suffered a broken shoulder bone and the horse, a broken leg. Some other workers brought them both home, having secured the horse on the cart with a rope. Could it have foreseen its fate, they wondered, as it lay quietly on the cart without any struggle the whole way home? In those days, a horse with a broken leg would be sent straight to the slaughterhouse. The news preceded their arrival, and we all ran to their house. When the injured ones arrived home, my friend’s mother became frenzied and screamed uncontrollably, “How will we buy food? How will we be able to eat from now on?” She repeated it over and over again. I recall vividly that instead of holding onto her husband, she threw herself over the horse and cried. It must have been clear to her, as well as to anyone else, that he was injured badly enough to be carried on a cart. She did not even once ask her husband how he was. She must have worried about his well-being, too, but he would heal, while the horse would have to be slaughtered. I am sure that it was her recognition of the immediate ramifications to this family that drove her to this extreme. A horse would have cost three hundred yen1 back then. NOTE 1.  This would be roughly six to nine times as much as a monthly salary for a secondary schoolteacher.

13

Female Coal Miners

F

rom the beginning of the Meiji period until some years after World War II, coal was just about the only source of energy fueling Japan’s economy—whether for manufacturing, transportation, or electric power generation. The major center of coal production then was at the Chikuhō coalfield in Kyūshū. The coal mines there were the stage for many dramas and tragedies, which seem inevitably to go hand in hand with the coal industry, and it would not be exaggerating to say that coal mining impacted every aspect of people’s lives in that area. There have been many publications on the subject of coal miners—fiction, nonfiction, photographic compilations, and so forth. Some of these are invaluable and deserve to be widely read and handed on down through posterity. Most of the fictional accounts I find unsatisfying, however, because even though they are based on historical facts, they are all too often overdramatized so as to emphasize their author’s point of view. In contrast, there are a handful of titles in the nonfiction category, in many cases written by relatively unknown authors, which nonetheless have the power to affect the reader profoundly. These are for the most part oral histories, compilations of accounts related by people who had direct, personal experience living and working in Chikuhō. It is because of their direct, factual basis, I believe, that these books speak so compellingly to their readers. One such gem is Yasuko Idegawa’s Hi o Unda Haha-tachi: Onna-kōfu kara no Kikigaki (Mothers Who Gave Birth to Fire: Stories Told by Female Coal Miners).1 As the title indicates, this book is a collection of unadulterated accounts by female coal miners who were employed at the Chikuhō coal mine, painstakingly collected by Idegawa over a period 53

54

Chapter 13

of ten years. The number of these women who are still alive continues to decline every year, which further increases the value of Idegawa’s work. I can attest to the validity of the records in her collection from my own exposure to coal miners. Shortly after the end of World War II, I lived near the Hokushō coalfield in Nagasaki Prefecture. There were several mines nearby and we had a number of miners, both male and female, living in our neighborhood. Coming from a poor but relatively peaceful farming and fishing village, I remember being in total disbelief at times when I listened to their stories. The following are some highlights I obtained from my interviews with these women in their sixties and older at the time of my interviews, all of whom worked in the Chikuhō coal mines. One woman relates: After we were defeated in the war, young Japanese women started imitating the way American women dressed, and now everyone wears a “breast cover” [brassiere]. But back when we were working in the mine, we all had our breasts exposed, both us, married, and those young ones, not yet married, alike. Down inside the mineshaft, it was so hot year-round, and besides, you couldn’t work properly if you were wearing regular clothes—they were too restrictive. In any case, after a hard day’s work, we would come back up to the surface and we would be all black, covered in coal dust—so why should we even bother to wear anything?

Who can argue with what this woman is saying? I am not sure about unmarried women, but it must have been a common enough practice in those days for women to leave their breasts uncovered in rural areas. In fact, I can remember from my own childhood that women customarily went around the house in their koshimaki skirt and open-fronted hanten jacket during the summer months. Frequently enough, I can even recall seeing them take off their hantens and relax completely bare breasted. Here is another woman’s account: At one point in my life, I had to go get a job, even though I had a baby I was still nursing. My husband was becoming a compulsive gambler and it got so bad that he stopped working. Even with two incomes, it would have been difficult enough to manage. But with him losing his job, we were doomed! So I had no choice but to ask my five-year-old son to look after the baby so I could take a job at the mine. After spending half the day down there, my breasts would become completely engorged. Do you even have any idea how painful that is? It is truly torturous! But no matter how uncomfortable you are, you cannot leave your post in the middle of the day.

She added that it was not just the physical pain from her engorged breasts but also the emotional pain that came from her feeling that she was neglecting her baby. Her older child would have to wander around the



Female Coal Miners

55

neighborhood looking for “milk donations” for his sibling. Fortunately, finding the baby a source of mother’s milk was relatively easy, since at any given time there were enough nursing mothers at home in the miners’ housing area. What was more difficult was finding a way to relieve the mother’s pain. She continues: At every coal mine, there were always one or two talented men who were good at things that others could not do. Well, at my mine there was one guy who could skillfully suck the milk out of an engorged breast. This isn’t as easy as it might seem—it takes real skill, in case you didn’t know. Babies don’t just suck the milk with their lips holding onto the nipple. They use their tongue, curling it up at the tip. So, this guy was really skilled with his tongue, and he would come around during the break to suck the milk out of my breasts. It was such a welcome relief. He used to boast that he would never need lunch if he could go around and relieve three women per day.

According to today’s sexual norms, allowing a man other than your own husband to put his mouth to your breast would be condemned as adulterous behavior. But as this old woman, in her mid-eighties, simply put it, “When your breasts are engorged, it is really excruciating. What else can you do? Every woman with engorged breasts called on him to ease the pain. When he was not around, boy, were we ever in trouble!” Even if we assume that back then women’s breasts were not so directly associated with sexuality—as evidenced by my own observation that the breasts were often left exposed—most people today would still feel uncomfortable with this picture. But who are we to castigate this behavior as indecent or adulterous? No, we need to imagine their lives in the dark and dangerous depths of the earth, often without anyone else to talk to, endlessly repeating the same motions of picking and digging the coal ore. How can we, who enjoy all the comforts of modern life, ever even begin to comprehend what their lives were really like? How can we possibly blame those female miners if they do not seem to live up to today’s standards? The old women confirmed in unison that there was nothing sexual or illicit about this activity, certainly not for them with their babies at home and a full day of work as hard as any man’s. The woman who had been telling the story assured me emphatically: Let me tell you—in a household where the mother had no doubts about what was right and what was wrong, no child ever went astray, no sir! You might not care less about what your husband thought of you—but you certainly wanted to make sure your children knew you were a good mother!

These words of the old woman ring true for what they reveal about her dedication to principle and her devotion to upright conduct in her every-

56

Chapter 13

day life. No matter how poor she and others like her might have been, they all strove to be mothers of the kind that their children could look up to. Certainly, we have no right to condemn them for whatever they had to do to relieve their engorged breasts. Returning to the clothing of these mining women—we have seen that they rarely covered their upper bodies while working down in the mines. What, then, did they wear on the rest of their body? The typical outfit for a female miner consisted of a “mining skirt” (mabubeko), a cummerbund (haramaki), and a pair of thin plain-woven towels (tenugui). At one point when I was visiting Ms. Idegawa, the author of Mothers Who Gave Birth to Fire, mentioned earlier, I had an opportunity to see a rare specimen of a mabubeko preserved in her collection. It is a heko (equivalent of koshimaki or wrap-around) that women would wear in the mabu (coal mine). At first glance it looks something like an apron in three unequally sized panels, the middle one being slightly wider and longer (22 in. wide and 20.8 in. in height) than the other two (16 in. wide, 13.4 in. in height, each). The garment would be wrapped around the waist so that the central panel covered the woman’s rear, and the other two would be overlapped in front and tied off with the attached strips of cloth. The difference in the length of the front and back panels is to make it easier for the wearer to work squatting all the time; the front panels can be shorter

Photo 13.1.  Mabubeko. Women made their own mabubeko according to their size. The middle panel of this particular specimen is 52 cm (20.8 in.) high.



Female Coal Miners

57

but the back one has to be longer to keep the wearer’s rear covered while working. Illustrations of women wearing precisely this type of outfit can be seen in the book of illustrations Living in the Mine2 by Sakubei Yamamoto.3 There were no set requirements for the material from which mabubeko were made. It seems kasuri or striped cloth was most common, but most likely whatever was available and within the reach of these women was used. It would appear that the mabubeko was viewed not as underwear (like an ordinary koshimaki) but rather as a specialized kind of work garment. Even so, those mining women typically did not wear anything else under their mabubeko. In other words, their private parts would have been exposed as they squatted and crawled through the mineshafts. It was really not that long ago that hundreds of women slaved away in this humiliating outfit, making their contribution to the energy production needed for the developing nation. We tend to focus more on its conspicuous, monumental signs above ground and remain blind to the effort and sacrifice of these invisible women working in the mines below. In addition to the mabubeko, the mining women wore a haramaki—that is, a length of cloth made of sarashi momen (bleached cotton)—which was folded in half lengthwise and then bound around the waist. It had several purposes. On the one hand, it functioned like a cummerbund, supporting the abdominal muscles during heavy physical exertion, and on the other, it helped to absorb all the rivulets of sweat that would cascade down from their upper bodies. Additionally, it was handy in the event of an accident, as it could also be used as a bandage to cover bleeding. Like anything else down in the mine, this haramaki would become blackened from the coal dust and would have to be washed daily. Unlike the mabubeko, however, this cotton wrap was replaced somewhat more frequently, even before it would become totally worn out. This may seem surprising, given that this was a time when cloth was scarce and the money to purchase it was even more so. But the haramaki had an almost ritual significance for these women. This was the very first garment they would put on before starting for work, and maybe because of that they may not have wanted to jinx their safety by seeing stains and rips. In other contexts, I have seen many cases where women would make a conscious effort to incorporate something of beauty in their field jackets or other work clothes, regardless of their humble status. The haramaki functions in a similar way for the female miners, revealing their sense of pride and grace through such details as the manner of tying the cloth. After wrapping the haramaki around her waist several times, the woman would tie it on the left, often making elaborate knots, such as a flamboyant bowknot or a samurai-like straight knot.4 “We knew darned well that after ten minutes down in the mine, we would be totally covered with

58

Chapter 13

black dust. I wonder why we even bothered about what kind of knot to tie!” Thus did my informant reminisce about the old days, adding with a chuckle that at one point in her youth she was known as “the beauty queen of the mine.” The final item in female miners’ outfits was the pair of tenugui (literally “hand-wipe or towel”) that they would wrap around their head. They would go down with at least two separate pieces of tenugui—one for keeping the hair tied in place while down in the shaft and the other for cleaning off the face when they come back out, and these two towels were never interchanged. The way they wore the tenugui on their heads was also varied. My informant proceeded to show me two of the different manners of wearing it. One way was purely practical, simply an effective means of holding the hair in place. The other way was more artistic and stylish and incorporated the hair tied in topknot. Mind you, these women had never heard of “hair salons,” nor for that matter did they have any real choice of hairstyles. “Why did we bother with such things when in fact nobody ever even looked at us?” the old woman reflected out loud with some measure of amusement. But I think the answer is clear: it was their sense of femininity that inspired them to be as beautiful as they possibly could within the limits of their situation. And that, in my view, is the definition of “gracefulness,” which has nothing to do with “embellishment.” In the early Shōwa era, younger female miners eventually started wearing hand-sewn underwear under their mabubeko. Most of those girls had never finished their elementary education, but many had attended school for at least a few years, which was long enough for them to become acquainted with the idea of wearing underwear. They sewed their own underwear (what may be called “bloomers”), using old lining material from their futon covers. Probably they could not even dream of purchasing new material for such a purpose. At any rate, even after underwear was becoming the new trend, the older women remained naked under their mabubeko, not willing to change. We can be glad that the mabubeko has become a thing of the past. The female miners who wore them are also dwindling in numbers, but I hope that we will not allow our memory of them to fade away as well. May the mabubeko serve as a reminder of the sacrifices of those rugged women and of their willingness to risk their lives working in so dangerous an environment, hundreds of feet below the ground. What has often struck me when visiting the homes of the few women miners who are still with us is that their houses are all so clean and tidy. I doubt that these women are in any way exceptions in this; in fact, I suspect it is their ideal, if not their obsession, to keep their own living space as clean as possible, after having spent so much of their lives down



Female Coal Miners

59

in those dark and dusty holes. The woman who told me about the milksucking male miner had a severely hunched back, so much so that I wondered whether she could even rise from bed by herself. However, she told me proudly that all of the flowers blooming in her yard were the result of her meticulous gardening. I could not help noticing that there was not a single weed anywhere in that garden. NOTES 1.  Yasuko Idegawa, Hi o Unda Haha-tachi: Onna-kōfu kara no Kikigaki (Fukuoka, Japan: Ashi Shobo, 1984). 2.  Sakubei Yamamoto, Collection of Illustrations and Notes: “Living in the Mine” (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2011). 3.  Sakubei Yamamoto (1892–1984), born to a poor family in the Chikuhō region, Fukuoka Prefecture in Japan, he started to work in coal mines at the age of seven. At sixty, he started to illustrate coal miners’ lives with annotations. The collection of his works was included in the UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register in 2011. 4.  Though these two specific methods of tying are not illustrated, other variations of sash tying can be seen in Liza Crihfield Dalby, Kimono (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press), 46–47.

14

Aunties and Uncles

I

visited a woman recently, who was born in the early Shōwa period and used to work in a coal mine. I had assumed that all female miners were of the Meiji and Taishō generations, but clearly I was wrong. According to her, women continued to work in the mines throughout the war, at least in the smaller mines, since by then, female workers were prohibited from working in the mines run by the larger companies. In her case, her parents sent her to work in the mine soon after she graduated from elementary school. In tears, she begged to be allowed to receive two more years of education, but that was not an option for an oldest child. Poor families like hers simply could not afford to grant their children’s wishes. She remembers that there were other girls working in the mines alongside her. This was Shōwa 17 (1941). At the mine where I was working, there was a group of Korean laborers who had been brought from Korea and forced to work in the mine. To a young girl like me, they all looked like middle-aged men and women, but looking back, I think they must all have been of different ages. There was not much of a barrier between us as far as language and customs go. Sure—things would occasionally get awkward here and there in the beginning, but that changed soon enough. All we shared was a sense of ichiren-takushō [sharing one’s lot with others]. Coal mines are very dangerous places to work, what with the frequent roof collapses, gas explosions, and the like. As miners, we all knew we could die at any moment, which would strike us not individually but collectively, all of us at once. Differences in language or customs—those things that give us our sense of individual identity—they had very little meaning or relevance when at any moment we might all die a single death in the dark61

62

Chapter 14

ness of the earth. I became very close with those Korean workers, and they always called me with the diminutive “-chan.” I was housed in a dormitory with the other female workers. The food was very crude and always in short supply. Lunchtime was just about the only thing we could look forward to in our daily routine. We would sit around and share our meager food together, entertaining ourselves by singing songs from home. The Korean songs all sounded so mournful and melancholy. But how could you sing in any other way, if you had been taken far away from home to live out your days, slaving away hopelessly in a mine? Working in a foreign environment at a job they were not used to, you could not blame them for getting sick. But whenever they were ill and couldn’t work, they would be dragged off to the office to be beaten up. (Of course, things were hardly any different for the Japanese workers, although we women were spared from physical punishment.) The management always said the same thing: “Endure your own petty pain in order to win the war.” Soon, though, the war started to take a turn for the worse. We could tell because the pressure was mounting to produce even more. Most of the Japanese men had been taken off to the war by then, so it was only us—the women and those Korean men—who were left working in the mine. Specialized jobs which had for generations been reserved only for men now became our duties as well—things like sakiyama—that’s what we called the difficult task of digging into a vein of ore and following its course to start a new tunnel. It was in the autumn of Shōwa 19 (1944). I was on the first shift and had left my dormitory while it was still dark outside. As soon as we got to the mine, we were given our instructions and started the work of kiriha—that’s what we called digging along the coal vein to expose it. All of a sudden, the roof of the cave collapsed with a terrifying sound like a muffled explosion. Chunks of ore showered all over me. There was not even a moment to run for cover. I was hit on the head and lost consciousness. The others grabbed me and pulled me over to a safe spot, where they put a bandage on my head. Fortunately, that was the end of it and no one else was hurt. I was still bleeding from my injuries when the safety inspector came from the office; he urged me to go up to be seen by the doctor, but I declined. Of course I had my reasons for not going. If you go to see the doctor, chances are they will put you on a forced medical leave, which would reduce your pay disproportionately. I was well aware that my family had extra expenditures that month and wouldn’t be able to manage if my pay was reduced. The young safety inspector said something to the effect that I was so dedicated to the noble cause of supporting the country that I was dismissing my injury from the cave-in. Back then, people said and believed things like that, and so you would be considered a patriotic hero. It became impossible for me to tell the true reason, even if I had wanted to. Then in December, on the eighth, which was the anniversary of the opening of the war, I was notified the day before that I was to receive public recognition for my meritorious service. Under better circumstances, it might have been a moment to be proud of, but the whole thing only made me feel awkward. There was no ceremony, and in fact one of my friends went to pick



Aunties and Uncles

63

up the certificate while I was at work down in the mine. That was it. Not that I had any expectations, but it was a really shabby “certificate.” Truth be told, their motive was not at all to recognize my personal contribution. It was only a way for the management to demand even more work from everybody. If the youngest girl was so devoted that she could ignore her injuries and keep working for the sake of victory, they reasoned, then everyone else would have to be shamed into working even harder. The true meaning of this award, or rather the meaninglessness of it, became clear to me on August 15 of the following year (1945). By then, I had missed my chance to apologize to those who worked with me. I still feel all torn up with shame, especially toward those Korean workers who had been so nice to me as if they were my own aunties and uncles. How many times had the management used my name when they tried to squeeze more work out of those powerless workers? I was “awarded” for giving the management the legitimacy to torture my coworkers even more.

Perhaps on account of this formative experience, this lady went on to dedicate herself to the cause of social justice and is today a worker in the district social welfare office in her town.

15

Rich and Poor

S

ome time in the seventies while I was running my own construction company, I met a female laborer at one of our construction sites. She did not care much for specialized tasks, but when it came to heavy, manual jobs, she was easily a match for any of the male laborers, even though she was by no means young. All this made sense to me when I learned that she used to work in a mine. On one occasion, she commented, “I once had a janitorial job and was sent to clean the lavatory at the Kaijima Estate. It was so clean and spacious you could live in it!” The Kaijimas were a family of coal-mining magnates who had made their fortune before the war. When she mentioned this, everyone around her burst out laughing, claiming it was just a tall tale. “Don’t laugh,” she retorted defiantly, “just come with me and I will take you there to see it for yourself!” I never had a chance to ask her whether she had actually seen the lavatory at the Kaijima mansion or whether the story was only based on hearsay, but she certainly knew the details. The lavatory was about 4.5 jō1 (almost 9 sq. ft.) and had amenities of every imaginable variety. She said she would have been happy to live in that room and kept trying to convince those doubtful with one detail after another. They did not believe her story, not because they thought she was lying, but simply because such accommodations were entirely beyond their imagination. She looked indignant as she gave those fools her elaborate descriptions. Could it be that she wanted to boast about her rare opportunity to witness such extreme luxury that lay far beyond anyone’s imagination? It must indeed have been far beyond anyone’s imagination when their only reference point was the miserable hovels in which they lived. 65

66

Chapter 15

Although not directly related, this does call to mind another similar story. I once met an old man who, in his youth, had worked on a construction project for a certain aristocratic family in Kamakura. He was flabbergasted to witness that the family used brand-new bleached cotton cloth for their baby’s diapers. Not only that, they handed him a brand-new pair of sparklingly white tabi socks each day and asked him to wear them when he was inside their house. The tone of his voice was identical to that of the female laborer when she told the story about the luxurious lavatory. For him, it was beyond extravagance that those people of the privileged classes could so freely use bleached cotton cloth for diapers or give away a brand-new pair of socks each day as if they were something disposable. Obviously, he came from a class where they had to recycle rags and quilt them together to provide the baby’s diapers—as seen in chapter 4. The mining companies provided workers’ housing to their miners, which were called tan-jū—literally “housing for mine employees.”2 The quality of this housing was so bad that the word eventually came to mean “hovel.” Usually, one unit comprised an entrance, a kitchen, and one room, either a four-and-a-half tatami mat or a six tatami mat size.3 The roof was constructed from a single layer of poor-quality wood shingles or cedar bark, and leakage was so common that nobody even bothered to complain about the problem. The surroundings were equally distressing. There was hardly any greenery, since the ground was barren and covered with a thick coat of dust that came from the discarded stones carried out of the mines. Furthermore, the housing complexes were often built in low-lying areas, so drainage was always a serious problem. The image conjured up by the word “tan-jū” is thus one of rows of cheap houses lining the muddy alleys. On the topic of the living conditions of the miners, there is an instructive passage in the aforementioned book by Yasuko Idegawa: I walked around the old quarter of the mining town with some of these ladies [former miners whom she was interviewing]. “This was the grocery store,” one said; “This was the accounting office,” said another. “This was the communal bath house.” “And this was the house of one of the big-shots in the company.” The office worker’s house to which she pointed was surrounded by an imposing compound wall and had a handsome gate. Ms. Tomi described the difference between the office worker’s house and the miner’s was “as great as the difference between the Emperor’s palace and a humble peasant’s shack.”4

This stark economic divide did not happen accidentally. Despite the substandard living conditions, workers did not take much notice of the decrepit nature of their living quarters. They were conditioned to think



Rich and Poor

67

that this was what they deserved. The truth is that the miners had no other choice, thanks to the conscious strategy of the management, as an acquaintance of mine, who had been a miner at one point, explained to me. The miners were a rough bunch. Working in such a life-threatening environment, it was only natural that they should run wild in their time off, drinking, gambling, and fighting in search of an outlet through ephemeral pleasures. Bars and gambling halls sprang up in the mining town, and although the mining company didn’t run these establishments, they did nothing to stop them—even though they were fully aware how adverse these businesses could be in their employees’ lives. Their aim was solely to secure manpower: drinking and gambling establishments offered the management a highly effective way to get their workers stuck deeper and deeper in debt. Once trapped in this way, they would not be able to quit their jobs or attain financial freedom.

It was apparent that he had nothing but disdain and mistrust for the management. He qualified his statement, saying that it may only have been true at the mine where he had worked, but then went on to condemn the mining company as the most exploitative work environment he had ever witnessed. It is much like the way a brothel owner makes his workers buy kimono and other items, thereby racking up debt and becoming hopelessly indentured. The sad outcome of this vicious cycle in the coalmining towns usually fell primarily upon the wives. Yasuko Idegawa has recorded an account by one miner’s wife who landed in this predicament: Of course, my husband’s drinking was a problem, but his gambling was much, much worse. Every miner back then gambled for entertainment. Even women played some watered-down version of gambling games, such as Subo-biki and Mame-nigiri, though what we did was more like kids’ games. We used to gamble by drawing lots with our hand towels while waiting for the rail car to go down into the mine, just for fun. There were times when my husband would get so involved in his drinking and gambling that he would forget to come home, sometimes for a month and even longer. I never went out to look for him when he was gone, since it didn’t make much difference whether he was at home or not. Actually, it was more relaxing if he was not home. He would come home looking all pale and jumpy after racking up a lot of debt, and almost in tears he would beg me to come up with one hundred yen. If he didn’t have the money, someone was going to kill him, he would say.5

There are good reasons why women should have taken up mining jobs. For one thing, the industry needed to secure a more stable labor force, especially when men started being drafted into the army as the war ramped

68

Chapter 15

up. Unlike those working in agriculture or fishing, miners had no land or equipment to tie them to where they lived. The management therefore provided them with free or subsidized housing and encouraged their family members also to sign up for work at the mines, thereby making it more difficult for the miners to leave the job. But beyond that, having a workforce that was closely bound by family ties made sense, both for the management and for the workers. For the management, having husbands and wives, sons and daughters, and other relatives working side by side would help keep the labor force more stable—after all, with your family members and relatives working together with you, you would be far less likely to run away, no matter how unbearable the work may become. Perhaps more significantly, for the workers themselves, it was reassuring in that dangerous working environment to be surrounded by closely related kin, who, after all, would be far more deeply motivated than their employers to rescue them in the event of a catastrophe. When men disappeared, whether because of the war or their compulsive gambling, women bore the brunt of the demands placed on the family unit by society. Needless to say, there was hardly any recognition, not to mention any appreciation, of their sacrifice. NOTES 1.  Jō is the counter as well as measure for tatami mats. One jō is approximately 91 cm (35.4 in.) × 182 cm (72.7 in.). 2.  Tankō jūtaku or tan-jū for short. In these housing complexes, rent and utilities were heavily subsidized or free, though in most cases, the buildings were of very poor quality. 3.  Rooms most commonly come in 4.5 jō, 6 jō, or 8 jō sizes. A 4.5 jō room is about 80 sq. ft., and a 6 jō room is about 108 sq. ft. 4.  Yasuko Idegawa, Hi o Unda Haha-tachi: Onna-kōfu kara no Kikigaki (Fukuoka, Japan: Ashi Shobo, 1984), 10. 5. Idegawa, Hi o Unda Haha-tachi, 46–47.

16

A Beggar Girl

M

y village was just another one of the countless poor villages that existed all over Japan. The village ran east-west along the coast with a little bulge to the north in the middle section. The southern half was mostly taken up by rice fields. There were two hundred or so households. The children went to what used to be called normal school for the mandatory six years of education, and some opted to go on to the high school for two additional years of schooling. At any given time, I would say, there were roughly five hundred children attending these two schools. The prefectural highway served as the main street in the village and boasted several stores on either side, such as a kimono store, a hardware store, and a general store, selling an assortment of items ranging from stationery, tobacco, and sewing notions to cheap liquor, shōchū.1 Every so often, we would see a group of beggars coming through town on the highway. Since there were stores and houses of better means along the main street, it was more likely they could receive some handouts here, and certainly more so here than around the houses of the poor in the back alleys. These houses in the back were most often empty anyway, since their occupants would likely be out working in one way or another. I remember in particular one family of beggars that came through town in this way. The mother was blind and, as was so often the case with the blind, she sang for a living. Blind female singers, called goze,2 usually accompanied themselves with a shamisen,3 although they often played a rustic, hand-made version called a gottan4 in southern Kyūshū, with a thin wooden veneer instead of animal skin for the soundboard. This woman did not even have a gottan. She would stand at the door and start sing69

70

Chapter 16

ing cheerful songs, somewhat out of tune, without any announcement. Maybe she did not want to humiliate herself by reciting begging words. Most people did not particularly care to have wandering musicians at their doorstep and so would give them some food—perhaps a tablespoonful of rice, half a teacupful of millet, a yam, or the like—only so that they could get rid of the beggars. This blind woman was accompanied by a girl of about my age, carrying a baby on her back, and she walked along, holding her mother’s hand. The girl had short, messy hair, like a boy, and a pale face and a thin body. I seem to recall that she wore a pair of worn-out wooden clogs during winter, but during the rest of the year, she mostly went barefoot. She wore an ancient-looking men’s kasuri kimono, somewhat short for her and almost shiny from the grime. Every time I saw her, she would be wearing the same—which, after all, was not all that different from us, the children of poor farming families. Eventually, a rumor went around among the village boys that this girl had no undergarment. To taunt her, some of the boys tried to lift up the hem of her kimono. At each of those occasions, she would resourcefully defend herself by squatting down on the ground and pinching the thigh of the baby on her back, making the poor thing howl and cry. This served to ward off the mean-spirited boys. In retrospect, I am amazed at her ability to devise this line of defense and thus to thwart the boys’ attempts no matter how often they would try to expose her. As you can easily imagine, wealthy landlords were never really liked by their tenants, although no tenant would ever openly say so. The poor would accept their fate, lest they should be penalized for wishing for a change. However, one landlord in our village enjoyed his tenants’ respect and trust. The family had been landlords for some generations, although rumor had it that the family’s fortune was declining, perhaps in part resulting from his lenient treatment of his tenants. One winter day, as I was walking down the street, I chanced upon a scene in which the landlord’s daughter, just a few years my senior in age, was talking to the beggar girl by the stone wall right outside the landlord’s house. She was holding onto the beggar girl with one hand and clutched a small parcel wrapped in newspapers in the other. I overheard the daughter telling the girl to wear the clothing in the packet. “There are three pieces, used but well laundered. Wash them whenever they get dirty.” She must have heard the boys’ taunting and felt sorry for the girl. This was a time when people did not mingle and interact over class lines. I was stunned to see a landlord’s daughter holding a beggar girl’s hand. After the girl left, the daughter turned around in my direction. With an awkward smile, she whispered to me not to tell anyone about this and then disappeared into the house. In the spring of 1946, when I finally returned home from the battlefield in China, I saw that this area of the village, around the landlord’s house,



A Beggar Girl

71

had been completely bombed to the ground. Our town was targeted because of its proximity to an airfield for the Imperial Japanese Navy’s air division.5 I also learned that the landlord’s daughter had passed away a year earlier from tuberculosis. Speechless, I could not help feeling an emptiness inside—an emptiness that perfectly matched the desolation of my surroundings. I can still picture the shortened men’s kasuri kimono the beggar girl was wearing, but I have no recollection whatsoever what the landlord’s daughter was wearing. More than half a century has passed since the end of the war. Cities and rural areas alike have gone through tremendous changes. Social inequalities have been leveled to a great extent, and Japan’s urban infrastructure— its roads and transportation systems—are now truly world class. Most of the population consider themselves to be middle class or above. There is an old saying that no matter how abundant the crop, one does not steal persimmons from someone else’s tree and that no matter how easy it may be, one does not steal the carp in someone else’s pond. It is saying that one should not do wrong no matter how easy or tempting it may be. However, I think that the proverb can be further interpreted. Could it also imply that people should do what is right? I wonder how many of us today would demonstrate a genuine sympathy for the unfortunate, as the landlord’s daughter did. It would indeed be a shame if wealth and prosperity have diminished our humanity by robbing us of our concern for others. NOTES 1.  Shōchū. Alchoholic beverage distilled from sweet potatoes, rice, wheat, brown sugar, and other ingredients. Most commonly produced in southern Kyūshū, which was not suited for sake production, it was consumed widely by the time of the Edo period. Considered as “poor man’s sake,” it has enjoyed renewed popularity in recent years. 2.  Goze. A blind woman who traveled from door to door in search of alms for her singing and playing the shamisen instrument. Common during the Edo and Meiji periods, some could still be seen through the period of World War II. Some goze performers still exist today. 3.  Shamisen. A three-stringed Japanese instrument, much like a banjo, played with a plectrum. It is used to accompany traditional genres of music such as folk songs, ji-uta (see chapter 3, notes 2 and 3), and kabuki and bunraku puppet theater music. In recent years, it has seen a resurgence in nontraditional genres of music, such as bluegrass, funk, jazz, and free improvisation. 4.  Gottan, or hako-shamisen for its wooden structure, possibly originated from the southern Chinese gootan. It was commonly played in folk music traditions in southern Kyūshū up to the mid-twentieth century. 5.  Kokubu Naval Air Base in Aira, Kagoshima.

17

Noble-Minded Ladies

P

arents who were so poor that they could not even afford to feed their offspring sometimes had to resort to mabiki,1 the practice of infanticide. In fact, it is commonly referred to using the euphemism kuchiberashi, “reducing the mouths.” Thus I was under the impression that the practice stemmed from a lack of food. However, according to Kuichi Takahashi in his Hie to Awa no Aishi (History of Millet and Hemp),2 the shortage of food was just one of several potential reasons, and a lack of clothing could be equally as pressing an issue as insufficient food.3 During those days when there was such scarcity of basic necessities such as food and clothing, it was completely irrelevant to those living in poverty whether their clothing was attractive or their food was delicious. For the poor, clothing was simply to keep oneself warm, and food was but a means of fending off starvation. Takahashi relates a conversation that he had with an eighty-four-yearold woman from Kunohe village in Iwate Prefecture in northern Japan. I asked her “what was the most wretched thing you ever had to do during your days as a field laborer—something so miserable that you have never been able to erase it from your memory?” She closed her eyes and thoughtfully pondered my question for a while. Then she began. “Well, I’ll tell you. It was very hard working, like weeding in the fields, especially during that time of the month. But what I hated most was working in the yachita.4 I was often waist deep in mud. I didn’t want the mud to soil my momohiki (long underpants, here used as part of the work outfit), so whenever I had to work alone in the rice paddy way back in the ravine, I 73

74

Chapter 17

would first make sure there was no one around, then take my pants off. You had to walk slowly into the muddy paddy. I had a michika jacket5 over my shoulders and a short apron covering the front of my upper body down as far as the surface of the water, so no part of the body would be visible. You worked just like that all day. At the end of the day, I washed off the lower half of my body and put my pants back on, taking care not to soil them with mud. But what was so terrible was that after working like that all day, at night you would suffer an unbearable itchiness around your bottom, but you can’t very well scratch there, you know.” It moved me to tears to think of the plight of that young woman, as she told this story so many decades later. She would work in muddy water practically naked, just to avoid soiling her crude underpants!6

Field clothes were made thick and durable so as to protect the worker from getting injured by pests, branches and roots, stones, and the like while working. Yet this lady chose to take off her work pants to protect them and thus exposed herself in the muddy water. If they had been spoiled or torn, she would not have been able to procure another garment to replace them. Such was the cruel reality surrounding farmers in the not-so-distant past. In addition, women back then were not allowed to expose anything above the knees—at least outside of their private space. Doing so would be considered indecent—certainly, no thigh, not to mention anything still farther up. These strictures even applied to farmer women. Poor female laborers often had to resort to choosing what was considered indecent in preference to ruining their crude but precious clothing. (This illustrates further how unconventional female coal miners were in terms of their work clothing.) I cannot, however, help but single out here how virtuous these ladies were. This old lady candidly mentions that she could not scratch herself because it was considered indecent to do so, even at home! Her family members must have known how hard working in the field was. Why observe social etiquette in front of them? Yet she recalls that she would endure the itching, thoroughly convinced that one should never engage in such improper behavior. This modesty is truly touching. There were derogatory terms to refer to peasants then, such as donbyakushō and tagosaku.7 How utterly inappropriate such expressions would be to refer to this young woman. She had to exert herself her entire life simply to survive. She may not have completed school and may never have learned the finer points of etiquette or the graceful behavior of a noble lady. But if one could define the word “nobility” not in terms of the social class into which one is born or the level of education one has received but rather in terms of one’s devotion to virtue, then this lady most certainly counts as a noble lady.

Photo 17.1.  Momohiki farmer’s pants. This hand-made men’s cotton momohiki dates from the early Sho¯wa period. By that time, momohiki were mass-produced as a cheap alternative for trousers.

Photo 17.2.  Michika jacket. Michika is a short hanten. This cotton example is from the early Sho¯wa period. Considering the size, it must have been made for women. One can detect a sense of design consideration in the placement of the patches for repair.

76

Chapter 17

I would like to quote another passage from a travelogue written by Isabella Bird8 in the summer of 1878, on the occasion of her trip from Tokyo to Hokkaido: Men may be said to wear nothing. Few of the women wear anything but a short petticoat wound tightly round them, or blue cotton trousers very tight in the legs and baggy at the top, with a blue cotton garment open to the waist tucked into the band and a blue cotton handkerchief knotted round the head.9 From the dress no notion of the sex of the wearer could be gained.10

What she observed never really changed, even up to the early Shōwa period, as I recall firsthand. Bird also states: A most rigid social etiquette draws an impassable line of demarcation between the costume of the virtuous woman in every rank and that of her frail sister. The humiliating truth that many of our female fashions are originated by those whose position we the [sic] most regret, and are then carefully copied by all classes of women in our country, does not obtain credence among Japanese women, to whom even the slightest approximation in the style of hair-dressing, ornament, or fashion of garments would be a shame.11

Living in extremely adverse conditions, these working women whom I interviewed now (and Isabella Bird observed then) must have had a clear and strong sense of propriety. I consider them the true nobility. I would add that some scholars of popular culture and fashion argue that after World War II, it was the prostitutes who had served the GIs who set the new trends in clothing fashion. What would Bird have said if she had lived to witness that? NOTES 1.  Mabiki. Literally, “pulling out in between.” It is used both in the horticultural sense (thinning, pruning, culling) and to refer to infanticide. 2.  Kuichi Takahashi, Hie to Awa no Aishi (Tokyo: Sui-yō sha, 1983). 3. Takahashi, Hie to Awa no Aishi, 209. 4.  Yachita (or yachida). Literally, a rice paddy in a valley. It refers to a rice paddy in a marshy area without a proper drainage system. The yield is typically lower because the water is stagnant. 5.  Michika or mijika. A shorter version of the hanten jacket. There are other similar garments, such as hippari, uwappari, and nen’neko. These have somewhat different purposes, but they are all different versions of hanten, and the nomenclature seems fluid and flexible. 6. Takahashi, Hie to Awa no Aishi, 222–23.



Noble-Minded Ladies

77

7.  Donbyakushō literally means “stupid peasant,” while tagosaku can be interpreted as “manure carrier/producer.” The degree of derision is more relevant here than the actual meaning of these words. 8.  Isabella Lucy Bird (1831–1904). A British woman who traveled the world from a young age on. She visited northern Japan in 1878 and published a book, Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, in 1880, which is a collection of her letters describing her travels in the country. 9. This passage describes a female farmer wearing koshimaki or momohiki, hanten with a sash around, and tenugui on her head. 10.  Isabella L. Bird, Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, 2nd ed. (1911; repr., Mineola, NY: Dover, 2014), 83. 11. Bird, Unbeaten Tracks, 202.

18

A Gown of Leaves for the Dead

I

n the olden days, it was not uncommon for people to practice mabiki, infanticide. Many people lived in such abject poverty that they had no choice but to eliminate newborn babies. (As was mentioned briefly in chapter 17, it was not only food shortage that drove people to this extreme measure.) The system was such that the poor could survive only by racking up debt: tenant farmers with limited land available for cultivation, fishermen who did not own their boats and fishing gear, laborers in the cities—none of them could afford to have many children if they were to live within their means. Infanticide is no doubt a topic that resonates deeply in the human psyche, and given its prevalence, one would expect to find it discussed in histories of the common people. Yet I have not come across many writings on the topic. Those few that can be found rarely do anything more than offer a straightforward account of such incidents without investigating the broader social and economic conditions that encouraged such practices. No doubt, life in those days was extremely challenging, and people had to struggle terribly just to meet their basic needs. There was no shortage of reasons and justifications for the practice of infanticide, yet it must have been an unbearable and deeply heart-wrenching act—especially for the mothers, since the decision was typically made by their husbands. Women had no say in these matters because it was believed that a wife simply belonged to her husband. The method typically employed was a rather passive one: the baby would be laid on a straw mat spread on the mud floor of the house, and then a shallow wooden bucket would be placed upside down over it so as to confine and suffocate the baby. After a certain length of time, they 79

80

Chapter 18

would lift the bucket. If the baby was still alive, I was told, they considered it a sign that the baby was meant to be kept alive, and they would give it back to its mother for feeding. This is only one method; different practices must have been employed in different locales. Eventually, infanticide was officially banned, although there was hardly any enforcement of the law. Oddly enough, I have met many elders who survived a failed attempt of infanticide, having once been those lucky babies. Though no one talked about such matters openly, people tacitly knew the details, and the survivors often found out in the end. I have come across one reference stating that there was increased pressure against infanticide around the time of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905). I suspect that the motive was to secure necessary human resources, both for the war effort and for the Meiji government’s program of industrial development—a far cry from advocating human rights. Though the following account is not about infanticide, it nonetheless provides powerful insight into the experience and feelings of young mothers toward their lost children in a society that practiced such cruel methods of population control. It is invaluable evidence of the mind-set of a woman in rural Japan in the Taishō era (1912–1926). One summer day, I had to go up the hill to tend the family’s millet field. I was not yet thirty, and had by then three children, the oldest being five, with a fourth child on the way. I was suffering from severe morning sickness. Of course, no pregnant woman was excused from work no matter how sick she was feeling. There was no choice. You had to work if you wanted to eat. The night before, I stayed up taking care of my middle child, who had caught some stomach bug and needed my attention. Under the hot summer sun, and with the combination of my nausea and my lack of sleep, I was feeling quite out of it. Some time around noon, I had a premonition that I was about to miscarry. I had experienced a miscarriage before, so I figured I could handle this one on my own. As soon as I put away my tools and squatted down by a tree, the process started. For however long it took, I stayed down till the end. The child [she did not call it a fetus], I figured, must have been about four months old. It was a hot summer day. I had only a simple hanten jacket and a koshimaki underskirt. If it had been winter time, I would have had a full-length kimono, which would have allowed me to take off my koshimaki to wrap the little body in, but I could not do that since I would be exposing the bottom half of my body should I take it off. I also could not use my jacket since it was much more expensive than the koshimaki. I looked around and saw some taro leaves a short distance away in a nearby field. It took several layers of leaves to cover the entire body. I made several trips to tear off enough leaves. Once it was all wrapped up, as solemnly as I could, I tied it carefully with a vine. Not that it was much of a load, but



A Gown of Leaves for the Dead

81

it weighed heavily in my hands, all the same. Life was difficult and I knew very well that we could not feed another mouth. Even so, I felt that whatever entered into my womb was a gift from heaven. It would have made life even more trying, but still I would have loved to see that child’s smiling face. On the way home, I stopped at the village graveyard. I chose an out-of-theway spot, dug a deep hole using only some twigs scattered nearby, laid down the body, and prayed for its soul. Tears rolled out of my eyes. However short a period of time it was, that life had been sustained in my belly. I was overwhelmed by feelings of remorse—not just for the loss of life but also for the fact that I had to wrap the body in taro leaves. Using my hanten would have been out of the question, but I so desperately wanted to give it something, like my koshimaki. If I had had done that, I would have at least sacrificed something for the sake of my unborn child. But I could not even do that.

In an effort to console the old lady, I commented that it would have been impossible for a young woman to walk naked from the waist down, however deserted the little path from the field might have been. She responded, “A parent should never be selfish. A parent needs to always have her child first; otherwise, she would not deserve to be a parent.” She added that she would never forgive herself for failing to live up to this principle. Her words about parenthood resonate deeply in today’s social climate. There have been strings of incidents reported in which desperate mothers murder their infants who could not express themselves, let alone fend off the attack. How can such tragedies happen? It is beyond my imagination how these mothers can drive themselves to murder, no matter how tired of child rearing they may be, no matter how trying it is to deal with their crying babies. On the other hand, in today’s affluent society, there are also people who will pay for a funeral and a tomb for their pets. I am not criticizing these pet owners; I am sure they have their own compelling reasons. The juxtaposition is chilling, nonetheless.

19

Katatsuke-gasuri

M

y mother had a half sister who was much younger than she was. In fact, the sister was just about my eldest sister’s age, so we all called her Sister Oito. She was of small frame and was always smiling, but somehow I felt there was something sad about her smile. She lived nearby, with my mother’s aunt. That aunt—my great-aunt—ran a little shop where she sold snacks and such. We used to call this type of store a penny shop, since most of the things sold for about a sen1 (penny) each. My great-aunt used to cook beans a lot. It was the salty kind that she made, not the sweet kind, perhaps because sugar was so expensive. Nevertheless, her beans were a favorite snack for the young patrons in the village. Two of them used to sit at the front of the shop and work on some sewing while they tended to business. Skill at sewing, especially the hand sewing of kimono, was considered one of the most important accomplishments for women, and it was exclusively the job of wives and daughters to sew and mend clothing for the entire family. But in those rare cases where the woman of the house was not particularly adept at sewing, and if one needed formal wear to be made of high-quality material, then people would bring the work to someone who was known in the village as a good seamstress. Oito was touted as the most accomplished seamstress in our village. She was thoroughly mindful of detail and made the most beautiful stitches. The downside, however, was that it took her twice as long as others to finish such work, and because of this she seldom got outside jobs for sewing. Her reputation was such that if women in our village took a longer time to finish their tasks, whether at home or in the field, they were often reprimanded by their menfolk for “playing Oito.” 83

84

Chapter 19

Still, people greatly admired her work, since her stitches stood up to the heaviest use and frequent washing. Although she drew little income from her fabled skills, Oito and my great-aunt managed happily together, however frugally they had to live. I never found out why Sister Oito was living with my great-aunt. Oito was in fact married to someone who worked at a shipyard in Kobe, but somehow she returned to the village shortly after her wedding. The reason for this was only a matter for speculation. Before the war, a wife had no legal rights in certain aspects of marriage. Her husband could divorce her for the flimsiest of reasons, such as not conforming to the customary traditions of her new family. Adultery, which may be considered an obsolete word today, was not so long ago conceived of as an immoral act that was committed only by women. No matter what the circumstances were, and no matter how justifiable her actions might have been, infidelity was a woman’s crime, punishable by terminating the marriage and casting the woman out of her husband’s home. In those days, a major source of entertainment in rural areas was the silent films that would come around a few times every month or, in some places, the traveling theater troupes that would appear every so many months. Traveling theaters, when they came, were preceded by jinta, a group of actors who played music and made announcements as a form of advertisement. Their music was traditionally in a minor key, although somewhat later, as the nation marched to the drums of war, their plaintive songs came to be replaced by energetic marching tunes. My great-aunt was not so fond of silent films, claiming that the moving images hurt her eyes and that the accompanying music—played live by a couple of musicians—was too loud, so she and Oito would go to see the traveling theater shows every so often for fun. Sometimes, they would ask whether we children wanted to come along. Our school prohibited students from going to this type of grown-up entertainment, but we used to sneak in just the same, furtively hiding between Oito and great-aunt. The theater was a shabby building that had been built on the riverbank right outside the village. It was placed there deliberately, close enough to the next village so as to maximize attendance. The roof was a sheet of galvanized iron, the crumbling walls were full of holes, and the audience sat on straw mats spread on a floor of thin wooden boards. The stage was built significantly higher than the floor and had a curtain against the back wall. In order to suggest the setting of any particular scene, the curtain was made of pieces of cloth of various colors stitched together. The theater floor could accommodate about 150 people. With its naked light bulbs swaying back and forth in the wind, what a flimsy, humble structure it was! Yet for most of the villagers back then, it was precious as the one and only center for entertainment.



Katatsuke-gasuri

85

Unlike today’s television shows, the programs presented at the theater were mostly family dramas, heavily laced with didactic messages. For example, there might be a program about a young son who hates his peasant’s life and leaves for the big city, breaking the hearts of his parents by doing all the wrong things. He then gets drafted and straightens out to become a better person, exhibiting many acts of bravery on the battlefield and eventually dying an honorable death. The shows at the theater generally followed along these lines, with tragic stories outnumbering comedies. Perhaps this preference for the tragic was because people found solace in stories that paralleled their own life experiences. One performance I remember so clearly was about a young girl who was to be taken away as a mistress for a greedy, lecherous moneylender, in effect becoming human collateral for the family’s debts. The father was long since dead. The mother, who was sick and weak, struggles to sit up from her tattered bedding and begs the moneylender to wait just a little longer. He ignores her pleas and drags the girl out of the house, as she resists valiantly all the while. At this point in the performance the audience began booing and jeering at the moneylender, and some of them were ready to run up and beat him. Many in the audience were in tears over the plight of the mother and her daughter, and the whole theater seemed ready to explode with emotion. Dramas like this were not at all uncommon in the real world, and everyone seemed to know people who had been victims of this kind of tragedy, making it easy to empathize deeply with such characters. Eventually, the sick mother reaches the breaking point and lets the tears flow as she tries to hold onto her daughter. As the mother cried, “I am so sorry I cannot even buy you a single katatsuke-gasuri,” I saw Oito wipe her tears. I innocently thought that katatsuke-gasuri must be really expensive since it could make an adult cry. Some time later, remembering this scene, I asked my mother what katatsuke-gasuri was. She explained that it was an inexpensive kasuri (ikat) substitute for the common people. This type of fabric developed around the mid-Taishō era: instead of being actual ikat, painstakingly woven from individually tie-died threads, it sported ikat-like designs that had been machine printed on the woven fabric. It was much more affordable and met with an enthusiastic response by ordinary consumers. Eventually, however, it fell out of favor, for it was no match for the genuine handwoven ikat with its traditional indigo background. By the beginning of the Shōwa period (1926), katatsuke-gasuri had become synonymous for a fabric of cheap quality, although most village women still could not afford to buy it very often. I have to add, however, that on occasion, some exceptional quality kata­ tsuke-gasuri were produced. I have seen one specimen of an outing gown, most likely dating from the early Shōwa period, that was quite impres-

86

Chapter 19

sively made, both with regard to its outer fabric and its inner liner, which was just as attractive as any silk equivalent. Since it was relatively easy to produce, katatsuke-gasuri must have been produced in quantity, although so much less has survived today than is the case with indigo kasuri or striped kasuri for the very reason that it was not as durable as the other handwoven kasuri materials. The prices listed in the sample catalogue from early Shōwa indicate that katatsuke-gasuri was sold at around one yen and twenty sen per roll, roughly one-third of the expense for a roll of Kurume-gasuri.

Photo 19.1.  Katatsuke-gasuri kimono. This is an informal kimono for women, made of cotton fabric with a lining, featuring white four-petal flowers and three-ring motif against a dark-brown background. Up until the introduction of katatsuke-gasuri, most kimono designs were stripes or ikat for common women. Katatsuke-gasuri opened possibilities for brighter, more varied patterns, though the lesser quality of the fabric eventually led to its decline in popularity.



Katatsuke-gasuri

87

Photo 19.2.  Katatsuke-gasuri kimono. This is an example of a nikoniko-gasuri kimono for children. Made of cotton, from the Taisho¯ era.

Katatsuke-gasuri was also sometimes referred to as nikoniko-gasuri. This was a brand name belonging to a large-scale fabric manufacturer. The brand became quite common and even today people still recognize the name. You find many samples of katatsuke-gasuri clothing for boys and girls, more so with girls’ kimono, from the years of the late Taishō and the early Shōwa. For boys, hand-woven kasuri was still the mainstream. My guess is that girls were given more colorful and showy clothing, even though the material was not as durable, and boys wore something sturdy rather than florid. Katatsuke-gasuri had served well for the common folks back then. NOTE 1.  Sen. One-hundredth of a yen. It was in use between 1871 and 1953. Currently, it is used only as a unit of account for quoting stock prices, exchange rates, and so on.

20

A Lady in a Dilapidated Mansion

Q

uite some time ago, I was visiting a small town in the Tōhoku area, in the northern part of the island of Honshū. Being a castle town, this place had a long history and well-rooted businesses. The town exuded a sense of peace and calm, unlike the hustle and bustle of life in the city. Every time I visited my friends in this part of the country, I enjoyed the charming old-town atmosphere, and I always made a point of visiting this quaint town whenever I had a chance. I was staying in a cheap inn in town and was scheduled to leave the next day. That evening, a woman in her mid-thirties appeared out of the blue, requesting to see me. I had never previously met her. There was no lobby or any other public space in the inn, so we walked to a nearby coffee shop. The woman gave me the impression that she was not financially well-off, judging from her outfit and the fact that she wore no makeup. I have to add, though, that she had an air of gracefulness about her. I was certain that she came from a respectable family. Once we sat down, she started to tell her story. I am from this town. I am a good friend with a lady who happens to be a sister of Mr. A., with whom you do business. She told me about you. I apologize for my rudeness in visiting without anyone making an introduction, but since I heard you are leaving soon, I have taken this bold step of coming to visit you. I hope you will forgive my being so selfish.

Mr. A was an area antique dealer with whom I often did business. The woman’s words were very polite, yet there was something urgent and passionate about them. She was elegant but very formal, sitting straight 89

90

Chapter 20

up, and she would not touch the drink that had been brought out for her. “It is getting late and I have an ill family member waiting for me at home. I am sorry to be so rude, but I must be brief and to the point.” Politely but firmly, the lady spoke. I gathered that the lady had come from a family with a well-established pedigree going all the way back to the Edo period. The family had traded in Chinese herbal medicine, and their brand was so well known and trusted that it was in demand not only all over Japan but in Korea, Taiwan, and Manchuria as well. When the war was over, however, the modern pharmaceutical industry was introduced, and the postwar population lost interest in the old-fashioned herbal medicine, leading the business into decline. In the traditional prewar model, a family business was like an unassailable fortress, protected by the loyalty of its patrons and its reputation. As long as the succeeding generations strictly adhered to the way the business had been conducted, it was unthinkable that such a well-established business like her family’s should go into bankruptcy. The postwar social and economic changes, such as the restructuring of the monetary system, however, were so fundamental and all-encompassing that local traditional businesses were totally devastated. The heads of these businesses were especially defenseless; they had enjoyed a long history of successful trade thanks to the skillful managers and accountants they had hired. Not surprisingly, my father was an old-fashioned businessman. He was terrified of relinquishing the family business. He saw carrying on the family business as his personal responsibility, as a duty he owed his ancestors since they had built it over the span of a century. He should have been wary of profit-generating schemes people brought to him, but I am afraid he was too naïve and also desperate, and he was driven into unfamiliar territory as he began to experiment with new business ventures.

The woman’s father was desperate to turn the family fortune around and started investing in questionable ventures proposed by unscrupulous people who were trying to siphon off his assets. In any place and at any time, there will always be those who circle around the dying like hyenas, intent only on benefiting themselves. The relatives on my mother’s side found out about my father’s new business ventures and became quite concerned for our welfare. They urged my father to reconsider, but he would not change course. He was just too proud, and perhaps he felt too ashamed to heed the advice of others.

Soon he started taking the family’s assets to provide collateral to cover his loans. Like an injured beast, he fought back blindly and fiercely, all the way to bankruptcy.



A Lady in a Dilapidated Mansion

91

I had had such a wonderful childhood, being raised by gentle and loving parents. It felt like it was always spring and early summer in our household. But once the family fortune started to decline, arguing and yelling came to fill the house. How many times I cried myself to sleep in my bed!

The debts quickly accumulated to the point that the family assets, including real estate, were all taken. The indignant relatives on the mother’s side refused to help out at this point. My father has lost his desire to live. He spends all day just watching TV. We’ve sold all the furnishings and other valuables. The only thing I still have to sell is the family’s heirloom clothing. I approached Mr. A through his sister, but he said you may be a better person since he does not deal with clothing. These kimono have been passed down in our family through several generations. My father says he does not want to sell to the locals. I guess this is his snobbishness again, but then I do not wish to sell the clothing in this area either.

So I visited them the next day. The house was a mansion, large and imposing, yet it was bare and dilapidated. There was little splendor left from its happier days. The father, a tired-looking old man, took a look at me without uttering a word and then disappeared. There was no sign of the mother, whom one would have expected to greet a visitor. The lady took me into a detached storage house. There were sixteen tansu1 chests and so many chabako boxes2 stacked up high. There was a staggering size of wardrobe in storage here. As she pulled out one kimono after another, each and every item a gorgeous, superb gem, she was choked with tears. “Even though we need to, how could I sell these family treasures that my ancestors cherished so dearly!” She turned away from me and tightly embraced the pieces in her arms as if they were her children. There were stacks of formal kimono, such as tomesode3 and tsukesage,4 piled up high. The furisode5 from the Meiji and the Taishō eras were so dazzling and magnificent. There were heaps of men’s formal kimono and hakama as well, and quickly the floor of the storage house disappeared under the accumulating layers and layers of kimono. A woman’s festive gown in slate blue chirimen6 silk crepe with a chrysanthemum motif; a formal outing kimono of dark blue rinzu7 with an azalea print all over; a child’s yotsumi ceremonial gown in light blue silk crepe with gold and silver embroidery; and a colorful hare-gi outing kimono for young girls— all these fabulous garments were joined by equally luxurious accessories such as elegant satin undergarments, colorful obi sashes, elaborate silk ties, and more! It was patently obvious that an enormous amount of wealth had been poured into these possessions over the generations. I could not help but feel the unearthly atmosphere hanging about in the dimly lit storage house. All these kimono—were they expressing their

92

Chapter 20

regrets at parting or perhaps showing their pity for the current family members? I was sorry that I had to disappoint her, but I had to tell the lady that all I was collecting was cotton work clothes and that silk kimono were outside of my area of interest. I did find a few items of clothing that had been supplied for the servants. She said she would take any small payment for these items since they were pretty much valueless. But I would not dare take advantage of the offer and ended up paying far more than the going rate out of my sense of remorse for not being able to help her more. She refused to accept my generous payment, but I insisted. When I was about to leave the house, an old lady came out from the back. She was nicely dressed but looked somehow pale and elusive. The younger woman put her hand over the old lady’s shoulder and said to her, “Mother, this gentleman has bought a lot of items. Let’s thank him.” She turned to me and whispered, “My mother suffered a nervous breakdown after worrying so much about the family. Father is not much better. As for me, my destiny is to take care of my parents until the end. I consider that to be my way of atoning toward my ancestors.” Having said so with a faint smile, she bowed deeply to me. NOTES 1.  Tansu. A traditional chest of drawers. 2.  Chabako. A tea box. It is a roughly 16 in. wide × 26 in. deep × 19 in. high wooden box with a lid. The inside of the box and the lid is lined with metal sheets to keep the moisture out for the purpose of storing tea, in popular use in the tea trade until the 1960s or so. Used boxes were sold off for storage purposes (most likely clothing) to the general population. 3.  Tomesode. Formal kimono for women. 4.  Tsukesage. A semiformal kimono for women. 5.  Furisode. Literally, “swinging sleeve.” It is a formal kimono with long sleeves for young, unmarried women. A detailed account of different types of kimono is found in Liza Crihfield Dalby, Kimono (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), 171–81. 6.  Chirimen. Japanese silk crepe. Fabric is woven with a straight warp and a twisted weft, which creates crisp, crimped texture. 7.  Rinzu. Silk satin with various patterns woven in. Soft and glossy, it is very elegant. Used dyed or plain.

21

Female Workers in Textile Mills

T

he word “fashion,” in the sense of what was popular in women’s clothing, was first introduced in Japan in the 1920s, around the midTaishō era. Of course, different fashions had existed before that time, but they had little bearing for ordinary women of common origin. Fashion in clothing for the masses became possible only with the extraordinary development of the textile industry during World War I. It was the weaving machine that produced the so-called cheap textiles for the masses. In reality, these textiles were not actually cheap for most of the population, but they certainly were mass-produced. The Taishō period witnessed the development of liberalism among the general population, a phenomenon that was later referred to as Taishō Democracy.1 Along with that movement came “fashion,” based on new designs and colors in cloth, taking advantage of imported raw cotton and synthetic dye. By being given choices to make about what clothes to wear, it was as if young women had suddenly been liberated both from poverty and from convention. As history indicates, however, the democratic movement of the masses was suppressed, fascism began to seep in, and eventually militarism took the helm of the country. In some of the chapters thus far, I have portrayed the misery of Meiji to early Shōwa-era women through their work and everyday clothing, those mostly married women who held their households together. But now I feel compelled to mention the plight of the many young women who worked in the new textile mills. Their lives were so miserable that one may wonder whether it was even worth being born for them. The fabrics they made were intended to be used until they became rags—and that 93

94

Chapter 21

pretty much describes these women’s own fate as well. Actually, these young women were mostly low- to mid-teenage girls. They were rounded up by unscrupulous recruiters and delivered in the hundreds to the mills. People knew full well the fate that would be awaiting these poor girls, yet their families had no other choice but to send them off. Around 1921, according to Jokō Aishi (A History of Female Mill Workers)2 by Wakizō Hosoi,3 more than 60 percent of textile workers had not finished their mandatory six years of education. Textile production was considered to be at the cutting edge of modern industry back then. Throughout East Asia, there were concerted efforts to develop the industry quickly so as to drive out textile imports from England, which had been the most powerful textile producer up to that time. Textiles eventually became the foundation of Japan’s export industry. It was those young girls who were creating the revenue for national expansion, yet the living and working conditions for those workers—the factories, dormitories, refectories, and so on—were horrendous beyond imagination. Nonetheless, quitting their jobs was simply not an option. Aside from the horrendous working conditions, the fundamental problem was the lack of hygiene within both the factories and the dormitories. As a result, tuberculosis spread like wildfire among the girls. Once they became unable to work, they were sent back to their villages. Those who were thus afflicted may have welcomed their chance to return, but this almost always meant inevitable death, since they would be sent home only if it was clear that they would not survive. Tuberculosis was considered to be an incurable illness in that era, so people ostracized the afflicted out of fear of contracting the disease themselves.4 In my village, too, there were cases of girls who were sent back from the factories because they had contracted TB. In fact, I remember, when I was a boy, we used to see traces of burned tatami mats on the beach. They would appear one mat at a time regardless of the season, usually some distance away from the village. As soon as someone in our group would spot such a site, we would all cover our mouths with our hands, turn our heads, and run away as fast as we could, as if leaving the site of a disaster. Once we reached what seemed like a safe zone, we would spit repeatedly onto the ground. Most of the households in our village could barely afford a new tatami mat, but people would not hesitate to burn one if someone had died while sleeping on it. The family of the deceased would take the mat out in the middle of the night, lest it should attract the attention of others. Oddly, it was always only a single tatami mat that was burned and discarded, but not the clothing or futon bedding of the diseased. Did people think that it was only the tatami mat that harbored the death-causing germs? It was more like a ritual act of the poor, who could not afford to



Female Textile Mill Workers

95

burn everything touched by the deceased. It was as if they were trying to placate the bad luck they had inadvertently invited into their household. Those girls were sent off to work in order to help their families’ financial difficulties, but alas, without even achieving that goal, they were simply crushed between the merciless gears of modernity. People were well aware of what would happen to those unlucky girls at the mill, yet in village after village, they would be sent off to work—this was considered “filial piety.” The following is a Taishō-era song sung by textile workers. I am a girl from a poor family. They sold me to the factory when I was twelve. I wish I had wings and I could fly, I’d fly away from this dreadful valley.

Who pays any attention to the ultimate sacrifices made by those girls? They were the ones who laid the foundations for today’s economic growth—although personally, I do not see this as success. Let us never forget these countless girls, born only to become rags on the rubbish heap, who have paved the way to our prosperity with their blood and tears. NOTES 1.  Taishō Democracy. During the Taishō era, mostly the 1910s to 1920s, there occurred various liberal movements in political, social, and cultural spheres, such as universal suffrage (for men above twenty-five years of age), unionization, and equality issues. First coined by a political historian, Seizaburō Shinobu (1909–1992), in his writing in 1954. 2.  Wakizō Hosoi, Jokō Aishi (Tokyo: Kaizō-sha, 1925). 3.  Wakizō Hosoi, 1897–1925. Born in Kyoto and having grown up as an orphan and laborer, Hosoi became involved in the early phase of the labor movement in Japan but took a path into journalistic writing. Together with his other publications, Kōjō (Factory) and Dorei (Slaves), Jokō Aishi led to Hosoi’s being much celebrated as an intellectual leader of the labor movement in early twentieth-century Japan. 4. Barbara Molony wrote a detailed study about the state of female textile workers and its historical significance. See Barbara Molony, “Activism among Women in the Taishō Cotton Textile Industry,” in Recreating Japanese Women, 1600– 1945, edited and with an introduction by Gail L. Bernstein (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 217–38.

22

Forbidden Tears

F

or me, the image conjured up by a military uniform is one of separation, of women bidding farewell to their men. As they saw them off to war, what was it these women desired for their men in uniform? A shining badge of valor, perhaps? More lapel pins and promotions in rank? Pride and honor for the family, thanks to the success of their campaigns and the enthusiastic reception of their victories at home? No, truth be told, it was none of that. The only thing these women desired was for their men to return safely. Only that, and nothing else, was on their minds as they watched these men march away in uniform. Alas, they were never allowed to speak of their feelings! Over the course of many, many years, almost all the clothing items I have collected—no matter how small or threadbare they might be—have presented me with their precious stories. Military uniforms were the one exception. Because both the men wearing them and the women seeing them off were required never to express their emotions, military uniforms in effect erased the wearer’s personal identity and experiences. They simply appear silent to me. Or perhaps it was this imposed silence itself that was the message they were communicating. I was a sixth-grader when the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937, sparked by the Marco Polo Bridge Incident outside of Beijing. That day happened to be the last day of our “rice-planting break” from school. In our farming community, all the schoolchildren were excused from school during the rice-planting season so that they could help out at home with the rice planting. I remember that the adults around us were talking 97

98

Chapter 22

excitedly about this incident. I remember feeling rather anxious, correctly anticipating this to be an omen of dark things to come. A few days passed. Radio broadcasts and newspapers were filled with war-related news: “No Enemy Can Stop the Imperial Japanese Army”; “Wherever They Go, They Earn Victory after Victory!” So declaimed the headlines and the radio reports. Another few days passed. At about that time, my friend’s father received a draft notice. Perhaps because this was the very first in the village, people reacted very enthusiastically. I learned of the news after finishing my day’s chore of weeding the rice paddy. I headed straight for my friend’s house, which I found full of villagers drinking and merry-making in the middle of the day, exalting the man’s “honorable departure.” But even to the eyes of a young boy, the downcast face of my friend’s mother—busy cooking food for all these guests—revealed her pain and anxiety. It was already our summer break at this point, but we were instructed to report to school anyway. It was a very hot day, as I can vividly recall. Our teacher lined us up and, together with the other villagers, we marched to the village shrine to pray for the military success of our country and for the well-being of our friend’s father. My friend had four younger siblings. His mother carried the baby on her back, and his father held the hands of the two young ones, while my friend and his sister walked behind them. The family marched at the head of the procession, and the whole village followed behind them. The shouts of “Banzai!” and the sounds of hands clapping resonated under the blazing sun, but the faces of my friend’s father and mother remained expressionless. She was in her thirties, a young woman with five little children, but tears were forbidden to a soldier’s wife. She walked looking downward in the midst of the cheering crowd. There was no room for personal expression in this public separation of the couple. At the shrine, the whole village saw him off on his way to the battlefield. My friend’s father was a peddler and owned only a very small piece of land. He must have had worries about the financial future of the family after his departure, but such concerns were of no importance in the face of “the war.” My friend’s mother was left with five young children and little prospect for earning enough to survive. This was a separation over which death loomed, yet they were prohibited to talk of the pain, cry, or express their hopes to see each other again. Doing so was considered to be “unpatriotic,” a sign of placing one’s personal emotions before his or her dedication to the country, and so the couple stood there, bowing stoically in front of the whole village. Sometime later, they received the report that my friend’s father was killed in action (KIA). The village organized an elaborate funeral ceremony inviting high-ranking local government officials and military

Photos 22.1 and 22.2.  A celebratory flag. People sent off new conscripts with banners like these. Left: “Celebrating the Departure [for the front] of Ichiro¯ Shindo¯,” signed by well-wishers. Right: “[Wishing for] the Triumphal Return of Hatsuichi Fuchigami,” signed by the Fuchigami family. It is roughly 12 ft. tall and 2.5 ft. wide in size and was attached to a bamboo pole to be hoisted.

100

Chapter 22

officers, the likes of whom we had never seen before. They all praised the “heroic” death of my friend’s father, said he had been “an exemplary soldier,” and then left as suddenly as they had arrived. The family closed up the house and left for Kumamoto, from where my friend’s mother had come—she simply could not make ends meet alone. There were hardly any people to see them off. They left as if the wind had swept them away. What did the country do to compensate a “military wife” for a soldier’s death or to provide for their “children of Yasukuni”?1 Nothing. The war only spread as time went by, and more and more men left our village to march to the front. People became used to receiving the incessant draft letters and KIA reports and stopped holding special events altogether. People had no choice but to grow indifferent about their fellow villagers’ departures, whether they were going to the war or folding up their households. War had corroded people’s psyches and numbed their minds. NOTE 1.  Yasukuni Shrine. The Shinto shrine in Tokyo housing the spirits of soldiers killed in the war. First established as Tokyo’s Shōkon-sha by imperial order of the Meiji emperor in 1869, its name was changed to Yasukuni in 1879. In 1946, it became an independent religious corporation. Today, it is surrounded by controversy; for one thing, it includes a number of World War II “Class A war criminals” convicted by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East.

23

The ThousandStitch Waistband

H

ow many readers would know what sen-nin-bari1 is? Few now remember the sen-nin-bari waistbands or the men who had to wear them, and few now recall the sorrow, grief, and bitterness of the mothers, wives, daughters, and sisters who stitched them for their men.2 Still fewer people have any firsthand experience of the horrors of war, and those who do rarely want to open old wounds by talking about it. People seem unconcerned, perhaps assuming that war can never happen again. As for those of us who have experienced the cruelty of war, certainly we do not need to raise up our voices and shout at those who have been fortunate enough to grow up in peacetime. Let us simply tell our stories quietly. There may be some younger people who will be receptive and take away a cautionary note from our tales. Soon after the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out (1937), the people in our village started receiving their draft papers. Those who were already enlisted in military service received their mobilization orders and were sent off to the front. “The Song of Sen-nin-bari” was a smash hit and could be heard constantly on the radio. I was in elementary school at the time and remember well how its melancholy melody made me feel sentimental. In due course, my second brother received his draft orders. I can still picture my mother’s dismay at the news, which made her extremely anxious. For one thing, there was very little time before he had to go, and for another, she was quite concerned about his physical ability to keep up with his military duties since he was of a slight frame. Of course, going to war always meant the possibility of death, of being “KIA” (killed in ac101

102

Chapter 23

tion). She could not openly express her fear that he might die, for since the Meiji period, women had been told to smile and cheer as they sent their husbands and sons off to the battlefield. She asked her relatives and friends to help in making the sen-nin-bari waistband on her son’s behalf. This was the only concrete course of action she could take, and, as did many other women, she devoted herself to the task as a means of ensuring her son’s safety. I am sure my father was every bit as worried as my mother, but like most Japanese men, he certainly did not express his feelings. To do so was considered unpatriotic, as we learned from the indoctrination offered by the military authorities. The idea behind sen-nin-bari is that a thousand women would each make one stitch on a waistband made up of several layers of white cotton cloth. As they stitch with a pure and earnest heart, they pray for the good luck and protection of the man for whom they are making it. Women who were born in the Year of the Tiger3 could make as many stitches as their age, in recognition of the adage that a tiger can run one thousand miles4 and still return. Though sen-nin-bari is simply a superstitious custom, one can see in it the ardent desire of family members for the safe return of their loved ones. Similarly, cutting the thread with scissors was taboo, as it was feared that cutting it with a blade might cause the wearer to be injured by a weapon. Instead, the women were supposed to bite off the tied end of the thread. Two other customs were that a five-sen coin and a tensen coin would be sewn in to the inside of the band. These ritual details are based on the magic power of puns, in that five sen goes beyond four sen (shi-sen—the point between life and death) and ten sen goes beyond nine sen (ku-sen—hard battle). For dinner on the day of my brother’s departure, my mother prepared a special meal containing ayu fish5 and nata-mame beans.6 Like the salmon, the ayu fish is born in a river, grows to maturity in the sea, and then returns to the river to spawn. In similar fashion, the nata plant, when the beans

Photo 23.1.  This waistband is made of white cotton cloth. The rectangular piece, 15 in. × 35 in., is folded in half. The thousand stitches—made with red thread and individually tied, stitch by stitch—are only on the front half, leaving a pocket in between the two layers as a place to keep important things. Sadly, however, after a long sojourn on the battlefield, a sen-nin-bari waistband would be soiled, worn out, and often infested with lice. It seems to suggest the fate of helpless young men in war.



The Thousand-Stitch Waistband

103

mature, bend down under their own weight until the top of the plant eventually reaches the ground, thus returning to its place of origin. These superstitious customs are based on primitive ideas of mimetic magic and are conceived as ways of bringing about the soldier’s return by transferring the good luck from the fish’s or the plant’s natural behaviors. As silly and ineffectual as these customs may seem, they reveal the painful anxiety of those waiting at home for the return of their husbands and sons. Toward the end of the war, however, even the waistband stitching came to be forbidden. The military authorities decreed that soldiers were no longer allowed to wear sen-nin-bari waistbands, fearing that enemy spies might be able to estimate the size of the troops from the number of people gathered to do the stitching. This was beyond absurd, making no sense at all. The shortage of cotton cloth certainly helped to terminate the practice of sen-nin-bari as well, since synthetic materials such as rayon were not suited for quilting. In 1944, when I was drafted in northern China, I remember that there were very few members in my battalion who had sen-nin-bari waistbands, and most of them were older soldiers. About a year after the end of the war, we received the official KIA notice for my third brother. A few years later, an urn bearing his name arrived home. Inside was a stone. My mother held the urn tight to her chest and sobbed through her tears that he would not have returned in such a pitiful form had she managed to give him a sen-nin-bari waistband. He had been working in a city hall in Taiwan when he was drafted and had to report for service directly from there. My mother must have been tormented with regret that she was not able to prepare properly for his departure as she did with her other sons. I often talk today about the inhumanity of war, always citing firsthand experiences such as these to illustrate its destructive effect on people’s hearts and minds. On these occasions, I observe that some people look bored, as if they have heard the same story too many times. Others will listen, but only fitfully, focusing in on certain parts to satisfy their personal curiosity. Yes, we are fortunate to be alive today, at a time when Japan is blessed with peace. This does not mean, however, that we should forget about the tragedy of war. I show people the sen-nin-bari waistbands that I have collected, and I try to convey to them the sorrow and desperation of the women and children who were left behind, but more often than not I am disappointed with people’s reactions. One young woman even laughed to see one of my specimens, observing that it could not possibly protect a wearer from a bullet. Our younger generations are becoming less and less able to empathize with those of past generations who have experienced war firsthand— whether with the frightened men at the front, or with the women they left behind, who had no other means of dealing with their worries and hopes than by making sen-nin-bari waistbands for their loved ones.

104

Chapter 23

NOTES 1.  Sen-nin-bari. Literally, a thousand-people-stitches. During the war, women went out to public places such as schools, stations, or even on the street and asked other women to pitch in, one stitch per person, to create a cummerbund for their loved ones to wear on the battlefield. 2.  The most valuable documentation on this topic is Namiko Mori, Sen-nin-bari (Tokyo: Jōhō Center Publications, 1995). 3.  The Chinese sexagesimal cycle, which is adopted in the Japanese calendar system, rotates through a smaller cycle of twelve years, each of which has a specific animal assigned. 4.  Sen-ri (a thousand ri). Ri is a measurement of distance, roughly 4 km (2.5 miles) in Japanese tradition. 5.  Ayu. Sweetfish (Plecoglossus altivelis). 6.  Nata-mame. Sword beans (Canavalia gladianata).

24

The Rising Sun Kimono That She Wore

T

here was once a time when women were not treated as humans. It was not so long ago. Girls from poor families were often sold and bought, the same as if they were commodities. What an appalling time it was! In those days, adolescent girls were sold off to brothels or textile mills to help ease the financial burden for their parents and younger siblings, although how much help their sacrifice ever provided, in the name of filial piety, is questionable. Poverty was harsh and relentless, and society was structured in such a way that those who were at the bottom would never be able to crawl out of poverty. Speaking of poverty, I met an old farmer some years ago while I was traveling in southern Kyūshū. He recalled that tenant farmers back in the early Shōwa years, 1925 through 1935 or so, were taxed by their landlords at rates of at least 40 percent of their rice harvest and sometimes as much as 70 percent. Even if they earned enough from their winter crop of wheat to pay for their fertilizer and cover their labor costs, they managed to keep only three to three and a half pyō1 of unpolished rice per tan.2 This is only hearsay, to be sure, but I have heard similar testimony about the oppressiveness of conditions in other areas. Bakurō refers to an occupation, no longer in existence, involving the buying and selling of horses. These brokers would travel around from village to village, looking for those who wanted to buy horses and those wanted to sell them. When they came across possible merchandise, they made the owner lead the horse around. The bakurō would stand there, carefully examining the legs, hooves, and gait of the horse; he also checked the teeth 105

106

Chapter 24

by inserting his fingers into the horse’s mouth, all the while gauging the horse’s power, qualities, and personality. It was the examinations by the bakurō that would unilaterally determine the price of the horse. Girls were sold in more or less the same manner. Instead of bakurō, those men who purchased girls from their parents and took them to brothel owners were called zegen. Good zegen were smooth talkers, slick and merciless, people who were capable of viewing other humans as if they were mere cows and horses—otherwise, they could not have done what they did for a living. I have in my possession some postcards that zegen had written to potential buyers and mailed from the villages they were traveling through. The cards typically contain no trace whatever of humane feeling but only cold, calculating descriptions of the girls. The words used to describe these girls fated for prostitution are no different from those used to describe farm animals, relating to such aspects as their body shape and size, posture, skin complexion, facial features, and such. Others use code words to convey their descriptions. For example, a girl being ill or not available implies that she is kept indoor to gain fairer complexion.

Photo 24.1.  “Humble greetings. I sent you a photo [of a girl] the other day. I have located another child, very promising, at Ikura-cho¯ in Tamana County. Let me hear from you right away, as soon as you receive this card. The one in Shimabara is not available for another month, however. Reply immediately, please. January 26th, Meiji 44 [1911].” Source: Horikiri Private.



The Rising Sun Kimono That She Wore

107

About ten years back, I visited a town in San-in Province. A friend from that area had alerted me to a possible source of old kimono. There were not many interesting items in the collection except for one that caught my eye right away. It was not an entire kimono but rather just a scrap piece from one and was made of cotton. The design on it, reserved in white against the sheer red background, was produced through a dyeing technique called ita-jime.3 It is a common enough technique on silk, but it was rare to see this done on cotton. That, however, was not the reason that it caught my attention. More unusual than that, actually, was the design itself, which depicted warship pennants, an anchor, and a cherry blossom repeating across the fabric. I tried to determine where the piece had come from, but the owner had no idea. My friend, who had accompanied me on this trip, told me that in a nearby naval harbor town there had once been a brothel, long since dismantled. He said that he had seen a naga-juban (women’s full-length undergarment) made of similar material among the kimono in the storage room of the brothel. He speculated that it must have belonged to a prostitute doing business with the sailors in town. Considering that this was produced when women occupied a much lower status than that of men, it seems a rather bold and daring idea to insert a navy pennant design onto a women’s garment—and a kind of negligee at that. The kimono in this photo came to me some time ago from a suburb of Sasebo, a naval base in Nagasaki Prefecture. Its design is practically identical to that on the fragment from San-in Province. There is no clear evidence to suggest that it was worn by prostitutes in the harbor town, but the theory is rather tempting. Those who joined the navy in the early Shōwa period were mostly volunteers who were not even old enough for the draft, or so I have heard. They must have come from the poorest rungs of society and joined the navy so that they could send home their meager salaries. They would have belonged to the same socioeconomic group as the girls in the brothel. What does it mean that these women chose to adorn themselves with such patriotic design, as if their bodies alone were not enough to woo the sailors? This kimono, as my imagination guides me, must have been a witness to the drama of a woman, all but abandoned by her family and society, meeting in the brothel with a man in similar circumstances. Despite its gay color and its vibrant and patriotic design, it appears only bleak and dreary. What it elicits to me is only an unbearable sense of helplessness and a mood of everlasting sadness.

108

Chapter 24

Photo 24.2.  Naga-juban kimono underwear. Cotton. A design of flowers, including chrysanthemum and cherry together with pine and bamboo motifs and three different navy flags, appears in white on a bright red background.

NOTES 1.  Pyō. A measurement of rice equal to 60 kg (133 lbs.). 2.  Tan. A measurement of cultivated land equal to 0.245 acres. 3.  Ita-jime. A method of printing patterns via pressing cloth between carved boards. It leaves the design white and dyes the background.

25

Gifts from My Mother

I

n February 1942, clothing was added to the list of rationed commodities, limiting people’s ability to buy clothes in accordance with the ration points they were assigned by the government. It was easy enough to see this coming, since various items, starting with food, had already been subjected to rationing. In fact, both merchants and consumers had gained enough experience with rationing that they were becoming adept in various tricks to circumvent its control, such as price manipulation and hoarding. For smaller retail stores, however, this was more difficult, since they certainly did not have sufficient inventory with which to manipulate the balance of supply and demand. As Japan went deeper and deeper into the war, fewer and fewer goods were produced and delivered. Somehow, the population at large had to find ways to make ends meet in this climate of ever-dwindling resources, which was now extending not only to food supplies but to clothing as well. The mainstay for synthetic cloth production in those days was the plant-based fiber sufu1 (rayon), also called jinken (literally, “artificial silk”). Thanks to today’s advanced technology, synthetic materials are no longer inferior to natural fibers, whether in terms of color selection, feel, or durability. Indeed, sometimes they even surpass natural fibers. But during the World War II era, synthetic materials were lacking in the one quality that was most required—durability. They would shrink when wet and lose their shape. I do not have the hard data to prove it, but I am certain that these synthetic fibers were far inferior to cotton, so much so that a new derogatory term came into use, jinken yarō, “rayon guy,” referring to 109

110

Chapter 25

Photo 25.1.  Clothing ration ticket. The right half reads (from right to left at the top): valid dates for use, “Clothing ticket,” and “Sho¯ko¯sho¯ [Ministry of Commerce and Manufacturing].” The middle section bears two seals of local officials, and the bottom section gives the name and the address of the family who received the ticket. The left page contains instructions for use and the actual detachable tabs in denominations of different numbers of points. Source: Horikiri Private.

a man who is a phony—not a real man, but a wimp or a sissy. This was considered the biggest insult that could be applied to a young man back then. One can readily understand the poor reputation of sufu, given its use as a derogatory term applied to people. In order to buy an item of clothing under this new ration system, one needed to have not only the money but also government-issued ration tickets for clothing. Each adult would be allotted one hundred points per year if in an urban area and eighty points per year elsewhere. These tickets constituted the official “permission” that allowed people to purchase clothing within the limit of the given number of points. Individual items of clothing would require different numbers of points: a men’s suit jacket—though these were neither available nor popular—would require fifty points; a man’s three-piece suit or student’s uniform, thirtytwo points; a women’s two-piece set, twenty-seven points; a one-piece dress, fifteen points; a man’s long-sleeved shirt, twelve points; a woman’s blouse, eight points; a skirt, twelve points; a pair of socks, two points; a handkerchief, one point; and so on.2 There was a dress code during the war as well. Women were required to wear mompe trousers,3 and everyone had to wear a head covering when they went out. Men were asked to wrap gaiters around their trouser legs. In place of a suit jacket, men also wore the so-called national uniform, light green in color, which was most likely modeled on the jacket of the army uniform. Light khaki green was the “national protection color.” The whole society was being repainted in pale shades of green.



Gifts from My Mother

111

In January 1943, I was preparing to leave home to report for my new job in China. My mother had to go the extra mile to acquire the things I would need to start my new life as an adult. She regarded this occasion as the first and only chance she would have to give me a proper send-off. Since our family did not have sufficient ration points to buy everything I would need, she went around to friends and acquaintances to borrow extra ration points on my behalf. I had my new “national uniform” stitched up by the same village tailor who had made my school uniform when I was a child. Since he had known me from my earliest years, he went out of his way to make my jacket with the greatest care, and he congratulated me heartily on my new job. I have no idea where my mother obtained the material for the cover for my quilt. It was meisen silk and bore a large flower design. It was used material, but, of course, that was hardly a problem in the difficult social and economic climate of those days. On the other hand, the bright flower design may have been appropriate for a new bride, but it was more than a little embarrassing for a young man. I told my mother that this fabric would be too good for me and that I would much rather prefer to have something plain and subdued. As it happened, my father was there and overheard me, and he became furious at me for not appreciating all the trouble to which my mother had gone. The mattress, on the other hand, was an old one that I had been using. It had an indigo blue Kurume-gasuri4 cover. To repair and renew it, my mother undid the seams of the cover, washed the pieces, restitched them together, and restuffed it after having the cotton stuffing fluffed up. The contrast between the showy top quilt and the dark ikat mattress was somewhat incongruous. Ladies in my neighborhood came over to see my bedding, and they teased me for having what seemed to be a more luxurious cover than the bridal quilts of their daughters-in-law. Some made lewd comments just to see me turn red, no doubt. My new overcoat was also a used item. My mother heard about a good-quality coat for sale through the grapevine, and she made a trip to the next town over to purchase it. It turned out to be quite a highquality item made of thick wool in a very deep blue. When I put it on, I remember feeling as if I had suddenly been transformed into an adult, as if by the garment’s magic. I learned much later that it was a kind of what was called an Inverness, somehow considered as a merchant’s coat in Japan, worn over either Western-style clothing or Japanese kimono. The neighborhood ladies came over to look at this newly purchased garment and commented to one another that it was so thick that I would have no problem keeping myself warm, even in northern China, and that the dark color would hide any stain. They chattered on, extolling the many virtues of this coat. They all commented that I was a truly lucky man to have such a perfect coat and that I should never forget my debt to my parents.

112

Chapter 25

Photo 25.2.  Inverness coat. Originating in Inverness, Scotland, it is typically shaped as a sleeveless coat with a cape attached at the shoulders. This specimen, like the author’s, has wide sleeves instead of the cape. Examples like the one in this photo can still be seen, worn by those in the sumo¯ world.

Though the coat was so well received by the ladies of our neighborhood, it was not without a problem as far as I was concerned. I was not fully happy with it because it had only a single line of buttons. I do not know why I fancied a double-breasted coat. I doubt there was any specific reason, but somehow I must have thought that would be a better-looking coat. I knew better than to complain about it—my father would roar at me, and besides, it was considered shameful for a young man to be concerned with his clothing back then. It was not worth trying to have a double-breasted coat when it would only end up bringing me public ridicule. It so happened, however, that a female classmate of mine from elementary school was back in town from Taiwan. After elementary school, she had gone off somewhere for a two-year program to become a seamstress and was now working as a teacher’s assistant in a seamstress school in



Gifts from My Mother

113

Taiwan. (I remember feeling puzzled that this girl, who had always been so quiet and timid, should somehow manage to become able to teach!) So it occurred to me that maybe this girl would be able to reform my coat somehow. It should be simple enough to add another line of buttons, shouldn’t it? I visited her and asked her the favor. She instantly declined, saying it was not possible to change the coat’s design. It was not that I was dead set against a single-breasted coat; but when I was rejected so summarily, I became all the more adamant. I had this naïve notion that our having been childhood friends would somehow make her predisposed to do me a favor. I showed my disappointment and demanded that she give me a good reason. She explained, “Simply adding another line of buttons does not make a double-breasted coat. You need to undo the collar and make a new one, add more material to the front, and other parts have to be adjusted, too.” At this point, I became utterly pigheaded. I asked her to keep the collar the way it was and just to make the two lines of buttons. She looked sad and said, “Why do you insist on such a trivial matter? A single line of buttons or a double—what difference does that make? You are getting a good job. You will soon be making enough money to buy a number of coats, if you wish. It is not proper for a man to be so obsessed with his clothing!” I instantly felt ashamed of myself for having tried to rationalize my whimsical desire. She had hit the nail right on the head. She was, of course, right about its being impossible to change the design of the coat and also that a man should not worry about his appearance. And she had a good argument about my being able to buy what I want on my own since I was becoming independent. A few days later, the same girl came over to my house. She apologized for her harsh words and then produced a flannel scarf out of her bag. She explained that she had looked all over for a better material but this was all she could find. I did not even know there was such a thing as a men’s scarf. She said that it would help me keep warm as well as look fashionable and showed me how I should tie it around my neck. Early on the morning of January 14, 1943, I arrived at Moji, a harbor town in northern Kyūshū, after taking an overnight train from my hometown. I was alone, walking toward the pier at Moji Harbor against the cold gusts coming from the Genkai Sea. I was teeming with ambitions and dreams in my heart. I embarked on the ship Kokuryū-maru, bound for Dalian, and settled into my third-class cabin. I was thinking neither about the flashy “bridal” quilt nor the single-buttoned Inverness coat. The boat left a few minutes later. I was seventeen years, five months, and twenty-nine days old on that day.

114

Chapter 25

NOTES 1.  Sufu. A contracted form of suteipuru faibaa, “staple fiber.” “Staple” refers to the set length of fiber, natural or artificial, but in Japanese use, it referred to synthetic fiber made from wood pulp. 2. A sample list of ration points for different clothing is found at Nara Kenritsu Toshokan Jōhō-kan (Nara Prefectural Library Information Center), https:// www.library.pref.nara.jp/event/booklist/W_2006_01/hitosyo060410.html, and at Sapporo-shi Heiwa Virtual Shiryō-kan (Sapporo City Virtual Peace Museum), http://www.city.sapporo.jp/ncms/shimin/heiwa/tenji/kurashi_01/index.html. 3.  See chapter 28 for more details about mompe. Also see photo 28.1. 4.  See the caption for photo 1.1 in chapter 1.

26

Akemi’s Song

T

he elementary school I attended stood at the west end of the village. It was a shabbily constructed building with cracks in the floors and the walls, and the rickety windows would never close up tight. When it was windy, sand would appear all over the desks and floors inside. During the cold season, we shivered from the chilly drafts. This was typical for most of the elementary schools in Japan in the 1920s and 1930s. My first-grade teacher—the beautiful young woman fresh from teacher training school introduced in chapter 7—used to come to work wearing a pair of dark blue hakama tied high up around her waist on top of a showy long-sleeved furisode.1 She was always kind and gentle to all of us and called us by our given names with the diminutive suffix -chan instead of using our family names as other teachers did. One day, shortly after the school year started, I got into trouble. I had not finished my homework the night before, not because I forgot or could not do it, but simply because I was too busy fooling around. The homework, a mimeographed worksheet for practicing the Japanese katakana alphabet,2 had neatly drawn squares in which we were to practice writing four new letters ten times each. I filled out the lines for the easy “no ノ” and “me メ” but completely omitted the harder “ku ク” and “ta タ.” For whatever reason, this gentle, loving teacher became enraged and upbraided me for this. Maybe she wanted to make a point about her pupil’s laziness, or perhaps it was just a bad day for her—I never knew. But because of this unexpected turn of events, I burst out crying. I was genuinely terrified. Teachers back then had so much authority. In fact, the 115

116

Chapter 26

simple phrase “I am going to tell the teacher” certainly worked like magic against any troublemakers in class. Now that she had shouted at me and chastised me in front of the class, the teacher made a solemn announcement that I was to stay alone after school and write the missing letters twice as many times as originally required. After everyone had left for home, the classroom looked unbelievably huge and empty, and I felt so alone and abandoned. My arm became heavy and unwilling to write the letters of punishment. I was feeling impatient and lonely, miserable and eager to go home. The letters I was writing started to look rough and careless. Sensing someone’s presence, I turned around, and there I saw Emika standing behind me. Emika was not from my village but was a member of the traveling theater troupe that came around every so often. She was at least a few years older than I was but was in my first-grade class nonetheless. Belonging to a traveling theater troupe, she probably had not accumulated enough days in school to keep up with her proper class. She was certainly taller and more worldly, and academically she was much more advanced as well. In my eyes, she looked so special. She had long hair hanging loose over her shoulders, and she always wore kimono with bright designs. (By then, most children were wearing Western-style clothes.) Even in the untutored eyes of a first-grader, her kimono looked very beautiful. It was not until many years later that I learned the kind of kimono Emika used to wear was made from meisen silk. Meisen was very expensive—easily ten times the price of a cotton kimono in the early Shōwa period—so it was not commonly worn as everyday attire, even by a wealthy adult, and certainly not by us, the villagers. There, in the empty schoolroom, long after class hours, Emika sat next to me, looking carefully over my homework sheet. “If you don’t write the letters neatly and clearly, teacher may ask you to do it all over again.” Then she took the sheet and patiently began erasing my ugly letters with an eraser. Dumbfounded, I stared at her as she finished writing “ku” and “ta.” When she was done, she turned to me and said, “Take this to the teacher. And don’t forget to apologize politely!” Handing me the sheet, Emika stood up and left. I was filled with a bittersweet feeling. I had no idea why she had helped me and was a little embarrassed about her kindness. While feeling so grateful, I could not help feeling a debt of some kind. I never did thank her for her kind deed. In spring at the end of my fourth-grade year, Emika graduated from my elementary school. Her theater troupe was stationed in our village then. It took her seven years to graduate, and she looked so much more sophisticated than the other girls who were graduating at the same time. After the school ceremony, I happened to run into Emika on the way home. She



Akemi’s Song

117

was wearing a meisen kimono with a pretty obi sash and a haori jacket. In the eyes of an awkward fourth-grader, Emika was too pretty to have to suffer sharing her space with anyone else. I felt that I had to speed up and walk away from her. As we proceeded on the path through green wheat fields and yellow mustard flowers, she started running to catch up. She quickly overtook me and planted her feet to block my path and stop me. She pushed her diploma into my hand, held her hands together, and then started singing, in a high soprano voice tinged with sorrow: Sad Emika, where is she going? A lovely flower at a bar, people say. Never fall in love— It makes you happy only to end in tears Like sake that makes you tipsy only for so long.

The tune as well as the resonating voice pulled at your heart, and Emika sang with so much emotion. I was moved to tears without knowing why at all. A girl from the theater is always depicted as an unfortunate heroine in stories. I could not help feeling pity for her, because she was clearly singing about herself, and the emotion she poured out was so genuine. I was somehow convinced that she, too, had tears in her eyes. This all came back to me many years later, in China in 1945, as Japan was losing its hold everywhere on the continent. I was a foot soldier of the lowest rank, being sent up and down on reconnaissance in the areas along the Great Wall. The Japanese troops had long since lost the dignity they had enjoyed as the “Imperial Army,” and belonging to the North China Expeditionary Force no longer carried any clout whatsoever. Both the soldiers and the equipment were rapidly declining in quality. Newly inducted soldiers would be sent to the front without proper training, not even knowing how to shoot! Fresh recruits were expected to function like more seasoned soldiers. Fortunately, I was in decent health at that point and was somehow able to cope with the unrealistic demands thrust on me, but the conscripts suffering from health problems faced unbearable difficulty. Even though they could not perform their expected tasks, that certainly did not mean they would be sent back. They were stuck in the war and had no choice but to carry on. In this battalion, I had befriended a soldier who was in his fourth year of service and was at the rank of private, first class.3 It was highly unusual for a fourth-year soldier not to be at a higher rank than that: those who carried out their duties without incident could generally expect to be promoted to the next higher class within two years. By the fourth year, one should be promoted to the rank of corporal or higher. Rumor had it that

118

Chapter 26

in his first year of service, this soldier had once been assigned to serve as a lookout while his superior was engaged in some highly controversial activities. As a result, he was unfairly included in the sanctions and a record was kept in his file. After having been utterly disillusioned by the military’s rigid bureaucracy, this private, first class seemed as if he were consciously resisting promotion by purposefully irritating his superiors. He became the bane of the battalion. No one wanted to talk with him, since most of the higher-ranking soldiers had enlisted after him. It was one thing to be at a higher rank, but one’s length of service also counted in an informal but very real way. Even if someone tried to discipline him, he would simply ignore such attempts. The battalion leaders never tried to reassign him elsewhere either, since he was an excellent gunner. It was said that no one could ever even approach his skill in firing a light machine gun on the battlefield. By the time I entered the battalion, there was a superstitious belief going around that the reserve corps would survive, even under a heavy attack, as long as his machine gun was roaring. Like this soldier, I had also been branded as a troublemaker, though I was eventually cleared of suspicion once it was determined to be a false charge. In any event, since my character was blemished, the battalion leadership decided to attach me to this soldier, perhaps in the hope that I might occupy his attention and keep him out of further trouble. One day while the two of us were on patrol, I heard him humming a tune that instantly transported me back to that day in fourth grade. The tune he was humming was none other than Emika’s song. I told him about this incident and asked him to tell me anything he knew about the song. According to him, it was called “Akemi’s Song.” It was written by Asao Hara4 in 1932, a famed female poet and noted beauty from the Taishō era. After this exchange, this soldier warmed up to me, and we enjoyed talking about topics totally unrelated to the war, mostly about modern Japanese literature, the naturalism movement during the late Meiji and Taishō eras, and things of that nature. “Akemi’s Song” occupies such a poignant place in my life. For some reason, it was not easy for me to learn any details about the song for a long time. I finally learned its lyrics in their entirety five decades after Emika sang the song for me and four decades after I parted with the drop-out troublemaker in my troop—the only person who could provide any kind of solace in that desolate wilderness of the battlefield. To me, the song will always be about a beautiful sad-eyed girl from a traveling theater and a defiant lone soldier in China.



Akemi’s Song

119

NOTES 1.  Furisode. See note 5 in chapter 20 for definiton. An outfit of a furisode kimono and a dark blue hakama was considered quite fashionable for female students and young professional women from the Meiji through early Shōwa periods. At college graduation today, female students often adorn themselves with this combination or simply furisode alone. 2.  Katakana. Katakana, along with hiragana, are syllabaries, or the phonetic writing systems, used to express the sounds of Japanese, while the third system, kanji, or Chinese characters, consists of logographs which express both the sound and the meaning. 3.  In the Imperial Japanese Army, there were three levels within the rank of private: private, second class (the lowest); private, first class (the middle); and private, high class. Above that was the rank of corporal. 4. Asao Hara (1888–1969). A poet and writer. She wrote an autobiography, which was made into a silent film, Kajin yo Izuko e, in 1932, in which she acted the main role. She also wrote the lyric for “Akemi no Uta” (“Akemi’s Song”), the song associated with the film.

27

Military Uniforms and Shoes

W

hat a military uniform immediately summons up in my mind is the idea of silent separation, as I wrote before. More specifically, I would argue that it is a uniform for those on death row: those troops in their uniforms, awaiting their own inescapable demise, were truly the condemned. Indeed, many a soldier perished as gyokusai1 on numerous battlefields toward the end of the Pacific War. Should they somehow receive a reduced sentence from their death penalty—by avoiding “gyokusai”—they were still imprisoned in the sense that their fate was being determined by others. By the time I entered the army, the fate of the nation was beginning to tilt precariously. Supplies were dwindling. The day I reported for duty, I was scandalized to witness a soldier wearing a Chinese farmer’s outfit and holding a gun. Someone explained to me that this was a disguise and that the soldier was assigned to “suppress” the enemy (as they termed it), but it quickly became clear to me that that was not the entire reason. My unit was stationed far away on the northern border of China, so far from the main camp that we were effectively cut off from the army supply chain. We had no properly maintained weaponry. Most of our guns were, in fact, things we had plundered from the enemy. Resources were so scarce that the most important wartime supply—weapons—had ceased to be replenished. Under such conditions, who could possibly expect that we would be provided with proper clothing? It is hard to fathom why the soldiers on the front lines were clothed in the shabbiest-quality uniforms while those who were far from the front, away from the bullets and explosions, were given the better-quality 121

Photo 27.1.  Wool army jacket.

Photo 27.2.  Leather army shoes.



Military Uniforms and Shoes

123

outfits, as I observed. To me, this demonstrates the military leadership’s total lack of concern for those on the front and the absurdity of the situation. Many times as we were marching to the battlefield, I witnessed men in my company stealing the shoes from unlucky Chinese passersby, taking them at gunpoint. Was it that their own shoes were so worn out that it made it hard to walk, or was it perhaps that they wanted to have an extra pair in case their shoes did not last through another battle? Shoes were indeed one of the most valuable items of clothing. At one point while marching in the rain on a hopelessly muddy road, the stitching of my army-supplied shoes had become so loose that mud and sand seeped in between the sides and the soles. It was as if I were walking on mud, so much so that all the skin on my sole got chafed and completely peeled off. In such a sorry state of affairs, we were fighting against the highly determined Chinese Communist army. Because of the shortage in supplies, many uniforms were either too big or too small. But our superiors ordered us to “make our bodies fit into our uniforms and shoes” when we entered the service. Such was the irrationality of the military culture all across the board. This led to undue pressure on the weakest, who in any ordinary environment would have deserved protection and support. There were some soldiers who should have been in a hospital and others who had just been discharged from the sanatorium. They were so thin and wasted that they seemed to be swimming in their dirty, loose clothing. Actually, that was more or less what our entire unit looked like. If it had not been for the war, all these individuals would have been leading meaningful lives, doing what they wanted to do, holding onto their own sense of dignity and pride. But the military authorities had no interest in such matters. Among those “weaklings” (as they called them) were men who, due to their health, physical build, or constitution, simply could not perform at the expected level, no matter how much they tried. They never should have been drafted in the first place. These “weaklings” were the target of bodily abuse by the heartless “savages,” those bullying men one finds in any army. I was lucky that my constitution was strong enough that I could endure their beating, but others around me were not so fortunate. The soldier I befriended, who had been a private for four years and did not cower before his superiors, was not brutal toward the newer lowranking recruits. I had developed some kind of friendly relationship with him over the time as we would go out on patrol together. He was, in fact, sympathetic toward me once he found out about my unfortunate experience of undergoing a military interrogation, which ended any chance for me to be promoted. Because of our camaraderie, maybe I was feeling just a bit too smug. One day I approached him and asked whether he could help stop the beating of the “weaklings” by the older soldiers. I thought

124

Chapter 27

he might hold some sway with these men, even though he was only a private. Thud! A rock-solid punch exploded on my left cheek. I looked back at him in surprise and saw an angry look of frustration in his eyes as he yelled at me: Yeah, it doesn’t make sense to try to train those half-sick recruits by beating them up. But we are on the battlefield! The reality is that everyone has to fight. One bullet shot by one of them may end up saving your life someday. Not that beating them will make them any stronger, but your naïve sympathy is just as useless. Anyway, what can I do as a lowly private? What I know is this: on the battlefield, no one can afford to have a heart. Your heart has to turn into stone or you will not survive. If you cannot do this, then quit being a soldier and desert! If you’re not cut out for that, then you will just have to die on the battlefield. We are fighting a war. Don’t hate the soldiers, hate the war. I hate the war, but I am only a fool, good at surviving each day. I can do nothing to change the evil of war.

Clearly, it was not only our clothing that had become threadbare; we had, too, as human beings. Our hearts and minds had turned numb long before we found out that we had been left alone on the desolate battlefield. Somewhere, in some remote place in northern China, we eventually learned of Japan’s defeat. (There were no radios for hundreds of miles from that place.) We felt nothing—no disappointment, no relief, not even any feeling of gratitude for our survival. We had only a vague anxiety about what would happen next. We were told that the Chinese national army had ordered us to hold out in that spot against the Chinese Red Army. We never received discharge orders, nor were we ever formally disarmed. In mid-September, those who had been recruited in China began being repatriated to their families who resided in China. Since I had no family in China, I was kept in the battalion. The cold of winter was approaching. On October 15, I was finally released as the very last soldier in my class. The quartermaster handed me, without a word, a brand new winter uniform and shoes. How feverishly had I desired those things in the horrible conditions of the battlefield! And why bother giving them to a defeated soldier who was now returning home? Was this my reward for having fought a battle in a threadbare uniform and sand-filled shoes? The new uniform felt heavy on my body, and the new shoes were so tight on my feet. I dragged myself toward the gate. Having been defeated in a war, now, for the first time, I keenly felt the meaninglessness of the whole experience. There was no formal ceremony for repatriation. I gave a military salute to the guard at the gate, a fellow I had known for some time, who silently presented arms in return with no discernable expression on his face. However strange it may seem, our battalion was not

Photo 27.3.  Ho¯ko¯-bukuro. Young men during the war were given a ho¯ko¯-bukuro in which to keep their important necessities, such as their military handbook and their name seal, to make them ready for receiving their draft orders.

Photo 27.4.  Imon-bukuro. Citizens at home were organized to send these bags with “gifts for soldiers,” small supplies and a formulaic “thank you” note. The writing on the bag says “Praying for long-lasting good luck in battle” and the name and address of the sender.



Military Uniforms and Shoes

127

officially permitted to disarm by the Chinese national army, under whose control any remaining Japanese forces then belonged. I finally reached Beijing in that military attire. A middle-aged station attendant approached me and whispered, urging me to discard at least the military hat. His rationale was that the sight of a Japanese military uniform might agitate people’s sentiments. I handed the hat to him and asked him to dispose of it. It finally sank in to me that the Japanese military had not a thread of power left. As he held the hat, he bowed to me deeply, thanking me for my long travail. “Times have changed. Now it is dangerous to walk around in a military uniform. The main roads may be a bit safer, but do be sure to avoid the back allies.” Having said these words, the kind station attendant walked away from me. NOTE 1.  Gyokusai. Honorable death. The military leadership promoted the idea of honorable death and no surrender, and many soldiers perished under the weight of this ideology.

28

What Mompe Trousers Symbolized

D

uring the six-year period between the end of the Manchurian Incident (1931) and the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937), an uneasy calm briefly presided over the land. Despite our perpetual poverty and the weight of tradition that oppressed us, our village, like so many others throughout the land, savored this ephemeral peace—although not without a sense of trepidation. One day, a young woman came to visit our village. Her father had been born in the village but took a job as a crew member on a boat that plied the international routes, and he eventually settled in Kobe. She had grown up there, in the city. This was the first time she had come to visit her relatives in her father’s ancestral village. People said she was working at the office of some trading company from overseas. Any visitor would have attracted instant attention from the villagers, let alone a young lady from the big city, and a working woman to boot. She dressed and applied makeup differently from anyone else in the village. I doubt that she had any conscious agenda. Most likely she was simply conducting herself as she always had—only, whether she knew it or not, there was a huge gap between what was natural for her and what was the norm for us villagers. Donning Western-style dress was still uncommon but not such an outrageous act even for us villagers, but one day she was seen walking down the street in a pair of pants. We villagers were scandalized. People whispered to each other how vulgar she was and pointed at her behind her back, calling her a “man-woman.” Pants were men’s clothing, not allowed for women—that was the thinking in our village, as it was in rural areas all across the country. People concluded that 129

130

Chapter 28

this young woman had been corrupted and lacked the feminine virtues. She left the village shortly thereafter and never came back. The feminine virtues included such qualities as obedience, modesty, grace, and purity, and nobody questioned these ideal requirements for the Japanese woman. A woman wearing a pair of pants in public, revealing the outline of her legs all the way up to her crotch, was felt to be quite lewd in those days. This, however, changed almost overnight.1 Soon, women came to realize that the war was changing everything, including even the taboo on pants wearing. The war forced women to move ever deeper into men’s territory: to do men’s work, to wear men’s clothes. Wearing mompe, work pants for peasant women, was the first step. Even so, this never meant that women were liberated from the shackles of the deeply entrenched male chauvinism. Even though women were being pressed into the men’s domain for work, all in the name of the war effort, they were still completely subordinate to men and were expected to uphold the traditional feminine virtues. Mompe had been in use before the war and had even existed in ancient times for farming or other working environments for women, but their use was restricted mostly to farming areas and deep snow regions. These pants were quite a bit shorter than the mompe worn during the war. The longer-legged mompe may have been developed in an attempt to “feminize” men’s clothing or peasant outfit and make it more acceptable for women in general. Over my years of collecting clothing, I have rarely come across old children’s garments. Moreover, within that category, specimens of girls’ clothing have been much harder to find than boys’ clothing. This scarcity most likely means that they became threadbare and were eventually tossed out. Mompe for girls are particularly rare, but whenever I did come across girls’ mompe, they all looked as though they had been made of material recycled from a mother’s outfit. As the war dragged on and became more desperate, fewer and fewer textiles were being manufactured, and whatever production remained was shifted more to synthetic and thus less durable fibers. Even synthetic material was becoming hard to obtain. Mothers who had been born in the late Meiji era must have brought a few cotton kimono with them when they got married, and now they had to recycle their kimono to make mompe for themselves and their daughters. What went through their minds when they were making mompe for their young daughters and hence turning them into “men-women”? There was no room for lamentation, however. Women were simply instructed to wear mompe, which, the authorities now declared, were “the symbol of womanhood supporting the soldiers on the battlefield.” They advocated the idea that now it was women’s duty not only to make up

What Mompe Trousers Symbolized

131

Photo 28.1.  A pair of worn-out mompe pants. Mompe were commonly worn by women during the war and continued to be worn in villages by working women even after the war, up through the 1950s. In recent years, its use has been revived as a fashionable garment for young women.

for the shortage of labor but also to take over men’s duties in the areas of food production and even weapons manufacturing. As the war was drawing down toward its inevitable end and cities throughout the country had been incinerated by American bombers, the military leadership announced that it was the women who would now guard the motherland. Mompe during the wartime had first been developed as a work outfit and had then evolved into a specialized piece of clothing for emergency use in fighting the fires from air raids. It was also an austerity outfit forced on women by the government under the national war policy, together with the “anti–air raid cap” that citizens were required to carry at all

132

Chapter 28

times when outdoors. Now it was being turned into a uniform for protecting the motherland in the face of the anticipated landing of the Allies, the ultimate battle gear to be worn while killing the American and British enemy soldiers with spears made of bamboo! To my mind, however, mompe had achieved the status of a national mourning outfit, imposed by the desperate national leadership in the face of certain defeat. The Japanese women who survived that challenging period emerged from the war far stronger than anyone could have imagined. In a symbolic sense, mompe was the starting point for the movement toward gender equality after World War II. We must never forget, though, the rage, the pain, and the sorrow these mompe-clad women had to bear silently in the name of the national war effort. Here is an anecdote regarding mompe I collected from a group of old ladies I met in a small mountain village in 1952. I was staying there for some time and had an opportunity to sit around an irori hearth with these ladies. One said: Back toward the end of the war, all the village women had to participate in bamboo spear training in the playground of the school. It went on and on. The trainer was a military reserve member and was extremely strict and demanding. We could not possibly ask if we could go to the bathroom during the training. Sometimes, we could not hold it any longer and just had to go in our pants.

They laughed over such memories, but I suspect it was anything but fun when it happened. Mompe is certainly a piece of clothing that has witnessed various hardships for women and is not something that would be remembered with a smile. Nonetheless, trousers eventually became a common fashion for women. NOTE 1. Early during the Pacific War, the Ministry of Health and Welfare ran a campaign to spread the use of mompe by partnering with women’s organizations, such as the Patriotic Women’s Organization (1901–1942), the Great Japan Women’s Federation (1931–1942), and the National Defense Women’s Group (1932–1942), all of which were eventually unified into the Great Japan Women’s Group (1942–1945). Toward the end of the war, the government required all women to wear mompe as protective gear.

29

A White Chima Jeogori

I

t has been nearly half a century since I first became even remotely aware of the subtlety of human emotion. I have met and then parted with countless people, the majority of whom have completely faded from my memory. I must confess that I rarely even try to dredge up memories of people from the past. Those acquaintances from my past have become “stones along the wayside,” just as I must have become for them. Yet every once in a while, the memory of some long-forgotten acquaintance might flash suddenly and vividly into your mind, the image as fresh and alive as on the day you first met this person. The recollection of these remembered friends strikes a chord so deep and so resonant within us that we hold them precious in the treasuries of our lives. In Japanese, there is a phrase for these kind of friends—ichigo ichi-e,1 “ once-in-a-lifetime encounters.” If this notion seems especially compelling today, it is simply because these kinds of interactions are becoming fewer and farther between. Our lifestyles have changed so drastically—we do not rely on one another as much, work has become so mechanical and human interaction so superficial, and the pace of living is so frantic, not allowing extra time to care for mingling with others. Given these changes, it is no wonder that we long for the deeply forged connections enjoyed with these “once-in-a-lifetime” acquaintances. One that I continue to savor today involves a Korean friend from half a century ago. In January 1943, I traveled to China as a newly independent adult, full of dreams and hopes. The company I was working for was located in Beijing. 133

134

Chapter 29

When I look back on them now, those three years I spent in China—which included also the time I was in the army—feel just as long as the next few decades of my life. I was assigned to the construction division of my firm. The people in this division were all very open-minded and carefree. My immediate boss was especially kind—so much so that he once reported my mistake as his own responsibility! I knew of other people who had been hired around the same time but in other divisions of the firm, and they were often treated much more harshly. After the completion of my month-long training period, my boss considered me to be a competent professional and gave me my first assignment, which was to oversee a construction project that my company had contracted. I was told that the building was to be a reinforced concrete structure. One would certainly need a strong background in structural engineering to calculate loads and forces and such for that sort of design work. Lazy student that I was, I had avoided that subject and never really learned the mathematics of the job. But this was hardly the time to confess this shortcoming. Instead, I buried myself in books and tried to figure out all of the necessary information. My savior was a Mr. Kimura. He worked for the subcontracting company and, as far as I could tell, was a genius at this subject. I was in awe of his wizardly abilities. He was about five years older than I was and had been trained at a technical high school in Dalian in northern China. Someone mentioned that he was originally from Korea, although we never spoke much about our personal lives. I was very clear in expressing my boundless admiration of him, and he readily returned his appreciation; at the same time, I was aware there was some kind of invisible divide between us that prevented us from becoming buddies. In the end, however, I learned immeasurably from my connection with him, not only with regard to work-related knowledge but, even more important, in the subtler matters of human conduct. Mr. Kimura once made a passing remark to me that he and his fellow Koreans were a wandering people. The particular word he employed was a borrowed Chinese phrase, 流氓 ryū-bō, “people who wander in a foreign land after their land was taken by force.” I was pained and ashamed to hear this. This was an implicit reference to the fact that Japan had invaded his country and taken advantage of his people. The use of the Chinese phrase only made his sense of sorrow and loss that much more real to me. After this particular assignment, I never had the chance to work with him again, although I did see him often in my company office, and we managed to keep up our friendly ties. In the summer of 1944, I was arrested and falsely accused at a remote construction site where I was working. My coworkers and friends ran around valiantly trying to clear me of the cruel accusation but to no avail.



A White Chima Jeogori

135

In those days, it was simply impossible for private citizens to talk reason to the military authorities. In the end, they released me, but they exercised their revenge by not allowing me to enlist at home, forcing me instead to sign on as a local recruit—thereby robbing me of the chance to see my family and to receive certain benefit. Only two days before I was to report for duty, I received a visit from Mr. Kimura. He told me he had just learned of my conscription and that he wanted to invite me to his home for a simple farewell gathering. I had been so devastated by the whole affair that I found his demonstration of good will tremendously comforting. So I went together with him to his house that night. Mrs. Kimura came out to the gate to receive us. She was dressed in a pure white chima jeogori,2 a traditional Korean outfit for women. It was so stunning that it took my breath away. She was a beautiful woman, but the beauty she displayed that night was not the beauty of a superficial appeal; it was rather the beauty of a dignified and majestic elegance. I found it deeply moving that she had received me in this regal attire. That alone made me feel special, even more so than any of the elaborate dishes and drinks she had prepared. I declined a glass of sake in fear of getting drunk and making a fool of myself, but Mr. Kimura insisted that I take the drink. “This war will not last any longer than another year,” Mr. Kimura said. “I do not know where you will be stationed, but you must be very careful. If you should die in battle, it would be such a meaningless death. You must not die!” Mr. Kimura kept repeating this exhortation as he held my hand. Mrs. Kimura’s eyes welled up with tears as she added to what her husband had said. “I have heard from my husband that you never, ever, struck any of the Chinese coolies. I am so proud to know you. It is immoral to shame others just because one happens to represent the power of a stronger nation. My husband and I will remain ever honored to have known a friend like you.” “Coolie” was the term used for manual laborers in China. Back at home in Japan, just when my employment in China had come through, my mother had sat me down and told me, as only a mother can, “Please promise me that you will never hit a Chinese man. That is not the way for an honorable man to behave—taking advantage of his power by insulting and harming others.” She asked me to make this promise repeatedly until the day of my departure. She of course had her reasons. Her own mother had passed away at a young age, and she had grown up under two stepmothers in succession. Both were strict and demanding and exercised their motherly authority against the helpless child. The lesson my mother took away from this was never to abuse one’s power over the powerless. She must have wanted to impart this wisdom to her son. Mrs. Kimura, too, who had been deprived of her homeland by the powerful, would also have appreciated my mother’s conviction.

136

Chapter 29

In October 1945, I was finally discharged and returned to Beijing. I called the company where Mr. Kimura was employed and left a message for him to meet me under the clock tower at Beijing train station. I showed up in a dark company uniform, which I had to borrow from my colleague at the company since the only other outfit I had was the army uniform. Mr. Kimura was waiting for me there, looking energized. “I am going to dedicate my life for the independence of Korea,” Mr. Kimura declared. “You too work hard in reconstructing your country!” He grasped my hand tightly as he said these words. He was ready for the postwar world. The next day, I received a huge package. It contained a luxurious wool coat with a fur collar, together with a letter inside. “Even when beaten to the ground, one should keep one’s aspirations high,” was all it said. There was no name written anywhere except for the single character for “ki,” as in Ki-mura. I had never asked his Korean name. A few days later, however, my coat was stolen while I was out. A man, who was a relative of my friend, had finally returned from Inner Mongolia, barely alive. He took my coat and sold it to someone so that his family would have food to eat. I could not blame him. I hope that Mr. Kimura, who is no longer wandering outside his motherland, has found it within him to forgive us, the oppressors, for our thoughtless acts. NOTES 1.  Ichigo ichi-e. Ichigo, one’s life, and ichi-e, one meeting/chance. The concept originates from the teachings of Sen no Rikyū, the tea master (1544–1590), in the writing by his disciple, Yamanoue Sōji, and expresses the idea of serving tea to one’s guest as if it were the only chance to do so in one’s life. Each word has its origin in Buddhist philosophy. 2.  Chima jeogori. Traditional Korean clothing. Chima is a full-length skirt, and jeogori is a top. Jeogori is worn by both men and women.

30

Sarasa Print Bed Quilt

D

on’t we all have some particular items of everyday use that bring back vivid memories? Even among today’s mass-produced consumer goods, there are things that remind us where we bought them, with whom we were shopping, how much we paid, and so on. Those memories are not always pleasant ones; sometimes they can be vexing, sad, or so unpleasant that one would rather just forget. On the whole, however, it is such strong sentiments that impel us forward and teach us to strive in the hope for a better tomorrow. Clothing is particularly good at carrying such memories, thanks to its intimate connections with our bodies and our sense of inner being. Take the example of katami-wake1— distribution of mementos. Back in the olden days, whenever someone died, we would observe the custom of katami-wake. The clothing of the deceased would be distributed among the close family members and friends. It was not merely because clothing was an expensive commodity, but more important, because the bereaved would want to keep some token with which they could hold onto the memory of the deceased. Since clothing was something that was in direct contact with the deceased person’s body, it carried a special significance. When people would pray for the soul of the deceased, they would naturally do so while holding his or her clothing in their hand. It was twenty-odd years ago that I met a certain antiques buyer at an auction. I liked him instantly for his honest, sincere demeanor. He was a farmer, but in his spare time, he would go around, visiting households of means to see whether they had any used tools or other unwanted items. Most of the items he had with him at the auction were not of interest to 137

138

Chapter 30

me. I asked him whether he would look for old, everyday clothing and field clothes for me, but he speculated that it would be very rare to find them since the owners most often incinerated such items to get rid of them. Nonetheless, at the end of our conversation, he invited me to his home. The day I visited him was in late autumn. It was getting dark, and it was cold enough that it was sleeting. I had entertained hopes of finding some interesting items, but nothing in his collection really caught my eye. I asked the man’s wife whether I might see some of her work clothing to give me a sense of the local fashions. She was rather curt and almost rude in her response, showing no willingness to accommodate my desire, to the extent that I felt rather awkward. The dealer suggested to her that she should bring out one item; perhaps he felt sorry for me for having come from so far away. She finally agreed, although she repeatedly made sure I knew it was not for sale. She went into the back room, took quite some time, and then finally reappeared to call us in. Spanning the room between the two end beams, she had fixed a bamboo laundry pole from which was hanging an amazing yogi. That yogi dominated the whole space. I was totally floored and speechless. From the back of the room, the wife kept repeating, “This is not for sale! I am not selling this!” A yogi is a kind of blanket in the shape of a kimono. (See chapter 8.) People used to sleep under this type of quilted bedcover until the beginning of the Shōwa era. It is amply filled with cotton or other material, even in the sleeve sections. What stunned me about this particular yogi was the design and color scheme of the outer material. It was made from a kind of printed cotton called wa-sarasa,2 but it was not like ordinary simple calico prints and instead featured a large, bold pattern of colorful, schematized flowers. When I said I was floored, I did not mean from the physical weight of the yogi (although that certainly would have been considerable) but by this flamboyant, extravagant visual effect. The background was asagi (light blue) and uguisu (greenish yellow) in just about even measure. The design of the print included a mixture of chrysanthemum, plum, iris, and other flowers, with scrollwork running in between. Flower petals were outlined in ebicha (deep reddish-brown), and on each petal there were ebicha stars scattered around. The combination of light blue, greenish yellow, yellow, and deep reddish brown might seem like a totally random choice, but the overall effect produced by these colors was simply dazzling. A design this bold and extravagant would ordinarily be so overpowering that if done even the slightest bit in the wrong way would end up being hopelessly vulgar. But that was not the case with this yogi. It exuded a feeling that was delightful and carefree. I fell in love with it! How could that have happened? It was only a bed quilt, and one that was forbidden to me at that! I could not help it but immediately offered



Sarasa Print Bed Quilt

139

them a huge sum of money. At this, the wife sat up straight, looked me in the eye, and started to talk. Everyone who sees this quilt begs us to sell it to him. But I am not allowed to do so. Your offer is the highest I have ever had so far, but I cannot sell it to you. If you insist despite that, then I will have to tell you the story about this yogi cover. Once you hear it, you may not want to own it. Or you may not deserve to own it. Even if I wanted to give it to you, I could not accept any money for it.

She was no longer exhibiting any trace of her initial curtness. Even her voice sounded different. I was all ears to find out what she had to say. In the village where I was born, there was a family that had only two sons, both of whom died in the war. At one point during the war, the old man had a stroke and was confined to his bed, which means they lost whatever income he had been earning. His wife took care of him by herself, but there was only so much she could do—even one who was in good health could barely get by then. You can imagine how hard it must have been for the old couple. This yogi was the bedding the woman’s grandmother had brought with her when she got married, way back in the Meiji era. The old couple must have sold everything else they had owned, since they had no other source of income. The wife spoke to my father and explained the situation that although she really did not want to part with the yogi, she had no other alternative. My family was also poor, but my father decided to buy it as my wedding gift. He paid for it partly with money and partly with rice and wheat. The old man’s family had been a large landowner for generations, but the Land Reform Act of 1947, enacted by US occupation forces, had dismantled his property and redistributed it all to his tenants. Suddenly now they had to work to earn a living. With the two sons gone off to the war, they could barely make enough to get by, and then, the stroke . . . Yet no one in the village came to help this old couple. No one could even care because everywhere, people were so numb from the horrid war. The government paid them a pittance for their land. They died in misery at about the same time. Actually, the wife died first. She was so exhausted from taking care of her invalid husband that I am sure she must have died from pure despair.

At this point, the antique dealer’s wife stopped talking. As a fellow villager, was she perhaps reflecting on her own guilt for not having helped the old couple? The story sounded all too familiar. By then it had been a few years since the end of the war, but the aftereffects of defeat were felt all over the land. Not only were food, clothes, and housing scarce, but the

140

Chapter 30

lack of sustenance drove us to such extremes that we could no longer even maintain our humanity, and this led to the breakdown of the social fabric. Famine was striking deep into people’s hearts, drying up whatever was left of compassion, love, and care for others. The country was overflowing with those who needed help—the returnees from former overseas colonies, the homeless urban evacuees from the air raids, discharged soldiers—none of them had anything with them when they returned to their villages. There was no food, there was no work, just one big wasteland. The whole country was devastated by the war. After a long silence, she resumed speaking again: The couple must have felt so betrayed by the government. It had taken away their sons, their only support and comfort, and it had stripped them of their ancestral land, the sole source of their earning. Inwardly, they must have thirsted for revenge. Just a few years later, the government started paying survivor’s benefits to the families who had lost their sons in action. But by then it was too late for this old couple. The village built simple tombs for them—both for the couple and for their sons—which by now have fallen to ruin.

Pausing for a moment, she then continued. My husband and I are planning to build proper graves for the old couple and their sons. As for this yogi, my only wish is to entrust it to a proper museum, where it can tell its story and show how unreliable and heartless humans can be. Let it tell all who come after us about the unimaginable devastation of war and how it destroys people’s hearts.

Despite the dazzling, delightful appearance of this yogi, it witnessed yet another tragedy experienced by the couple who had lost everything— family, health, their livelihood, and ultimately, hope, when everyone else abandoned them. By the time I finally took my leave, the sleet had turned to snow. Back at the inn, trying to find sleep in the thin, cold futon, I reflected on her words and meditated on the devastating effects of war, the ultimate destroyer of hearts and minds. NOTES 1.  Katami-wake. Distribution of mementos of the deceased among the family and friends. The rules and steps to be followed vary somewhat by region or religious affiliation, though today it is for most part done loosely. In the olden days, the items distributed were mostly clothing. 2.  Wa-sarasa. Cotton print or calico. Sarasa is from Portuguese saraça.

31

Hanten Story

W

hen the Pacific War ended with the defeat of Japan, millions of overseas Japanese began to make the difficult trip back to their homeland, leaving everything behind—their assets, their social status, and the friendships they had worked for decades to cultivate. All they could bring with them was what they could carry on their backs or in their hands. This is the story of one such returnee, from among the many who came home from Manchuria. She came home with just one small pack, yet what she carried in it may have been the heaviest thing imaginable in terms of the extremity of human experience. For the hanten she carried had witnessed a woman’s journey to hell and back. At the construction business I started after the war, one of the employees was a man from western Kyūshū who worked for me for more than twenty years. I very much appreciated his unassuming personality as well as his skill as a carpenter. As such, we formed a long-lasting friendship that continued even after I closed my business. I had been asking him whether he might be able to help me locate old items of clothing in the area where he was from. At one point he invited me to go with him on a visit to his village. His parents were deceased, but his eldest sister and her husband still lived in the house, having succeeded as the head of the family line. Alas, however, as we went around his village from house to house, I was unsuccessful in finding a single item of interest. If people had anything to offer at all, it turned out to be some relatively new machinewoven items, hardly worth collecting. More often than not, the old clothes from the era I was interested in had already been disposed of by then. I 141

142

Chapter 31

ended up purchasing a few pieces just to be polite to those who had gone to the trouble of bringing old things out from storage. By then it was getting dark. Although I had been careful not to get my hopes up too much, I must admit that by now I was very disappointed on account of my bad luck. My friend, his sister, and her husband all felt so bad for me. I tried to assuage them, telling them that instead of old clothing, I was fortunate to have received ample good will, and I was ready to start my one-and-a-half-hour trip back home. Suddenly, one of them mentioned a lady’s name. “She may have something of interest for you,” they suggested. “She lives right on the way out of town. Why don’t we stop there?” I had given up all hope, but nonetheless I followed them to her house to be polite. The lady was in the front yard, tending her vegetable garden. She greeted us by taking off the tenugui towel she had draped over her head to keep her hair in place. In the setting sun, her silvery hair sparkled attractively. She was very courteous and elegant, which I felt was probably the reason my friend and his sister had insisted that I come meet her. When I explained what I was looking for, she shook her head and apologized, as I had expected. “I came back from Manchuria with nothing,” she explained. “I’m afraid I won’t be of much use to you. I’m sorry you had to come from so far only to go home empty-handed. Please let me offer you some tea, at least.” Bowing deeply, she invited us into her house. She appeared to embody the pure, genuine graciousness of days past. Needless to say, we apologized profusely for showing up at her house without prior intimation, thanked her for her time and for the tea, and eventually took our leave. After parting from my friend and proceeding a short distance on my way out of town, I realized that I still had one last gift box of sweets in my bag. I thought I should give it to her for her hospitality, and so I quickly headed back to her house. She looked puzzled at first, and when I presented the box, she refused to take it, saying there was no reason why she should receive such a nicety. I insisted and left the box at the door. As I was about to leave again, she suddenly looked up at me and said, “Actually, there is something I can show you. As you can see, this is a humble abode, but if you do not mind, would you like to stay overnight?” I detected an air of determination in her refined facial features, so I decided to take her up on her invitation. She led me to the six-jō room1 at the back. It was a small room, roughly twelve feet wide, but it housed a butsu-dan, Buddhist altar,2 far more elaborate and expensive looking than one would expect in such a humble dwelling. In front of the altar were two large vases full of seasonal flowers, which cascaded out of them. She treated me to a wonderful feast of rice and miso soup, apologizing all the while for the meagerness of the meal. The soup was full of veg-



Hanten Story

143

etables, all cooked thoroughly and full of miso flavor, reminding me of the way my mother used to make miso soup every day and night. I told her this and kept asking for more. She looked genuinely pleased by my healthy appetite. After the meal, she asked me why I liked old clothing. I told her all about my background—where I was born, how I grew up— and I explained how much I appreciate the way people live earnestly, with respect and care for others. I explained my belief that old clothing contains the distilled traces of the emotions, thoughts, and experiences of those who had worn them. I said that, on occasion, I was sure these old clothes had witnessed happiness and joy, but more often than not, their experiences were those of sorrow and lamentation. I concluded by confiding in her that it was my life’s ambition to convey to people, through the voices of the actual clothes themselves, the nature of the trials and tribulations undergone by their owners in the past, however outrageous this might sound. I stopped talking. The old lady was listening quietly and intently without uttering a word. A hush of silence fell over the room. She continued to sit there without opening her mouth. We sat there without words for what felt like a very long time. Then she finally broke the silence, speaking in a low, quiet voice, but very clearly and deliberately. “Please do stay here tonight. I have a story to tell you, and something I would like to give you.” The voice felt as though it were coming from somewhere far away, emanating from some larger being, and I sat there in total stillness, listening intently. “My son and his wife, and my grandson and his wife all live together in the main house. They may come later to check on me, but otherwise, there should be no interruptions. Just make yourself comfortable and listen to an old woman’s story.” She smiled, somehow looking a bit more relaxed. At this point, the old lady reached into a storage compartment under the butsu-dan and pulled out a yanagi-gōri trunk.3 She opened the lid and took out a bundle wrapped in layers of paper. Out came a welllaundered hanten jacket. It must have been left in the trunk for a long time; its deep creases would not relax even after being flattened and spread out. The protective mothballs wrapped with it had long since evaporated, and the dried up cellophane packets that once contained them were all empty and fell to the tatami floor one after another, making a rustling sound. The jacket had light blue pinstripes against a dark navy blue background. The lining was dyed with an indigo blue. I could tell right away that it was hand-woven cotton from the Meiji era. It was not a particularly uncommon item. However, something unusual about it caught my eye immediately: it bore several cuts in its fabric, as if it had been slashed by a sharp knife. I learned that the old lady had been born in Meiji 32 (1899), in a small mountain village right around the border of Nagasaki and Saga Prefec-

144

Chapter 31

tures. There were about thirty families living there, but they were all very poor. As villagers commonly did back then, they cultivated tiny pieces of land up in the hills, and to augment their livelihood, some would come down in summer to do odd jobs in town, or they would supplement their income in winter by making charcoal. Simply by being the firstborn daughter, the woman’s fate had been sealed, since it fell to the firstborn child to bear the brunt of the household duties. There was no questioning this, and one was not able to refuse. That was simply the way things were up to the 1940s or so. Sisters and brothers followed in due course, but then, when she was ten, her mother died because she had gone back to work too soon after having another baby. Her family had no land of their own. Her father grew some crops on rented land, but the family’s main income still came from his work as a day laborer. When he would leave home to go to work, the ten-yearold girl would be left at home to take care of her four younger siblings, including a newborn and one child who was still wearing diapers. The father soon took a second wife, a divorcée from the next village. The girl knew that this would change her life forever and that it would not be for the better. In order to bring in more income for the struggling family, she was sent out to work as a live-in babysitter at a merchant’s house in town. Her yearly salary amounted to only twenty yen. She did not mind working in someone else’s house, but she was quite anxious about the welfare of her siblings. She remembered begging her father to be sure to take good care of her little sisters and brothers. The work was hard, though fortunately the lady of the house was a kind woman who treated her well. Back at home, more children were born from the stepmother. The family had less and less with which to manage. Soon the younger brother, after finishing grade school, was sent out to work as a farmhand. He came to visit her the day before he was to leave. “We have to earn money for the younger ones,” he said, trying to cheer her up. However, the family’s financial situation did not improve at all, not even with two children contributing to the income. Several years went by, and the father became sick. When a day laborer is ill, it means that there is no income. The stepmother started complaining incessantly, blaming the father and lamenting her bad luck in marrying him. She vented her anger by being mean to the children from his first wife. The family situation grew steadily worse. In due course, the daughter was promoted from babysitter to housemaid, although her salary did not become much higher. In 1918, when she was eighteen, she heard that much money could be made by working in the textile mills in Nagoya. There was a recruiter who would come around every so often, and he was trying very hard to talk her into coming to work at the mill. She was so excited about the prospect



Hanten Story

145

of being able to send home twice as much money that she was just about to follow this man. In the meantime, however, an unsavory merchant called Yorozu-ya found out about her plan. This character was from a few towns away and would come around regularly to sell his goods. He was an old, devious-looking man with a small frame and deep-set eyes. He was a smooth talker, well informed, and he was known for his shrewd business skills. He started frequenting her parents’ home for no apparent reason. Rumor had it that he was running a side business of taking girls from poor families to work in brothels. To their credit, her parents knew his reputation and had heard these allegations, so they paid no attention to what he had to say. But alas, he was too crafty and persuasive. He would tell various exaggerated tales, all dramatic and quite effective. “The textile mill is a horrible place!” he would proclaim. “Girls are locked up there with no air and ventilation. The food they provide is so meager and of terrible quality. In fact, the place is a den of tuberculosis! Once so-andso’s daughter contracted TB and got thrown out of the factory. She came home sick and then the whole family died shortly thereafter! Another girl, simple-minded country girl that she was, was deceived by a wicked man in town, got pregnant, and had a child out of wedlock. She eventually disappeared.” Then he would repeat his mantra at the end of his stories that they should all be grateful just for being alive. What he was suggesting to her parents at these visits was that he could get the daughter a job at a restaurant in a town by the Kishima coal mine.4 The work would be easier, the food better, the pay bigger, and after a set amount of time, she would be free and able to save money. He must have figured that the parents would eventually be persuaded because he kept coming every so many days. The clincher was a gift he brought for the stepmother. She was brought over to the pimp’s side, and a contract was agreed upon without the girl knowing anything at all about it. One day, she was called back home. Seeing how cheerful her stepmother was and how fidgety her father was acting, she knew she had been “sold.” She thought only about her brothers and sisters, and about her father— she didn’t mind sacrificing herself for them. She had no choice, anyway. Yorozu-ya had paid four hundred yen for the two-year contract. He boasted that it was thanks to his reputation that he was able to offer such a large sum. She knew it was going to be a horrible life, yet the reality would prove to be far worse. It would truly turn out to be a living hell. Back in those days, the miners at Kishima were not direct employees of the mining company but rather laborers contracted through the naya system.5 They were rough and rowdy men from all over the country, some of whom flaunted tattoos all over their bodies. The old lady described the unbearableness of her condition:

146

Chapter 31

Day after day, those men would come, assaulting me and crushing my body until I felt like it would crumble. How I wished I had chosen to die working in a textile mill instead! I lived in regret and despair every single day. The man who ran the brothel was a real reptile. Of course, he had to be—how else could he have been a brothel owner? Even so, he was unusually cruel. He would spitefully declare, “Prostitutes are the lowest of the low, not even human.” Shortly after I started there, one of the older workers went mad and committed suicide by hanging herself. She had been suffering from a terrible disease that the women of this trade would contract. After the police report was filed, the owner dragged her body to the back door, pulling it by the rope around her neck, and threw it out unceremoniously. She lay there in the dirt of the back alley with only a small piece of old straw matting over her face. Her legs were covered with mud and her body was exposed. It was indeed a chilling sight! Certainly this was not the way the dead should be treated. Even a criminal would be regarded as a Buddha once he had died! Eventually, some relatives came to take the body. The brothel owner never spoke to them, but all the while he kept haranguing at us about what a nuisance and financial loss she had caused by killing herself. We were treated far worse than cats and dogs. The system of servitude worked in such a way that your indebtedness would never be reduced. It seemed as if dying was the only way you could get out of this hell. There was nothing else left for me. Every night, I would curl up, waiting for the dawn that never came. I had no desire to go on living; my mind was an empty blank. In the fall of my second year there, I started to be visited by an evil man who was a guard at one of the dormitories for the naya laborers. These guards were no better than gangsters, and they were charged with the job of catching escapees, punishing undisciplined slackers, and exercising control in general. I hated this man with all my heart. Just hearing his voice would give me the shudders. The brothel owner often relied on this man to help keep things under control in the brothel and for that reason was trying to stay on good terms with him. Right around that time, the Great Spanish Flu Pandemic6 struck. This devastating disease quickly spread throughout the world, claiming a total of twenty-odd million deaths. In Japan, it was reported that roughly 1,420,000 souls fell to the disease, out of which 60,000 died in 1919 alone. In our brothel, we lost some of the women to this disease. Of course, we were never treated or given medicine. We knew that contracting this flu would be a very serious matter. However, despite all the precautions we took, I ended up becoming ill anyway: I had a fever, I could not eat, and I felt deathly ill. Cursing the whole time, the brothel owner put me under quarantine in a room called the andon-beya,7 as was customarily done in order to keep the sick away from those who were still healthy. Most customers would not even consider hiring an infected prostitute, but one night, that thug of a guard came in to see me. He insisted that he had to have me. He raided the andon-beya to find me, kicked away my pillow,



Hanten Story

147

peeled off my cover, and jumped on me. I screamed for help, but nobody would dare enrage either the thug or the brothel owner by stopping him. I pleaded with him. “What’s so fun about having sex with a sick prostitute? If you wait till I am better, I will be able to do more for you. So please spare me tonight—please have mercy! My body and my mind are just not working right tonight.” I begged him in tears, but still he would not heed my plea. Just then, a young man named Kichizō, a casual patron who was visiting another woman, must have heard my voice and came rushing into the andon-beya. Quickly comprehending what was going on, he challenged the thug. “Are you even a man, to be torturing a sick woman like that? Shame on you!” This young man then pulled the thug away from me and threw him against the wall. The thug was taken by surprise, but once he got reoriented, he pulled out a knife and lunged toward the young man. Hearing the commotion, the other people in the brothel came rushing into the room and eventually managed to separate the two. But that was only the beginning. The thug had lost face by losing like that in a fight with an ordinary guy. Soon his underlings gathered in the room and started harassing the young man. Naturally, the brothel owner sided with the gang members. The situation quickly deteriorated for the young man. Soon, the manager of the naya, who had so much political power in town, was called in to decide on a resolution. He got the gang members to agree to back off and leave if someone would sever the young man’s right arm from his shoulder. Since this was the naya manager’s idea, the thug could not refuse; however, the young man surprised all of us: he declared that he was going to buy me out of bondage! He said, in front of everyone, that he had wanted to marry me all along and that he was going to pay up for me. He said that he had planned to do so for a long time. He asserted, “What crime is there in a husband’s trying to save his wife when she is in danger?” I would imagine that anywhere and at any time it would be a huge taboo for any man to marry a woman from a brothel, possibly with the exception of yakuza8 gangsters. Prostitutes were not considered to be human beings but only “playthings” for men’s entertainment. The naya manager must have been impressed by this young man’s reckless courage! He declared that in consideration of the young man’s earnestness and young age, he would let this incident go and that no one would threaten the young man any longer. What a deal, dropped in his lap by a chance meeting! Other people were amused as well, saying that an arm would have been cheaper than paying to buy me out of bondage. As for me, I begged the young man to forget about me. People would not allow a prostitute to become a respectable wife. It would affect not only the man but also his family and relatives. The more I pleaded, the firmer Kichizō became in his resolve. “I will make enough money to pay off your debt. You have nothing to worry about. Even if the whole world goes against it, I will make you my wife.” When his family and relatives got wind of his marriage plans, all hell broke loose. They threatened to cut him off from the family and never again receive him into the house. His mother begged him in tears, crying, “I did not give birth to you so you could marry a prostitute!” No matter what,

148

Chapter 31

however, he would not change his mind. Somehow, he managed to borrow enough money to pay off my debt and bring me out of bondage. He kept telling me that he was not doing it out of sympathy but rather because he had fallen in love with me. He reassured me and said that there was nothing I should worry about.

The old lady uttered a heavy sigh, remembering the hard times and suffering. “We prostitutes were treated like animals, or outcasts from human society. There was not a single woman among us who had wanted to become a prostitute. We were all forced.” Wiping her teary eyes, the old lady looked at me and continued as if possessed: This is the very hanten jacket Kichizō was wearing when he saved me from the thug. The cuts in its fabric are the slashes made by the knife during the thug’s attack. This jacket was my will to live. Many things happened after we got married, but as long as I had this hanten, I felt safe and calm and always managed to keep going.

Then she pulled out a few sheets of paper from the bundle and placed them before me. I could see that there was some notation written in big, hurried letters on the thin mino-gami9 paper. This is the cancelled contract document. It shows how women were bought and sold, just like animals. When my husband paid off my remaining debt, the brothel owner gave these papers to him. My husband told me to burn everything from the brothel, but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to do it, and so I have saved these papers ever since.

She handed me the sheets of paper, which themselves appeared to share in the anguish and misery of the woman who had been sold. The first sheet was the letter of agreement signed by her father. It stipulated that the family would not cause any trouble during the period of indenture and that if this condition should ever be violated, the family would compensate the brothel owner for any losses thus incurred. The second sheet was a printed document listing all the rules with regard to things like renting clothes and bedding and maintaining bodily hygiene, especially so as to prevent venereal disease. It bore her signature. The third sheet was the pimp’s acknowledgment of receipt of payment by the brothel owner. “Do you see how this hanten gave me my will to live? You can understand why I held onto these documents?” She spoke rapidly, as if pressing me for an answer. These documents may have been instruments that helped solve the family’s money problems. At least her family had been relieved, however temporarily: her younger siblings may have benefited somewhat; their stepmother may have felt a bit warmer toward them on account of the



Hanten Story

149

sacrifice their elder sister had made. The price for these modest gains? The personal hell endured by a young, innocent girl being crushed and tormented by circumstance. No matter how much she fought back, there was no way out. Those three sheets of paper might just as well have been steel shackles chaining her to a life of servitude. My host went on: My savior fought like an Asura10 against those who opposed the marriage. I have to say, though, that it was not all opposition. His elder sister spoke up on our behalf, saying, “Kichizō must have a reason for this. We should respect his feelings.” She was the only one who was at all sympathetic. It must have taken real courage on her part to support us in the face of such heavy opposition. Every member of the clan started pointing fingers at her as well, saying that she was just as tainted as Kichizō for being in cahoots with a prostitute. Despite all the pressure and accusations, she stood firm along with Kichizō. She was my savior, my Buddha. If it were not for her, I would have . . .

She paused for a moment and then continued: We got married. We could not stay there near his family, but we needed to earn money to pay back the debts. So we decided to immigrate to Manchuria. He was a good miner, so he would certainly be able to find a job there.

Back then, the Fushun coal mine11 was said to be the biggest coal field in Asia. Japan was expanding its power in Manchuria and Inner Mongolia. The demand for coal was at a historic high, and there was a severe shortage of labor at the mines there. In year 10 of the Taishō era (1921), our first son was born. Two years later, a second son, and then a daughter in 1926. I was in bliss. I never dreamed I would experience such happiness as when I became a mother. I even worried that this may only have been a trial to see whether I deserved an ordinary life. It was like being in heaven, having finally crawled out of the hell of brothel life. It was my husband and my sister-in-law who gave me this happy life. In my mind, I would bow in reverence to both of them, over and over every day. Just once, I made a passing reference to my previous existence. My husband reacted with anger and hit me hard repeatedly, as if I were telling some preposterous lie. As I crumpled down under his blows, I was in tears, but they were tears of joy and happiness at realizing the success with which he had erased my past in his own mind. I was overjoyed that he had done this and to realize that he wanted me to do the same. Since that day, I have never once said anything more about those days, nor did I ever even think about them until I began telling you this story now. When our first son was in third grade, in the fall of Shōwa 5 (1930), my husband contracted a serious cold and died. All along he had been very healthy

150

Chapter 31

and had never suffered from any illness. It was so sudden and unexpected. I felt as though I had been thrown into the abyss and was now surrounded by total darkness. My mind was a blank—I could not think about my children, about the funeral, about anything, and all I could do was cry my heart out for three full days, writhing around all over the floor. Afterwards, the neighbors told me they were amazed to realize just how much liquid a human must retain in her body in order to be able to keep crying for such a long time. Someone took care of the family, the house, the funeral. I sat through it all, absolutely lifeless. The neighbors also told me that they took turns keeping an eye on me so that I wouldn’t follow him in despair, taking the lives of the children as well. They were not totally wrong to worry like this, because the thought did cross my mind more than once. I did nothing but cry for the first forty-nine days,12 but it eventually became apparent that I had to do something to support my children. I came to believe that raising his children to their full potential would be the only way I could possibly ever repay him. All I was good at was ordinary house chores. Someone found me a job at the company cafeteria, where my duty was to wash the dishes. There were two shifts open, so I requested them both. I had to work long hours every day, but I never thought it was difficult. In fact, it was so easy compared to the work I had once performed in the distant past. My children never complained about my not being able to spend much time with them; they never got into trouble, and they were all very supportive. I am sure they must have understood the difficulty of my situation. Then came 1931 and the Manchurian Incident.13 Soon after, there were more and more Japanese immigrating to Manchuria, and the labor force at the Fushun mine grew rapidly. The cafeteria was owned not by the mining company but by an outside contractor, and business was booming. The owner was quite happy with the way I worked and he also knew the difficulty of my situation, and so he offered me the chance to manage the place on my own. This was unbelievable good fortune for me—instead of being a hired worker, I was now able to hire my own workers! My income rose accordingly. My father and stepmother were long gone by then. My only surviving family member back in Japan was my sister-in-law, who was now a widow with young children and barely able to make ends meet on her own. I wrote to her regularly about life and about the details of my job. I told her how much I would love to have her come and live with me. She could not take me up on my invitation, however, since she had to take care not only of her young children but of her aging mother-in-law as well. I sent her a set amount of money every month. Now that my husband was gone, my sisterin-law was the only person left in the world who had helped me escape my hell. The money I sent would not even count for one-thousandth of what she did for me. Each time, she wrote back a thank-you letter, detailing how grateful she was and how generous I was. Yet it was nothing at all compared to what she had done for me. I would have happily dedicated my entire fortune to her, the one and only person who had supported her brother when he married a prostitute and who had protected that prostitute by standing in front to deflect all the attacks and taunting.



Hanten Story

151

The business of running the employee cafeteria grew steadily, and by the fourth year, I had opened another one. My oldest son joined the Manchurian Railroad after finishing his middle school. My second son entered Manchurian Electric after graduating from an engineering high school. They were both excellent at school! When my daughter entered girls’ middle school, I was reduced to tears to think that the daughter of a prostitute was now a schoolgirl! I had barely gone to grade school myself. For me, middle school was something magnificent, like a palace up in the clouds! The day before she started, I laid her head face-down on my lap to shave the soft downy hair on the nape of her neck.14 The soft hair shone golden in the sunlight pouring in from the window. It was so beautiful and pure, almost divine! I was beside myself crying, missing my husband who had made it possible for me to have such a beautiful girl! On the first day of school, she stood at the door dressed in her sailor-style student uniform made of wool twill, wearing black leather shoes on her feet, her braided pigtails dangling over her shoulders. I could not believe this was my own daughter. I was so happy. It was spring of 1938.

She went on to explain that before long, her elder son was drafted. The second son, who was a little more delicate and smaller framed, was not drafted immediately but was placed in a stand-by category for the draft. She was hoping that he would be spared, but fate dictated otherwise. He was called up at the very end of the war, sent to Siberia, and, as she later learned, died on the battlefield there. “If I had only had a chance to show him this land here,” she lamented wistfully. “This is his father’s birthplace.” Her words were full of remorse. She continued: In the early summer of 1948, I returned to Japan. It had been twenty-seven years since my husband took me to Manchuria. This time, my daughter accompanied me. The other returnees on the boat had whatever they could carry with them on their back or in their arms. My luggage was small. All I had with me was my husband’s ashes, the hanten, and the three sheets of paper. All along the long way home, I did not let anyone else carry my luggage, not even my daughter. A happy surprise was waiting for us back in Japan: my older son, whom I had long ago given up as dead, had returned in one piece from the southern front and was waiting for us. My sister-in-law took care of us. Her daughter was a kind-hearted girl, just like her mother. After consulting with my sisterin-law and with the young man and the young woman, all happily decided that the two should be married.15 My sister-in-law never told anyone about my past, not even her own children. What she did, and what my husband did, in accepting me was something she should have been so proud of; yet she was such a thoughtful person and so dedicated to protecting me that she never revealed my secret to anyone. The hanten was my life. I draped it over my husband’s coffin during the funeral. Then I kept wearing it myself all though the mourning period. People

152

Chapter 31

asked what that was for, but I never explained; I wanted to keep this a secret just between my husband and me. My sister-in-law passed away eight years ago. Once she became bedridden, I asked every one of her children to let me take care of her. She told them herself that she wanted me to be there in her last moments. I was so honored. I put the bedding right next to hers and slept beside her. Before she took a turn for the worse, I had a chance to show her the hanten and the documents. She looked up at me and said “Kichizō would be so happy to know that you took such care to keep these things all along. I have to thank you, too.” She stayed with me about a year and then departed from this world. You can imagine how devastated I was—I must have cried just as much for her as I did for my husband.

After pausing for a while, she turned to me and said: Earlier this evening, you started to leave, but then you came back. There must be a reason for this. When you said what you did about old clothes carrying the sorrows and desperation of their owners, I knew that you were the one to whom I must entrust this hanten. That is why I asked you to stay. If you have some sense of what my husband, my sister-in-law, and I have been through, you must relieve me by taking the hanten and the documents.

At this point, the old lady bowed deeply toward me. The sky was beginning to get lighter. I had completely lost all sense of time, listening to her story all night long. When I realized the gravity of her entreaty, I hesitated: it felt totally inappropriate for someone so unseasoned as I to bear the responsibility of protecting such profoundly charged items. I kept telling her I was not worthy. These items were perhaps the choicest examples of what I had been looking for—vehicles bearing the sorrows and the hopes, the desperation and the joy, the suffering and the compassion of those who owned and wore them. No doubt I would feel tremendously honored and grateful if they were to come into my possession. Yet I did not believe that I deserved such an honor, and I was not sure I could endure the horrendousness of her life experiences. In the face of such extremity, I became numb and speechless. I should mention that in recounting her story above, it was I who referred to her father’s second wife as her stepmother. She never used the word “stepmother” in her own narration, and in fact, she never expressed any resentment or blame toward her father, stepmother, or in-laws. This alone reveals how high-minded this old lady was. I was awed by her magnanimity. She resumed speaking: I am offering you the hanten and the papers because I think you can appreciate their true value. You can do whatever you want with them. I want you to know that I would not give them away to just anyone. Neither could I get rid of them myself. Please take pity on me and try to imagine what I am feeling. Please take them.



Hanten Story

153

She continued bowing to me, renewing her plea. By this point, I could not resist any longer, and so I nodded in acceptance. In the end, I no longer had any sense of hesitation—this was just the right thing to do. The old lady folded the hanten carefully, put the papers back in the packet, and bowed to me again in thanks. One last time, she embraced the packet, crying quietly for the first time since she had started her story the night before. “How heavy it has been, how terribly heavy it has been . . .” I let her cry for a long time. I left her house in the light of morning. But before I departed, she fed me with leftover rice and miso soup from the night before, with a few more vegetables added. I can still remember the wonderful aroma and flavor of that soup! I accepted the hanten and the papers, fully aware of the responsibility that was being entrusted to me, and it seemed that I was now carrying a substantial weight on my shoulders. A couple of months later, almost at the beginning of summer, I had an opportunity to go visit the old lady. We had set up this visit when I left her house that day. But when I approached her house, it appeared to be empty and quiet. I stood for a while in the yard, thinking about what I would say to her when she would return. After a while, a young woman came by, looking at me suspiciously. Once I told her who I was, a look of recognition played across her face. With a warm smile, she greeted me. “My grandmother passed away last month. She told me about you. She kept saying that she had met someone really nice. Before she died, she made me promise to tell you that she was really happy to have met you.” There was freshness in the early summer air, but I felt empty inside. Without even paying my respects at the Buddhist altar in the main house, I turned around and left. I simply could not bring myself to see her name inscribed on a tablet on the altar. Convincing myself that the altar for her was in my mind, I headed back. In 1987, I published a book titled Ranru-tachi no Henreki (The Journeys of Scrap Clothes). This publication is a reference tool for different kinds of textiles and gives detailed accounts of each of the four hundred samples of old cloth. I tried my best to be accurate and informative in my analyses, while placing the emphasis on the oral history component. When I was working on this project, I hesitated to include the material from the old lady’s hanten. Eventually, the day came for me to pick the four-hundredth piece. Facing the hanten, I could not help hearing the desperate cry of a soul that had been violated and exploited through no fault of its own. I was afraid it might be sacrilegious toward the old lady to detail the history of this piece. For a long time, I vacillated in my mind. The weight of the hanten and the papers was indeed too much to endure. I begged for

154

Chapter 31

advice from a friend, to whom I had told the whole story previously. This is what he said: I believe that the soul can be resurrected when one is able to see a ray of light in the midst of inhumanity. The old lady was perhaps the luckiest person after all. Not too many people are so fortunate to be supported by someone as full of love and care as her husband and her sister-in-law. She had certainly found the ray of light! Among the readers of your book, there will certainly be some who would be deeply moved to read her story. You should by all means include this item—that would be the best tribute you can make to the memory of the deceased.

NOTES 1. Six-jō room. Room with six tatami mats. See notes 1 and 3 in chapter 15 for more information. 2.  Butsu-dan. A Buddhist altar, a place in the home to house the tablet bearing the Buddhist name of the deceased family members and other mementoes of them, as well as offerings to their spirit. It can be as small as a wooden box or as large as an entire room. The word originally referred to the main sanctuary of a Buddhist temple. 3.  Yanagi-gōri. Box-shaped wicker basket with a matching lid, typically woven with willow reed. Used to keep clothing in for storage. 4.  Kishima coal mine. Located near Ōmachi-chō, Saga Prefecture. Mined since the late nineteenth century to its closing in 1969, with its heyday around 1925–1950. 5.  Naya system. A system of bonded labor through which workers were recruited, paid a lump sum in advance, and kept until their advance had been paid up through their labor. 6.  The Influenza Pandemic of 1918–1919. The first-ever incident of a worldwide pandemic and the most devastating in recorded world history, which according to one estimate left between twenty and forty million dead. (The numbers vary widely.) Since it was first officially recognized in Spain, it is commonly referred to as Spanish flu. 7.  Andon-beya. Andon is an oil lamp. Andon-beya is a small room for storing extra bedding and furniture, typically in inns, brothels, and such. It is often located under a stairway or in an interior space away from other rooms. 8.  Yakuza. Members of Japanese crime syndicates which operate illegal activities, from prostitution, extortion, and gambling to buying political influences. Known for its rigid hierarchical structure and the strict code of brotherhood and loyalty. 9.  Mino-gami. A kind of Japanese rice paper produced in Gifu Prefecture. Has been in production since the early eighth century. 10. Asura: a deity of wrath in Buddhist tradition, derived from the Hindu pantheon.



Hanten Story

155

11. Fushun, situated in northeastern China, was under Japanese control between the Treaty of Portsmouth (1905) and 1945. As it was a highly industrialized area, coal mining had been in operation for centuries. 12.  It is a Buddhist belief that the soul of the deceased will part from this world on the forty-ninth day after his/her death. 13.  In 1931, the Japanese military invaded Manchuria, which led to the establishment of the puppet state of Manchukuo under the control of the Japanese imperial government. 14.  This was customarily done as part of grooming for young women. 15.  Marriage between cousins was not an unusual practice in the past in Japan, partially to keep the asset within the clan and also because the families knew each other well.

Afterword

T

he afterword by the author is primarily from the 1990 first edition from Shin Nippon Shuppan-sha. The last segment, however, is a condensed version from the afterword from the 2004 edition from Shinkagaku Shuppan-sha.

How many years have passed since I first become attracted to old kimono and cloth scraps? It feels like many, many years, yet it also feels like only yesterday. It was not exactly the actual kimono and old cloth specimens that first interested me. Rather, it was the incidents and human circumstances these items must have witnessed that attracted me and pulled me into what has now become a long journey. My desire to uncover these stories has not at all lessened but has only increased as I have come further along in the journey. A vivid memory from my childhood is relevant here. One day, I happened to discover a hand mirror in the box my mother had used to store family valuables. For some inexplicable reason, I was overcome by a desire to own it. I begged my mother for it. It was not the kind of mirror we have today, but rather an antique made of bronze with a polished surface on one side to reflect your image. It had some cloudy parts here and there but was still perfectly functional if you didn’t mind the spots. There were other things in the box that were perhaps even more valuable, such as my father’s medals of honor from the Russo-Japanese War, in which he had served, but I had no interest in these other things. Upon hearing my mother’s report, my father instantly declared that a hand mirror was not the kind of thing a boy should desire. Nonetheless, 157

158

Afterword

he proceeded to ask me why I wanted it. I had to think about this, but eventually I said something along the line that I wanted to commune with the old mirror so that I could find out about the people and the events it must have witnessed. It was not clear exactly how old this mirror was or how long it had been in the possession of our family, but it must have been produced during the Edo period. Back then, both men and women tied up their hair in more elaborate ways than what is normal today. What were their thoughts as they faced this mirror while combing or arranging their hair? There must have been times when they saw big smiles, hopes, and happiness. But there may also have been times when the mirror revealed the face of a demon or ogre filled with hate and rage. Sometimes, the desperation of the holder may have seeped into the mirror and left its residue all over. Whatever they were, I felt that the mirror might hold the many sedimented layers of the sentiments of the beholders. Those were the things I told to my father. I truly felt that I could converse with the mirror and discover the stories of my ancestors. “How odd this son of mine is! He thinks a mirror has a heart!” My father appeared rather perplexed at my reasoning, but in the end he concluded that it was still not appropriate for me to have the mirror, stating that it was something that had been entrusted to the family for the generations. Since our family religion was Shinto and a mirror was considered a sacred item, he might have felt particularly awkward about my request. Such were the most distant beginnings of my quest. I gave up on the mirror and became obsessed with old clothing, but still with the same fundamental conviction. The futon mattress my mother had made helped me realize that the hearts and minds of those who possessed or had produced these old items of clothing do talk to you, if only you let them. But my business years intervened. I had to earn a living as well as take care of my employees and their families. While I was busy fulfilling these responsibilities, my conversations with old kimono and clothes had to wait. Then, some twenty years ago, I went to visit my parents in my hometown and happened to see my mother trying to dispose of my father’s okiboda. He had stopped his fishing business a long time before. Besides, one would no longer need an okiboda to do fishing even in wintertime. It was rather surprising that she had held onto it for so long, even when there was no longer any need for it. “That okiboda does not bring happy memories, but thanks to it, we managed to survive. We could afford your schooling because the okiboda made it possible for your father to continue fishing. You may call it the lifeblood of our family!” said my mother. She was right. Since our household engaged in farming and fishing both, the

Afterword 159

okiboda served as my father’s work outfit from late fall to spring of each year. For sure, that extra income, earned during the months when one could not work in the fields, was a significant help to us. I decided to bring my father’s okiboda home. My mother did not question me about it, nor did I tell her, but I believe we shared the same sentiment toward that okiboda. In my hands, the okiboda felt heavy, reflecting the long and hard years of my parents’ lives. My long dormant desire to collect old clothes was sparked again by this reunion. When I looked around, it became clear that old garments were falling out of use and being discarded at an increasing speed. Whenever I came across those old garments, I would try my best to collect the stories of their wearers. The owners did not always want to talk about these garments of theirs. The clothes were certainly old, worn out, stained, and heavily mended—really, nothing to boast about. As I have written in these pages, it was their sense of shame at having been so poor that made these folks reluctant to speak. It was no use telling them that it was the social structure that forced poverty upon them and not their own lack of skills or effort. The challenge in dealing with oral history, however, is not so much in gathering it as in authenticating it and determining its credibility. There are always those who are a little too creative in their storytelling or those who get intoxicated from being the hero of their own tragic drama. At the same time, there are occasions when the truth shines forth in even a few words casually uttered. If their clothing shows the evidence of such truth—which was rarely the case—then I felt that I had succeeded in authenticating the story at hand. But regardless of whether or not I could authenticate every story, it became very important for me to try to find out about the lives of the underprivileged and to learn about the values and principles that guided their lives. And for this, the old clothes were invaluable. In part, I became motivated simply because of the lack of sources for such information. Most books on the history of the common people— shomin-shi—are rather superficial. They do address certain historical facts and provide evidence to support them; however, they often seem to focus too much on the “main streets” and rarely go down the “side roads” and “back alleys.” Those are exactly the pockets of lives I wanted to excavate. Fortunately, though, there were a few gems—books that fell into that category of exploring the back alleys—and these became my guides as I collected and researched specimens. Apart from these few guides, I had little to go on, and I had little choice but to develop my own idiosyncratic methods for conducting research. In essence, my goal was to become a medium between old clothes and people in the present because the “heart” these old garments manifest is exactly what is needed today. That was what I was attempting to achieve in writing this book.

160

Afterword

Oh, the wonders of those old, tattered clothes! Even when they had become so threadbare that they were ready to be thrown out, they were still treated with extraordinary respect—being meticulously mended, washed, and folded. This repair work was hardly necessary, yet the patches used to mend them were so carefully chosen and placed, despite the fact that these garments would be worn only in the fields, where there would be no one else to see them. Clearly, the people who wore these clothes had an outlook on life that we rarely see today—sound, industrious, and ultimately, full of hope. And that is another thing that I wished to demonstrate through the stories collected here. This volume is a collection of essays I have previously published in various newspapers and magazines, together with a few more newly added here. I am aware that there may be some passages that seem repetitious, since the stories were originally designed to stand on their own. I hope that instead of viewing these repetitions as blemishes, the reader will understand them as expressions of the key messages I wanted to emphasize. Similarly, I trust that the reader will understand the lack of proper names for places and people not as vagueness but as a necessary means of protecting the privacy of my informants. Japan has gone through breathtaking transformation even during the past ten years. It seems things are in turmoil in every aspect of the society: politics, economy (its recovery), education, national security, international affairs, social welfare, and health-care policies (especially for the aging). Back when the book was first published, there was no inclination to address the possibility of constitutional reform. Now some argue that it is imperative to change the peace constitution! In the meanwhile, there occur horrific crimes almost daily, so many that it seems people are numb toward such incidents. When I traveled to give my lectures around the country, often I was asked about Nuno no Inochi. I had to apologize for its unavailability for it was out of print. However, upon the publication of my newest book, Nuno no Kioku (Memories of the Clothes) from Shinkagaku Shuppan-sha, the inquiries about the previous publication started pouring in. Those who have lived through the years before Japan’s “economic miracle” all seem to reminisce about their childhood, which was much more restricted in resources, freedom, and opportunities than today’s society can offer. I believe this is because my fellow citizens wish to preserve and pass on to the next generations “the spiritual richness” that I wanted to depict in these pages of this book.

Acknowledgments

TATSUICHI HORIKIRI For the original publication of many of the essays in this book, I owe much to Ms. Junko Shibata of Akahata newspaper. I would also like to thank Mr. Hiromoto Toyama of Senshoku to Seikatu-sha publishing house and Mr. Kouji Matsuo of Nishi Nippon newspaper for their support and encouragement. If it were not for the initiative of Shin Nippon Shuppan-sha, my writings would never have seen the light of day. For this I am deeply indebted. Lastly, for the 2004 edition of the book, I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Ms. Miru Takeda and her staff at Shinkagaku Shuppan-sha. I suspect she took this bold move without expecting any revenue. RIEKO WAGONER As I worked on the translation, time and time again I was deeply moved by Mr. Horikiri’s compassion for his subjects and his bold criticism of social injustice. I cannot express how lucky I feel to have encountered him and his works. It was Miwako Ono who introduced me to his work. I am grateful for her judgment and support. For the professional support offered by Ms. Akiko Ueno at Kitakyūshū Museum of Natural History and Human History, I cannot adequately express my gratitude. She is truly a superwoman and has shaped this book in a most meaningful way. Ms. Susan McEachern at Rowman & Littlefield saw potential in 161

162

Acknowledgments

my manuscript, for which I am truly grateful. Susan, Dr. Mark Selden, Ms. Janice Braunstein, and the production staff at Rowman & Littlefield have guided me patiently and skillfully through the process. And lastly, my genuine appreciation goes to Phil Wagoner, who supported the whole venture from the outset and rendered inexhaustible help whenever needed. I am forever indebted.

Glossary of Clothing Terms

Fudan-gi 普段着. Everyday clothes that one wears around the house, as opposed to yosoiki or hare-gi, clothing worn for formal outings or ceremonial occasions. Furisode 振袖. A formal kimono typically worn by young, unmarried women for special occasions. It has full, flowing sleeves (30 in. to 40 in.) extending down beneath the outstretched arm, on which elaborate decorative designs are made matching the designs on the body of the kimono itself. Futon 布団. In English usage, “futon” refers to a bed mattress that one sleeps on. However, in current Japanese usage, it refers either to a mattress, shiki-buton, or a cover, kake-buton, both of which are filled with batting. Hakama 袴. A skirt-like garment, deeply pleated in the middle, to be worn over kimono and fastened around the waist with ties. Umanorihamaka is divided in the middle with a low crotch, while andon-hakama is shaped like a skirt without separate legs. Worn by both men and women, mostly for formal occasions but also for certain martial arts. Hanten 半纏. A traditional jacket for men and women for either indoor or outdoor use. Some are padded for winter use. There are many variations in length, shape of the sleeves, and fabric used. It originates from a type of work outfit used in the Edo era but later became the common, 163

164

Glossary of Clothing Terms

all-purpose top. Typically not tied with an obi sash but worn loosely. See photos 5.1 and 5.2. Haori 羽織. A half-length coat for men and women to be worn over kimono, for extra warmth and/or formality. Two ties are attached in the front to be knotted if necessary. See photo 7.1. Haramaki 腹巻き. (1) A cummerbund made of cotton cloth which wraps around the waist several times for the purpose of protecting the abdominal area and supporting the small of the back of the wearer. (2) A knitted waistband commonly worn to keep the midriff from getting cold. Inbanesu (Inverness) インバネスコート. A Japanese adaptation of the Scottish Inverness coat associated with the character Sherlock Holmes. Originally sleeveless with an attached cape, another Japanese variant dispensed with the cape and added roomy sleeves to accommodate kimono sleeves underneath. See photo 25.2. Jinken 人絹. Artifical silk, or rayon. Also called sufu, it is a synthetic material made by chemically processing natural cellulose from wood pulp and other plant fibers. Jōfu 上布. Linen fabric woven from fine thread. It is considered a highquality fabric and is popular for summer kimono because of its light and airy quality. Kasuri (or -gasuri) 絣. A type of fabric woven with pre-dyed threads to produce ikat patterns. Mostly cotton but also sometimes made from linen or silk. The technique originated in India and reached Japan through Southeast Asia and became commonly produced by the late Edo period. See photo 1.1. Katatsuki-gasuri 型付絣. A type of fabric machine-produced from the late Taishō to early Shōwa period, which mimicked kasuri weave by printing the ikat design. In addition to the traditional ikat patterns, it also featured more interesting, creative designs. Certainly more affordable than real kasuri, it was considered a “poor person’s kasuri.” Eventually, it fell out of use because of its poor quality. One particularly popular brand, Nikoniko-gasuri, specialized in children’s kimono material with designs ranging from flowers and vehicles to warplanes. See photos 19.1 and 19.2.



Glossary of Clothing Terms

165

Kaya 蚊帳. A mosquito net. Made of finely woven linen or other fibers, a Japanese-style mosquito net is constructed with four sides and a top to fit into the entire cavity of the room. There is a string at each of the four top corners, which is tied to a hook attached to the corner of the room. See photo 9.1. Koshimaki 腰巻. A wraparound undergarment for women, worn beneath the kimono. Rectangular in form (approx. 33 in. × 55 in.), it is provided with ties at the top corners for fastening around the waist. Peasant or village women often wore a koshimaki alone without a kimono over it. See photo 2.1. Mabubeko まぶべこ. A work outfit for female coal miners. It takes the form of a wraparound skirt, only very short, with three panels, two to overlap in the front and one longer one for the back. See photo 13.1. Meisen 銘仙. Dense silk fabric of plain weave. First produced in the Edo era, primarily with stripes and plaid patterns. Later, in the Taishō and earlier Shōwa eras, it achieved popularity among young women for its bold and modern designs. See photo 11.1. Michika or mijika みちか／みじか. A type of hanten that is short. The word comes from the adjective mijikai (short). See photo 17.2. Momohiki 股引. Pants worn by both men and women when doing physical labor, primarily farming. The legs are tight for the whole length, but the waist is loose and closed with a tie. See photo 17.1. Mompe もんぺ. A type of pants originally worn by peasant women but later encouraged, and then required, for all women during World War II. The legs are loosely constructed, as is the waist, which is closed with a drawstring. See photo 28.1. Naga-juban 長襦袢. Juban, purportedly derived from Arabic jubbah via Portuguese, refers to a type of undergarment to go under a kimono. The original form was the han-juban (“half-juban,” covering the top only), but naga-juban (long-juban, full length) became common by the late Edo period. Could be made from various types of fabric. It is said that the pleasure ladies of Edo wore naga-juban as loungewear at work, and therefore, women’s naga-juban can be quite colorful and eye-catching. Men’s naga-juban can be surprisingly elaborate, too. See photo 24.2.

166

Glossary of Clothing Terms

Nora-gi 野良着. Farmer’s work outfit. As opposed to the one-piece kimono worn by the higher classes, work clothing consisted of two pieces: a top and a bottom. Men typically wore a loincloth or momohiki pants and a hanten jacket; women wore a koshimaki skirt, a hanten, a maekake (a small apron), and a tenugui towel for the head. The most common form of footwear was straw sandals. See photo 5.1. Okiboda 沖ぼだ. A fisherman’s coat, made of cotton material. Typically layered and/or quilted to keep fishermen warm from the wind and waves. The etymology is not clear apart from the word oki, “open sea.” Depending on the region, it could also be called yanza or donza. See photos 6.1 and 6.2. Omutsu おむつ. Diapers. Made of quilted layers of rectangular cotton cloth, typically recycled from old clothing. The wealthy, however, used sarashi momen (bleached cotton) instead. Rinzu 綸子. Silk satin. Using only untwisted thread, rinzu is woven with the overshot technique, in which the weft passes over two or more warp threads to create various weave patterns. Color designs are produced by dying the fabric after it is woven. It is very soft and glossy and is the preferred fabric for bridal kimono, furisode, and other kinds of formal wear for auspicious occasions. Sarashi momen 晒し木綿. Bleached cotton cloth. Because of its purity and freedom from blemishes, it bears ritual connotations. Sashiko 刺し子. Quilt stitching done to reinforce the durability of the cloth. Typically created with white thread against dark cloth to produce a geometric design. It is often strikingly beautiful, whether or not it is intended to be. Antique sashiko stitching from northern Japan is particularly famous for the variety of its geometric designs. See photos 4.1 and 6.1. Shina-fu 品布／科布. Fabric made from the bark of the shina tree (Tilia japonica). The fiber is so coarse that the fabric was used mainly for items such as bags and nets. Shitaobi 下帯. Loincloth worn by men as underwear. Typically made from a simple rectangular piece of white cotton, 6 ft. to 10 ft. long and 6 in. to 12 in. wide, it is tied around the body in a variety of different styles. It covers and supports the genitals but typically exposes the buttocks, somewhat like a sumō wrestler’s loincloth.



Glossary of Clothing Terms

167

Sufu スフ. Same as jinken, rayon. Tabi 足袋. Highly durable cotton socks. The big toe is separated from the rest of the toes. Open in the back from ankle to heel so that the foot can be inserted, it is fastened with small hooks and loops. Tattsuke-hakama たっつけ袴. A kind of hakama in which the pants legs below the knees are tightly fitted while the upper part is roomy. Originally a traveling outfit, it was used by dancers, farmers, and (most famously) ninjas. See Hakama and photo 3.1. Tenugui 手拭い. A thin, rectangular piece of cotton cloth, roughly 14 in. × 32 in. Used for washing and drying one’s body, for kitchen use, or as a neckerchief or a head scarf while working. Nowadays, local businesses often produce tenugui printed with their names to distribute to their customers. Tomesode 留め袖. Formal kimono with designs confined to the part below the waist and with three or five family crest designs at the back and on the sleeves. Worn by married women on ceremonial occasions. Tsukesage 付け下げ. A semiformal kimono. Its decorative designs are asymmetrical and confined to the front of the left shoulder and the lower hem. Wa-sarasa 和更紗. Sarasa (derived from the Portuguese saraça) refers to a cotton calico, block-printed or hand-painted with polychrome designs. Originating in India, it was introduced to Japan by the seventeenth century as well as to Europe and became very popular. Various regions in Japan produced their signature designs (Nagasaki sarasa, Sakai sarasa, Edo sarasa, and so on). It declined in popularity after machine printing became mainstream in the Taishō period. Yogi 夜着. A kimono-shaped bed quilt. It is stuffed with batting—cotton, linen, scraps, straw, or other fibers. The kimono shape is a legacy from the fact that people used to sleep on a mat (or futon) with an actual kimono draped over themselves, in some cases, the ones they wore during the day. See photo 8.2. Yukata 浴衣. A full-length, unlined, informal summer kimono for men, women, and children, made of cotton. Although worn casually, for daytime home use, or as nightwear, it can nonetheless sport fancy decorative designs.

Selected Bibliography

RESEARCH (Works consulted in author’s research. All are in Japanese.) Akamatsu, Keisuke. Onna no Rekishi to Minzoku. Edited by Chizuko Ueno. Tokyo: Akashi Shoten, 1993. Asaoka, Kōji. Furugi. Tokyo: Hōsei University Press, 2003. Bird, Isabella. Nihon Okuchi Kikō. Translated by Kenkichi Takanashi. Tokyo: Heibon-sha, 1973. Fukui, Sadako. Momen Kuden. Tokyo: Hōsei University Press, 1984. ———. Zusetsu Nihon no Kasuri Bunka-shi. Kyoto: Kyoto Shoin, 1973. Higashi, Toshio. Josei no Shigoto to Seikatu no Nōson-shi: Sōsho Kikigatari Nōson-shi. Tokyo: Ochanomizu Shobō, 1989. Hosoi, Wakizo. Jokō Aishi. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1980. Idegawa, Yasuko. Hi o Unda Haha-tachi: Onna-Kōfu kara no Kikagaki. Fukuoka, Japan: Ashi Shobō, 1984. Inoue, Kouzaburō. Hataori-uta no Onna-tachi. Tokyo: Tokyo Shoseki, 1980. Inumaru, Giichi. Shokkō Jijō: Iwanami Bunko AoN100-1. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1998. Kida, Junichirō. Tōkyō no Kasō-shakai: Chikuma Gakugei Bunko. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 2000. Kikuchi, Isao. Kikin: Ue to Shoku no Nihon-shi. Tokyo: Shūei-sha, 2000. Kitagawa, Morisada. Kinsei Fūzoku-shi. Edited by Hideki Usami. 3 vols. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1996–1999. Miyamoto, Tsuneichi. Emakimono ni Miru Nihon Shomin Seikatsu-shi. Tokyo: Chūō Kōron-sha, 1981. Mori, Namiko. Sen-nin-bari. Tokyo: Jōhō Center Publications, 1995. 169

170

Selected Bibliography

Mori, Senzō, and Suzuki Mozō. Nihon Shomin Seikatu Shiryō Shūsei. Tokyo: Sanichi Shobō, 1971. Nakajima, Yōichirō. Kikin Nihon-shi. Tokyo: Yūzankaku, 1981. Segawa, Kiyoko. Hanjo: Josei to Shōgyō. Tokyo: Mirai-sha, 1971. ———. Mura no Onna-tachi. Tokyo: Mirai-sha, 1970. Takahashi, Kuichi. Hie to Awa no Aishi: Kyōdo no Kenkyū 12. Tokyo: Suiyō-sha, 1983. ———. Mura no Seikatu-shi. Tokyo: Nōsangyoson Bunka Kyōkai, 1978. Yamamoto, Sakubei. Gashū Tankō ni Ikiru: Chi no Soko no Jinsei Kiroku. Tokyo: Kodan-sha, 2011. Yokoyama, Gen’nosuke. Nihon no Kasō Shakai: Iwanami Bunko Ao 109-1. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1985. Yoneda, Sayoko. Kindai Nihon Josei-shi. Tokyo: Shin Nippon Shuppan-sha, 1972. Yoshimura, Takeo. Watazukuri Minzoku-shi. Tokyo: Seiabō, 1982.

SUPPLEMENTAL BIBLIOGRAPHY (Works related to topics discussed in this book. An asterisk indicates that the work is in Japanese.)

A. Modern Japanese History—General and World War II Dower, John. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. New York: Norton, 1999. Duus, Peter, ed. The Twentieth Century. Vol. 6 of The Cambridge History of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Gordon, Andrew. A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Hardacre, Helen. Shinto and the State, 1868–1988. Studies in Church and State. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991. Pyle, Kenneth. The Making of Modern Japan. 2nd ed. Boston: Cengage Learning, 1995.

B. Reflecting on World War II Buruma, Ian. The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1994. Cook, Haruko Taya, and Theodore F. Cook. Japan at War: An Oral History. Repr. ed. New York: New Press, 1993. Dower, John. Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor/Hiroshima/9-11/Iraq. New York: Norton, 2010. ———. Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering: Japan in the Modern World. New York: New Press, 2012. Field, Norma. In the Realm of a Dying Emperor: Japan at Century’s End. New York: Vintage, 1993.



Selected Bibliography

171

Hidaka, Rokurō. The Price of Affluence: Dilemmas of Contemporary Japan. Translated by Gavan McCormack et al. New York: Kodansha International, 1984. Orr, James. The Victim as Hero: Ideologies of Peace and National Identity in Postwar Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001.

C. Labor History (Coal Mining, Textile, and Others) Burton, W Donald. Coal-Mining Women in Japan: Heavy Burdens. Asia’s Transformations. New York: Routledge, 2014. Faison, Elyssa. Managing Women: Disciplining Labor in Modern Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Hane, Mikiso. Peasants, Rebels, Women, and Outcastes: The Underside of Modern Japan. 2nd ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. *Hosoi, Wakizo. Jokō Aishi: Iwanami Bunko 135-1. Repr. ed. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1980. Hunter, Janet. “Gender, Economics and Industrialization: Approaches to the Economic History of Japanese Women, 1868–1945.” In Japanese Women: Emerging from Subservience, 1868–1945, ed. Hiroko Tomida and Gordon Daniels. Vol. 1 of Women in Japanese History. Kent, UK: Global Oriental, 2005. ———. Women and the Labour Market in Japan’s Industrialising Economy: The Textile Industry before the Pacific War. London: Routledge Curzon, 2003. Nimura, Kazuo, and Andrew Gordon. The Ashio Riot of 1907: A Social History of Mining in Japan. Comparative and International Working-Class History. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997. Smitka, Michael. The Textile Industry and the Rise of the Japanese Economy. New York: Barland, 1998. Tsurumi, Patricia. Factory Girls: Women in the Thread Mills of Meiji, Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.

D. Rural Life in Japan Miyamoto, Tuneichi, and Jeffrey Irish. The Forgotten Japanese: Encounters with Rural Life and Folklore. Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press, 2010. Ritchie, Malcolm. Village Japan: Everyday Life in a Rural Japanese Community. Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle, 1999. Saga, Junichi. Memories of Silk and Straw: A Self-Portrait of Small-Town Japan. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1987.

E. Textile Studies Dalby, Liza Crihfield. Kimono. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993. Hali. “Japanese Boro Textile Exhibition at Somerset House, London.” March 20, 2014. http://www.hali.com/news/japanese-boro-exhibition-at-somerset-house. *Horikiri, Tatsuichi, ed. Ranru: Catalogue of Used Clothes from Horikiri Tatsuichi Collection. Kitakyūshū: Kitakyūshū-shi Shizen-shi Rekishi Hakubutukan, 2014.

172

Selected Bibliography

*Inui, Yoshiko. Zusetsu Kimonogara ni miru Sensō. Tokyo: Inpakuto Shuppan-kai, 2007. *Segawa, Kiyoko. Kimono. Tokyo: Mirai-sha, 1972. Shepherd Roberts, Luke, and Sadako Takeda. Japanese Fishermen’s Coats from Awaji Island. Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 2001. *Shimanekenritu Kodai Izumo Rekishi Hakubutukan, ed. Yomigaeru Maboroshi no Senshoku. Matsue, Japan: Hābesuto Shuppan, 2008. *Tanaka, Yūko. “Boro.” Shōsetsu Tripper, Spring 2002, 136–40. *———. “Nuno wa jinsei no sei ga shimikonda jinrui no kioku dearu.” Review of Nuno no Kioku, by Tatsuichi Horikiri. MEME no. 4 (2003): 30–31. Tomita, Jun, and Noriko Tomita. Japanese Ikat Weaving: The Techniques of Kasuri. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982. Tuzuki, Kyouiti. Boro—Rags and Tatters from the Far North of Japan. Tokyo: Aspect, 2009. Yamanaka, Norio. The Book of Kimono. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1982. Yoshida, Shi-ichiro, and Dai Williams. Riches from Rags: Saki-ori & Other RecyclingTraditions in Japanese Rural Clothing. San Francisco: Craft and Folk Art Museum, 1994. *Yoshioka, Sachio. Nihon no Iro Jiten. Kyoto: Shiko-sha, 2000.

F. Other Topics Proletarian Literature in Japan Iwamoto, Yoshio. “Aspects of the Proletarian Literary Movement in Japan.” In Japan in Crisis: Essays on Taisho Democracy, edited by Bernard Silberman and H. D. Harootunian, 156–82. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974.

Infanticide *Chiba, Tokuji, and Tadao Otsu. Mabiki to Mizuko: Kosodate no Fōkuroa (Ningen Sensho 67). Tokyo: Nosongyoson bunka kyokai, 1983. Drixler, Fabian. Mabiki: Infanticide and Population Growth in Eastern Japan, 1660–1950. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013. Lafleur, William. Liquid Life: Abortion and Buddhism in Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992.

Women’s Issues/Gender Study Bernstein, Gail Lee, ed. Recreating Japanese Women, 1600–1945. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. *Ishizuki, Shizue. Kindai Nihon Josei-shi Kogi. Tokyo: Sekai shisō-sha, 2007. Sievers, Sharon. Flowers in Salt: The Beginnings of Feminist Consciousness in Modern Japan. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1983. *Sōgō, Josei-shi Kenkyū-kai, ed. Shiryō ni miru Nihon Josei no Ayumi. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2000. *Wakita, Haruko. Nihon Josei-shi. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1987.

Index

actors, traveling, 84–85, 115–19 affluence, contemporary, 7, 17, 36–37, 103 ampela, 37f andon-beya, 146, 154n7 Aomori Prefecture, 33, 35 apprenticeship, 12, 43–45 araihari-ya (kimono cleaner), 31, 32n5 asa, 35 Asura, 149, 154n10 authenticity, xviii, 159 ayu, 102, 104n5 bags: grain sack, 33–35, 34f; military, 125f–126f bakurō, 105 batting, 3, 35, 37f beauty, 21, 23, 57–58, 135 beggars, 69–71 Bird, Isabella Lucy, 76, 77n8 Bon festival, 45, 45n1 boro, term, xviii, 7 butsu-dan, 142, 154n2 chabako, 91, 92n2 chan, 29, 32n4, 62, 115 Chichibu, 48, 50n3

Chikuhō coalfield, 53–54, 59n3 child abuse, 9–13 Child Abuse Prevention Act, 12, 13n4 children: carrying, 22; chores, 15, 39–40, 97; clothing, 130; dance costume, 9–13, 11f; diapers, 15–19, 18f; firstborn, duties of, 61, 144; infanticide, 73, 76n1, 79–81; labor, 10, 48, 61, 70, 94–95; siblings and, 41; treatment of, 29, 32n4 chima jeogori, 133–36, 136n2 China, 41, 117, 121–23, 133–36 chirimen, 91, 92n6 Chu kun ai kōku, 29, 32n3 clothing, xvii–xix; collecting, rationale for, 5–6; folding, 7–8, 8n1, 23; and heart, 1–4, 143, 152, 157–60; and life, xix; and memory, 137; rationing, 109–14, 110f; and status, 21, 23–24 coal miners, 53–59, 56f, 61–63, 65–68, 149; resources on, 53–54 coats, 25–28, 26f–27f; Inverness, 109–14, 112f. See also hanten; haori; okiboda common people: collecting clothing of, 5–6; and grace, 73–77; Horikiri and, 173

174

Index

xvi; lack of historiography of, 1–2, 159; treatment of, 135–36 cultural history, xix dance costume, 9–13, 11f debt, 48, 67, 79, 85, 90–91, 146, 148 departure of soldiers, 97–104 diapers, 15–19, 18f, 66 disease: influenza, 146, 154n6; tuberculosis, 71, 94, 145 donbyakushō, 74, 77n7 donza. See okiboda dress code, 74, 129; war and, 110 durability, 10, 19n1, 21, 109 echigo-jishi, 9–13, 11f; definition of, 12n1 education, 29, 61, 69–71, 94, 115–17, 151 elderly, treatment of, 17–19 family, 140, 144; and business, 90; discipline, 55–56; fathers and, 33–37, 40, 111, 157–59; and mosquito net, 39–42; mothersin-law, 17–18; mourning for miscarried child, 79–81; and prostitutes, 147–48 famine, 33, 37n2, 140 farm jackets, 21–24, 22f, 24f fashion, 93 fathers, 33–37, 40, 111, 157–59 fishing coats, 25–28, 26f–27f flags, for departing soldiers, 99f folding clothes, 7–8, 8n1, 23 forty-nine days of mourning, 150, 155n12 fudan-gi, 5; definition of, 163 Fukuoka Prefecture, 6 furisode, 91, 92n5, 115, 119n1; definition of, 163 Fushun, 149–50, 155n11 futon, xvii, 1–4, 3f, 111; definition of, 163 gaiters, 110 gambling, 54, 67–68

gottan, 69, 71n4 goze, 69, 71n2 grace, common people and, 57–58, 74, 89, 130, 135 grain sack, 33–35, 34f Great Depression, 6, 51–52 Great Tenmei famine, 33, 37n2 gyokusai, 121, 127n1 hakama, 9–10, 11f, 30, 91, 115, 119n1; definition of, 163 hako-shamisen, 71n4 hanten, 21–24, 22f, 24f, 25, 54, 77n9, 80, 141–55; definition of, 163 haori, 23, 30, 31f, 117; definition of, 164 Hara, Asao, 118, 119n4 haramaki, 56–58; definition of, 164 hare-gi, 91 Hayama, Yoshiki, xx head coverings: anti-air raid cap, 131– 32; required, 110; tenegui, 58, 142 heart: clothing and, 1–4, 29, 107, 143, 152, 157–60; term, xvii; war and, 100, 103, 124, 140 heko, 56–57 hemp, 35 Hiroshima, xxi Hokuriku, 17, 27f Horikiri, Tatsuichi: background of, xv– xvi, xx; false accusations against, 118, 134–35; father of, 40, 102, 111, 157–59; mother of, 3, 30–31, 40, 85, 101–3, 111, 135, 157–59; on war, xii, 2–4, 41–42, 97–98, 101–3, 117–18, 121–27 horses, 51–52, 105–6 Hosoi, Wakizō, 94, 95n3 housing, for laborers, 66, 94 ichigo ichi-e, 133, 136n1 ichiren takushō, 61 Idegawa, Yasuko, 53–54, 56, 66–67 ikat, 85 infanticide, 73, 76n1, 79–80; contemporary, 81 influenza, 146, 154n6

Index 175 inochi, term, xix Inverness, 109–14, 112f; definition of, 164 irori, 39, 42n2 ita-jime, 107, 108n3 Iwate Prefecture, 73 jackets, 21–24, 22f, 24f; michika, 75f; military, 122f. See also hanten Japan, xiiif; attitude to war in, xx–xxi, 2–4, 127; postwar changes in, 71, 101, 103, 160 jinken, 109; definition of, 164 jinken yarō, 109–10 jinta, 84–85 ji-uta, 9, 12n2 jō, 65, 68n1, 68n3, 142, 154n1 Jōetsu, 9 jōfu, 35; definition of, 164 juban, 107, 108f; definition of, 165 kadozuke, 10 Kagoshima Prefecture, 16 kagura, 13n3 kanji, 39, 42n1 kasuri, 1–4, 3f, 57, 70, 111; definition of, 164 katakana, 115, 119n2 katami-wake, 137, 140n1 katatsuke-gasuri, 83–87, 86f–87f; definition of, 164 kaya, 39–42, 40f; definition of, 164 kimono, 30, 116–17, 119n1; folding, 8, 8n1; katatsuke-gasuri, 86f–87f; linen, 35; meisen, 49f; for okiboda, 27; for prostitutes, 105–8, 108f; of wealthy, 91–92 Kishima Coal Mine, 145, 154n4 Kitakyūshū Museum of Natural History and Human History, xv knot tying, 57, 59n4 kokoro: term, xvii. See also heart Koreans, 61–63, 133–36 koshimaki, 5–8, 6f, 35, 54, 56, 80–81; definition of, 164 kuchiberashi, 73 Kumamoto Prefecture, 100

Kurume-gasuri, 3, 3f, 4n1, 86, 111 Kyūshū, xivf, xv, 47, 53, 105 Land Reform Act of 1947, 23, 139 laundry, 25–26, 28n1, 31, 32n5 life: clothing and, xix. See also heart linen, 35, 39 mabiki, 73, 76n1, 79–80 mabubeko, 56, 56f; definition of, 165 mada-fu. See shinafu makisode, 22f, 23 Manchuria, 149–51 Manchurian Incident, 129, 150, 155n13 Marco Polo Bridge Incident, 97 marriage, 47, 84; of cousins, 151, 155n15; to prostitute, 147–48 material culture, xvii meisen, 47–50, 49f, 111, 116–17; definition of, 165 memory, 103; clothing and, 137; Horikiri and, 2–4; questioning, 5; tribute to, 154 michika, 75f, 76n4; definition of, 165 military uniforms, 97, 121–27, 122f mino-gami, 148, 154n9 mirrors, 157–58 miscarriage, 79–81 modesty, 74 momohiki, 73, 75f; definition of, 165 mompe trousers, 110, 129–32, 131f; definition of, 165 morality, 7, 10 mosquito nets, 39–42, 40f mourning, 150–52; for miscarried child, 79–81; mompe trousers and, 132 mushiro, 48 music: Akemi’s song, 115–19; beggar singers, 69–70; children’s songs, 15–16; ji-uta, 9, 12n2; mill-worker song, 95; on shinafu, 35; for soldiers, 101; for traveling theater, 84 muslin, 29, 31f, 31n1 naga-juban, 107, 108f; definition of, 165 Nagasaki Prefecture, 54, 107

176

Index

nakedness, 54, 58, 73–77 natamame, 102–3, 104n5 national uniform, 110 naya system, 145, 147, 154n5 Niigata Prefecture, 9, 12n1, 35 nikoniko-gasuri. See katatsuke-gasuri nora-gi, 16, 21–24, 22f, 24f; definition of, 165 nursing mothers, 15–16, 54–55 obi, 91, 117 O-Bon, 45, 45n1 oguso, 37f okiboda, 25–28, 26f–27f, 158–59; definition of, 165 Ōmuta, xix, 6 omutsu, 15–19, 18f; definition of, 165 oral history: authenticating, xviii, 159; challenges of, 5–6; interviewing technique for, xvii–xviii patched clothing, 5–8, 6f, 23, 25, 26f, 75f patriarchs, 33–37 petticoat, 5–8, 6f poverty, 5–6, 21, 47, 51–52, 105; and beggars, 69–71; and child labor, 9–12; and clothing options, 47; and diapers, 15–19; and fathers, 33–37; and infanticide, 73, 76n1, 79–80; and military supplies, 121; and okiboda, 27–28; and patched clothing, 6; and propriety, 73–77; and selling girls into prostitution, 47, 95, 105–8, 106f, 144–49; and sleeping arrangements, 43–45; and wealth, 65–68; and working women, 61–62 prostitutes, 76, 105–8, 144–49; selling girls for, 47, 85, 105–8, 106f, 144–49; treatment of, 146–48 quilts, 33–37, 36f, 111, 137–40 rags, term, 7 Ranrutachi no Henreki (Horikiri), xvi, 153–54 rationing, 109–14, 110f

rich people, 23–24, 65–68, 70–71, 89–92, 139 rinzu, 91, 92n7; definition of, 165–66 Russo-Japanese War, 29, 80 Sado region, 35 Saga Prefecture, 143 San-in Province, 107 sarasa, 137–40, 140n2; definition of, 166 sarashi momen, 57, 66; definition of, 166 Sasebo, 107 sashiko, 17, 18f, 23, 26, 27f; definition of, 19n1, 166; for diapers, 17 sato-kagura, 10, 13n3 school, 29, 61, 69–71, 84, 94, 97, 115–17, 151 seedbag, 33–35, 34f sen, 83, 87n1 sen-nin-bari, 101–4, 102f, 104n1 sewing, 48, 83, 102, 112–13 shamisen, 69, 71n3 Shimagi, Kensaku, xx shina-fu, 33, 35; definition of, 166 shishimai, 10 shitaobi, 25; definition of, 166 shōchū, 69, 71n1 shoes, military, 121–27, 122f Shōkon shrine, 29, 32n2 shomin-shi. See common people Shōnai District, 23 silk, 23, 47, 91, 107, 111, 116 Sino-Japanese War, Second, 29, 97, 101, 129 sleeping arrangements: bed of wood shavings, 43–45; futon, xvii, 1–4.3f, 111; mosquito nets, 39–42, 40f; yogi, 33–37, 36f, 137–40 sleeves, 23, 25 social etiquette, 73–77 soldiers: send-off for, 97–104; uniforms of, 97, 121–27, 122f Spanish flu, 146, 154n6 staple, 114n1 status, 50n1; and clothing, 21, 23–24; and clothing options, 47–50; in postwar era, 71; of prostitutes, 146–47 sufu, 109, 114n1; definition of, 166

Index 177 tabi, 66; definition of, 166 tagosaku, 74, 77n7 Taishō Democracy, 93, 95n1 Takahashi, Kuichi, 73–74, 76n2–3, 76n6 Tanaka, Shōzo, xx Tanaka, Yūko, xviii–xix tanjū (tankō jūtaku), 66, 68n2 tansu, 91, 92n1 tatami, 66, 68n1, 68n3, 94, 143 tattsuke-hakama, 9; definition of, 166 teachers, 29–32, 115–16 tenugui, 56, 58; definition of, 166 textile mills, 93–95, 130, 144–45 theaters, traveling, 84–85, 115–19 Tōhoku, 89 tomesode, 91, 92n3; definition of, 166 tsukesage, 91, 92n4; definition of, 166 tuberculosis, 71, 94, 145 undergarments, 25, 54, 58, 70, 73, 91, 107, 108f uniforms: military, 97, 121–27, 122f; national, 110 war: casualties, 29, 98, 100n1, 103; effects of, 28, 62–63, 70–71, 90, 132, 139–40; end of, 141; Horikiri on, xii, 2–4, 41–42, 97–98, 101–3, 117–18, 121–27; and rationing clothing, 109–10, 110f; resources on, xx; and working women, 54, 61–62, 130–32, 151. See also soldiers wa-sarasa, 138, 140n2; definition of, 166

women: clothing requirements during war, 110, 130–31, 132n1; coal miners, 53–59, 56f, 61–63, 65–68; and education, 29, 61, 112, 151; and feminine virtues, 130; Horikiri and, xvii; and okiboda, 25–28; in postwar era, 132; and propriety, 73–77, 81; as prostitutes, 105–8, 144–49; and send-off for soldiers, 97–104; sold into bondage, 47, 94, 105–8, 106f, 144–49; in textile mills, 93–95; treatment of, 79, 84, 105, 130, 146– 48; and trousers, 110, 129–32 work clothes, 73–77, 75f; farm jackets, 21–24, 22f, 24f; female coal miners, 53–59, 56f, 61–63, 65–68; fishing coats, 25–28, 26f–27f; mompe trousers, 110, 129–32, 131f working class. See common people yachita, 73, 76n4 yakuza, 147, 154n8 Yamagata Prefecture, 23, 33 Yamamoto, Sakubei, 57, 59n3 yanagi-gōri, 143, 154n3 yanza. See okiboda Yasukuni Shrine, 100, 100n1 yogi, 33–37, 36f, 137–40; definition of, 167 yotsumi, 91 yukata, 16; definition of, 167 zegen, 106; postcards by, 106f

About the Author

Tatsuichi Horikiri, 堀切辰一, was born in 1925 in Kagoshima, Japan. He was sent to China in 1942 as a young engineer and was subsequently drafted into the Japanese Imperial Army and served in northern China until the end of World War II in 1945. After returning to Japan in 1946, Horikiri ran his construction business until 1985. In the 1970s, he began collecting used work clothing and furnishings from all corners of Japan while conducting research on topics relating to these items. As an independent scholar, he has penned six monographs and the first three volumes of an annotated catalogue of his collection. He is currently working on the fourth volume. His collection of clothing is housed in the Kitakyūshū Museum of Natural History and Human History.

179

ASIAN VOICES A Subseries of Asia/Pacific/Perspectives Series Editor: Mark Selden Identity and Resistance in Okinawa by Matthew Allen Tales of Tibet: Sky Burials, Prayer Wheels, and Wind Horses edited and translated by Herbert J. Batt, foreword by Tsering Shakya Tiananmen Moon: Inside the Chinese Student Uprising of 1989, Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition by Philip J Cunningham Voicing Concerns: Contemporary Chinese Critical Inquiry edited by Gloria Davies, conclusion by Geremie Barmé The Subject of Gender: Daughters and Mothers in Urban China by Harriet Evans Peasants, Rebels, Women, and Outcastes: The Underside of Modern Japan by Mikiso Hane Comfort Woman: A Filipina’s Story of Prostitution and Slavery under the Japanese Military by Maria Rosa Henson, introduction by Yuki Tanaka Japan’s Past, Japan’s Future: One Historian’s Odyssey by Ienaga Saburō, translated and introduced by Richard H. Minear I’m Married to Your Company! Everyday Voices of Japanese Women by Masako Itoh, edited by Nobuko Adachi and James Stanlaw Sisters and Lovers: Women and Desire in Bali by Megan Jennaway Moral Politics in a South Chinese Village: Responsibility, Reciprocity, and Resistance by Hok Bun Ku Queer Japan from the Pacific War to the Internet Age by Mark McLelland Behind the Silence: Chinese Voices on Abortion by Nie Jing-Bao Rowing the Eternal Sea: The Life of a Minamata Fisherman by Oiwa Keibo, narrated by Ogata Masato, translated by Karen Colligan-Taylor The Scars of War: Tokyo during World War II, Writings of Takeyama Michio edited and translated by Richard H. Minear War and Conscience in Japan: Nambara Shigeru and the Asia-Pacific War edited and translated by Richard H. Minear Growing Up Untouchable in India: A Dalit Autobiography by Vasant Moon, translated by Gail Omvedt, introduction by Eleanor Zelliot Exodus to North Korea: Shadows from Japan’s Cold War by Tessa Morris-Suzuki Hiroshima: The Autobiography of Barefoot Gen by Nakazawa Keiji, edited and translated by Richard H. Minear

China Ink: The Changing Face of Chinese Journalism by Judy Polumbaum Red Is Not the Only Color: Contemporary Chinese Fiction on Love and Sex between Women, Collected Stories edited by Patricia Sieber Sweet and Sour: Life-Worlds of Taipei Women Entrepreneurs by Scott Simon Dear General MacArthur: Letters from the Japanese during the American Occupation by Sodei Rinjirō, edited by John Junkerman, translated by Shizue Matsuda, foreword by John W. Dower Unbroken Spirits: Nineteen Years in South Korea’s Gulag by Suh Sung, translated by Jean Inglis, foreword by James Palais No Time for Dreams: Living in Burma under Military Rule by Carolyn Wakeman and San San Tin A Thousand Miles of Dreams: The Journeys of Two Chinese Sisters by Sasha Su-Ling Welland Dancing in Shadows: Sihanouk, the Khmer Rouge, and the United Nations in Cambodia by Benny Widyono Voices Carry: Behind Bars and Backstage during China’s Revolution and Reform by Ying Ruocheng and Claire Conceison