While I was at Canon, I convinced myself that I needed to do a year-long home stay in order to perfect my Japanese, picturing that I would find some welcoming family who would become my friends for life. One of my Canon colleagues volunteered to help find me a home stay, and did, in Itabashi-ku in northwestern Tokyo. I started the home stay in September 1991, after my internship at Canon ended, and I moved out of the Canon dorm that came with the internship.
When I arrived, it was not at all what I pictured. Instead of a welcoming family, who would take me in as their "adopted" American son for a year, what I got was a family that took in boarders to make some extra money. They had a college student, whom I don't remember ever talking to, and a five-year old, slightly retarded girl, who was attending a special school that was not available in her hometown.
The mother and older sister, who did not live there, but was at the house all the time, were both nutritionists, so my breakfast and dinner were always very healthy. As soon as I moved in, I began losing weight as a result of my healthier diet, which worried them very much because they thought I was not eating enough, but I was quite happy about this change in my appearance. The father was a coarse working stiff from Kyushu, with such a thick Kyushu accent that I was never able to understand what he was saying. Because I could never understand what he was saying, he thought I was stupid, and would use sign language to try to communicate with me, when all I wanted was for him to speak a little more slowly and more clearly.
The worst aspect of the home stay was that I had a 10:00 p.m. curfew. I am not sure whether eventually they would have given me a key once they got to know me, but they did not and I had to be home by 10:00 when they locked the front door. To make matters worse, where they lived in Itabashi-ku was near the very end of the Mita subway line, and it took me about 45 minutes to get home from central Tokyo, where I usually hung out with my friends, meaning that I had to leave the goings-on by 9:15 p.m. to get home on time. I found this quite insulting, given that I was an adult with a job and was used to keeping my own hours completely at college.
To make matters even worse, the Mita subway line, which traveled mostly through poorer parts of Tokyo, had not yet been updated and had subway cars without air-conditioning. Even in September, the subway was stiflingly hot, and I would arrive at work in the morning drenched in sweat.
After a few weeks of the home stay, I noticed that I was constantly sneezing and itchy-eyed. I finally realized I was having a bad allergic reaction to the family dog. I suffered horribly for a few weeks, but then realized that this was my face-saving ticket out of the home stay. I called my friend Kakurai-san at Canon and asked him if he would find out from Oshikawa-san whether the offer was still open for me to move into Oshikawa-san's dorm. He called me back almost immediately to tell me that it was. I moved out that weekend, closing one brief chapter of my life in Japan and opening a new one with the Oshikawa family.
Showing posts with label Oshikawa-san. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Oshikawa-san. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Monday, July 6, 2009
My Dad, the Kamikaze Pilot
A few years after I met Oshikawa-san at Canon, he told me something about himself.
During the war, he was a pilot. A kamikaze pilot.
This astonishing statement takes a little explaining. Oshikawa-san obviously never flew his one-way mission. In the last months of the war, when the Japanese army was conscripting every able-bodied man for the final, apocalyptic show-down with the United States, Oshikawa-san was drafted. He was 16. And whether he was pushed into kamikaze service or, more likely, was, as a high school student, so deeply indoctrinated with end-time emperor worship that he volunteered to make the ultimate show of patriotism, he never told me. It was enough for me to know that, in order to protect the homeland, he trained to fly his plane, specially designed to hold explosives rather than enough fuel for a return trip, into an American warship at the water-line. He never got the chance because -- fortunately for him, his family, me, and who knows how many American sailors and their families -- the war ended before his training did.
Oshikawa-san also told me another shocking fact about the war. He was stationed in Nagasaki. Suddenly, in early August 1945, the soldiers were suddenly mustered out of the city and into the surrounding hills without explanation. On August 9, 1945, with the soldiers safely outside the city, most of Nagasaki disappeared in a 1000-degree fireball in the second atomic bombing. News of the bombing of Hiroshima was as a state secret and the Japanese government kept it from the civilian population and low-level soldiers like Oshikawa-san alike. Oshikawa-san's story may have been repeated in hundreds of cities throughout Japan -- potential A-bomb targets all. The government evacuated soldiers to fight another day, but left millions of innocent Japanese civilians to their fate.
To bring the reality of the bombings even closer to home, Oshikawa-san's wife, Chisako, is from Hiroshima (although I believe she was born after the war). Her grandparents died in the atomic bomb blast.
I don't presume to think that meeting me led to some kind of epiphany of forgiveness on the part of the Oshikawa family. The Oshikawas were, like many Japanese of their generation, fascinated by the United States and had visited there as tourists. Any bitterness about the war had long since receded into the past for them. But, still, the fact that this family -- so deeply and directly touched by the horrendous conflict with the United States -- decided to call me their "son" is something I will never forget.
During the war, he was a pilot. A kamikaze pilot.
This astonishing statement takes a little explaining. Oshikawa-san obviously never flew his one-way mission. In the last months of the war, when the Japanese army was conscripting every able-bodied man for the final, apocalyptic show-down with the United States, Oshikawa-san was drafted. He was 16. And whether he was pushed into kamikaze service or, more likely, was, as a high school student, so deeply indoctrinated with end-time emperor worship that he volunteered to make the ultimate show of patriotism, he never told me. It was enough for me to know that, in order to protect the homeland, he trained to fly his plane, specially designed to hold explosives rather than enough fuel for a return trip, into an American warship at the water-line. He never got the chance because -- fortunately for him, his family, me, and who knows how many American sailors and their families -- the war ended before his training did.
Oshikawa-san also told me another shocking fact about the war. He was stationed in Nagasaki. Suddenly, in early August 1945, the soldiers were suddenly mustered out of the city and into the surrounding hills without explanation. On August 9, 1945, with the soldiers safely outside the city, most of Nagasaki disappeared in a 1000-degree fireball in the second atomic bombing. News of the bombing of Hiroshima was as a state secret and the Japanese government kept it from the civilian population and low-level soldiers like Oshikawa-san alike. Oshikawa-san's story may have been repeated in hundreds of cities throughout Japan -- potential A-bomb targets all. The government evacuated soldiers to fight another day, but left millions of innocent Japanese civilians to their fate.
To bring the reality of the bombings even closer to home, Oshikawa-san's wife, Chisako, is from Hiroshima (although I believe she was born after the war). Her grandparents died in the atomic bomb blast.
I don't presume to think that meeting me led to some kind of epiphany of forgiveness on the part of the Oshikawa family. The Oshikawas were, like many Japanese of their generation, fascinated by the United States and had visited there as tourists. Any bitterness about the war had long since receded into the past for them. But, still, the fact that this family -- so deeply and directly touched by the horrendous conflict with the United States -- decided to call me their "son" is something I will never forget.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Oshikawa-san
I met Oshikawa Ken, my Japanese "dad," in 1991. Most gaijin who say they have a Japanese "family" usually mean their homestay family. I met my Japanese family at Canon.
Oshikawa-san was a middle-manager in the Internal Training Division, and pretty much every Canon employee knew him because he trained every new hire that came through the door. Oshikawa-san was short, chubby, balding, and wore coke-bottle glasses that made his eyes seem huge. He was a former kamikaze pilot (more on that in another post), Tokyo beat-cop, and most importantly, a Canon employee for more than 30 years. Canon recognized his special place at the company by keeping him on for 2 years beyond the mandatory retirement age of 63 and by appointing him manager of the Musashi-Nitta Dormitory. In true Canon fashion, he met his wife Chisako there. Oshikawa-san was a larger-than-life presence at Canon -- everyone's favorite uncle, who was always in the middle of whatever fun was going on.
According to my orientation at Harvard before leaving for Japan, one of my most important duties would be to give a proper self-introduction (jiko-shokai) on my first day. I arrived in Japan on a Friday and worked very hard over the weekend on my jiko-shokai, laboring intensively with a Japanese-English dictionary and my still-limited Japanese.
Like other points from the orientation, I misunderstood the point of the jiko-shokai as well. It needed only to be a brief introduction that told my new colleagues who I was and where I was from, but I treated the 30-odd assembled employees of the Internal Communications Division and the Internal Training Division to my whole life story to date. As I droned on, I could see some of the blue-uniformed women stifling yawns, and I tried to speed things up. But Oshikawa-san later told me that he had been touched by the obvious effort that I had made to make a speech in Japanese, and he liked me right away because of it. (I also later learned that at least one long, boring speech was an essential part of every Japanese gathering.)
One evening, there were plans for everyone in our office to go out after work. The closing chime rang at 5:15 pm, and while the younger workers didn't budge, Oshikawa-san and some of the other middle managers (the mado-giwa-zoku, or "ones who sit near the window") gathered in the corner meeting area and produced several bottles of beer from a small fridge.
Oshikawa-san suddenly bellowed across the room: Jonasan! Kotchi ni koi yo! Nome, nome! ("Jonathan, come over here! Drink, drink!) He waived at me with his palm facing me and his hand motioning towards the floor -- the Japanese way of waving someone over, which looks to an American as if they are waiving you away. I had intended to keep on working until it was time to leave like everyone around me, but because Oshikawa-san had never spoken to me before and was a manager, I figured I'd better go over. He sat me down and poured me some beer, and I drank with the older guys until 6:30, when it was time for the whole group to leave for the restaurant.
From there, a great friendship was born. When Oshikawa-san found out that, instead of returning to the US after my internship was over, I would be starting another job in Japan, he insisted that I come live at the Musashi-Nitta dorm. I initially turned him down, having arranged for a year-long homestay, but when the homestay became unbearable within a month, I contacted him and he immediately arranged everything with the powers that be at Canon. I was given one of the empty rooms across the hall from his family's apartment, where I lived until he retired from managing the dormitory a year later. Once or twice a month, both while I lived in the dormitory and afterwards, the Oshikawas invited me to dinner at their house. Shortly before I left Japan after three years, Oshikawa-san paid me the intense honor of telling me, Jonasan, omae wa uchi no musuko da yo ("Jonathan, you're our son").
Oshikawa-san died in 2002, a month after learning he had cancer. The family did not tell me until after the funeral because I was having a difficult time in Boston then and they did not want to trouble me. (So Japanese!) They knew I would have hopped on a plane right away had I known he was sick.
Oshikawa-san would have been happy to know that I married a Japanese woman and still return to Japan often. We are still close with the Oshikawa family, talk frequently with my "big sister" Keiko, and see them whenever we can. Keiko and her mother attended our wedding in Kyoto. I've visited Oshikawa-san's grave and helped wash it, and I always greet him at the family shrine whenever I visit the Oshikawas' apartment in Kawasaki. I only wish that he could have lived long enough to see his American "granddaughter," Emma, but I am sure he knows all about her.
Oshikawa-san was a middle-manager in the Internal Training Division, and pretty much every Canon employee knew him because he trained every new hire that came through the door. Oshikawa-san was short, chubby, balding, and wore coke-bottle glasses that made his eyes seem huge. He was a former kamikaze pilot (more on that in another post), Tokyo beat-cop, and most importantly, a Canon employee for more than 30 years. Canon recognized his special place at the company by keeping him on for 2 years beyond the mandatory retirement age of 63 and by appointing him manager of the Musashi-Nitta Dormitory. In true Canon fashion, he met his wife Chisako there. Oshikawa-san was a larger-than-life presence at Canon -- everyone's favorite uncle, who was always in the middle of whatever fun was going on.
According to my orientation at Harvard before leaving for Japan, one of my most important duties would be to give a proper self-introduction (jiko-shokai) on my first day. I arrived in Japan on a Friday and worked very hard over the weekend on my jiko-shokai, laboring intensively with a Japanese-English dictionary and my still-limited Japanese.
Like other points from the orientation, I misunderstood the point of the jiko-shokai as well. It needed only to be a brief introduction that told my new colleagues who I was and where I was from, but I treated the 30-odd assembled employees of the Internal Communications Division and the Internal Training Division to my whole life story to date. As I droned on, I could see some of the blue-uniformed women stifling yawns, and I tried to speed things up. But Oshikawa-san later told me that he had been touched by the obvious effort that I had made to make a speech in Japanese, and he liked me right away because of it. (I also later learned that at least one long, boring speech was an essential part of every Japanese gathering.)
One evening, there were plans for everyone in our office to go out after work. The closing chime rang at 5:15 pm, and while the younger workers didn't budge, Oshikawa-san and some of the other middle managers (the mado-giwa-zoku, or "ones who sit near the window") gathered in the corner meeting area and produced several bottles of beer from a small fridge.
Oshikawa-san suddenly bellowed across the room: Jonasan! Kotchi ni koi yo! Nome, nome! ("Jonathan, come over here! Drink, drink!) He waived at me with his palm facing me and his hand motioning towards the floor -- the Japanese way of waving someone over, which looks to an American as if they are waiving you away. I had intended to keep on working until it was time to leave like everyone around me, but because Oshikawa-san had never spoken to me before and was a manager, I figured I'd better go over. He sat me down and poured me some beer, and I drank with the older guys until 6:30, when it was time for the whole group to leave for the restaurant.
From there, a great friendship was born. When Oshikawa-san found out that, instead of returning to the US after my internship was over, I would be starting another job in Japan, he insisted that I come live at the Musashi-Nitta dorm. I initially turned him down, having arranged for a year-long homestay, but when the homestay became unbearable within a month, I contacted him and he immediately arranged everything with the powers that be at Canon. I was given one of the empty rooms across the hall from his family's apartment, where I lived until he retired from managing the dormitory a year later. Once or twice a month, both while I lived in the dormitory and afterwards, the Oshikawas invited me to dinner at their house. Shortly before I left Japan after three years, Oshikawa-san paid me the intense honor of telling me, Jonasan, omae wa uchi no musuko da yo ("Jonathan, you're our son").
Oshikawa-san died in 2002, a month after learning he had cancer. The family did not tell me until after the funeral because I was having a difficult time in Boston then and they did not want to trouble me. (So Japanese!) They knew I would have hopped on a plane right away had I known he was sick.
Oshikawa-san would have been happy to know that I married a Japanese woman and still return to Japan often. We are still close with the Oshikawa family, talk frequently with my "big sister" Keiko, and see them whenever we can. Keiko and her mother attended our wedding in Kyoto. I've visited Oshikawa-san's grave and helped wash it, and I always greet him at the family shrine whenever I visit the Oshikawas' apartment in Kawasaki. I only wish that he could have lived long enough to see his American "granddaughter," Emma, but I am sure he knows all about her.
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