by Ioana Lee
Ultimately, I summoned up my courage and looked at them smiling, slightly tilting my head, without saying anything. The two of them were atypical Japanese men, especially the one sitting right next to me, who looked very tall, at least 6’5”. He was slender and elegant with straight, beautiful dark hair with a tinge of blue, white porcelain skin and big, dark, mysterious eyes. He almost looked like a doll. He was wearing a dark grey suit (Karl Lagerfeld, I later found out) and Chanel Egoiste cologne. I was fascinated by his alluring presence. I would have liked to turn around and look at him longer and closer, but I was trying to look detached and relaxed.
“Do you speak English?” I heard him ask. He had a clear, beautiful voice. His English easily indicated a Japanese accent.
Struggling to appear calm, I sputtered:
“Yes. Sumimasen, nihongo ga wakarimasen.”[i]
The young man looked at me with his big, black eyes, astonished.
“Do you speak Japanese?”
“No, I don’t.” I answered in English, still faltering. “Very little, just a few words.”
“No problem, it’s good that you speak English. My name is Ken and I’m a musicologist. And you?”
“Ioana. I’m a student.”
“It’s a pleasure meeting you.”
“Same here,” I answered.
The young musicologist introduced me to his friend, Ichiro, who worked for the Japanese Embassy. I introduced them to my friend and colleague Magda. Shortly after our introductions, the concert started. I don't remember who performed or when, or even if I liked it or not. I was secretly peeking at the young man next to me, who was visibly very focused on the performance. He constantly made notes on a small pad, in Japanese characters that looked totally different than the ones I had learned in school. It looked like handwriting, like a sophisticated wiggle. Only later, much later, I found out that only very educated Japanese people were capable of writing this way.
At the end of the concert I turned towards the young musicologist to say goodbye.
"Would you like to dine with me this evening? Please!" he asked shyly, with a tremble in his voice.
"Ohh... Well..." Observing the confused situation I was in, he added:
"Of course accompanied by our friends, Ichiro and Magda."
I brusquely turned towards Magda and through the power of our eyes “asked her.” She gave me a sign meaning yes.
"Alright,” I said. “My pleasure..." even though I wasn't sure if this was appropriate or even normal...
The four of us walked to a restaurant downtown. Everything seemed surreal. I was going though an amalgam of strange and contradictory feelings of fear, happiness, unease, curiosity, and reticence. The restaurant was very elegant and private, with a relaxed and enjoyable atmosphere, flooded with warm, pink lighting. We took our seats, ordered what we wanted and then began talking. Magda and I explained how we were struggling to learn Japanese, and they told us about how they came to Romania.
Ichiro was 24-years-old and came to the Romania three months ago. He was studying Romanian language and history, preparing to become the cultural representative for the Japanese embassy in Romania.
Ken, on the other hand, had come only three weeks ago and wanted to study for his Ph.D. in Romania. He was fascinated by George Enescu's (a well-known Romanian composer, violinist and pianist) music, which he first learned about from his uncle. His uncle had been Japan's ambassador in Bucharest just a few years ago. Prior to his Ph.D. he wanted to get his masters degree in Romania as well. For this he had to study Romanian intensively. We decided, therefore, to help each other; we would teach both of them Romanian, and they would do the same for us with Japanese.
The evening ended very nicely. That day, Magda and I had two more friends than we had the day before. After leaving the restaurant we all climbed into a taxi. They dropped us off at our places; we exchanged numbers and said our goodbyes.
After a few days, with everything feeling like it was just a dream, my landlady came into my room to tell me that a Japanese musicologist, who speaks English, is on the phone wanting to talk to me. Ken? Is he on the phone? Oh, did it truly happen
"Hello Ioana. Would you like to dine with me tonight or tomorrow, or tonight and tomorrow?" he asked.
"Oh, yes, of course. It would be my pleasure."
"Ok. I'll pick you up at 7p.m. Is that fine for you?"
"Yes, thank you."
We arrived at the restaurant. There was a reserved table waiting for us, discreetly, on one of the corners of the restaurant. We talked a lot about music, foreign languages, airplanes, Tokyo, Japan, Romania…
"By the way, I said, what is your real name? Ken is not a Japanese name!"
"I'm called Ken abroad, but my real Japanese name is Kenijiro. I believe that my name is quite hard to pronounce, especially for foreigners—Kenijiro Kurosawa."
"Kurosawa?! I said surprised. You have the same last name as the well-known philosopher Shin Kurosawa. You ought to be proud to have the same last name. You can even claim that you are relatives..."
"Shin Kurosawa? You've heard about my great-grandfather?"
"Yes, I know of him a little bit. Obviously I didn't know that he's your great-grandfather," I said, laughing out loud.
"What is so funny about the fact that Shin-San is my great-grandfather?"
"Great-grandfather? Shin Kurosawa—your great-grandfather? Very interesting! Actually, I would like to confess as well that the greatest Romanian violinist, George Enescu, is my great-grandfather."
"Ioana, you don't understand, do you? Shin Kurosawa is really my great-grandfather. How can you doubt what I'm telling you?"
I admit that I have a choleric temperament hidden behind my apparent fragility. I was so furious. An evening that started out on a good note was now becoming disgusting because of this young man, who, perhaps because he wanted to seduce me, was claiming to have well-known great-grandparents. I was astounded that he didn't go on by claiming that he was the son of the Sun and played a big part in Japan's founding legends, including being related to Amaterasu, the powerful sun goddess of Japan, the most well known deity in Japanese mythology.
"What do you know about Shin Kurosawa?" I asked him in a severe tone.
"What do you mean what I know about him?! Everything! Besides the fact that he is on the 5000-yen banknote (the equivalent of $50 US), he also wrote several masterpieces, was a university professor, the vice-president of the United Nation League and was a friend of President Roosevelt. He was a very honorable man and also my grandmothers' father, who can confirm all of these facts and tell you a lot more."
"Alright, I believe you, I said to him. Now I have to go, I have classes early in the morning."
He drove me home in complete silence. My only desire was to prove to all these foreigners that we're not a nation that fell off the trees after the 1989 Revolution and that we have much knowledge about the world and strong common sense.
When we separated I couldn't refrain from telling him: "Oh, by the way... Besides the fact that George Enescu was my great-grandfather, I also want to tell you that Dracula was my great-grandfathers' brother… on my mother's side. Does he listen to himself when he claims to be one of Kurosawa's! Good choice though, I thought to myself. Many of them say that they descend from ninjas and samurais, which basically means the lower class, but Kurosawa... hmmm…nobility. I was convinced that I’d never, ever see him again. When you're young, one so lightly and easily uses this word—NEVER.
As it turned out, what Ken told me was true. Ichiro and many other Japanese people confirmed this fact and explained to me how proud they were to know a descendent of Shin Kurosawa. Shin Kurosawa himself descended from a noble family of shoguns, a family with a blazon that went back in time to the XII century.
The good, the dear and the horrible Otoosan
Today in my flat, in Bucharest, Romania 2004, I talked on the phone with Otoosan[ii]
(I addressed him as his Japanese children did). I told hi
m that I intended to write a book about Japan, not because there weren't enough of them in Bucharest, but because I felt the need to present the readers with a different perspective; to offer another dimension to the understanding of this sophisticated phenomenon called Japan.
"Will you be writing about me as well?"
"Of course, without the Kurosawa family Japan wouldn't be itself. Without Shin the access of the country to the West would have been prolonged."
"And what exactly will you write about me? Will you say that Nihon no Otoosan Osoroshikatta desu?"[iii]
I've always had a special relationship with Otoosan. I haven't had with anyone else that sort of connection, in terms of complexity as well as contradiction. We had tremendous respect for each other. We loved each other like father and daughter and we challenged each other's ideas countless times. We sang and cried together… we laughed so many times. Otoosan—just like Okaasan[iv], Obaachama[v] and obviously Ken—were always offering me expensive, fine presents. It was one of their ways to show their affection and love towards me. They were planning far in advance what to give me and what would make me happy: jewelry, an expensive scarf, dresses, books... They always managed to surprise me.
I loved and hated Otoosan at the same time, with the same passion. Actually, Japan itself was capable of arousing within me extreme and contradictory feelings. Otoosan said the same thing about me. My ferocious fight with my Japanese father and the whole country of Japan had to do with my desire to maintain independence. I have a tumultuous, passionate, exuberant, contradictory and overwhelming to the extreme personality, and it’s pretty much similar to Otoosan’s. People like me can’t stand limitations, barriers or restrictions, especially if they aren’t based on logic. And the word allegiance, (the most defining characteristic of the Japanese) I was only able to understand after reading it multiple times in the dictionary. However, as a feeling, I was never able to identify with it, but obviously I was constantly under pressure to fake it. I faked it since childhood, in front of my parents, teachers, older sisters and the communist regime.
One day I told Otoosan that, amongst all the Kurosawa family members, I valued their Japanese spirit the most. He laughed. I embodied the Japanese spirit, more than they themselves as natives did.
“How come,” he asked?
“Because I’m a tsunami, a typhoon and a jishin.[vi] I was thinking how all these weather phenomena define Japanese culture in paintings, literature, in their way of being and in their relationship and allegiance to nature. Life with me is similar to braving all of these weather disasters at the same time. Otoosan, next to me, one can’t reach Nirvana, but one will never get bored. A tsunami doesn’t oblige anyone. Never. Therefore, Otoosan, I care about you deeply and I respect you enormously, yet I’ll never defer to you, or Ken, or any other person. It’s not because I don’t want to, it’s because I am unable to. I simply can’t. I would have to feel it, and I only feel this toward God—who you don’t believe in yet!”
I was harsh with Otoosan, whom I jokingly yet seriously called Hideyoshi (hidoi = awful and yoshi = good), a nickname embraced rapidly by Ken as well. Ken would often say: “Ioana, Hideyoshi is on the phone and he’d like to talk to you” or “Ioana, Hideyoshi sent you a present” or “Let’s go on vacation to Sendai. I miss Hideyoshi.”
Him
I don’t recall when and why I married Ken. I woke up one day being married and having to move to Japan. No one explained anything to me and I was way too young to be fully responsible for my own deeds.
Ken said that for him it was love at first sight. For me … not. He fascinated me and over time I started to be affectionate, enamored and confused. We were together 24/7. In the beginning we were in a linguistic competition: who could first learn the other’s language. In just a few months I started speaking Japanese fluently. It was painful but worth it. It was a language that I didn’t start through babbled, short sentences or disorderly words. I started talking when I felt that I could make myself understood, that I could use the past, present and future tense, accurate grammar, plus a very rich vocabulary. Over time I took control of the situation and I only spoke Japanese with Ken.
I now feel guilty that I never helped him with Romanian, and that we didn’t speak English more frequently. But Japanese was now my new way of life, which was also the main reason I lost many Romanian friends, unintentionally yet irredeemably. I was spending most of my time with people from the embassy, tourists or friends of Ken. I was hanging out in restaurants, in the mountains, singing karaoke at home or at my parents’ house with Ken and Ichiro. I was totally absorbed with the Japanese culture and people.
I was in my home country, yet rarely among Romanians or watching Romanian television. We were always watching films and documentaries about Japan.
Ken and I fought frequently. I have no idea why. Maybe it was because we were both too young, or because our very different cultures were separating us. Or maybe he loved me in a claustrophobic and agonizing way, which I wasn’t able to understand.
He was calling me obsessively. My landlord, the kind and conciliatory Mrs. Motorga, was begging me to answer him. “No, I can’t talk to him right now. I can’t. I’m too upset!” I was saying, and sympathetic with Ken, tears were rolling down her eyes while on the phone with him. She wasn’t on his side, but she was sad that two young people were fighting so often.
Against all this, Ken and I also had fun together, traveling abroad, laughing a lot, and making jokes over things, situations, misunderstandings and incompatibilities between cultures. I laughed myself to tears at his perfect imitations of Gica Petrescu (a prolific Romanian folk music composer and performer), Vali Vijelie (a popular singer of gypsy music) and Adrian Copilu Minune (another popular gypsy music singer). I’m pretty sure that Ken was Adrian’s #1 fan. It was a huge accomplishment to have a Ph.D. Japanese musicologist as a fan! When I asked him what exactly he liked about this music he said the instrumental virtuosity. I never fully understood him but I remember being both amused and horrified when he bought himself tickets to their concerts. Imagine a highly cultured Japanese musicologist in a concert hall filled with gipsy music fans. What an interesting dichotomy.
I amused him by composing haikus, or writing lyrics for traditional songs from Osaka, which I passionately sang in front of him, dressed in my kimono and wearing my geisha make-up.
I was going to my parents’ town, Valeni, very often. Ken, a passionate nature lover—animals, trees, insects, birds and bats—was happy in my parents’ small paradise. They loved him. Sometimes, I was suspecting that they loved him more than they loved me. I was jealous, but I knew that Ken’s father, who only got to know me for a month, while I was in Japan, loved me more than he loved his three children. Even today, I know that I have a saved spot in his heart. And it always makes me cry… This is who I am, I cry often, with sorrow, when I think of all the people that I love.
Frankly, I don’t believe I’ve met anyone in my life that I didn’t become attached to, regardless of them making me feel good or bad, being very close or not or even just accidentally bumping souls at an airport. I believe that the best way to love God is to love the people He created, in their full emotional, intellectual, moral, ethnical, racial and religious diversity.
In awe
While living in Romania everything was easy and beautiful as we created our little Japan, eating with chop sticks at Asian restaurants and speaking our own unique language. We had our own unique words, created and mixed through the process of studying each other’s language. I was interested in Japan and he was interested in George Enescu and many other Romanians who’ve had a huge impact on the world.
After three years of knowing each other, on a crazy day in April, we got engaged, without telling anyone. I explained to Ken that our engagement didn’t mean that we’d really have to get married. We both invited a Japanese couple to Ken’s place to celebrate our engagement, yet we asked them not to tell anyone about it because it was more of a fa
ntasy—a joke and fiancé-fiancée role-play—for us.
At that time Ken was living in a superb villa in Bucharest and I would spend every weekend with him, in decadent luxury. We even had a small grey cat, which we named Franz, after the famous pianist Franz Liszt. Ken cooked something delicious every night. He was the best chef ever, and by far the best driver that I’ve met in my entire life. I had the pleasure to dine in very fine restaurants and at many ambassadors’ residences.
Many professional drivers drove me on the long roads of many countries, yet with him I felt most comfortable and safe. The dishes made by him were often the only ones that delighted my appetite and pampered my taste.
His knowledge about music was overwhelming. Endless names of composers, singers, conductors, and unique pieces of music from classical to salsa, meringue or French chansonettes filled my ears, often sounding very mysterious to me. He liked painting and wasn’t limiting himself like I was, to only the impressionism period. He competently introduced me to multiple different epochs, periods and influences… yet what amazed me the most was to discover his passion for biology and his vast knowledge about insects, every one of which he knew how to precisely name in Latin. I’ll never forget the moment when he asked me in Romanian from where he can buy a macaleandru (robin; Erithacus rubecola - Latin). Not even today do I know what a robin is or what exactly it looks like. At the time he was stunned that no one at the conservatory knew what a robin is and wasn’t able to give him any information about it. Ultimately it appeared that my father was the only one who was capable of explaining to Ken that you can’t buy a robin, that it is a bird that lives in wilderness. The two of them talked a lot about birds, wild or not.
