The Cherry Blossom Rarely Smiles

by Ioana Lee

  The Romanian event made me very happy. We ate sitting on tatami and sipped Romanian wine. I was even happier when I arrived at home and was able to lie down in my bed. As much as I enjoyed that day, I hated the next. I ended up at the hospital. Again! I had a Japanese flu. At the hospital I had to go through the same routine. The first thing that the nurses tried to do was to take a sample of my “Trajan blood.” Again! This time the desperation, fear and exhaustion made me brutal and absolute. I said to them: “Zettai dame!!!”

  Silence…

  I’ll now explain to you why they remained silent and why my words made them stop their bloody endeavor. This Japanese saying means: “Out of question!”, “No way!”, “This is forbidden!”, yet it belongs in a man’s vocabulary. It is very disrespectful and deprecatory to the addressee; dame is usually used when a dog is yelled at to not do something. So, it was unacceptable for a woman to ever say that expression out loud, especially a woman like me who came from a noble family. My strong words, sharp look and semi-coherence due to my rising fever convinced them to stop taking my blood. My heart and mind were both yelling “Only over my dead body!” (The motto of those who fought for Romania’s freedom.)

  That period of my life was when the “cold war” started. It was an acerbic war between the Japanese culture and me. The only thing that I wanted to win in that fight was my independence. It didn’t feel like I was asking too much, yet the Japanese culture wanted me to conform to its rules. I was surprised that Japan didn’t learn anything about me after my talking intensively about myself, my culture, Decebal,[xi] Burebista,[xii] Mihai Viteazu,[xiii] Stefan Cel Mare,[xiv] Vlad Tepes[xv] and Ceausescu[xvi]…

  At the hospital, I requested the two-hour intravenous treatment with antibiotics and vitamins. It always worked. They honored my request. I didn’t know exactly what they added to the treatment, yet I know that after just a few hours it always made me feel like a new person. That was also the day when the whole town hummed with rumors about me saying the incredible, incalculable, draconian and unspeakable: “Zettai dame!”…

  Household difficulties

  I remember once reading in The Chrysanthemum and the Sword by the well-known author and field anthropologist Ruth Benedict: “Japan for all its recent Westernization is still an aristocratic society. Every greeting, every contact must indicate the kind and degree of social distance between men. Every time a man says to another ‘eat’ or ‘sit down,’ he uses different words if he is addressing someone familiar or is speaking to an inferior or to a superior.” This author knew the Japanese culture fairly well. On top of all those differences one also had to add the notable differences between a woman’s and a man’s vocabulary or the language used by children, which is very different than the previous two. The silky veil of the Japanese language is woven with countless subtleties that both interfere and blend with each other to create a specific flow and smoothness. On the surface it’s polished, uniform and elegant, just like real silk.

  I needed many years to understand the spirit of their language and culture, and I now have the strange feeling that I assimilated too much of it… Japan is incomparable. It is the type of place that you say “Goodbye” to, yet you never truly leave from. It could even have a narcotic effect, pulling you into the “drama of the absolute.” Japan leaves its imprint on you, which always follows you subtly. It almost turns into a being, which shows up at times just like a Lorelei[xvii] in a kimono, regardless of how far from it you are.

  It took a long time until I was able to understand my Japanese family and I believe they went through the same assiduous process to really know me. The deep and priceless relationship that we were able to establish amongst ourselves will never be destroyed… No one and nothing could ever change it. It goes beyond time and life circumstances. It belongs to the part of the soul that never changes.

  When we arrived in Japan Ken was still very Europeanized. He was evidently torn between two worlds: I was part of one world and his Nipponese family was part of the other. Nevertheless we all knew each other and were very united, yet none of us expected the experience of reuniting our families to be the shock that it was. I was the one assimilating 100% of the shock; for me it was a must to unconditionally integrate into their culture. I became very attached to Otoosan since my first visit to Japan. It was quite different with Okaasan, Otoosan’s wife and Ken’s mother. I couldn’t understand her at all. As far as Obaachama, I was totally intimidated by her. She was Shin Kurosawa’s daughter. She had a laser focused intelligence and an overwhelming elegance.

  In the first few months of my training to become a Kurosawa family member and assimilate their customs and mindsets, we would interact on a daily basis…also considering the proximity of our homes. Things proved to be quite different than expected between us. Ken was the mediator and the absorber of the shock produced by the collision of the two “civilizations.” It was extremely hard for me to adapt to a lot of things. One of them was the fact that I always had to be ready: make-up and lipstick on, for the unannounced visits of various people. I was expected to be at Otoosan’s disposal whenever he came to visit us and wanted to engage in elaborate conversations. I also had several aristocratic duties. The most challenging thing for me was to accept that I belonged to other people, to meaningless details or meticulous rituals—yet never to myself­, to my desires. Their mandatory, suffocating customs were always the same.

  I’ll give you an example so that you can understand what I had to go through. One morning I was having breakfast – European style – and Ken was having all sorts of Japanese delicatessens. That morning, Otoosan came from the museum to our place for a short, unannounced visit. He was in a state of shock that my husband and I weren’t eating the same thing!

  “Ioana, (he always called me by my first name which made me very happy, in comparison to all the other people who called me Mrs. Ioana, which was strange) why don’t you eat the same food as your husband?!”

  “Otoosan my taste hasn’t adapted to Japanese food, yet. There are still plenty of things that I don’t like. It is hard for me to eat rice and soup in the morning.”

  “Yes, I understand completely, but you must make the effort to do it!”

  I don’t like the word must in any language. In Japanese it can take various forms, from extreme politeness to extreme harshness. Otoosan used it with kindness, yet I still could not stand it.

  “Otoosan, I know that I have to make the effort and that I need to become as Japanese as possible, but some things require time. I needed time to learn the language and to understand aspects of your culture and civilization. It also took me a while to decide if Japan was really what I wanted. If all these things took time to become clearer, now, in order for me to assimilate and digest them to the subtlest detail, I need not only time, but also attachment, love, understanding…not OBLIGATION… It all requires a natural process that happens at my own pace…”

  “Alright, alright, but you have to eat like we do, because Japanese food is the healthiest one for the body. That’s why we live longer and healthier lives. And there’s even more to this…”

  “Otoosan, I am respectfully asking you to leave her alone!” interrupted Ken, with an obvious fear towards his father and also towards my inward seething.

  Otoosan was taken by surprise by his son’s interference. Based on the family’s education, Ken had no right to ever contradict him, regardless of the situation…

  Elegantly, I dialed back the conflict by changing the subject: “Otoosan, I wanted to ask you something about Shin-san. In his agricultural treaty, what else was he referring to besides the fact that Japan produces only 40% of the food needed by its population?”

  Otoosan, happy to talk about his grandfather and reveling in his role as director of the Kurosawa Museum and also as a history teacher, sat comfortably at the table and started explaining everything to me, in dizzying details. He used technical words, specific to agriculture, which I was able to understand only in the same percen
tage of the fed Japanese population– approximately 40%. His language required of me a considerable amount of concentration. His speech lasted about 50 minutes, during which time Ken and I stayed pinned to our chairs, not daring to breathe or ask for permission to use the toilet. It felt like we were in elementary school. We were nudging each other under the table, just like two brat students who were accomplices in school. After Otoosan talked the bark off a tree, he realized that he was only supposed to come visit us for 5 minutes, yet he spent over an hour. He left. Finally! Being left alone, Ken and I started laughing out loud.

  “Ioana, my father cares about you very much” Ken told me. “Only that he doesn’t know to show his affection as foreigners do. I know that for you it is hard to understand. He comes here like a child with a new toy. He likes to talk to you, see you and also listen to you. He only wishes what’s best for you, to be healthy and strong. He doesn’t understand that for a foreigner like you our customs are hard to adapt to. And he uses the most elevated level of Japanese because he’s used to it and also because he knows that you are very smart and you can make the effort to understand even the hardest words and most sophisticated expressions…”

  It wasn’t really like that. I would have liked him to lower the level of his Japanese language, as I would have found it much easier. I am now happy that he didn’t do it and that he forced me to understand and memorize some of the hardest Japanese expressions and idioms.

  Around the table…

  Ken and I would often go out and have lunch together. Sometimes Otoosan would join us as well. Once in a while we would savor the food cooked by our Parents, which were brought over to our house by Ken. However, when dinnertime came, we all used to gather at our Parents’ house. After a while I asked them to come dine at our place, as I felt freer that way and my issues around eating were diminishing. My request changed the custom of gathering at their place, and we all started to get together at our house. Often times, in order to create more comfort for our Parents, we would invite them to spend the night at our place, in one of the guest rooms downstairs.

  After dinner, we would spend the whole evening talking about countless things: customs, places, people, religion, ancestors, literature, history, and geography… Otoosan and I were always the ones talking the most, while Okaasan was cleaning up the table and washing the dishes. Ken would watch television and Obaachama would write in her journal.

  Writing this makes me smile and cry at the same time, because even if it was extremely hard for me to integrate into their environment, I now miss it … and find it hard to readapt myself to other cultures… It is like the agony of a soul that is torn between two worlds, two worlds that are not compatible with each other, two worlds that didn’t allow me to find my balance and a solid base in just one of them alone.

  In my first few months in Japan, before moving to Tokyo, I was thinking almost every day that the next morning I would book a flight that would take me back to my home country. It was strange, but my Romanian stubbornness and pride, as well as the will and dignity of the samurais, made me determined not to give up. Over time I believe that I found the answers to living a happy and fulfilling life in Japan: to live as a woman, yet to lead a life as if you were a man. While I know that this may sound graceless, I’ll explain myself over the next few pages.

  Dinnertime, generally, was a true difficulty for me, not only the gastronomical side of it, but also the linguistic and cultural side. Okaasan was usually the one preparing and serving the food. I don’t know exactly how much time it took to make the food itself, considering its lightness and all the kitchen devices required, but what I do know is that displaying the food on the table usually took 2 hours. This was half of the siesta time from the previous meal, lunch. Those two hours felt like endless hours for anyone who didn’t have time to have had lunch for any reason.

  Nicely dressed, we all gathered around the table. We women were supposed to wear our jewelry and have our make-up on. The rule was to sit at the table hierarchically, meaning: Obaachama first, who was the oldest and most important member of the family, then Otoosan, Ken, myself and Okaasan. In reality things were never this way. Okaasan was always the last one to sit and in a very short time I got to hold first place in the hierarchy, meaning that I would sit first. After hypnotizing them to think this way, it was perceived by the entire family as being a normal thing. But still, it didn’t make me happy…

  After sitting around at the table, which was always arranged to the smallest detail, depending on the season and the people sitting at the table, Okaasan started serving the food, not as our family member, but more as our housekeeper. We all insisted that we should hire a person to do it in her place, but she never accepted this, saying that her mission and destiny required her to do everything herself. She would serve herself last, after which she would bow in front of all of us, thanking us for the honor of eating her food and for making her happy every day by doing this. Everyone tilted their heads, meaning what I perceived as “just let it pass!” I blushed. I was so embarrassed and felt such strong heartbreak for the situation. My sorrow stopped when I finally understood that Okaasan really loved doing it and that she wouldn’t have changed the situation for anything in the world.

  Now, when I remember my way of thinking in the beginning, I find it funny. It was probably a similar mindset to all of the other Europeans who thought that all Japanese women were unhappy, as they had to always conform to their husbands’ wishes. In reality, things weren’t as bad as we perceived them. Perhaps the people that still hold these beliefs could never understand the things that I had noticed by living there day in and day out. There are life experiences and perceptions that couldn’t be shared and believed through simple statements, because the gap between visions, conceptions, personal beliefs and values is too big.

  Once we all sat down at the table we said “Itadakimasu!”, a word that translates into English as Bon Appétit. For semantic accuracy it would translate as “I humbly receive this food!” I couldn’t believe that they all knew how to decode the secrets of the meal. To me the table looked like a surgeon’s table. On it there were multiple tools, the usage of which was meant to follow a certain order and logic. As if that wasn’t enough, there were also all sorts of rigid rules and recommendations. In addition, they had specific gestures for rituals, traditions, superstitions, finesse and multiple other things. I struggled a lot until I learned them all: where the chop sticks needed to be placed when you took a break from eating, where they needed to go based on the type of food you were eating (soup, rice, fish, etc.), where you should never put them because of bad luck or what I had to do to never drop them from my hand. I also learned how a woman must drink out of a special colored cup—bring the cup to your mouth touching it with both hands, while slightly tilting your head. They had countless rules and customs around eating, which made me hate the verb “to eat” for the rest of my life, let alone passing through the labyrinth of orders surrounding “dinner.”

  Initially, given the fact that dinner was such an elegant and complicated ritual in itself, I was shocked to hear all those educated people loudly munching and sipping their food. It was their way of savoring it all. In my European perception, the contrast between them and their manners was grotesque, especially when eating soup became a concert of loud slurping sounds, which didn’t seem to belong to humans. My stomach turned against it. I couldn’t eat calmly in their full concert of loud swallows, let alone joining and copying what I was witnessing. My empathy and adaption to the situation was very limited. My mind took me to one of Ion Creanga’s[xviii] stories about a prince who was under a spell and turned into a pig during the day. Given the situation—I thought to myself —I would still be left with the option to eat during the night, since Noblesse oblige![xix]

  Only later did I come to realize that in Japan things happen for a reason and everything has a rationale and a deep psychological meaning. To eat that way meant that they were truly enjoying the food, as well
as the presence of the people they were sharing the meal with. They shared through sounds the great taste of the food. Most of all it was a way to show gratitude and respect for the person who made the food, in our case Okaasan. The lack of munching and loud sipping would have dishonored her, as it would have been a sign of not enjoying the food enough. This is a perfect example of how huge the gap between perception and custom was. I found it difficult to adopt their way of eating, yet in a few months I managed to become an expert at gulping, munching and sipping. It felt like I was leaving behind some of the good manners that I had acquired all my life. I lived in a foreign household with different customs and the rules and things that I thought were polite would have been perceived as being impolite, and vice versa. In times of intense struggle, I remembered my grandmother’s saying, “I’d rather stay in pajamas in my bed and have only a piece of bread for dinner.” Well, I’d add to that an ice cream as well—except that in Japan ice cream wasn’t considered healthy.