by Bruce Feiler
“Go ahead,” Hara called to his friend, “say something. At least tell her good night.”
After another tantalizing moment, Azuma stepped forward, jumped into our cab, and without so much as a glance over his shoulder ordered the driver to take us away.
“Oh no,” Hara cried. “What a catastrophe.”
Back at his studio apartment, Hara explained the history behind our failed evening. He told me about successful go-cons in the past, when he had met girls who had become passing flings, live-in lovers, and even his fiancée. He told me about Azuma and Kana and their stormy past, with an assorted collection of dramatic fights in public places, followed by romantic make-ups in distant hideaways. He told me about the new era of love in Japan, in which sex comes first and marriage later. “You meet, you talk, you have sex—just like in America.”
But then he told me he was tired of this life.
“When I was in university, we had parties like this all the time,” he said. “I got money from my parents once a month, and I spent it all in one week. I lived on beer and tuna fish. Even today, the only glasses I have in my house came from kara-oke mamas.”
He opened his refrigerator and offered me a drink. The only items on the shelves were a half-empty bottle of brown Chinese tea and two cans of NCAA Isotonic drink.
“I want to have a home, a wife, and a family,” he said, lying back on his unmade bed. “I think I’m outgrowing the city. You see that picture over there?” He pointed to a small framed photo of a group of men on a ski slope. “That’s where I’d rather be. I’m ready to go back to the country.”
“Irashaimase, irashaimase,” the old woman said as she sank to her knees, grazing her fingers on the mat at our feet and dipping her head to the floor. “Welcome, welcome. It is late, you must be weary from the drive.”
In early February, two weeks after my thwarted go-con, I went back to the country with Hara, Cho, and some of their friends for a reunion at the spot they had been visiting since they first went away to school. Cho, Chieko, and I had left Sano early Friday evening and driven two hours west from Tochigi through a mountain pass toward the Sea of Japan. We arrived after midnight in a small town in Niigata Prefecture at an inn named after its homeland, Yukiguni, the “Snow Country.” The Yukiguni is spiritually about as far from Tokyo as one can go and still be in Japan. An isolated pocket of mountain villages on the western side of Honshu island, the Yukiguni is to winter what Nikko is to fall. In the peak of the season, snow settles several feet thick over the region, piling in milky dunes atop black tile roofs and gathering in mounds along every thoroughfare. Instead of the glass forests of Tokyo, here open fields outnumber the homes and only evergreens scrape the sky. Long ago, wealthy lords from the capital brought their mistresses here for furtive weekend trysts; now college boys bring their girlfriends for several days on the slopes.
“Please come inside,” the woman said. “Get warm around the fire and have some tea. The others have been waiting.”
We stepped out of our shoes and through a sliding door into a large, matted room, darkened by worn wooden panels and heavy, knotted beams. Faded prints of pine trees hung from the walls, stained by spots of dripping water which had paused on their way to the floor. The cold air from the room stung my face. I looked but could see no fire.
“You’re here,” Hara called, dragging his legs from beneath a quilt-covered table. He bowed to Cho, his sempai, or senior, at college, greeted Chieko, then slapped me on the back. “Bruce-san,” he said. “It’s been a long time. I want you to meet my fiancée.”
Emiko Kawakami was small and perky, with long hair and a marshmallow nose. With her shocking-pink sweater and lipstick to match, she looked like the flouncy models on Japanese television who pitch everything from mouthwash to life insurance with little more than a wink and a bow.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Bruce,” she said with a slight giggle. “Are you related to Bruce Lee?”
“Um, he’s my father,” I said.
She thought for a moment, then turned toward Hara. “Uso,” she said. “He’s kidding me, right?”
From behind, another man stepped forward.
“Good evening,” he said. “My name is Komaba. This is my younger brother, Tomo.”
Komaba, who had also been a member of the international club, worked alongside Hara in the same Tokyo bank. He was clean-cut, with a button-down blue Oxford shirt and a bright green down ski vest. His younger brother, although close to twenty, still wore his hair in a junior-high-school-style crew cut. After the usual bows and how-have-you-beens, we lapsed out of formality and sought refuge under the quilt.
I pushed my legs underneath the table, and my feet fell into a hole in the floor and came to rest on what felt like a fire. I stole a glance under the quilt and saw that the heat came instead from a bright red bulb. This was an old-fashioned kotatsu, Cho explained, a Japanese hot seat. The earliest kotatsu consisted of a cavity carved into the foundation of a house in which a charcoal fire could be embedded; modern technology has replaced the live fire with an electric heat lamp. Since most Japanese homes have no central heating, these toaster tables serve as the main source of heat for many people. Even families who have kerosene heat still have a kotatsu for central seating.
After a moment the old woman appeared from behind a curtain and set a small cup of green tea in front of each person. Her face, like the walls, had wrinkled with age, but her smile softened the lines. She settled on bended knees just off to the side of the table and began asking questions of her guests, like a seasoned kara-oke mama. A year had passed since their last visit, she said. Had anyone taken a trip? Was anyone planning to get married?
“I went to Australia on business last summer,” Komaba said, “and I’m moving to our London office in April. I’m afraid this will be my last year for a while.”
“London!” the woman gasped. “Sounds dangerous.”
“Not really,” he said. “It’s not like New York. I won’t need to buy a gun.”
“Mama-san,” Hara said, “I have an announcement: Emi-chan and I are getting married in June. We’re going to Hawaii on our honeymoon.”
“Congratulations,” she said. “And just think, Hawaii! I can’t believe you’re going that far. It really is true what they say: this is an international age.”
“Hey, Cho-san,” Komaba said, “why aren’t you going abroad?”
“Maybe I will,” he said. “But someone has to look after your truck when you’re gone.”
“Do you want to buy it?”
“Perhaps. I’ll have a look tomorrow.”
“Oh, tomorrow,” the old woman exclaimed. “You will want to go skiing. You’d better hurry off to bed.”
We pulled our legs from the “fire” and padded off obediently to the next room, where seven bedrolls had been laid across the floor. A cookie was resting by each pillow, and a kerosene stove was aglow by the door.
The next morning when we arrived at the base of the mountain a little after ten o’clock, people were visible at every turn. According to a popular saying, every person in Japan is only one hour away from the sea and one hour away from the mountains. Nearly eighty percent of Japan is covered with mountains and virtually uninhabitable. Adding in the country’s already limited land supply, the result is that over one hundred million Japanese live and work in an area smaller than the state of South Carolina. Not surprisingly, a Japanese ski slope on a Saturday morning in February is a product of this equation. Multicolored specks of pink and green seemed to appear out of nowhere and spiral down the mountain on top of one another until they gathered in a heap at the bottom like discarded confetti. Five separate chairlifts scooped skiers toward the summit, pausing at the lodge halfway to the top. To add excitement to this already frenetic scene, loudspeakers strapped to every other tree blared synthetic pop songs from the latest American teen heartthrob: “Electric Youth. Feel the power and the EH-NER-GEE.”
At the top of the range our group divided. Cho, Har
a, and Komaba took off down the most treacherous path, carrying a video camera and several blank tapes to record their exploits for posterity. The two women headed down a less difficult course, while Tomo and I—a beginner and a recovering cripple—chose the least rigorous route to the bottom. We agreed to meet at one o’clock for lunch.
Wearing borrowed pants that were too short and rented boots that were too tight, I soon realized that skiing down this mountain would be far more difficult than teaching English on crutches. Tomo and I managed to make it down the hill and up the lifts several times before Cho came skidding up to us at midslope and offered some much-needed instruction.
“How did you get to be so good at this?” I asked.
“I went to college,” he said.
“To go skiing?”
“Not exclusively. We went hiking and bowling as well. Nowadays, my club even goes scuba diving in Okinawa.”
“And you complain that you never get a vacation…”
“Now, I don’t. I went skiing ten times a year in college, but I haven’t been ten times since I graduated. I am supposed to have fourteen vacation days a year, but this is the first one I’ve taken. Being a teacher is like being a mother: we never have a day off.”
The others had arrived for lunch before us and settled down in the cafeteria with matching bowls of beef curry over rice. I bought a large order and a small cup of tea, and took my place on the redwood bench.
“Excuse me,” Emiko said to me as I started eating. “May I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“It’s about your country.”
“Okay.”
“My father owns a real estate company in Tokyo, and he has decided that now is a good time to invest in America. Last month he sent me and my younger sister to New York to examine some office buildings.”
“Did you buy anything?”
“No. Well…” Her voice dipped down and lost its happy edge. “We looked at a lot of buildings, but the truth is, we had a lot of problems with our name.”
“What name?”
“The name of our company.”
“What is it?”
“Up River,” she said. “Up River Real Estate Company.”
“And how did you choose that name?”
“Because of Bridgestone Tire. Do you know this company? It was started by a man named Ishihashi. Ishihashi means ‘stone bridge’ in Japanese, so when he started his company, he named it Bridgestone.”
The others nodded at the story.
“My father’s name is Kawakami,” she continued, “which means ‘river up.’ When he started an international company, he named it ‘Up River.’”
“He sounds very smart,” Chieko said.
“But every time we said our name, the Americans would laugh. Can you tell me why, Mr. Bruce?”
“I think so,” I said. “The name of your company is very similar to the English expression ‘up the river,’ which means to be in prison. Some people may have thought that your name was a joke or that you had criminal connections.”
“Oh no!” she shrieked. “I am so ashamed.”
Like many others, the Kawakamis had decided that having international status begins with having an international-sounding name. English has such appeal as the lingua franca of modern life that the Japanese are labeling everything from toilet seats to hotel chains with exotic English terms. Supermarkets feature such goods as “Dish of Quickie” curry sauce, and restaurants welcome customers with slogans like “NICE EAT YOU?” In Sano I saw a pregnant woman with a T-shirt that said “WAY OUT, BUT CLASSIC”; and an advertisement in the train station advised new husbands to “carve a ham as if you were shaving the face of friend.” All these foreign expressions, however, seemed less a sign of increased internationalization than an indication of how superficially most Japanese understand the West.
After lunch that day on the slopes, Cho and Komaba went off to the vending machines at the end of the room and returned with drinks for everyone.
“We bought a new type of beer,” they announced. “ ‘The Winter’s Tale.’”
“Oh, that sounds delicious,” Chieko said. “I saw it advertised on TV.”
“Why is it called ‘The Winter’s Tale’?” Emi asked.
“Because they make it only five months out of the year,” Chieko said. “It’s a winter beer.”
“Maybe it’s just colder,” Emi suggested.
Hara suddenly interrupted. “Haven’t you ever heard of Shakespeare?” he asked impatiently.
“Yes…,” Chieko said.
“Well, this beer is named after one of his plays. That’s why there’s a quote from him on the can.”
“Oh,” she said, “I didn’t know.”
“It doesn’t really matter,” Cho said. “The labels are only for looks, the beer is all the same.” He opened up the can, took a sip, and splashed it around in his mouth. “It’s just as I expected,” he said. “The name may be from Shakespeare, but the beer is from Japan.”
One of the complaints I heard most often in Japan was that young people, such as Cho and his friends, are becoming too Westernized. Unlike their parents, they have traveled abroad, honing their tastes in such exotic haunts as Surfer’s Paradise in Australia and the Great Pyramids in Egypt. They are more accustomed to having money, and to spending it on conspicuous consumer goods like portable CD players and upscale, off-road pickup trucks. They are more apt to spurn formulaic marriages, and more inclined to take their unwed girlfriends for weekends of escape. Mr. C, in contrast, had never traveled abroad, had never been skiing, and rarely went anywhere with his wife. Yet if Cho and his friends are any indication, the reports of the death of Japanese culture are grossly exaggerated.
“Hey, little brother,” Komaba called as soon as we slid our legs under the table for dinner, following our evening bath, “why don’t you pour everyone some beer?”
“Hai,” Tomo shouted, bounding to his feet and dashing off to the kitchen without comment.
“We have to train him to be obedient,” Komaba explained. “He just joined the cheering club at his university in Osaka.”
“I hear those clubs are very strict,” Chieko said.
“It’s true,” Komaba said. “They meet every day and practice special mental training. They march around the campus screaming chants in the afternoon. Last year they even made a special trip to Tokyo to sing and pay their respects to the emperor.”
“It sounds spooky,” Emiko said. “It reminds me of the army.”
“Maybe, but right now he is a freshman, so he is learning how to obey his elders. That’s important for anybody to learn.”
“Excuse me for being late,” the boy barked as he came rushing back into the room. “I present you with beer.” He made his way around the circle, pouring beer in each person’s glass. When he finished, we raised our glasses and cheered: “Kanpai.”
“Hey, Tomo-kun,” Emiko said as she sampled the sautéed scallops and pickled fish, “why did you join that club?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I saw a similar group on television singing at a baseball game. I thought it looked interesting. They had a lot of group spirit.”
’That’s wonderful,” she said. “So many students today don’t think about the Japanese spirit. They just think about themselves.”
“That’s right,” Chieko added. “We had a young teacher come to our school this year, and he didn’t want to stay late or lock up the building, as new teachers are supposed to do. He only thought about what time he could leave.”
“It’s worse in Tokyo,” Komaba said. “I had to interview people for the bank recently, and half of the students couldn’t even speak proper Japanese. It was embarrassing.”
We finished the appetizer, and the old woman set down a huge wooden boat of fresh sushi in the center of the table. “This is the life,” Hara said. He plucked a sample from the tray, dragged it through a dish of soy sauce, and dropped it in one piece onto his tongue. “Most students don’t und
erstand this. All they eat is McDonald’s hamburgers and Dunkin’ Donuts.”
“You people sound just like your parents,” I said. “You even sound like my parents.”
“But it’s true,” Cho said. “Japanese students just do what others around them are doing. If it’s winter, they go skiing. If it’s summer, they go diving.”
“But you go skiing,” I said, “and you’d go diving if you could.”
“Yes,” Emiko said, “but we are not shinjinrui.” She spat out this last word as if the mere mention of it would poison her meal.
The others mumbled in assent. Komaba asked his brother to pour more beer.
“What’s the difference between you and the ‘new types’?” I asked.
“Shinjinrui are people who cannot think for themselves,” Komaba said. “I went to buy a coat the other day in Tokyo, and all I could find were leather jackets. Two years ago it was football jackets from America; then it was navy pea coats. This year it’s leather. The people who buy these coats are shinjinrui.”
“The problem,” Komaba said with a tone of authority, “is that with all the American movies and fashion clothes, students have forgotten what it means to be Japanese.”
“Do you remember what Kana said the night of our go-con?” Hara asked.
“She said that Japan would soon rule the world,” I said.
“I don’t think it’s true,” he said, “but I think she made a good point. Our parents bowed down to Americans because they won the war. But since Americans became rich, they have forgotten how to work. I’m afraid that the same may be happening to Japan. The shinjinrui have lost the will to work. They think the world is all discos and dates.”
“Hey, little brother,” Komaba called, “why don’t you show Bruce-san what you learned in your club? Show him what the Japanese spirit used to be like.”
