A Thousand Stitches

by Constance O'Keefe

  Mother was flushed with excitement as we walked back. “Yoshie, things have changed so much,” she said to her sister. “What an impressive parade! The young men looked so resolute and so proud.”

  “Well, we want to show our support and send the troops off in style,” said Aunt Yoshie. “The girls like the excitement of seeing the soldiers and being part of the crowd.”

  “Yes,” said Mother, “they looked so cute waving their flags.”

  It was all over by noontime, and that afternoon Mother and I moved into our city house. I was now a resident of the Yanai-machi neighborhood of Matsuyama City on Shikoku Island, in Japan. Japan, the Land of the Rising Sun. I was Japanese.

  We settled in, establishing our routines. I was fitting in fine at Bancho. We went a few times to the Ishii Village house, and I loved the wide-open spaces there. But I wouldn’t be playing there in the summer because, on the Japanese schedule, school continued through most of the summer months.

  On June 1, we switched to our summer uniforms, trading the heavy black wool for cooler gray cotton. It was about then that a visitor arrived one day on a motor scooter. He introduced himself to Mother as Yamamura, a teacher at Matsuchu. Everyone talked about Matsuchu all the time: it was the city’s prestigious middle school. “Middle” school for Japanese boys of those days followed eight years of elementary school and was the equivalent of high school in the States.

  I listened to Yamamura-sensei explain to Mother that he taught English and music at Matsuchu, and that he had heard that her son spoke perfect English. “I’m sure you’re aware, Mrs. Imagawa, that young children can easily forget a second language if they don’t have a chance to use it. That would be a tremendous waste in the case of your son. I think I could help by introducing your Isamu to the American missionary family that has been living in the big house just across from Bancho for about a decade.”

  “Well,” she said, “I suppose that would be fine. Isamu’s father has always been proud that his skills in both languages are so good.”

  When Yamamura-sensei explained that he had already spoken to the Graham family, and that they were willing to have me visit them every Sunday, Mother readily agreed. She was pleased to be able to take Yamamura-sensei’s advice; he was an important person in Matsuyama. Plus, since he had made all the arrangements, she didn’t have to try to deal with the Grahams in English. Mother was, without question, completely Japanese herself, and I know she was happy to be home in Japan where she could communicate perfectly rather than stumbling as she always did in San Francisco. But still, I think she missed our old life somewhat. Maybe she thought I did too. And I think it must have been lonely for her without Father.

  The next Sunday was the first of many I would spend with the Graham family. Morgan, their oldest son, was exactly my age, and we became great friends. Sundays were now given over to hiking with Reverend Graham, who was eager to be outdoors when morning services were finished, to games and sports of all sorts with Morgan, to family dinners of fried chicken and apple pie, and to hymn singing in the parlor after dinner. There were no more excursions with Mother to watch the parades of new recruits marching to the station and off to war. My Sundays were now taken up with “Rock of Ages.”

  When my second year at Bancho began, the schoolyard had a new statue of Ninomiya Kinjiro. Kinjiro was a poor Edo-era boy who had long been held up for children as a model of honesty, diligence, thrift, and moderation. His story was no longer just a lesson of how a poor boy could succeed and prosper; it was suddenly a model for the kind of behavior the government wanted to inspire in young people all around the country—the ideals of self-sacrifice and hard work were now promoted because they served to aid the nation and the war effort. I was fascinated by the statue of the earnest boy with his bare feet, his bundle of gathered firewood on his back, and his gaze fixed on a book even as he trudged through his daily chores. I was so interested that on the second day of the new school year, I got to Bancho early so I would have time to myself to inspect the statue thoroughly. As I was doing so, Principal Tomihisa came up behind me and said, “Well, Imagawa, I see you admiring our new statue. It’s impressive, isn’t it? And now that we’re lucky enough to have our own statue of Kinjiro, I hope it’ll help to remind you every day of the important goals we talked about at assembly yesterday.”

  “Yes, Principal Tomihisa,” I said, wondering if somehow the fact that the word oriental had just popped into my mind for the first time in a year somehow showed on my face.

  “Run along now,” he said. “You don’t want to be late.” As I did, I resolved to pay better attention to what my teachers told me—I might look Japanese but I still had a way to go before I really fit in.

  Although it was never spoken about, I think the real reason my parents decided to go back to Matsuyama was that the Depression was wearing on them in San Francisco. They were not advancing as Mother believed they should. Father’s jobs—clerk in a book store, shipping agent at a trucking company—were never, I think, what she thought appropriate, and the salaries were far too meager. I’m sure she thought things at home would be a bit better. The Imagawa family had been prominent for generations in Matsuyama and in Ishii Village, where it owned a great deal of land. I think Mother decided to reclaim that status for herself and for me. Finishing elementary school in Japan would give me time to get acclimated and prepare for the Matsuchu entrance examination. A Matsuchu education would be the first step toward a successful life for me in Matsuyama.

  Father arrived home the second summer we were back in Japan. Mother was displeased that he had not brought anything from our Cedar Street house with him, and even more displeased when she learned how little he had sold everything for. When he stepped off the ferry, he said, “Isamu, how you’ve grown. How tall and strong you’ve become.” At first, it was strange to have him around again, even though I was happy to see him and happy that we were all together again.

  Later that first week, when I was relating what we had learned at school about the advances of the Japan’s Kanto Army of the East in China, Father said, “It’s not just that my boy is growing tall and strong, he’s also grown a whole new set of opinions.” He never said anything like that again, but I think now that he must have been astonished at the changes in me. At that point, I needed no coaxing to hold forth on Japan’s military prowess and the nobility of the Yamato race.

  Father wanted to spend as much time as possible at Ishii Village. Our family didn’t actually farm; the land was all rented out to tenant farmers. Father said he loved to be out in the open and that that was the best part of leaving San Francisco behind. He was especially fond of a creek on the edge of our Ishii property. He and I went fishing often. It was easier than our excursions from Japantown to Tiburon, where he had occasionally taken me to catch rock cod. Now, we just strolled through the fields and spent a peaceful summer afternoon. What was the same was the special time with Father.

  That first summer, one morning when we were staying in Yanai-machi, Father walked me up Okaido, Matsuyama’s shopping street, to the city’s main street, where municipal and prefectural buildings flanked the broad boulevard beyond which the Castle hill rose. From there we took the trolley out to the city’s far suburbs and Dogo, Japan’s oldest hot spring. But the hot spring wasn’t our destination that afternoon. From the trolley station we climbed the hill and hiked to Ishiteji Temple, which was having a festival. This was my first time in a Buddhist Temple. Outside we saw a large group of people dressed all in white. Each of them was wearing a large inverted-bowl-shaped straw hat.

  “Father, why are there so many priests?” I asked.

  “Isamu, they’re pilgrims, not priests,” he laughed. “You really are still an American kid, aren’t you? There may be lots of priests, but not that many. Here in Shikoku there’s a special pilgrimage tour. The pilgrims dress in white and walk all around the whole island. They visit eighty-eight temples. It usually takes months. They are following the steps of a pilgrimage circuit
established by Kukai, Kobo Daishi. Do you know who he is?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Well, he was born in Shikoku more than a thousand years ago. He became a monk, traveled to China, and brought Buddhism to Japan. He was also a great educator. He opened schools that were open to everyone, not just aristocrats.”

  “Oh,” I said hesitantly, trying to absorb all of this religious talk.

  “And,” said Father, who probably understood my confusion all too well, “one more thing to help you remember what we’ve seen today. Do you know that daruma dolls are in the image of the Indian monk ­Bodai-Daruma, or Bodidharma, who three centuries before Kobo Daishi, brought his version of Buddhism to China from India? He taught martial arts as well as Zen Buddhism.”

  “Yes,” I said with relief. Daruma gave me some footing in the conversation.

  “So the next time you get one of those roly-poly dolls with just one of its eyes painted in and make a wish with a promise that you’ll paint in the other eye when it comes true, you’ll think of Buddhism, the discipline of martial arts, the pilgrimage, and Ishiteji Temple. Let’s go in.”

  The main gate and the pagoda were impressive, and the temple’s many gravestones eerie. Father mentioned that the temple’s architectural style was Chinese and told me that both the main gate and the pagoda dated from the fourteenth century.

  An alley of stalls was set up for the festival. It was crowded, but everyone was smiling and cheerful. There were stalls with games, stalls with fortunes, stalls with second-hand goods, and stalls with all sorts of food and drink. I inhaled the sweet, pungent scent of miso paste on grilling seafood. It made me hungry, and the happy crowd and the rich smell filled all my senses and reminded me of an excursion in San Francisco. The Japanese fleet had come to town and opened one of its frigates to the public on the weekend. Mother, Father, and I toured the ship. I was awed by the power of the vessels and the vigor of the seamen. They were young, strong, and very handsome in their uniforms. They stayed in town for a week, and after our visit to the port, we saw them walking the length and breadth of the city, taking in all the sights. What stayed with me the longest, however, was the smell at the wharf of the paint of the frigate. That smell still filled all my senses as we stepped back on land. From then on, my idea of the Navy was positive and linked with the smell of paint.

  As we walked away from the Temple, Father stopped and pointed out a large weathered stone outside the gate. “We probably should have stopped on the approach to the Temple,” Father said. “This is something you should see. Take a look.”

  I walked closer and saw characters carved into the stone. They were worn down but I could read them, and they were all simple enough that I had no trouble understanding them: Namu Daishi / Ishite no tera yo / ine no hana. Praise Daishi / the temple at Ishite / rice plants in bloom.

  “Nice, isn’t it,” said Father. “It was written by Shiki, a Matsuyama hometown hero and famous haiku poet. I’ve always liked our city’s romance with poetry in general and haiku in particular.”

  Before we got on the trolley, we toured the arcades around the hot spring. Shop after shop featured Dogo souvenirs. One cake shop was crowded with tourists, who emerged back into the arcade with big grins and shopping bags with the logo of the Dogo souvenir. Father gave me a little push and said, “We can’t buy any of them today, but go take a look.” I wiggled to the front of the crowd. The machine making the cakes clanked and whirred in mechanical splendor. After a few minutes, Father called to me over the crowd, “Isamu, come. Let’s go. We need to get on the trolley and start back.”

  5. SAM

  Matsuyama, 1935–1937

  I was never as good a student at Bancho as Mother wanted me to be. So Mother, Father, and I were all pleasantly surprised when I passed the entrance exam for Matsuchu. I started in April of 1935, or Showa 10. The system of referring to years in terms of the length of the reign of the Emperor, which was something I had been taught but never really understood at Kimmon Gakuen in San Francisco, was now fully familiar.

  Matsuyama Chugakko—almost always shortened to “Matsuchu”—Matsuyama’s most prestigious secondary school, graduated its first class in 1879, Meiji 12. But its real fame came in 1906, Meiji 39, with the publication of Natsume Soseki’s Botchan. Botchan is one of Japan’s most famous novels, and every Japanese knows it, or at least knows about it, the way Americans know about Huckleberry Finn. Soseki is so famous that in 1984 the Japanese government put his picture on the 1,000-yen bill.

  As a bright Tokyo University graduate with no particular prospects, Soseki was recruited to teach in Matsuyama. He lasted only one year at Matsuchu, the school year 1895–96. Soseki was miserable away from the cosmopolitan capital. He had no talent for suffering gladly his foolish colleagues, pompous supervisors, and sluggish students. But he did have a talent for skewering all those local characters. The put-upon narrator of Botchan—a teacher at a higher school in a provincial backwater dissatisfied with his lot in life—spends the entire tale in a beleaguered why me mode. Botchan is endearing because some of its most hilarious scenes poke fun at the narrator himself.

  For Soseki, the best thing about Matsuyama was Shiki, a young poet with whom he formed a deep friendship. And just as the Midwest s­urvived Sinclair Lewis, Matsuyama survived Soseki and Botchan. In fact, by the time I arrived in Matsuyama, Soseki and Shiki were revered local heroes. They had put Matsuyama on the map, and made it famous for the whimsical characters of Soseki’s novel and the tiny perfect jewels of Shiki’s haiku.

  For me, there were lots of new things about Matsuchu. First, it was a boys-only school. The girls from Bancho who continued their education past the elementary years attended either the Prefectural Girls’ High School, or Saibi, a private academy. Officially, we no longer had any contact with them: there was a strict no fraternization policy, and boys and girls were completely separated. And that’s why one of the other new things about Matsuchu was so good. It was twice as far from Yanai-machi as Bancho, about a twenty-five minute walk. To get to Matsuchu, I had to walk almost the entire length of Okaido, Matsuyama’s main shopping street. I was usually in a group with my buddies. And we almost always saw the girls across the street, headed for their schools, which were in the opposite direction. I was always happy to see my old friends and classmates and at first had trouble understanding why suddenly they were supposed to be exotic. Without knowing what motivated me, or any of us, I was an enthusiastic participant in the hijinks the boys devised to get the attention of the girls. There were often times when the groups on the two sides of the road collapsed in giggles. But as time passed, the girls really did begin to seem exotic and alluring. We desperately wanted them to notice us.

  Eventually, I really began to treasure the few occasions when I was by myself and saw my Bancho classmate Michiko Shizuyama. If I saw Michiko “alone” like this, it made my whole day, and I still hold those memories dear. Michiko’s parents were the proprietors of a small sweets and sundries shop on Okaido, and on days when I didn’t see her, I walked especially slowly as I passed the shop.

  Matsuchu also featured a lot more regimentation. Of course we wore uniforms. They were on the same military model as the Bancho uniforms, but they had the characters for matsu and chu stamped on their bright gold buttons, and our caps sported a distinctive patch with the same characters. Mother was delighted the first day I put on my Matsuchu uniform, and I must admit that I was quite proud of it myself. Father commented on how different I looked from my San Francisco days and I heard him say to Mother the first morning I left the house in my new uniform, “Now that he’s getting bigger, it’s much too easy, isn’t it, to imagine the military uniform I fear the future holds for him.”

  I found the rigmarole about the book bags much less agreeable. But I had to obey. We were all issued a standard bag and instructions on how to use it. On the way to school, we were to carry it slung across our chests from our left side, switching to the right side on the way home. Ridiculous,
but we obeyed.

  The old Japanese proverb about the nail that sticks up getting hammered down may be a bit dated today, but it was absolutely true then. Uniformity and conformity were the rule. Each day began in the broad yard in front of the school. It was our playground, but also our morning assembly site. As soon as we arrived, we ran to our classrooms, left our book bags at our desks, and then hurried to the schoolyard. Each class lined up in double rows, facing east. The home room teachers stood in front of the rows of their students. The principal, standing on a raised platform at the front of the assembly, faced the students. On the barked command of the head teacher, the students, their teachers, and the principal bowed to each other and shouted “Ohayo gozaimasu,” Good morning! The principal then turned so he too, faced east, toward Tokyo, and he, with the rest of us, followed the next command of the head teacher, “To the Imperial Palace, deepest bow!”

  Also new was military training as part of the school curriculum. This was in addition to our regular physical education classes, which included calisthenics, judo, kendo, other martial arts, baseball, and other team sports. Matsuchu, like every secondary school in the country, had military officers on its faculty. First-year students at Matsuchu learned to march and handle a rifle; all of our training strictly complied with army regulations. And it took place daily. When it rained, we were excused from marching and drilling but had to listen to lectures on military history and strategy. So I was only twelve when I began hauling about one of those long rifles and first learned to name the parts. We were proud that the Model 38 infantry rifle we trained with was the one actually used in the army. I’m sure I’m not the only Japanese my age with memories of running my finger over the Imperial chrysanthemum crest stamped right on the Model 38.