A Thousand Stitches
Page 28
Ronin Literally, “masterless samurai”; used to describe students who take time off from school to prepare for entrance exams for the next educational level
Saikeirei Deepest bow
Sake Japanese rice wine
Sakura Cherry blossoms
Samazama First word of a Bashō haiku
Samurai Japanese warrior
-san Honorific title used in lieu of Mr., Mrs., or Ms. Appended to family names as a suffix
Sashiko Japanese traditional craft stitch
Sembazuru Literally, “A Thousand Cranes”; title of the 1952 novel by Yasunari Kawabata, winner of the 1968 Nobel Prize for Literature
Sembei Japanese rice crackers
Senninbari “Thousand stitch belt;” scarf-like white cloths hand-stitched with red crosses, typically made for men serving in the Japanese military by their wives, sweethearts, or female relatives. In order to have stitches made by a “thousand” different hands, those making senninbari for their loved ones asked friends, neighbors, and even strangers in public places to add stitches.
Sensei Literally, “teacher.” Honorary title for teachers, doctors, etc. Can replace the honorific “san” as the suffix used with family names
Seto no Hanayome Literally “Seto Bride.” Seto Naikai is Japan’s Seto Inland Sea, between the main island of Honshu and Shikoku, the smallest of Japan’s four main islands.
Shamisen Three-stringed musical instrument; somewhat similar in sound to a banjo
Shinkansen Literally, “New trunk line”; Japan’s bullet train
Shiso Perilla; beefsteak plant leaf
Shitamachi Tōkyō’s traditional “downtown”; Asakusa and other neighborhoods in the eastern, older part of the city, near the Sumida River
Shōchū Alcoholic drink made from potatoes
Showa Name of the Japanese era from 1925–1989; name of the reign of Emperor Hirohito
Soba Japanese buckwheat noodles
Sokaijin Evacuee from the city to the countryside
Sukiyaki Japanese beef stew dish prepared at the table fondue-style
Sumo Japanese wrestling
Sumi Black calligraphy ink made from charcoal
Suribachi Mortar
Surikogi Pestle
Sushi Raw fish and/or vegetables served atop canapés of rice or wrapped in rice and seaweed rolls that are then sliced into individual pieces
Takuan Japanese pickle made from daikon white radish; typically yellow in color
Tanchōzuru Japanese crane
Tatami Woven straw mats used for flooring
Tenno Heika Banzai “Long Live the Emperor”
Tōdai Tokyo University nickname (Tōkyo + Daigaku)
Tokkō Wartime civilian secret police; “thought” police
Tokonoma Alcove in a traditional Japanese room, typically used to display a hanging scroll and a flower arrangement
Tsubame Swallow
Tsutusdori Oriental cuckoo
Umeboshi Picked plum
Yakyu Baseball game, a term that replaced the foreign word besuboru during the war
Yasukuni Tokyo Shinto Shrine famous for its cherry blossoms; place where those killed in service to Japan are enshrined. In that respect, comparable to Arlington Cemetery, but controversial, especially with Japan’s neighbors because individuals adjudged war criminals after World War II are among those enshrined there
Yokaren Japanese naval recruits—often teenage farm boys—trained as aviators for suicide missions
Yuzu Japanese citrus
Bibliography
Suggestions for further reading
Axell, Albert & Hideaki Kase (2002). Kamikaze: Japan’s Suicide Gods. London: Pearson Education.
Batty, David (2004). Japan at War in Color. London: Carlton Books.
Blyth, R.H. (1963). A History of Haiku (Volumes One and Two). Tokyo: Hokuseido.
Brines, Russell (1944). Until They Eat Stones. New York: Lippincott.
Briscoe, Susan (2005). The Ultimate Sashiko Sourcebook. Devon, UK: David & Charles.
Cook, Haruko Taya & Theodore F. Cook (1992). Japan at War: An Oral History. New York: New Press.
Crew, Quentin (1962). Japan: Portrait of Paradox. New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons.
Dower, John W. (1993). Japan in War & Peace: Selected Essays. New York: New Press.
Dower, John W. (1999). Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. New York: Norton/New Press.
Frédéric, Louis (Kathe Roth trans.) (2002). Japan: Encyclopedia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Guillain, Robert (William Byron, trans.) (1981). I Saw Tokyo Burning. Garden City: Doubleday.
Havens, Thomas R. H. (1978). Valley of Darkness: The Japanese People and World War Two. New York: Norton.
Ienaga, Saburo (1978). The Pacific War, 1931–1945. New York: Pantheon Books.
Imamura, Shigeo. (2001). Shig: The True Story of an American Kamikaze. Baltimore: American Literary Press.
Jansen, Marius B. (2000). The Making of Modern Japan. Cambridge: Belknap Press/Harvard.
Kuwahara, Yasuo & Gordon T. Allred (2007). Kamikaze: A Japanese pilot’s Own Spectacular Story of the Famous Suicide Squadrons. Clearfield, UT: American Legacy Media.
Mikesh, Robert C. (1993). Japanese Aircraft Code Names & Designations. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Military/Aviation History.
Mikesh, Robert C. (1994). Zero: Combat & Development History of Japan’s Legendary Mitsubishi A6M Zero Fighter. Osceola, WI: Motorbooks International.
Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko (2002). Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko (2006). Kamikaze Diaries: Reflections of Japanese Student Soldiers. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Peter, Carolyn (2006). A Letter from Japan: The Photographs of John Swope. Los Angeles: The UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts and the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center.
Reichhold, Jane (2008). Basho: The Complete Haiku. Tokyo: Kodansha International.
Saito, Takafumi & William R. Nelson (2006). 102 Haiku in Translation: The Heart of Basho, Buson and Issa. North Charleston: BookSurge.
Senoh, Kappa (2002). A Boy Called H: A Childhood in Wartime Japan. Tokyo: Kodansha International.
Sheftall, M.G. (2005). Blossoms in the Wind: Human Legacies of the Kamikaze. New York: New American Library.
Spector, Ronald H. (1955). Eagle Against the Sun: The American War With Japan. New York: The Free Press.
Skulski, Janusz (2004). The Battleship Yamato: Anatomy of the Ship. Annapolis: The Naval Institute Press.
Terasaki, Gwen (1954). Bridge to the Sun. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.
Ueda, Makoto (1992). Basho and his Interpreters: Selected Hokku with Commentary. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Warner, Dennis & Peggy Warner, with Seno, Sadao (1982). The Sacred Warriors: Japan’s Suicide Legions. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
Wild Bird Society of Japan & Shinji Takano (1982). A Field Guide to the Birds of Japan. Tokyo: Kodansha International.
Wright, Harold (1979). Ten Thousand Leaves. Love Poems from the Manyoshu. Translated from the Japanese by Harold Wright. Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press.
Yamashita, Samuel Hideo (2005). Leaves from an Autumn of Emergencies: Selections from the Wartime Diaries of Ordinary Japanese. Honolulu: The University of Hawai’i Press.
Yoshikawa, Eiji (Charles S. Terry, trans; Edwin O. Reischauer, forward)(1981). Musashi. Tokyo: Kodansha International. (Original work published 1935–1939).
Yoshimura, Akira (Vincent Murphy, trans.) (1999). Battleship Musashi: The Making and Sinking of the World’s Biggest Battleship. Tokyo: Kodansha International.
Acknowledgements
When I was a graduate student who had never known anything but Philadelphia, Professor Shigeo Imamura and his wife, Isako, opened the world for me. They have been an important part of my life ever since
then. A Thousand Stitches started with Isako and her determination that her husband’s memoir have the effect he intended—to serve as a testament of peace.
Almost thirty years after I first met Isako, I was part of a group that scattered her husband’s ashes in San Francisco Bay on an overcast summer morning. After the ceremony and a celebratory lunch, we gathered in a hotel in Japantown. Isako showed us pictures from her life with her husband and from his time as an aviator and a member of the Special Attack Force—the kamikaze corps—of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Isako also showed us a manuscript Shig had written in his last years, and asked me and Johnnie Hafernik and Stephanie Vandrick to help get her husband’s memoir published. Thus, what we quickly came to call the “Shig Project” was born.
Ten years later, the Shig Project is a success. Professor Imamura’s memoir has been published in English (Shig: The True Story of an American Kamikaze, Baltimore: American Literary Press). The first edition in 2001 was followed by another in 2009. Thanks to the passion and dedication of Ken Oshima, a translation of the memoir was published in Japan in 2003 (Tokyo: Soshisha). Professor Imamura’s book and his work were honored at a special event at the University of San Francisco in November 2001. Many of Shig’s former colleagues and friends reminisced, and Professor Uldis Kruze set the memoir in its historical context. The book and Professor Imamura’s life are featured on a website that displays the amazing photographs used to illustrate the memoir. I recommend the website to those interested in more background: www.shigproject.com. Finally, thanks to Mrs. Imamura’s generosity, endowed fellowships at the University of San Francisco and Michigan State University honor her husband’s life’s work as a cross-cultural educator. The fellowships support graduate students affiliated with USF’s Center for the Pacific Rim and MSU’s English Language Center, and give others interested in Shig’s life and work one more way to honor him and continue his life’s work.
For those of us who worked on the memoir, the best, and most wonderfully astonishing aspect of the Shig Project has been the places it has led us and the people we have encountered. All of our experiences have been positive. Our horizons have expanded; we have learned so much; we have met scores of kind and interesting people, far many more than those mentioned here, and each of them has been supportive and helpful. My thanks to all of them.
One day not too long after the event in San Francisco, Isako told me about how one of her friends had suggested that the story—Shig’s and hers—needed another version, one that included the romance her typically-Japanese-style-reticent husband had omitted. I agreed and was honored when Isako agreed that I could try my hand at turning the memoir into a novel—just before I was overwhelmed with what have I gotten myself into? But, like all of the journeys the Shig Project has taken me on, this too has been a joy.
I have many, many to thank. Some are others of Shig’s protégés: Johnnie Johnson Hafernik, Charles J. Quinn, Michael Raleigh, and Stephanie Vandrick. Shig and Isako made deep impressions on all of them, and they have carried Professor Imamura lesson’s forward through distinguished academic and publishing careers of their own. Special thanks to Charlie Quinn for his assistance with literary Japanese and translations. The assistance all these old friends offered has made me grateful, all over again, for the bonds we formed many years ago as graduate students. Others who have helped never met Professor Imamura, but were touched by his story and the message he was so passionate to deliver. They provided invaluable assistance in the earlier stages of the Shig Project and have given me generous support as I worked to turn the story into a novel. They all have my deepest gratitude and affection: Eiji Kanno, Fumiko Kanno, Etsuko Kawasaki, Mamoru Kabori, and Ryoichi Miura.
The love, patience, and encouragement of Johnnie Johnson Hafernik, Mary O’Keefe, and Michael W. Dolan have enriched my life and supported and sustained me as I’ve worked on this latest version of Shig and Isako’s story. Stacey Bredhoff, Janice Fitzgerald, Nina Johns, Marianne Klugheit, Monica Petersson, and Polly Rich have provided the same support I have been privileged to have for decades. My thanks too to Katherine Andrus, Anders Bengtsson, Charles F. Donley, John Hafernik, Don Hainbach, Michael Feldman, Colin Flynn, Carlos Grau-Tanner, Leslie Lugo, Mark MacKeigan, Nancy Malan, Mike Muller, Carl Nelson, Marilena Perrella, Bruce Rabinovitz, Amy Sloan, Joanne Szafran, Antoinette Tatta, and Carlos Tornero. Special thanks to Sen Huang and to Robert E. Bristow and all of his capable, caring colleagues.
Finally, my thanks to other members of the Washington, D.C. area writing community and other friends who, along with Isako, generously read drafts and offered constructive criticisms along with their support: Kathy Anderson, Alana Black, Frances Holmes, Mark Klugheit, Nandini Lal, Ann McLaughlin, Junko Mukoyama, Ilse Munro, Bernadette Pedagno, Judith Penski, Cathleen Peterson, Lynn Purple, Dan Ryan, David Schmidt, Briana Spencer, Madeline Tedesco, Mark Toner, Natasha Tynes, and James Yagley. All errors are mine.
About the Author
Constance O’Keefe (1948–2011) taught English for a year in Japan. She worked at the Japan National Tourist Organization, the Japan Society, and the Consulate General of Japan in New York. With Eiji Kanno, she co-authored Japan Solo, a guide to Japan for foreign travelers and residents. She worked for twenty-five years as a lawyer in international aviation law, and as an adjunct law professor at several institutions on the East Coast. She was co-editor with Isako Imamura, Johnnie Johnson Hafernik, and Stephanie Vandrick of Shig: The True Story of an American Kamikaze–A Memoir by Shigeo Imamura.