The Cherry Blossom Rarely Smiles

by Ioana Lee

  “Otoosan, my parents want to become grandparents as long as their daughters want to become mothers. They are still young like you are and I believe that they have the right to enjoy life and themselves, without children. That being said, they didn’t teach us to marry quickly and have children right away. They encouraged us to study, cultivate ourselves and develop our inborn intelligence and talent so that we could become fulfilled individuals, personally and professionally. They wanted us to become strong and independent from our own efforts, not to become bound slaves, dependent and supported by our husbands—obedient, just like Japanese housewives.”

  I bit my tongue after saying that. I dared to continue with my thought, while Ken and all the other family members froze: “And Otoosan, what’s most important is that nature shows us that any rabbit female can have plenty of children, but she can’t have master and PhD degrees in philosophy, like my sisters have.”

  That being said, I’d like to end the chapter on “having children” from my Nipponese story. Had I been a different person, this story would have been a rather short one: “I have children and cook all day. My husband goes to the brothel and I know it, yet I’m not allowed to say a word. Despite all this, I am of noble race and part of the high class!”

  Whenever someone tries to intentionally annoy me, or better said provoke me, I can become very bitter and pungent in my replies. I don’t want to do it, but I can’t hold back. After all I was trained as a linguist and words serve me to acquire knowledge, as working instruments and ways to get closer to people’s hearts, understand them or make myself understood. Occasionally I use words as a weapon, yet only to defend myself. Furthermore, to let the Japanese know what was on my mind and to try to reason with them in their own language was a huge effort and endangerment at the same time. You need courage for this, because you are forced to leave behind the subtleness that is always present in their communication, and try to propose, with brutal honesty, another perspective on reality. I approached them with a perspective that was totally unheard of and uncomfortable for them…

  In my conversation with Otoosan I felt a sort of sadistic contentment by being so direct and tough in my words. My only excuse was that I was defending myself, just like Kiku was by barking loudly whenever someone stepped by mistake on her tail. Even though the “provokers” weren’t aware of where their words might take the discussion and didn’t have the intention to annoy me, the cultural differences were flagrant and seemed to be even more unbearable.

  On one hand, I completely understood why they were always asking me about children, yet on the other hand, I wanted them to understand the reasons I wasn’t ready to do it at that moment or in the near future. This never happened because the differences in culture and mindsets were much deeper than they originally seemed. They were incapable of understanding me. For example, Ken’s family and I agreed that I would have children after the age of 30.

  “I promise that with the condition that until then I would be supported to follow my artistic career in Tokyo,” I said.

  “All right, but at 30 you’ll have a baby boy, ok?” requested Otoosan.

  I didn’t feel like going into the details and biological explanations of the sex of the child depending on the father’s genetics, so I innocently answered:

  “Well, I’ll have a… It will depend on what will come out. As long as it’s a healthy baby I’ll be happy!”

  “No, it has to be a baby boy so that he can carry our family’s name forward. We thought that you understood this before you got married…”

  Truth be told, there were a lot of things we didn’t understand about each other before Ken and I got married.

  “I think I want a baby girl,” I said.

  “Very good! Anyway, you’ll have two children. The first one should be a baby boy and the second one a girl.”

  I couldn’t stop wondering: “Does Otoosan know that this detail doesn’t depend entirely on me?!”

  “Ok Otoosan, I understand. I’ll have a baby boy.”

  “Bravo!!!”

  My answer made them all very happy, as if the baby boy had already been born.

  “But… I continued, the baby will be half Romanian, so he won’t be a full Kurosawa.”

  “Oh no! You are Ioana Kurosawa. You will be fully Japanese by then. Plus, the baby will be born here so it won’t be a problem.”

  “I’d like to give birth in my own country though.”

  “Oh no… This is not possible. You have to have him here in Japan.”

  “Ok, ok, but I want to teach him Romanian and send him off to international schools.”

  “International schools? No way! Their educational system is not good. He must be educated here in Japan, and just like Ken, he will go to study abroad after college.”

  Before Ken came to Romania he also studied at Cambridge.

  “During school break and summer vacation I’d like to take him to Romania, to visit with his grandparents.”

  “What grandparents? We will be sending them pictures. You still don’t understand that you don’t belong to your natural parents anymore? They offered you as a bride to our family. That’s what parents who have girls do. They have to surrender their daughters and understand that they will be left alone… but your parents have your sisters back home, anyway.”

  “No Otoosan! I think that you’re the one who doesn’t understand things. My parents didn’t give me to anyone. Ken and I fell in love and we got married. That’s it! It’s simple!”

  “No Ioana. They gave you away and they’re not your parents anymore. We are now your parents. I am your only father,” said Otoosan, filled with pride.

  My Trajan (famous Roman Emperor who conquered Dacia, later to become Romania) blood started boiling through my veins... Therefore, my child, birthed by me and solely by me, not by my parents-in-law, wouldn’t belong to me but to the Kurosawa family and all its future generations… He would belong to Otoosan. Where was Stephen the Great to explain to us how things would be with the future generations? It seemed as if we were speaking in Turkish, that’s how poorly we understood each other!

  “Your child will know that you were born in a different country, just like Shin’s wife, but that you are now Japanese. He wouldn’t be able to understand anyway what being a Romanian means. And yes, of course, he’ll go to visit Romania, but as a Japanese citizen.”

  “How about when he gets married? What if he decides to marry a foreigner?”

  A dead calm…

  “If she’s beautiful and smart like you are and looks like a Japanese, maybe! said Ken. I want to be the only one in the family who has a foreign wife. No, I won’t allow him to marry a foreign woman.”

  “What? Excuse me! If your parents didn’t allow you to marry me, you’d have listened to them or to your feelings?”

  “Ioana, I love you more than anything in this world, yet you have to understand that if my Grandmother, Obaachama, who is the head of the family, and all the other people down the family hierarchy, hadn’t accepted you, I wouldn’t have been able to marry you.”

  “Are you saying that all the things and events that we’ve been through have nothing to do with your feelings, but with the approval and acceptance of your family?!”

  “Yes, Ioana-san,” said Grandmother, softly. “Do you think that Your Parents would have accepted that you marry someone who comes from a class lower than the one of a judge?”

  Obaachama always talked calmly and wisely, in the most polite way possible. I couldn’t afford and did not have any desire to go against her word… But I had to be honest.

  “Yes Obaachama, my Parents allowed me and my sisters to choose what we thought was best for our lives. They trust us implicitly. Have they always been happy with what we have chosen for ourselves? That I don’t know for sure. I can’t stop wondering how it helps them as Romanian parents to know that I married someone from a noble family, who cares about me enormously, but who took me thousands of miles away from them.

/>   You see Obaachama, each culture has its charm and traditions. To ignore the subtleties and differences would mean to go against nature. What our families did was to somehow go against it all. I am guilty of doing it the most. That’s why I need to be understood and helped, not just supported financially. In any event, please allow me to end tonight’s conversation by telling you that I have PARENTS and I’ll have them for my entire life. Regarding children… we’ll talk more about it five years from now after I start my artistic career. I explained this to all of you before I married Ken, even though it went and still goes against your traditions and expectations. I’d do anything for the Kurosawa family, yet I owe it to myself to do something for me as well. Please allow me to evolve, mature and make progress. I don’t feel old at all. On the contrary, I feel excited and also ready to grow, gain experience and make the most out of my life. Let’s all be patient with one another, even if time is chasing us.”

  Futilities, tight laces, frugal friendships

  While I was in Tokyo I wanted so fervently to go against the family’s “wishes” and especially against Ken’s desires. He slowly but surely became more Japanese than Japan itself, unlike his more relaxed attitude when he was in Romania. So, I signed up at several modeling agencies. They took my measurements and photographs and all accepted me on the same day. As a result of this, the phone started ringing off the hook with job offers. Ken offered to be my manager, answer the phone and make decisions on my behalf. I trusted him implicitly and was very happy that he was willing to help me out. Now when I look back I smile to myself. The saying, “where there’s naivety, there’s drama as well!” held true in my situation. The truth of the matter was that at the time I didn’t find it abnormal when he refused job offers on my behalf. After all he was my manager. He explained to me afterwards that most offers were inelegant, not well paid, or for television programs intended for mediocre people, etc. Gradually, the phone started ringing less often, but I didn’t doubt for a second that there was a connection between that and my manager’s consistent refusals. ( this paragraph existed a few chapters ago!!) I notice several ideas repeat themselves way too often. I cannot really make a not for each and every single one of them.

  Ken was the one to both drive me and pick me up at my first castings, as I didn’t yet know Tokyo that well. He wouldn’t have left me by myself anyway, even though Tokyo is one of the safest cities in the world. The danger and uncertainty existed, as I got to understand much later, only in Ken’s mind.

  At one of the castings I met a Brazilian girl named Ana-Paula. She had beautiful features and skin, yet was obsessed with her hips, which were too prominent for the draconian measurements required by the Japanese fashion industry. She spoke English and Spanish and we both decided to communicate in Spanish. We both had Latin blood and were far away from home and family. This bonded us and helped us to rapidly become friends. After the casting, we decided to go out for a drink to get to know each other better. I called Ken to let him know that I was meeting a new friend and that I’d come home by subway. I told him that Ana-Paula and I had the same subway route and that from there I’d walk to a place where he could pick me up, so that I could arrive home safely. That was the moment when Ken started hating Ana-Paula, even though he had never met her. In his mind, she was the one stealing his wife away from him. Ana-Paula and I chit chatted a lot that day, about our countries, the Portuguese and Romanian language and their similarities… about how different and fascinating Japanese people were. She was 20 and I was 26. We usually met at castings and once in a while out in the city. When we weren’t together we talked on the phone for hours. Our friendship lasted until the waves of life had come to separate us.

  Everyone in Japan spent countless hours on the phone. The explanation for this was mostly technological: back then, they had such high-tech cell phones that you could use them from anywhere—in subways or elevated highways, in cars or the top of Tokyo Tower, basements or the 100th floor of a building, etc. Furthermore, the Japanese are so shy when talking face to face that they prefer to talk on the phone. It makes them more relaxed. The other side of the explanation had to do with long distances and infernal crowds. Cell phones brought people together easily and made them feel less lonely in the frantic world that was Japan at the time.

  I was often on the phone with Ana-Paula while shopping, working out, eating, commuting from one part of the city to another, etc. Ken was always jealous whenever I was speaking on the phone—whenever it wasn’t with him. He said that the connection with a fashion model could only degrade my education, especially when it came to a foreigner like Ana-Paula. He insisted that I’d only spend time with the Japanese and never mix with foreigners. He became absurd and wasn’t aware of it…

  I met Tina at another casting. It was a fashion show where they presented the original outfits worn by Gwyneth Paltrow in the film “The Talented Mr. Ripley.” At that time, they were launching the film in Japan.

  I was reluctant going to that casting. I felt lonely and sad in Japan. At most of the castings the international models, usually in a two-month contract, had priority. As for us, the ones who lived and worked in Japan, we weren’t that interesting for the fashion agencies. We were perceived as being too accessible. For me, at almost 26 years old, going to castings was courageous and daring, let alone dreaming to be selected. Because I looked like an anorexic teenager it seemed to give me a professional advantage, even if it was at the same time a personal disadvantage. At the time anorexics were in high demand.

  The day of the casting I woke up late. I had yogurt and kiwi for breakfast. I took a shower and put some foundation and transparent lipstick on. I threw on a pair of denims, a fashionable top (a nuance of green, yellow and light blue) and a pair of high heels. I left the house rushing, heading for the Ginza area. The agent had sent me a fax with a detailed map and told me to wait for him at the subway exit so that we could go together to the casting. I had to leave the house two hours prior to my appointment. It was a long distance away and required multiple subway transfers. I arrived there on time, as always.

  There were a lot of cosmopolitan and mottled people, agents and models from all over the world. Craziness! It seemed as if the Tower of Babel had capsized over Ginza. I didn’t really know what I was doing there. There were a lot of girls who looked superb, and I found it hard to maintain my confidence and self-esteem. I sat down in a corner, trying to ignore the razzle-dazzle around me. I was attentively studying the fidgetiness of their long legs and porcelain faces. I especially noticed the look in their catty eyes and the boredom on their young faces. Most were teenagers who had dropped out of school to become professional models. Consciously or unconsciously, they all chose to travel the world, work at a dizzying pace and deal with psychological problems related to their image, only to barely cope with their retirement at age 25. That was generally the age when the smartest ones had enough money to start businesses or marry famous rock stars, being that they couldn’t live in anything but luxury and constantly appear under the flashy floodlights.

  At the time I was reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s writings. I carried his book “The Beautiful and Damned” with me at the casting. It described perfectly the environment I was in. I never took it out of my purse because I didn’t want to insult my colleagues with my literary preferences, as most of them were into Sandra Brown at the time. I had the same strange feeling that I had in college when I was patiently expecting my turn for the oral exams… Even though there were big differences between the casting situations and my past college examinations, it didn’t stop me from taking the casting opportunities seriously. I say big differences because while in college I strived to pass the intellectual tests, which depended fully on my efforts and capabilities, while at the casting I was just presenting my genetic advantages, independent of my academic skills. At the casting I was just one of 200 sheep who were examined and harshly criticized if they didn’t match the physical requirements of some men who had questionable t
aste and preferences. The nicest way of saying this is that “the models’ looks didn’t fit their criteria.” Their looks were just a part of their overall esthetics, but no one seemed to care. The balance between their appearance and the depth of their soul was, as in many other instances, completely ignored.

  What fascinated me the most in that amalgam of cosmopolitan beauties was the mesmerizing linguistic variety: English, Japanese, Swedish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Dutch, etc. English was the most used language, yet the foreign models had many different accents and levels of understanding it. I avoided socializing so that I didn’t have to go through the same things I’d answered too many times to remember: “Do you speak English? What is your name? How do you pronounce that? Where are you from? What is your weight? How many years have you been in the industry? Are you international or local? What is your height? Can I see your portfolio?”… Each model felt like it was a must to study their competition’s portfolio. They made the whole process way too serious and complicated, as if it was an epistemology[xxiii] exam and they didn’t want to miss counting Wittgenstein’s statements in his Tractatus logicophilosophicus. Truly “the world is beautiful because it’s diverse” and because it is created by God.