When Mr. Azuma and his wife moved to Manchuria, his sister went with them, earning her keep by working in a Japanese restaurant. Right after the end of the war, she was kidnapped. This was done, apparently, by the head of a gang of bandits up in the mountains. He was neither Han Chinese nor Manchu. Rumor had it that it was in revenge for the killing of the man’s wife and children by Japanese soldiers. Soon afterward, the kidnapper himself died of some illness, and, incredibly, with the help of an elderly Chinese, Mr. Azuma’s sister found her way back to her brother. She then gave birth to a baby boy, but died from complications.
“And they say she was a real looker,” the fish seller told me, “but completely nuts.”
“Who, the sister?” I asked.
“Yeah, that’s what I heard,” he said.
Even as a child, apparently, she had been odd; some thought she was possessed. Once, when she put a curse on a stray cat, the cat died. People were afraid of her. As she lay on her deathbed, she’s said to have stared into space, pointed upward, and declared, “If my brother and his wife fail to raise this child and see him grow up as one of their own, I’ll curse the lot of them. And they’ll burn in hell!” With that she expired.
I wondered how much of this was made up by O-Tsune, but one thing was certain: the Azumas had brought Taro all the long way back to Japan with them. I would guess that O-Tsune probably tried to get rid of him along the way, but her husband stopped her. After hearing this story, I felt at least a touch of sympathy for her, despite the way she treated the boy. Trying to travel with two children must have been hard enough, but she was saddled with someone else’s child on top of it, and a nursing baby at that, in circumstances where every bite of food was vital for her own family. Why not leave the baby on the road? Why not just dump him? It wouldn’t have been at all unnatural for her to think of doing this, and it was no surprise that her anger and resentment had lasted so long.
A few weeks after this, the story reached the Utagawas’ ears.
On Sundays, in the morning anyway, Natsue’s husband took time off from work and relaxed. Natsue would tie on her apron rather purposefully and make everyone a Western breakfast. Even on my biweekly Sunday off, I had this breakfast with the family before I went out. The house filled with the smells of coffee perking and pancakes or French toast sizzling in the frying pan. When it was cold and the stove was lit, Takero often used to melt some chocolate for the girls. Even old Mrs. Utagawa had a Western breakfast on Sundays.
On that Sunday morning, he wrote the girls’ names in melted chocolate on their pancakes. To make it even more special, he did it in English instead of Japanese. “Here’s yours,” he said, passing a pancake with the large chocolate letters Y-U-K-O on it, and then did the same for Y-O-K-O.
Yoko eagerly reached out for her plate, saying, “You know Taro, the boy in our back yard? The other kids say he really should be one grade higher up, ’cause he’s a year older than us.”
After coming from the mainland and the chaos of moving around, he was inevitably behind in school. Afterward I learned that the public record showed his date of birth as May 5—Boy’s Day, a national holiday—1947. This seemed to me an indication that the Azumas couldn’t remember exactly when he was born and chose the date out of convenience when they finally got to register him as their third son. With the school year starting in April, it was more likely that he would have been in the same grade as Masayuki, Mari, and Yuko if he had been born a bit earlier than what the record showed.
“He can’t even read properly, and he’s supposed to be in third grade soon,” Yoko said scornfully, licking chocolate off her fingers. “He just sits there, so our teacher reads for him, and then he tries to repeat it. Kewpie is the only other one who can’t even read a sentence.”
“Yoko, you mustn’t say things like that,” her mother told her. Kewpie apparently was the name the children gave to a retarded girl in the class.
“Is he actually backward?” asked Takero.
Mrs. Utagawa answered this. “It isn’t likely. He seems to be the brightest of those three children.” This was the first time I was aware of her taking an interest in him.
“He’s not Japanese, that’s why he can’t read. Anyway, that’s what everybody says,” said Yoko.
“Not Japanese?” her father asked, puzzled.
“Yeah, they say he’s really Chinese.”
“So his mother is Chinese?”
“No, they’re all Japanese, but not him.”
At this point I decided to speak up. “That’s what the fish seller told me too.” I told them about Taro’s being the son of Mr. Azuma’s sister, about the Chinese bandit, and the sister’s death.
“There’s a Chinese girl in my class at Seijo,” Yuko said. “Her name is Ko. Written with the character for ‘high.’ Her family’s really rich, and they even have their own cook at home.”
“That’s different,” her mother said.
I rarely spoke to Takero, but that day I asked him, “Are there people in China who aren’t in fact Chinese?”
“Certainly there are,” he said, peering at me over his glasses. “It’s such a vast country. There are people who aren’t anything like the ordinary Chinese we know. And in Taiwan too.”
“It seems his father wasn’t one of those ordinary Chinese.”
“I see.” Then nodding to himself, “Amazing what can happen in life.”
Natsue pursed her lips and said, “I wish Mr. Azuma had told us that one of the children wasn’t his own.”
“Now that I think about it, there is something about him that doesn’t seem very Japanese,” Mrs. Utagawa murmured.
“What is he like?” asked Natsue, who hadn’t been paying much attention to what was going on in her back yard because she was always in Seijo. Mrs. Utagawa looked at me, and I did my best to describe him.
“Oh, I know who you mean,” Natsue said, nodding. “I thought the same thing when I saw him—a really dirty boy, but what an interesting face. So his father is Chinese?”
“Who cares where he comes from, anyway?” Takero said and turned to Yoko. “If anyone ever brings that up again in school, you tell them it doesn’t matter whether he’s Japanese or not. No, tell them, it’s better not to be Japanese.”
“Darling, I do wish you wouldn’t always be so extreme in your opinions.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have to be if we hadn’t started that stupid war.”
That was the end of the discussion.
THE FOLLOWING SUNDAY, Natsue made breakfast again; the smell of coffee filled the air. Yoko asked her father, “Papa, what’s a stepmother?”
Before he could reply, her sister piped up, “I know. It’s somebody who isn’t the real mother, so she’s mean to the kid.”
“Not all stepmothers are mean,” their father said, as evenly as he could. “There are plenty of nice stepmothers.”
Both of the girls seemed aware that Mrs. Utagawa was not their father’s biological mother, but they hadn’t figured out that this made her a “stepmother” herself.
“But I heard that Taro’s mother is mean to him because she’s a stepmother.”
“Who said that?”
“Kids in my class.”
“They’ve been spending too much time reading manga.”
“But it’s still true that she’s mean to Taro.”
Yoko was clearly enjoying having all of her father’s attention for the time being. She seemed resigned to the fact that Yuko was her mother’s favorite, so she tried hard at least to get some of her father’s affection.
“You always see Taro’s brothers out playing, but he never gets to play. He’s always made to do chores.”
“But isn’t he too young?”
“Maybe, but he’s one year older than me,” Yoko said with great seriousness, holding up her index finger.
“How much housework can a child that young really do, anyway?” Takero asked in my direction. I replied that I too had rarely if ever seen Taro playing outsi
de. Usually I’d see him scrubbing laundry at the well, or heading out, a cooking pot in his hand, on his way to pick up some tofu from the store.
“Still, when you think about it, in the old days, it was common to make children work, looking after the younger ones in the family,” he commented, apparently hoping to put a stop to this subject. But Yoko had something more to say.
“And they beat him all the time.” Her cheeks colored a bit, perhaps because she felt that her grandmother wouldn’t have wanted her to know something like this.
Her father was obviously disturbed. “Is that so? I’d have thought Azuma wouldn’t allow it.”
“No, it only happens when he isn’t there. Mrs. Azuma and his brothers slap him around.”
I myself was surprised how much Yoko knew about what was happening in the back yard.
“And where is Roku the whole time?” Takero asked, turning to face me.
I told him that for one thing, Roku wasn’t the kind of man to take a stand against that sort of thing. And since he hadn’t been feeling well lately, he needed O-Tsune to look after him, which made it even more difficult for him to speak up.
“Well then, what’s to be done?” he said.
The conversation ended there, but the boy’s predicament continued to weigh on my mind, and I couldn’t get over it.
A stone’s throw from the well out back was a large tree stump. Once in a while, I’d see Taro standing there, facing it, with a big, sturdy stick in his hand, always the same stick, so he must have kept it hidden somewhere. It was about as long as he was tall. He would raise it above his head and bring it crashing down on the stump, first with his right hand and then with his left. He was fairly small, so it looked almost as if the stick were the one wielding him rather than the other way around. I assume this was his way of taking revenge on the various people who had mistreated him. Oddly enough, his face remained expressionless throughout. He would only do this when his stepmother and brothers were not around; I’m sure he never dreamed that anyone from the Utagawa house could see him. It wasn’t a time of day when someone might be cooking in the kitchen, and, besides, the kitchen lights were off, so it wouldn’t have occurred to him that I might be watching from the window. Sometimes he’d scare a poor cat that happened to wander by. When he got tired of it, he just sat on the stump, hugging his knees. But not for long. He would bring out a basket of laundry, a washboard, and a washtub. I suppose he’d been told to finish the laundry before O-Tsune got back from work.
Rumor had it that when the family was living down south in Shimonoseki, at O-Tsune’s parents’ house, he ran away once. He was only seven at the time. Three days later, he came back. This was a story that O-Tsune had told in her usual mocking tone to the other women at work, which then circulated around the neighborhood and eventually reached the fish seller.
One day, Yoko’s father asked her, “That boy, Taro, does he go to school every day?”
“Yeah, he does. But he’s so dirty that some of the boys threw chalk powder over his head and said, ‘We’re cleaning you up with DDT!’ ”
This silly prank made her father start laughing, but he quickly stopped himself. “Listen, Yoko,” he told her firmly, “I don’t want you bullying him too just because other kids are. In fact, if you see them being mean to Taro, you should try to stop them.”
YOKO AND TARO were in the same class again in third grade. That was when she must have made up her mind to do something.
It was a day in early April, when cherry petals covered the ground. Yoko came running into the house, her pack bouncing on her back, and went straight in to see her grandmother. “After school today,” she announced, “they were teasing Taro and wouldn’t stop. So I said, ‘Who cares if he’s not Japanese? My dad says that it’s better not to be Japanese anyway.’ ”
“You said that?” said Mrs. Utagawa, looking slightly uncomfortable. She studied Yoko’s face.
“Yes, I did! The kids looked shocked. Then they left him alone.”
“Really? Well, then, you did the right thing. Good girl.”
Yoko may have been cocky at home with only her grandmother and me there, but she was nervous and timid outside. She was not the type ever likely to be chosen as a class leader. But her classmates knew she lived in one of the better houses in the neighborhood, and that her father was somebody important. She also attracted attention because she dressed well, thanks to the smart clothes she inherited from Yuko, Mari, and Eri. These things probably helped her stick her neck out that day. For her part, Yoko was pleased about her act of bravery and could hardly wait to tell her father. Even as she sat playing in her grandmother’s room that afternoon, she was clearly restless. Takero got home earlier than usual.
“Papa’s home!” cried Yoko, and went rushing out to meet him. With Takero standing in the front hall, his shoes still on, she stood with her hands clasped behind her back, suddenly bashful, turning her upper body left and right, before telling him her news.
“Good for you,” was all he said. He took off his shoes, came into the main room, and, seeing that Natsue wasn’t there, asked, “Is Mama going to be late again today?”
Yoko must have realized how annoyed he was, and silently watched him, holding her breath. Without another word, he walked up the dark stairway to his study.
I think it was around this time that he began to feel disenchanted with Natsue. It isn’t hard to see why. After all, it was clear that his wife’s heart belonged to Seijo, not Chitose Funabashi. She didn’t seem to mind that her house looked a bit bare and bleak. Natsue, on her side, claimed she didn’t want to impose her own taste on her mother-in-law, which may once in fact have been true. But I also think that at some point she just stopped caring about where they lived. Takero, won over by the most “charming” of the Saegusa sisters, and drawn to her simplicity, had married her from genuine affection. Yet as the years passed, he couldn’t help seeing that the very qualities that had attracted him only meant that she was not to be relied on. He seemed lonely.
Since we hadn’t been expecting him till later in the evening, we rushed around trying to put something together for dinner.
Yoko hovered around her grandmother, looking for another chance to blow her own horn. Mrs. Utagawa didn’t know about her son’s reaction to the story, but she did understand Yoko’s need for praise; so she tossed out compliments—“What a good girl!” “That was so brave of you!”—as she kept on working. Yoko seemed to find some comfort in this.
Natsue arrived home at her usual time, around half past eight. Reading a foul mood on her husband’s face, she countered with a complaint of her own: “You know perfectly well you should have called. What are we supposed to do if you come home early like this, without any warning?” She knew perfectly well he disliked calling Seijo. If the house in Chitose Funabashi had had a telephone, then he could have called me and I could have called Seijo. But though an application had been made years before when the family moved in, no telephone line had yet been installed.
SEVERAL DAYS LATER, I learned that even children understand the notion of repaying debts. Yoko came bounding home, all excited, and again ran in to share some good news with her grandmother, who, as usual, was sewing, her back bent.
“In gym class today we were running relays, and Taro ran in the race instead of me and, guess what? Our team won! He’s really fast.”
Yoko was slow on her feet. The only reason she managed not to finish last in a regular race was that the retarded Kewpie, not understanding what a footrace was, would just walk, taking her time. Running slowly in a regular race is one thing, but running slowly in a relay hurts the whole team, so Yoko looked gloomy, as usual, as she waited for her turn. Taro, who had already run and rejoined his team, must have seen how much she was dreading it. He came over and tapped her on the shoulder. Her eyes went wide with surprise just to be touched by this grubby boy. “I’ll run for you,” he said, pointing at himself. Her teammates weren’t any happier about Yoko’s running than she
was, so they just grinned and kept quiet about it.
“The teacher didn’t notice. Anyway, we won!” Yoko reported. She wrapped herself around the neck of her grandmother, who was still sewing.
“Then I gave him two pencils,” Yoko added. “They were still pretty long and I’d hardly used the erasers at all.”
“You gave him some pencils?” Mrs. Utagawa asked in surprise. She pushed her reading glasses down her nose a bit and turned to look at her.
I was ironing in the adjoining room—which became the children’s bedroom at night—with the sliding doors open. I too looked up.
“Yeah. I’d actually wanted to give him some even before.”
“He doesn’t have any pencils of his own?”
“Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn’t,” Yoko said. “A lot of the time, he doesn’t even have a notebook. I think his brothers take everything away from him, just to be mean.”
Just then, we heard the voice of the bakery man as he made his way through the neighborhood on his bicycle, calling, “Hot buns! Get them hot!” Mrs. Utagawa and I both must have had the same idea. As I stopped in my ironing, I saw her lifting her head and straightening her back.
It was she who spoke first. “Let’s buy an extra fried bun or something and give it to that boy.” I grabbed some change, jammed my feet into clogs, and went running down the gravel road.
GETTING THE SNACK to him turned out to be quite a challenge. O-Tsune had injured her back loading and unloading a three-wheeler van with those stacks of ceramic bowls, and had then been able to quit for good when her eldest finished middle school and started earning some money. At this point, she was taking in piecework at home. According to her, with Roku bedridden much of the time, she needed to be there to take care of him.
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