J-Boys

by Shogo Oketani

  Kazuo felt strongly that school lunch was a very big deal. The school lunch program had started after the war so that everybody, even children from poor families, could eat at school. Every day from Monday through Friday, everyone—from students to teachers to the principal—ate exactly the same thing.

  One morning, as Mr. Honda explained how to multiply numbers with two digits, Kazuo only pretended to study the blackboard. He was trying with all his might to identify the day’s main dish.

  Typically, if the smell was curry, everyone would smile. That meant the day’s menu was curry stew. All the children would suddenly become diligent students, their pencils scribbling twice as fast in their notebooks so they could eat sooner. At lunchtime, even children who never asked for seconds would jostle for a spot in line to get another helping.

  On the other hand, if the hallway smelled strongly of soy sauce, gloom would instantly descend. A strong soy sauce smell meant that the meal was boiled hijiki seaweed and vegetables, which didn’t have a single fan among the students, including Kazuo.

  Hijiki: A brown sea vegetable that grows wild on rocky coastlines. It has been part of a balanced diet in Japan for centuries. Most Japanese mothers want their kids to eat it, but most kids hate it, kind of how American kids feel about spinach.

  But most of the time, Kazuo thought the food in school lunch was delicious. And because of school lunch, he got to discover foods he had never tasted before—even foods from American TV shows. For example, he had seen spaghetti on the comedy program The Three Stooges, which always featured three men raising a ruckus with foolish antics. At first, Kazuo had not known the dish was called “spaghetti.” He’d only known that noodles piled on a dish were eaten laboriously with a fork by a guy named Curly, who was a big blockhead.

  So in the spring of his second-grade year, when a mass of fat noodles, thinner than udon yet thicker than soba, were served to Kazuo on his metal school lunch plate, he was excited. He was going to eat the same food as blockheaded Curly! Kazuo had poked Nobuo in the seat next to him and asked if he knew the name of the odd-looking noodles with red sauce.

  Udon: A thick, white, wheat noodle (similar to spaghetti) usually served in a big bowl of broth with scallions, tempura, or other ingredients. In western Japan the broth is made from light soy sauce; in eastern Japan the broth is dark brown. Udon is a very popular lunchtime dish because it is quick to prepare and inexpensive. Soba: A thin, beige-colored buckwheat noodle. It is served chilled with a dipping sauce or in hot broth as a noodle soup. Soba is served at cheap lunchtime counters and at fancy restaurants, and it is easily made at home for a quick meal or snack. It is also a traditional New Year’s Eve dish. Miruku: Japanese pronunciation of “milk,” used to mean a type of powdered skim milk. In the old days, the Japanese rarely ate dairy products. Many Japanese still have trouble digesting them. Traditional Japanese cooking does not use cheese, milk, cream sauces, or butter. Until the 1960s, the Japanese considered milk a kind of health food or medicine.

  “Spaghetti, of course!” Nobuo had flared his nostrils and grinned confidently. “You should know better than to ask that question of a butcher’s son.”

  Kazuo wasn’t sure how being a butcher’s son related to spaghetti, but he was impressed that Nobuo knew the name of this foreign food.

  Still, school lunch had one flaw. The name of that flaw, which was enough to bring disgusted looks to students’ faces when they said it, was miruku.

  Miruku, or “milk,” referred to a certain lukewarm, white liquid passed out in metal cups to everyone. The substance was nothing at all like cow’s milk, commonly known in Japanese as gyunyu. This other drink was so unlike gyunyu that it had to have its own name—a name reserved for powdered skim milk.

  Just how disgusting was it? First, Kazuo had decided that it gave off exactly the same foul smell as a kitchen drain. Second, when he managed to take a drink despite the smell, a very strange sweet and sour taste filled his mouth. If he left his miruku until the end of the meal, with the plan to swallow it all in one big gulp, it would congeal completely and taste exactly like melted butter mixed with water.

  Middle school students drinking their miruku.

  Unfortunately, Kazuo’s previous teacher, Mr. Tanaka, had flown into a terrifying rage the year before, yelling at the class one day when they’d refused to drink the miruku.

  “All of you are spoiled rotten! When the war was on, people on the battlefield had to drink mud to quench their thirst. If you can’t drink a cup or two of this milk, what does that make you? All of you, drink! Until everyone drinks, no one leaves this classroom for lunch recess!”

  Frightened by Mr. Tanaka’s outburst, Kazuo and his classmates had taken their cups of miruku back to their seats and somehow forced it down.

  And for the rest of the year, the miruku had to be drunk. Kazuo and the other boys in his class had begun to hold contests to see who could drink the most. After they’d eaten the food, they had dared each other to drink as much as possible of the completely cooled, leftover miruku to demonstrate fortitude. The game was put to an end when Yukichi Nakajima, the class tough guy, drank four cups of miruku and then had an upset stomach for a week.

  After Mr. Honda became their teacher at the beginning of fourth grade, Kazuo’s class no longer had to drink all of their miruku. Mr. Honda was a man of about thirty who never raised his voice. During their first lunch period as fourth-graders, after everyone had said “Itadakimasu” at the start of the meal, Mr. Honda had told them, “Everyone, before you eat, please watch me.”

  Itadakimasu: Japanese expression used before eating, meaning “I humbly receive.” It expresses gratitude toward the people who bring us our food such as farmers, ranchers, fishermen, delivery people, grocers, cooks, etc. It is also a way of giving thanks to the elements (water, sun, earth, air) that grow our food and to the plants, fish, and animals that give their lives so that we may eat.

  Mr. Honda brought his cup of miruku to his mouth and, holding his nose, gulped it down. When he finished, he laughed and said, “Wow, that was disgusting!”

  Everyone in the class, including Kazuo, laughed heartily. With a single phrase, Mr. Honda had broken the spell cast by Mr. Tanaka.

  “No one, including myself, likes the taste of miruku,” Mr. Honda said quietly. “This is not milk. And this kind of powdered skim milk is completely different from what you would find in a store. It is nothing but the sediment left over from making butter, which has been dissolved in hot water. In the United States, this kind of powdered skim milk is actually fed to cows.”

  “Fed to cows!” the class cried.

  “Settle down, everyone.” Mr. Honda held up a hand. “Our fifth period class is social studies, so after lunch, I will talk with you about why something that is used as feed for American cattle is being given to us for lunch. But now, about this miruku. Those of you who can drink it, please do so. But if you cannot drink it, please do not force yourself. As your teacher, I will not scold you if you leave it in your cup. I do ask, however, that you remember the lunch ladies who worked hard to prepare it for you. If you choose to leave it, please say a silent word of apology to them before doing so.”

  Everyone obediently nodded.

  And after lunch recess, Mr. Honda explained further. He told the children that Japan had been faced with a serious food shortage after World War II. Many Japanese children were suffering from malnutrition. So large quantities of canned fish and powdered milk had been donated, and miruku became part of a new school lunch program. It was a desperate time, and even feed for cattle was accepted with gratitude.

  But twenty years had passed since the end of the war, thought Kazuo. The Olympics had even been held in Tokyo, and Japan was economically better off than before. So why was miruku still being served? The reason was that Japan had signed an agreement with the United States. It promised that American soldiers could be stationed inside Japan, and in return, if Japan were attacked by another country, America would defend Japan.
As payment for this alliance with the U.S., Japanese elementary school children had to drink “powdered skim milk” every day.

  After hearing Mr. Honda’s lesson, Kazuo was very upset. He felt the situation was completely unfair.

  That evening at dinnertime, Kazuo told his parents and Yasuo what he had learned.

  His parents reacted much less strongly than he had expected.

  His mother tamped his father’s rice into a bowl. As always, she said, “During the war and afterward, people had nothing to eat at all. We’re lucky to have what we have.”

  His father, whose face was red again from drinking beer, said, “I wonder if Mr. Honda is a Communist,” and brought a bite of rice to his mouth.

  Yasuo was the only one to agree with Kazuo. “I hate that awful miruku. The smell of it alone makes me want to throw up. If that agreement with America ever goes away, maybe miruku will go away, too.”

  But Kazuo did not think that the agreement would disappear anytime soon. So he tried to teach himself to forget about the miruku that always accompanied the school lunch.

  Today, what he detected in the smells wafting through the hallway was soy sauce fried in oil.

  Tatsuta-style fried whale, he thought.

  Tatsuta-style: A style of breaded, deep-fried meat such as whale, pork, chicken, or mackerel. After marinating in soy sauce and mirin, the meat is sprinkled with katakuri-ko (potato starch) or corn starch before frying. At McDonald’s in Japan you can sometimes find a “Tatsu­ta-style chicken burger” on the menu. Whale: Whales have been eaten in Japan since ancient times, and the Japanese have also used whale oil, bones, and whiskers for tools and for arts and crafts. In the 1950s and ’60s, whale meat was served in school lunches because it had protein and cost less than other meats. Eating whale meat is no longer so popular in Japan, and Japanese whale hunts are regularly criticized by animal rights groups.

  Whale was the meat that was served most often in school lunches. Deep fried whale, whale cutlets, boiled whale. Kazuo would have preferred chicken and pork, or beef, but the budget for school lunch rarely allowed for that.

  Even Nobuo, the son of a butcher, said he had never eaten beefsteak. And he ate chicken and pork so few times each month that he could count them on his fingers.

  Today’s food was placed on Kazuo’s metal tray by a classmate on lunch duty, a boy wearing a white apron. It was, just as he had detected, whale meat in a thick breading. Next to the whale meat was bread, and next to that was the miruku.

  “Itadakimasu.” A student leader said the word of thanks, and the class repeated it. Kazuo held his nose, just as Mr. Honda had done, and downed his tepid miruku to get it over with. Then, sighing with relief, he looked down at the piece of fried whale. He could tell that it would be as tough as the sole of a shoe, as usual.

  Still, Kazuo put the meat in his mouth and chewed laboriously. He couldn’t help but think about how tender and delicious real beefsteak must be.

  November

  Bathing and the Beatles

  Kazuo’s house didn’t have a bathtub, so every other day his family went to the Fujita Yu bathhouse. Kazuo figured that fewer than half of the students in his class had bathtubs at home. Because demand was so high, West Ito also had two other public bathhouses, but of all three public baths, Kazuo liked Fujita Yu the best.

  Bathhouse: A public bath, usually in a spacious building with a prominent chimney. Men and women bathe in separate large rooms. Each has rows of faucets and stools and one or two large tubs for soaking. Many people go to the bathhouse a couple times a week just to visit with neighbors. See also page 157.

  First of all, it had a much grander entrance than the other two, with a tile roof that sloped down on both sides to make an inverted U, like the roof of an old temple.

  The next good thing about Fujita Yu was that it had a garden, complete with a pond where colorful carp swam. In the summer, there was no better way to cool off after a steaming hot bath than to sit out on the porch by the pond.

  But the absolute best thing about Fujita Yu was its mural of Mount Fuji, which was huge compared with the murals in the other two bathhouses. The mountain’s snow-covered summit soared to the ceiling at the center of the wall that separated the men’s and women’s baths. The fields beneath it extended all the way to waves painted right where the main bathtubs met the wall. When you looked at the mural while submerged to your shoulders in hot water, you almost felt you’d come to a hot spring near Mount Fuji itself and were bathing as you gazed at it! Although Kazuo dreamed about living in a huge house like the ones on the hill in District 4, he couldn’t help but feel that bathing at a public bath would always be more fun than bathing at home.

  Mount Fuji: The highest mountain in Japan, at 12,389 feet (3,776 meters). Mount Fuji is just west of Tokyo and can be seen from there on a clear day. The cone of Mount Fuji has become a symbol of Japan. Japanese bathhouses often have a big mural of a nature scene like Mount Fuji on the wall, to make you feel you are viewing it outside from a hot spring. Mount Fuji last erupted in 1707–8.

  His family usually went to the bath shortly after eight p.m., after dinner. Kazuo enjoyed going earlier, when there weren’t as many people in the main tub. Then you could stretch out your legs and arms as much as you wanted, and maybe even sneak in a swim when the lady supervisor wasn’t looking. But Kazuo’s family almost never bathed in the after­noons in autumn and winter. If you went in too early, you might catch a cold before bed.

  In November, as the year started to draw to a close, Father’s work at the Nihon Optics factory began to get busy. His job was to produce lenses used in making electronic equipment. Kazuo did not understand why you needed a lens for this, but according to Father, the lens was an important tool for making circuit boards. Lately, he had been working extra hours.

  One night, Mother told Kazuo and Yasuo to go ahead to the bathhouse. The cartoon show they were watching, Jungle Emperor, had just ended. “Father is working late again,” she explained.

  Jungle Emperor: A popular Japanese TV animation series created by Osamu Tezuka, a Japanese manga artist and animator (and medical doctor!). From 1966 to 1967 NBC broadcast it in the U.S. under the title Kimba the White Lion. Many people have pointed out how the story, situation, and characters in the Disney movie The Lion King resemble those of Kimba the White Lion.

  “We can go now, but when are you going to go?” Kazuo asked, switching off the TV.

  “I imagine your father will be back before nine. I’ll wait for him to eat his dinner and then we’ll go together,” Mother said. She handed them basins containing towels, soap, and a change of clothes. Then she gave thirty yen to Kazuo to pay the bathhouse fee.

  “Take care you don’t drop it. Okay, boys?”

  Mother faced them to begin the list of warnings that she always gave them when they went to the bathhouse by themselves. “Absolutely no running. No horsing around in the water and disturbing the other people. No going into the deep tub reserved for the adults. Be sure you get into the tub all the way up to your shoulders and count to a hundred. When you’re done, dry yourselves off properly and get right back into your clothes. Then come straight home without dawdling. Don’t go anyplace else. Don’t walk down dark and deserted streets. . . . ”

  As usual, Kazuo and Yasuo pretended to listen, nodding impatiently. Then, finally, she was finished, and they could go.

  Tonight, there was no wind, but the November night air felt chilly. Leaving company housing, they began to walk down the broad avenue that led to the shopping area.

  Suddenly, Yasuo leaned toward Kazuo. “Niichan, did you bring it?”

  “You bet I did.” Kazuo reached into the pocket of his shorts and pulled out a small vinyl object in the shape of a gourd.

  “All right!” Yasuo squealed when he saw it.

  It was a model of an island, the setting of a TV puppet show called Good Golly Gourd Island. The show was broadcast Monday through Friday at five forty-five in the evening.

&n
bsp; Good Golly Gourd Island: A Japanese TV puppet drama (Japanese title: Hyokkori Hyotan-jima). Seven kids go on a picnic with their female teacher to Gourd Island. But the volcano suddenly explodes and the island starts drifting into the sea. The kids, their teacher, and other characters have various adventures. A boy called “Dr.” and the sweet lion character Lion-kun have been favorites among Japanese kids.

  Gourd Island was home to a group of students who had traveled there on a field trip and ended up staying when the island began to drift around the world’s oceans. The students-turned-islanders met pirates and good-hearted gunmen, and had to unravel mysteries and solve tough problems. The model that Kazuo gripped featured all of the characters from the TV series, each one about the size of a bean.

  What Yasuo had in mind was to float the model in the tub at the bathhouse and swim around it, pretending to be the different characters. Yasuo, the animal lover, was a huge fan of a lion called Lion-kun. Kazuo, like many other boys his age at school, preferred the gunman called Dandy.

  After they entered the shopping area, Kazuo and Yasuo did not go directly to Fujita Yu. Instead, they stopped off at Takahashi Meats, where Nobuo lived. Nobuo’s father was closing the butcher shop for the night, sorting meat and croquettes inside the glass cases.

  “Good evening, sir.” Yasuo spoke up first.

  “Well, if it isn’t Kazu-chan and Yasu-chan. Headed to the bathhouse, are you?” Nobuo’s father smiled at them from over the counter.