Chapter 6 Pilgrimage Day 1

Diary of the White Bush Clover

Day 1 (6 October 1967) Kyōto to Hama Ōtsu

I had a little rucksack. Inside I had underwear and clothes, a notebook, map, raincoat, toothbrush and toothpaste. That was everything. My sneakers were new when I began to walk to Tōkyō, starting from the Kyōto Palace garden. I could hear the sound of my footsteps on the pebbles. Beside the path a puppy was in trouble. He could not jump down from the bank. I picked him up and set him down. He was glad, jumping all around. When I started walking away he followed me. I ran, the puppy ran. Maybe he is homeless, I thought, but if he is in this garden he will not have a traffic accident. I picked up the puppy and said to him, “I am starting a long journey today. I cannot take you with me so please stay here.” I put him down and ran, trying to escape, but the puppy ran after me. I hid behind a tree and a building and at last he lost me. But I had lost a lot of time.

Route 1 had a lot of traffic. The air was blue with exhaust fumes. A little purple flower was blooming beside the road. I had a sudden realization that flowers do not bloom for people, they just bloom naturally. Some flowers are grown for people to look at them, like the ones in the flower shop, but little flowers growing on the side of the road, people just pass them by. However, I did notice this little wild flower so I picked one blossom and pressed it in my notebook, as if to say I admire your beauty.

After walking awhile I found a famous temple, Geshin-ji. It did not look like an o-tera because it was extremely small. The gate, which I opened easily, was more like the gate to a house. Nobody was around, not a sound. To my right there was a well with long-handled bamboo dippers so I drank some water. It was cold and sweet. I thought about how travelers in ancient times must have drunk this water and refreshed their tired bodies.

At last I arrived at Hama Ōtsu in Shiga-ken, about twenty kilometers from Kyōto, my first stop. I could see Biwa-ko bridge. It looked like a white line drawn across the lake. I headed toward Butsuryu-ji, asking someone for directions to the temple, where I had already received permission to stay. The temple was big and old, built a hundred years ago. The roof was very high, shining in the sunset.

The priest’s wife came to the door smiling and said, “I thought you would be wearing white clothes because of your pilgrimage but you look very modern.” I was wearing slacks, a shirt, sunglasses and a scarf.

In the evening Nitchiei-san, the priest, wrote a poem for me. The priest of Butsuryu-ji was a very scholarly man who used quite difficult kanji. I feel this waka is a comparison of the eternity of nature with the short life of a human. The temple is ancient, founded over a hundred years ago, but I stayed only one night, a very short time. My life like the autumn leaves is transitory.

kaibyaku no

hiraki tamaishi

butsuryu-ji

hitoyo yadorinu

momijiba no aki

At the ancient temple of Butsuryu-ji,

amongst the autumn beauty

of colorful changing leaves,

I stayed

one night.

I went to bed but the trucks on the road nearby made a lot of noise. It was midnight yet many people were still working.

Chapter 6 Pilgrimage Introduction

Pilgrimage (junrei)

Walking humbly with the power of nature

to arrive at enlightenment

is one kind of meditation practice, is it not?

Diary of the White Bush Clover

My birth name is Hiroko but when I wrote this diary I used the name Suigetsu, given to me by my long-time tea ceremony master. Suigetsu means Moon Water. The moon represents truth. There is only one moon and only one truth. The water represents the heart, which is changeable, sometimes pure, sometimes not pure. The truth is so beautiful that to really see it you must look with a pure heart. The heart must be continuously cleaned because it gets dirty, like water. When you see the truth it will shine on your heart like the moon on water. The pure heart, like still clean water, will be able to reflect the truth clearly. There is a well-known Zen saying, mizu o tsueba tsuki te ni ari, which means, if you scoop up water you hold the moon in your hands. The moon does not plan where it is going to reflect, it just naturally happens where the light falls. Likewise the water does not try to attract the reflection of the moon. They are both naturally there and the process of reflection just occurs naturally. In the same way the truth will naturally reflect from a pure heart.

Everyone’s life is different, nobody walks the same way. Only I can walk my life. Forty-six years of my life had passed when I wrote this diary. The Great Pacific War was over. More than twenty years have gone by. After the war Japan had nothing, we had lost everything. But after twenty years we had everything, we were very rich. I cannot find anything left of the war. We have many things now but we have lost our ki, our spirit or life force. We live in peace in Japan now but we should not forget the war. Many people died wishing for Japan’s development and peace. Men who were conscripted into the military left their hearts with their relatives and died. Many died on Okinawa, the only place in Japan where ground fighting took place. Many more died from bomber attacks and the atomic bombs. Students with big dreams for the future had to go to war. Now we live in peace but we should not forget that many people made great sacrifices for this peace. If those people had lived they might be happy. These days many people do not know about the war. I do not want this story to be forgotten. This is the time to tell others, because I experienced the misery of war. I wrote this diary out of gratitude for my life and for the spirit of the people who died in the war.

After the war I wanted to do something special to remember senshi-sha, the people who died in the war. Perhaps it should be a spiritual journey, a traditional pilgrimage by foot from Kyōto to Tōkyō. But this was a long, hard journey and I could not do it right away. Money, time, family, there were many obstacles, so first I made a plan. I opened the map. It was six hundred kilometers through seven prefectures. I could walk thirty kilometers in a day so it would take twenty-five days. I decided to wait until the right time came.

I waited twenty years. My children grew up and my husband and I moved from Tōkyō to Nara. After we had been living in Nara for some time I had a young friend, Harami-san, who had some trouble in her home so we let her stay in our home. She knew about my plan to make a pilgrimage and one day she said, “I will take care of your family, just go ahead and do it.” I was thankful and glad that the time had come. On 6 October 1967, I started from my home, alone. I had asked that no one come to say goodbye so I left before sunrise and took the first train from Nara to Kyōto.

When I set out on foot early in the morning, I saw many white bush clover, a flower that blooms only in autumn. They were bent over with dew as if they were bowing and saying sayōnara.

As I said, it is six hundred kilometers from Kyōto to Tōkyō. I walked every day for twenty-five days. I do not know how I was able to walk that far but with every step I prayed for the people who died in the war. On this trip I met many people. Afterwards I felt I had become a better person. I had many valuable experiences and received many deep impressions. I could not buy that happiness with money. 

Chapter 5 Peace

Peace (heiwa)

Autumn dusk after a hard journey –

arriving at a sad village with few people.

Pillowed on the sound of waves.

yuki kurete

koson no aki no

nami makura

Toward the end of the war, my husband had to go to the military but he came back. In the final days there was no military and all the soldiers were forced to dig holes. When the Occupation began everyone had to turn in their weapons, even the old family swords. People wondered what happened to all those swords. Years later, it was discovered that they were stored in a bank vault in Japan. Kendō, a martial art using swords, also was banned during the Occupation.

After Emperor Hirohito surrendered, in 1945, he renounced the belief in divine rule and oversaw the transition to a constitutional monarchy. After the emperor surrendered, the period from 1945 to 1952 was known as the Occupation. During that time the Allied forces under General Douglas MacArthur reformed the Japanese government and began a program of economic reconstruction.

One of my aunts went to America with her husband before the war. They were living in Seattle. Her husband was a very hard worker. He worked for a department store, doing many different jobs. Right before the war they all came back to Japan, to Ōsaka. Her youngest son was still in high school, too young to go into the military. He had American citizenship and was happy that he could keep that. One of the other sons also had American citizenship but the Japanese government said he had to go into the military because he was Japanese, so he lost his American citizenship. Two of the sons were killed in the war, one in a fighter airplane and one in a submarine. During the war the American government took their property in Seattle. My aunt’s husband died three years after the war, at age fifty-two, about the same age as my father when he died. After the war the two remaining sons went back to America, because they had grown up there. The American government gave their property back to the youngest son, who had not fought in the war and was still an American citizen.

During the Occupation there were many American soldiers. They would go to cafes and they had plenty of milk. My father would go and bow down and ask for a cup of miru. He wanted to drink milk before he died and there was no milk available for the Japanese. One day I took my young son Masao to a park in Hibiya, Tōkyō, and we saw many children whose parents had died, gathered in a group. They were barefoot, dirty and their kimono were ragged and torn. They were begging for food from the American soldiers. I felt very sad for them. All Japanese were poor in that time and everyone tried to help each other. Since poor people have nothing material, they only have each other, so they have more compassion for each other.

There were problems with young Japanese women being used as service girls by the American soldiers. A few Americans joined the Japanese and lived their lifestyle but they were only a few. Most of the soldiers lived with Japanese women and had children but when they left they were not allowed to bring them to the United States and had to leave them behind. It was very hard for those women to live through that. Until then almost no Japanese had ever married foreigners, so these mixed children were a new thing and they were discriminated against. It was sad to see.

One woman, Sawada Miki, turned her large house into an orphanage for these abandoned mixed children, the Elizabeth Sanders Home, in Oiso, Kanagawa-ken. Sawada-san was the first-born child of Iwasaki Hisaya, the head of the Mistubishi Company. In her childhood she learned about Christianity and in 1922, when she was twenty, she married a diplomat, Sawada Renzo, who was a Christian, so she became a Christian. They lived in Britain and France until the Great War. Back in Japan after the war, Sawada-san noticed the plight of the mixed babies who were completely rejected by other Japanese so that the mothers could not rear them and many of them died. Sawada-san wanted to start an orphanage but Mitsubishi had been liquidated and the Iwasaki family was no longer wealthy. Sawada-san asked all her friends for donations for her plan. A British woman named Elizabeth Sanders, a home teacher for the wealthy Mitsui family, gave all the money she had. Therefore, Sawada-san named her home for mixed orphan children the Elizabeth Sanders Home.

Sawada-san helped these poor children in every way that she could. She made diapers out of the curtains and sold her own clothes in order to put food in their mouths. Most people only think of their own happiness but she had deep wisdom and could think internationally. She was helping only the mixed children, not the Japanese children, who were taken care of in government-run orphanages. The mixed children all called her “Mama.” She helped each child, providing food and education, until they were able to go out into society and get jobs.

Those children grew up and eventually married or went to live overseas. Then they in turn gave donations to this home. As a result Sawada children are all over the world. When she died these former orphans and their descendents were all very sad. One summer I was on vacation in Oiso and I took these children to the beach, which was near the Sawada house. I would sometimes see Sawada-san walking with the children in the town. It is one of my fondest memories. I deeply respected Sawada-san. These days in Japan mixed children are very popular but in those days it was really bad. The half-Japanese children were bullied and it was awful to see. But the ones who lived in this home were really happy. It is known worldwide. Some children who lived there rose to great heights because they were well looked after.

I had three children, a boy, a girl and another boy, all two years apart. My first son was born during the war, in 1944, and my daughter and second son were born soon after the end of the war. I had to work hard to raise three children. It was a challenge because they were genki, very lively. After my second son was born, we moved to the countryside, because I felt being in nature was better for children. From Ueno, in the north central area of Tōkyō, we moved to Kunitachi, on the outskirts, though now it has been engulfed by Tōkyō.

Living in the country was a good choice because the children could play in the snow in winter. In warm weather we could go for a picnic right in front of the house, because there was nature everywhere. You could not do that in the city. In the autumn we put a thin tatami on top of the fallen leaves and it was very comfortable. When we first moved from the city, the children did not understand about watermelons. They saw these small unripe suika in the field, so they picked them up and played with them, and then threw them down. The farmer wondered who had been smashing his melons before they were ripe, so he hid and saw our children and their friends. He jumped out, very angry, and told them off. We had to apologize to the farmer.

My husband was a teacher and he felt the same way about moving to the country, even though he had to commute. We had the same feelings about almost everything. Wives in those days never disagreed with their husband. If you disagreed you would not say it out loud. That was the virtue of Japanese women. I do not remember it being difficult at all. While he was at work I was free to do my activities but he requested that I always be home before he got home. I had to do everything, washing, shopping, cooking, so I did not have much time. Even if he said, “Do whatever you want,” I could not do it because of all the housework.

We did not have disposable diapers so I had to wash every diaper every time it was soiled. The water was so cold and sometimes the laundry would freeze on the line outside. At that time there was a superstition that dirty things had to be washed on the north side of the house where it was dark, cold, no sun, because if you did it on the south side bad things would come. I was taught to hang unmentionables where they could not be seen. In those days ladies and gentlemen were still very pure and innocent. For example, unless you were married you could not walk together. They are still very strict in Kagoshima, in the south, where they still have separate entrances for men and women. In some traditional households the wife still hangs her husband’s laundry on a line above hers.

The Beet family lived at the Tachikawa Army Base near our house. They did not speak Japanese and they would come to our house because my husband could speak English. My husband helped them with Japanese and our children would play together. They were Christians and very kind. They ran a Bible class in our house and invited people who lived nearby. They also taught us western-style cooking and housework. They showed us their washing machine, which no one in Japan had. Their lifestyle was really different. In effect, we were doing a cultural exchange. Perhaps that was the beginning of my interest in international cultural exchange. The Beets were in Japan four or five years and then went back to Alabama, in the United States. My daughter and I have been keeping in touch by letter. I was able to go to Alabama and meet them three years ago. It had been forty years since I had last seen them. I had a wonderful time with my old friends. The couple was very old so they could not travel to Japan, but they were so happy to see me. They said, “Next time, please come and stay longer, for a month at least.”

About ten years after the war, we moved from Tōkyō, the present-day capital of Japan, to Nara, the first permanent capital of Japan. My aunt, who was living in Ōsaka, bought land in Nara and wanted to divide it. She asked me if I wanted to buy some of the land. I bought a small piece but we did not build on that piece because my husband liked a different piece and we built there. When we moved to Nara, my youngest son Sumio was in high school. He did not want to move to Nara so he stayed with one of my aunts in Tōkyō until he graduated and then went to a university there. My daughter Atsuko went to high school for a short time in Nara. Then she went to the YMCA school to learn English. She worked for the World Expo of 1970 in Ōsaka for five years. Then she went to America for a home stay visit for about six months in Portland, Oregon. Later she became a translator and lives in Nara. My oldest son Masao went to Tōkyō University and settled in Tōkyō.

I taught shodō in Nara for twenty years, many students, very nice ladies. One time I told a friend of mine that I would like to live near Fuji-san some day. She remembered that. Later she was selling some land in Oshino, a village north of Fuji-san, and asked if I wanted to buy some. I came and looked. It was very beautiful, on the side of a hill with a view of Fuji-san, so I bought it on the spot. A company owned the land and the boss liked me. He asked if I wanted him to build a small house for us there. Since then I have added a separate room for chanoyu, tea ceremony. I love living here, where I can see Fuji-san from my window every day.

My husband learned English at the university and got his teacher’s license. He taught national history in a high school in Ōsaka before the war. After the war there were very few English teachers so he switched to teaching English. After he retired, my oldest son wanted us to move in with him in Tōkyō but I had shodō students in Nara and I had this place in Oshino and wanted to stay here. My husband also liked to live here. When we lived in Nara I would go back and forth to visit my son in Tōkyō and it was very convenient to stop here on the way to rest before going on. Finally we moved to Oshino in 1977. My husband died ten years ago, in 1995, at eighty-five, the same age as I am now. He was a very interesting person. Now my son Sumio lives with me. He is quiet and he has a very good heart. I also have a little silky dachshund, Anela, who is very lively.

After the war I began going around Japan, praying for the people who lost their lives in the conflict. One time I went to Okinawa and stayed a week to go around praying at sites where many people died during the war. For example, there was a cape where many soldiers jumped from a cliff to their death rather than be taken by the enemy and caves where there were mass slaughters. In the beginning of the trip I stayed at a hotel and every day I went out to visit these places. One day I met a person who said, “Why are you staying at an expensive hotel? There’s a cheap place you can stay at that’s especially for people who are going around praying for the souls of those lost in the war.” So I decided to stay there.

It was a really huge place. People would come from all over Japan to pray for their relatives who had been lost in the war but I was the only one staying there at the time. The staff all went home at the end of the day, except one man who came around during the night checking the place. I did not really want to stay by myself, so I would ask the staff to stay longer, and they would, but at 8 o’clock they had to go. The place was properly locked up but at midnight I heard the clumping sound of a man’s boots coming up the steps and the jingling of keys. Oh no, a ghost! I sat very quietly and the footsteps went past my door. It was just the night watchman and I was very relieved. One day a big group came and I was happy that I was not alone. I thought they would stay near me but they all went up to the third floor so it was just the same, nobody around. Anyway, I felt safer because I knew they were nearby. Sometimes traveling can be a bit scary. 

Chapter 4 War

War (senso)

In the war

you tried to find food

for your friends

and died on the battleground.

You are a servant of life.

sen’yu no
kate o motomete

senjyo ni

chirishi sonomi wa

bosatsu narubeshi

When I was young I studied various arts, not seriously but as enjoyable pastimes. When the war started circumstances greatly changed. We were no longer allowed to play. We could not wear fine or expensive silk kimono, only cheap kimono made of cotton. And we had to wear monpe, light pants with a baggy crotch, with the kimono tucked inside. If we had to run quickly and the kimono flapped open, the pants would cover our legs. This brought about a big cultural change because the young women did not like wearing the kimono bunched up under the monpe, so they gradually started wearing western slacks. Now, most women wear yōfuku, western-style clothing. Even kimono are generally worn only for special occasions. However, even now in rural areas some old women still wear monpe.

I married in 1942. I was twenty-one and my husband, Goto Yoshiji, was ten years older. It was shortly after the start of Daitoa Senso, the Great Asian War. My marriage was miai-kekkon, an arranged marriage. I do not want to talk about it. If you had a sweetheart during the war, there was a chance he might die. It is a very sad story. Young people in the old times were so different from the young people these days. They have no idea what it was like. It was a more pure time. There were many romantic stories in my days, which we do not seem to have anymore. Many young men, age fifteen to twenty-three, died during the war. They were forced to grow up faster because of the war. Children were like adults because they had lots of responsibility.

We were married in a Shinto ritual during a small ceremony at a hotel. During the war the government banned furisode, colorful kimono with very long sleeves, worn only by young girls and at weddings. But it was the only time I would ever get to wear a traditional wedding kimono, so mine was colorful with long sleeves, but not too long.

Nothing special happened in my married life. We lived with my husband’s family in Tōkyō. He taught Japanese history in high school until he was conscripted into the military at the end of the war. After the war he saw that there was a need for Japanese to learn English so he switched to teaching English. We were married for fifty-two years.

My first son was born in January 1944. I went to hospital to have my baby. During the war, immediately after a baby was born doctors advised the women to get used to walking and going up and down stairs in case they had to run during an air raid. After my son was born, I walked from the delivery room and up the stairs to get back to my room. Everyone had to make an effort for the war. They were training everyone. Luckily, at the time my son was born there were no air raids, so I stayed in hospital a week. The hospital was close to my house, in the same neighborhood. I breast fed my baby, of course. There was no milk around. Some women could not produce enough milk so they gave the babies watery rice gruel instead and those children had thin faces.

During the war we had sweet potatoes, white potatoes, soy beans and wheat bran but very little sugar or rice. Because we had so little rice, we could not make a pot of rice, only gruel. You did not hear the lovely sound of grains of rice falling into the pot, only the rattle of soy beans being roasted. We could not grow many vegetables in our small garden because the soil was covered with coke ash and there was no fertilizer. I had to bring in good soil from my neighbor and then I could only grow some pumpkins. The coastal area of Tōkyō used to be a swamp, so in order to build on it they brought in soil from other areas. On the west side of Tōkyō the soil was good so they could grow rice.

The best land was confiscated by the government for the military. The military had almost everything. The government focused all their energy on the military, giving them good food. Everything was regulated by rations. No one had more than anyone else. It evened things out between people. More value was placed on morals, how you treated each other, because we all had the same things.

My husband was conscripted into the navy toward the end of the war, after our son was born. He worked at the naval base but they did not have any ships at the end of the war. They could not get to the war zone so they dug bomb shelters in Yokosuka, near Tōkyō. At the end of the war there was a great fear that we would be invaded by the Americans. We were so short on all kinds of materials, such as metal, that people made spears out of bamboo. It looked silly but that is all they had.

The bombing of Tōkyō continued off and on during the last years of the war. When we heard the bombers coming, everyone ran to the nearest bomb shelter. There were different kinds of bomb shelters. Many people dug a big hole in the ground behind their house and covered it with boards and dirt. Some were only big enough for one person, others could hold several people. I did not like these shelters. I was afraid that the roof would collapse on the people inside. Sometimes, when I heard the sound of the bombers, I would crawl inside the futon cupboard, where I felt safe with the thick futons piled on the shelf above me. One of the nicest bomb shelters in the area had been constructed by the army in a small hill about five minutes away from our house. There were many small caves built into the side of the hill. About half a dozen people could squeeze inside each one.

On the night of 9 March 1945, we had the fire-bombing of Tōkyō. I was in Tōkyō when the big bakugeki happened. I remember the sound of the B29 bombers. I ran away from the machine gun going bang, bang, bang right in front of me. Just before running into the bomb shelter with my baby, I saw many people shot. One person was shot in the back and fell down in front of me. That made a deep impression on me, seeing that person shot dead. Inside the small cave it was completely dark. We sat in silence, listening to the sound of bombers flying over, dropping bombs and many bakuhatsu exploding. The bombing started many fires. The whole city burned. A lot of people were burned by the fire. Some of my friends were killed. As many as 100,000 people died during the big bombing.

I experienced the death of friends, neighbors and relatives, the bombing and the emperor’s surrender speech, but I did not die. When the war was over I felt extremely fortunate to be alive. It was such a miracle that I was still living. It was for this reason that I decided I had to do volunteer work to promote peace. I also feel it is my duty to explain about the war to the next generation.

After the fire bombing we had to escape Tōkyō. The government sent all the women and children to the countryside. My husband knew that we were being evacuated but we could not see each other to say sayōnara. In June 1945 I went with my son to Nagano prefecture, two hundred kilometers west of Tōkyō. We stayed there at my friend’s place about two months.

As a city woman I was very unhappy in Nagano. I decided to go back to Tōkyō. On 6 and 9 August we had the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I thought if I have to die I would rather die at home. On 15 August, two days after my twenty-fourth birthday, I went to the train station to buy a ticket to Tōkyō. Someone said there was going to be an important announcement, so I stood inside the station in a crowd of people, waiting. Finally we heard the voice of the emperor over the loudspeaker. Hirohito Tennō, the divine emperor himself announced the surrender. There was muchitsujo, total chaos, the day the war ended. The trains were not running. No one was giving orders and no one knew what to do. The government was completely destroyed. People gathered in front of the palace, crying, and some of them committed suicide. Everything had become nothing.

When I decided to leave Nagano, it was the peak of the crisis. No one knew what was going on. I had no idea what would happen to me. All kinds of rumors were flying around. Some people said if you go to Tōkyō the Americans will kill you, do not go. In Okinawa, Iwo Jima and many other places in the Pacific, Japanese soldiers fought to the last man. In some places the American army cornered Japanese soldiers. The Americans were saying, “Surrender and we will help you.” But rather than be captured by the enemy, they killed themselves with their own weapons or jumped off a cliff. On Okinawa and the Pacific islands, the Americans were dropping fake paper money with a message that said, “Do not be afraid of Americans.” Some people fled to the forests, living off insects and mice. Some families were preparing to kill their children and each other rather than give in to the enemy. On the main islands of Japan, people dreaded an invasion. They were afraid that American soldiers would treat them badly, because the Japanese government had educated them during the war that the American and the British were ogres or beasts.

The day after the emperor announced unconditional surrender, I went back to the station in Nagano. I got on the train with my young son but the train did not move. We waited in the train about six hours. Suddenly it moved. Then it stopped, moved again, stopped and then moved slowly. I did not know where this train was going. It took three or four times longer than usual but it finally arrived in Tōkyō.

When we stepped off the train there was nothing left of Tōkyō. It was all burned. My husband’s family lived at Ueno, way in the north of Tōkyō, so I walked there. The only people we saw were some men, mostly old but a few young ones, left to guard the city but there was nothing left. Fortunately, our family house had not burned because it had been protected by a big pond on the land. I climbed a little hill and I could see the Sumida River. Usually you could not see it because of the buildings. Everything was completely burned down. The temple of Kannon in Asakusa was burned, though fortunately the statue of Kannon was carried away before the bombing. I came back to Tōkyō by myself with my young son and experienced all that confusion.

Chapter 2 Roots

Roots (kompon)

The old cherry tree has fallen down,

perhaps someone will dig it up.

Also the people who used to sit

under the beautiful blossoms,

all gone.

yowai tsuki

horioko sareshi

ro-ō no

hana no sakari o

mishi hito mo nashi

These stories, not everyone is interested in them, but I believe it is important to tell young people about rekishi, their history. In the years of my life I experienced many things. I lived through earthquakes, fires, typhoons and bombings. At a very young age I learned that life is precious and people should help each other.

My given name is Hiroko. Grandfather named me, inspired by the words of Mêng-tzŭ (Mencius), the itinerant Chinese sage, one of the great interpreters of Confucianism. Mêng-tzŭ said, “The great man is he who does not lose his child’s heart.”  Hiro means “broad” and ko means “child” and is often added to a girl’s name. By naming me Hiroko, perhaps he wished for me to become a person who had a broad mind and strong will, yet always remained a child at heart.

I am a traditional Japanese woman, brought up in a very proper way. My family on both sides is descended from shizoku, the elite samurai class connected to the ruling Tokugawa han, the clan of military leaders who ruled most of Japan during the Edo period.

This historical period began in 1600 when Tokugawa Ieyasu became shogun, the military ruler of Japan. In 1603 he moved the administrative capital from Kyōto in the south, where the emperor lived, to Edo in the north. Edo, the old name of Tōkyō, means “gate of the river” because of its location at the mouth of the Sumida-gawa. The Tokugawa shogunate marked a long period of feudalism, national seclusion and the promotion of Buddhism as the national religion. In 1867 the Tokugawa clan fell from power and the authority of the emperor was reestablished. A year later, the emperor moved the imperial capital from Kyōto, “western gate,” to Edo, and the city was renamed Tōkyō, “eastern gate.” The reign of the emperor Meiji Tennō, 1867-1912, was a period of extensive reform, including the abolition of feudalism, the introduction of a new constitution in 1889, the modernization of industry, and the elevation of Shinto as the national religion and its separation from Buddhism. After the Meiji Restoration, class names were no longer used.

The circumstances of my birth were different from other Japanese born in bokoku, their mother land. I was born in Shanghai, China, during the imperial reign of Taisho Tennō, 13 August 1921, the Year of the Rooster. In Japan, this was the ninth year of the Taishō era, during the imperial reign of Yoshishito Tennō, the son of Meiji Tennō. My father was working for the Japan Cotton Company at their branch in Shanghai.

During my second year, my father had to come back to Japan because of his father’s death so he could take care of his mother. We returned to his family home in the Hongo district in Tōkyō, very close to Tōkyō University. My father went to work for General Motors, supervising the final check of Chevrolet automobiles being assembled in Japan. There were some Americans in his office, so he learned to speak English, but not so well.

My father’s name was Satomi Rokuro-hei. His paternal ancestors came from Kumamoto-ken in Kyushu, the southern island of Japan. They worked for the daimyō, the castle lord who ruled the Hosokawa-han area under the Tokugawa shogun. My great-grandfather, Satomi Matazo, was an administrator and treasurer of Hosokawa-han. I have a copy of documents written by him: a real estate report and an annual report of the castle. Continuing in his father’s footsteps, my grandfather also served as the Hosokawa-han treasurer for the daimyō, until the Meiji Restoration when the new emperor made many reforms. Under the new constitution, my grandfather became a member of the Meiji government, though I am not sure which assembly he belonged to. He may have been a member of the Imperial Diet, or a member of a prefectual or municipal assembly.

My father’s maternal ancestors were also shizoku. My great-grandfather was from Ninomiya, in Kanagawa-ken. My great-grandmother, before her marriage, was in service at Edo castle. There were rooms in the castle called ōku, where the shogun’s wives lived. Those wives were classified as one legal wife and the official concubines. Each wife had her own quarters and servants, which were managed by a woman called tsubone. My great-grandmother served under one of these managers. At that time, to become even a servant in Edo castle was a great honor. After my great-grandmother retired from that position, she married my great-grandfather.

In those days only shizoku boys went to school. They were private schools that cost a lot of money. But my great-grandmother wanted her daughter to have a good education, so she sent my grandmother to a private school, where she was the only girl in the class. My grandmother told me that her mother was very strict with her, as she was with me.

My mother’s name was Wakao Teruko and she came from Kisyu, now called Wakayama-ken, near Kyōto. It is known for three famous families of Tokugawa established by three of Togugawa Ieyasu’s sons: Kisyu-ke, Owari-ke and Mito-ke. This was done so that if the main Tokugawa line failed to produce an heir, one was adopted from these families. The Wakao family served Kisyu-ke. My mother’s father was a prefecture official. He had eight daughters and my mother was the sixth. They were all quite tall. My grandfather must have been proud of his tall daughters because he sent all eight of them through school and gave each of them an equal number of nagamochi dowry chests of equal value. These long wooden boxes, filled with bedding and clothing for a young bride to bring to her husband’s home, represented the family’s wealth.

My parents were married in 1919, about two years before I was born. The year 1923 was very eventful. My grandfather died, we returned from China to live with my grandmother, the Great Earthquake destroyed most of Tōkyō, my grandmother saved the rice from the fire and fed the people, and my brother Taro was born. Two years later, my youngest brother, Jiro, was born. The year 1926 was also significant. In that year, the imperial Shōwa era began, with the ascent of Hirohito Tennō to the throne. I was five and my brothers were three and one. That year our mother died. She was very young, only 29. She had an inner ear infection that went to her brain. I remember going to the hospital every day to visit her. Our family suffered another loss in 1938, shortly before the Great Pacific War. My brother Taro died of tuberculosis. He was only 15.

After my mother died, my grandmother, Satimi Tomi, raised us. In addition to raising three young grandchildren, my grandmother took care of the students at Tōkyō University who came from Kumamoto, where my ancestors originated. In those days only the sons of high society could go to Tōkyō University. It is very different today. When I was growing up, these students from Kumamoto stayed in the ryō attached to our family house. Thanks to that, my family had good connections with high society.

We had many servants, ten men and ten women. The cook prepared food for the students and the servants delivered the meals to their rooms. I remember that the steps to the ryō were not too steep because the servants had to carry the heavy trays of food up and down the steps. In the summer, when the students went back to Kumamoto, our servants had to clean everything in the ryō. It was a big undertaking, requiring a lot of space in the garden to clean the tatami and futon.

My mother had seven sisters and my father had two brothers, so I grew up with many cousins. In those days people had many children. Often the children would die in childhood, but my mother and all her sisters lived to adulthood. Even so, my mother died quite young and my aunts were very sad. They became second mothers to me, especially my eldest aunt. She would often send me presents, such as kimono, or pay for my extracurricular classes in lute, dancing and calligraphy. During summer vacations I would go to each aunt’s house for one week. Three of them lived in Tōkyō. After I visited them I would take a train to Ōsaka, at the southern tip of Japan, to stay with the four aunts who lived in Ōsaka, Nara and that area. Nowadays it only takes three hours from Tōkyō to Ōsaka, but at that time it was a long trip of eleven hours. One of my uncles lived in Tōkyō and I would also visit him. My other uncle worked for the Japanese Embassy in South Korea but I did not visit him there. Six of my cousins are still alive and I see them from time to time. One of them lives in Tacoma, Washington, and I have visited him once.

Those are my roots, and the environment I grew up in shaped who I was to become.

Chapter 3 Nothing Special

Nothing Special (hei hei bon bon)

Walking all the way from Kyōto,

crossing the old border station at Fuwa,

now completely quiet.

kyo yori no

tabiji haruka ni

ayumi kite

ima seki koyuru

fuwa no yamazato

Before the Pacific War was a very peaceful time for me. Hei hei bon bon, nothing special happened. My life was just normal.

I went to a private all girls’ school, which taught a way of life for girls. There were 30 girls in my class. In the home economics class, I learned how to grow vegetables and cook them. I learned how to raise tomatoes and make tomato puree. I learned the basics of sewing. I also learned typing. These skills have been useful in my life, even now, and I still enjoy cooking and sewing.

In addition, I learned about shinto and bukkyō (Buddhism), a mixture of both, not extreme on either side. Japanese religions are not exclusive. For example, marriage is performed before a Shinto kami, whereas a funeral is a Buddhist ritual. In most homes there are two altars, a Shinto kamidana and a Buddhist butsudan. Because of my upbringing, I am interested in religion. Especially I love Buddhism. Because of that I had good kone, personal connections, at a famous temple in Kyōto and Nara. I believe it was the will of nature.

I went all the way through six years of primary school and five years of secondary school. Most people started working after primary school or became apprentices. The first two years of secondary school were the same for everyone. After that you had to choose a specialization. Girls could specialize in home economics, office work or preparing for the entrance examination to university. Only one or two students in each class of primary school went on to secondary school, as primary school was usually the end of one’s education. Of those who finished secondary school, only teachers or professional workers would go to university. Not many did that and more boys than girls continued on.

I started secondary school in 1936, at a time when rumors of war were starting. Just before the war, in 1938, the Japanese government introduced education against the United States, especially in the boys’ school, where military training was important. In the girls’ school, we had a special budō class to learn naginata, long sword, as well as archery. The purpose was not to make women fight but to develop their fighting spirit. Naginata is the name of the weapon and also the name of the martial art. It is a long oak pole with a sword at the end, originally a Chinese weapon for cavalry, which was taught to women so they could defend themselves if the castle was stormed. During practice we would use all wood poles or poles with bamboo at the end.

I especially remember kangeiko, cold practice, early in the morning in the coldest part of the year. I had to take the first train out to commute to school. There were no heaters in the gym, so first we warmed ourselves on a bonfire outside made with scraps of wood. I wore a cotton practice uniform, kimono style, very thin, and we practiced for two hours. After practice we would eat breakfast and go to academic classes. Every year there was one naginata competition in the school, competing against our classmates.

For archery there was another class. There is a way to set up your shot, very precise. The target was 30 meters away. It was made of paper over straw and when the arrow hit correctly in the middle, it made a nice sound. It felt good when it made that sound, zook! It did not make a pleasant sound when it hit the dirt bank.

I practiced budō for five years. Budō is like Zen. There is nothing. If you aim at the target and think, target, target, you will miss it. You have to be one with the target. Once, a long time after I had graduated from school, I was walking down a street, carrying a shopping bag in each hand, when a bad-looking man came toward me. Without thinking, I shifted the two bags to one hand, preparing to defend myself. I gave the man a hard look and he turned and ran away. It happened automatically, because of my training in budō.

Traditional Japanese arts were not taught at school. Those were activities after school. At twelve I started learning shodō, the “way of writing” with fude, brush, and sumi, ink. I also studied ikebana, the art of flower arranging, and shamisen, a lute-like instrument. I did not start learning sadō, the way of tea (also know as chanoyu), until I was eighteen, after graduation from high school.

There was a school in Tōkyō, the Julliard of Japan, famous for both western and Japanese music. It was called Tōkyō Music School, which later became Tōkyō National University of Fine Arts and Music. My uncle taught the vocal music course at this school. I learned to play shamisen as an extracurricular activity from a lady who graduated from Tōkyō Music School. Shamisen is a long, three-stringed instrument which is plucked, and is accompanied by singing. In the old days shamisen was taught one to one, but when I learned it had changed and there were several students in my class. The style I learned was nagauta, one of the most popular styles. Usually when people hear nagauta, they do not understand because it is very stylized, but when you read the lyrics it is very poetic. Nagauta is designed to pass down the old songs written by famous poets and musicians a long time ago. I like the lyrics even when they are not accompanied by music. They are very traditional.

The origin of ikebana is a form of offering flowers to Buddha. The purpose is to show that humans are in between heaven and earth in this life. It was only practiced in the temple at first. Then it went to the warlords in the castles. Common people did not do it. The style I learned was very traditional. The tallest plant is called ten (heaven), the ones in the middle, jin (humans) and the bottom, chi (earth). You are making your own cosmos. That is the meaning behind ikebana. You could use one plant and have all three levels. I think nowadays people put a big bunch of fancy flowers together any way, as long as it looks nice, but you cannot see where heaven and earth and humans are. With true ikebana the three elements are clearly displayed and that is the most pleasing view. My teacher was from a temple. She taught me that each plant has its own history and it is alive, with its own spirit. You have to understand that when you cut the flower. Every time you do ikebana you put yourself into it. You make your own personal microcosm, so that is why every arrangement is different.

After graduation, I went to summer school, held by Tōkyō City Government (now Tōkyō Metropolitan Government), to get a license for teaching shodō for three years. During and after the war I was busy with my family and did not study. Later I took up the practice again and became a shodō teacher. I still continue to teach to this day.

I learned all these things from my teachers. When I was thirty-three, I started teaching shodō but I did not start teaching sadō until I was fifty, because when you are young you do not understand what all these things mean. Feeling is emphasized over technique. When you stir the tea, you have to put all other thought out of your mind and focus on stirring the tea, just like when you put the brush to paper. You cannot understand wabi sabi, simplicity and silence, when you are young. Also the cups are very fragile and valuable. I started learning shodō earlier, so I understood it better, and I also started teaching shodō earlier because you do not need so much equipment, just paper and brushes. To get the license for sadō used to be quite difficult. You had to take a test and also get permission from the master teacher. Now you can become a teacher just with money and the test is administered by the Culture and Education Ministry.

Many years ago I had twenty sadō students but now I am retired. As I get older I do not want to teach, I just want to enjoy the way of tea myself. Also, my knees do not like to sit folded under for long! Once you get to a certain age, most people stop teaching, although I still enjoy teaching shodō. I can sit at a table to make practice exercises and correct students’ work. Some of my students have been with me for twenty-five years. Teaching shodō is a blessing. I am able to pass on the old traditions, which I feel are very valuable as a spiritual practice, especially in these fast-paced times. And through the money I receive from teaching, I am able to support the humanitarian activities that are dear to my heart.