From a Town on the Hudson (3 page)

MY SONS chose the public schools in the town where we lived. For them, the two months from April 18th to the end of the 1984-85 school year seemed to be an exciting as well as tense time.

Because my older son, Kyosuke, who was thirteen years old at the time, had been in Philadelphia when he was three years old, and also because there were few strict rules in his new school, Lewis F. Cole Middle School, he looked more relaxed there than in Japans public junior high school. Besides, in the United States he had no daily piano practice and was not busy with after-school activities. He seemed to enjoy his free time fully. Though he couldn't speak English, he didn't seem to feel so anxious about it. The school had a bilingual class where he could learn American history and science in both English and Japanese. It seemed to be a surprising experience for him to be able to take lessons in fluent Japanese from an American teacher, Mrs. Wheeler. She also used to talk about Japan because she had been there. He was able to take the school trip to Washington, D.C., about ten days after he landed in the United States because of the teacher's timely advice, as well. Moreover, in his class, there were many Japanese girls but only one boy, who had come the previous year. Luckily he and my son became good friends immediately. Not only the students but also their parents could ask the teacher anything in Japanese. In a sense, the class was like a window through which Japanese newcomers could see the United States and Japan. Mrs. Wheeler always opened it wide with a smile.

My son was a member of the E.S.L.
^*
class, as well. The class consisted of new students who came from several non-English-speaking countries. This was one of the amazing aspects of the United States, a country of immigrants. Even though the E.S.L. teacher, Mrs. Costantino, taught proper English words, my son learned English taboo words which were frequently used by American boys in the school sooner than he learned the lessons in the E.S.L. textbook. The worse the phrase was, the easier the new students seemed to pronounce it. My two sons exchanged the newly learned phrases including the accompanying gestures every day at home. I told them not to learn those bad words so eagerly, but I carefully listened to and memorized them. Especially when there were traffic jams, it was helpful for me to understand Americans who were yelling at each other. In other regular middle school classes, my son seemed to enjoy observing everything. It was pleasant for me to hear about it from him while we had supper together. During the first two months in the school, the eyes of my older son were opened to the world—the world outside of Japan.

From the first day, however, my younger son, Masahito, eight years old then, was in a situation that was different from his brothers. At 8:30
A.M.
, April 18th, 1985, in the office of School #3 he waited for his new homeroom teacher to come to pick him up. The secretary, Mrs. Makroulakis, kindly offered to take care of him and I left him there, looking as timid as if he were going to be kidnapped. Since we had just moved into our new home five days earlier, I was busy all day unpacking the many boxes we had sent from Japan. Before three o'clock, I went to pick him up at school. Many mothers were waiting at the gate for their children to come out of the school building. After a few minutes, I saw my son coming with a friendly lady who looked like a teacher. She was holding my son's hand. He looked tired and still nervous. I greeted the lady. She responded with
"Konnichiwa!,"
introduced herself as my son's homeroom teacher, and explained some rules of the school, school hours, how to order lunch, and so on. Her name was Mrs. Benedict, and she told me that my son said he didn't like American school. "However," she continued with her face beaming, "don't worry. Most of the new pupils say that in the beginning, but time opens their minds. Your son will be all right, too." I have forgotten what the weather was like that day, yet her sympathetic manner, like the warm sunlight of spring, certainly put me at ease. My son was in Mrs. Benedict's class for only two months until the school year ended in June. He, too, automatically became a member of the bilingual class as well as the E.S.L. class but couldn't explain what the classes were like as exactly as his older brother did.

I got to know the classes and the teachers, Mrs. Hishikawa and Mrs. Amato, when the parent-teacher conference was held. In the bilingual class, my son seemed to prefer to take a rest as Mrs. Hishikawa, who was married to a Japanese gentleman and had raised their four children in Japan, understood how new pupils felt stress. In other classes, my younger son seemed to spend most of the school hours observing his new surroundings and especially enjoying the snack time for kindergarten through second grade. Having a snack between classes was something that never happened in Japans elementary schools. He acquired a taste for American snacks such as Fruit Roll-Ups. The class he could participate in with confidence seemed to be math class. He certainly knew numbers, but it should have been impossible for him to understand the meaning of the problems written in English. When I saw his math textbook and the tests that he brought home, however, I realized why he could solve the problems. I found marks such as +, —, and x below each problem. Mrs. Benedict marked them for him so that he could distinguish the addition, subtraction, and multiplication problems from one another. He looked happy showing me the results of his math test, but because of the help he received, he didn't get a grade on his report card for this marking period. One day in the middle of June, he told me immediately upon coming home from school about the "show and tell" class. His face lit up when he told about how he had tried to do his best when speaking his first English sentence: "This is a game-watch." I was sure that Mrs. Benedict had applauded for him. He added, "All the class applauded for me, too." The most important thing he learned about in the first two months may have been the American hospitality that his teacher showed.

*
English as a Second Language.

THE SINGER wasn't applauded at that time because he sang the Japanese National Anthem, "Kimigayo," at the opening ceremony of the official tour of Japan's national sport to the United States. However, I thought he was a professional worthy of being praised.

At 7:30
P.M.
, Saturday, June 15th, 1985, the seats of Madison Square Garden were filled. The opening ceremony for the second day of the three-day grand sumo tournament in New York had begun. Everyone rose. As soon as the first part of Japan's "Kimigayo" sounded, the noise of the crowd in the large hall ebbed away. I recognized the voice of popular baritone singer Sumito Tachikawa. He looked very neat in a formal, black Japanese kimono and was singing near the
dohyo
(the raised sand-and-clay ring where sumo wrestlers fight) in the center of the pit. The middle-aged singer, who stood erect, seemed to overwhelm the tens of thousands of spectators with his sonorous voice before his appearance attracted their attention. The song affected me strongly at once. I wondered if it was nostalgia, but it seemed different. The stillness of the hall as well seemed distinguished from a mere sense of respect for the national anthem. Everybody seemed to be listening to him intently. A solemn feeling spread through the large sports arena and the song stood out in the hushed silence. "Is this really 'Kimigayo'?" I gazed, enraptured by the scene. To me, for many years this song had seemed different than it was today. The tempo had been as slow as the plodding of an ox, the melody as monotonous as a blowing siren, the words as tranquil as a lullaby. It had always been a dull chorus, besides. What's more, in Japan the song used to give rise to criticism among leftist circles because it hadn't been made the official anthem by the Constitution. So I never fully appreciated it in the right way. Tachikawa, however, successfully showed the charm of the song: His rich voice set off the gentle tempo, making the melody mysterious but graceful. The words were particularly peaceful: "May the reign of the Emperor continue for a thousand, nay, eight thousand generations and for the eternity that it takes for small pebbles to grow into a great rock and become covered with moss."
^*
Unexpectedly, an image of the seahorse-shaped Japanese archipelago across the blue Pacific Ocean flashed into my mind. It was my homeland, lush and green. Because of this song, a feeling of pride that I was from Japan formed in my mind for the first time. I found myself a Tachikawa fan by the time the male American vocalist finished singing the bright "Star-Spangled Banner."

The tension in the hall was relieved as people burst out talking again, in anticipation of seeing Japanese sumo. Breathing in the sweet smell of popcorn, I looked forward to going to see a Tachikawa show after I returned to Japan. Six months later, however, the vocalist suddenly died of a brain hemorrhage in Japan. He was fifty-six. When I heard the news in the United States, I realized that I had been able to see only his back when he had so majestically sung "Kimigayo" at Madison Square Garden.

*
Nippon: The Land and Its People.
 
Nippon Steel Corporation, Personnel Development Division. Tokyo, 1984.

FOR AN AMERICAN audience, the parade of forty barefoot wrestlers at the
dohyoiri
"
^*
ritual seemed significant in the sense that they saw Japanese who were different from a group of Japanese businessmen wearing suits and glasses in Manhattan. The audience shouted with joy—as if anthropologists had finally discovered a primitive Japanese man. Everybody looked wide-eyed at the extraordinary, ancient-looking wrestlers and welcomed them with applause. The bulky wrestlers were dressed in colorfully embroidered
keshyo-mawashi
^†
and all wore the same distinctive hairstyles. They moved slowly in single file and performed their mysterious ring-entrance rite on the
dohyo.

To tell the truth, I had never appreciated their old-fashioned appearance while I had lived in Japan. When I was small, I even mistook sumo wrestlers for big, tough women. The dour expressions on their faces made me think they were unhappy, as well. I was interested in championship matches between big-name wrestlers such as Taiho and Kashiwado as I grew up, but I had never been an eager sumo fan. However, in New York in 1985, the parade of sumo wrestlers represented a race and an ancient culture that greatly contrasted with the modern, Western surroundings. Besides, the tremendous acclamation by the audience roused me. I was beginning to see sumo culture in a new light. The way that it combined martial arts with Shinto, the pantheistic, indigenous religion of Japan, became apparent. Yokozuna Chiyonofuji's elaborate grandchampion ritual even looked like an
ukiyoe
woodblock print from old Japan. The audience cheered loudly as they watched this grand man, steeped in tradition. Of all the Japanese visiting America at that time, the sumo wrestlers were the most warmly welcomed, even more than a prime minister.

The friendly audience, however, started raising clenched fists as they were informed that the tournament would begin. They were ready for the grand sumo tournament, and the hall was thrown into an uproar.

3
Entrance to the
 
dohyo.

†
Ornamental apron worn by sumo wrestlers.