Mother Leads Ito from Iwanosaka toward Sugamo
ONE OF THE MOST NOTICEABLE things about Tokyo dialect is that instead of pronouncing the sound hi like the English pronoun “he,” people add an “s” sound and pronounce it shi, like the English word “she.”
As a result, the statue of the loyal dog Hachiko, a popular rendezvous spot, is located in “Shibuya”—that, Tokyoites can pronounce without much problem—but Hibiya, a part of town known for its movie theaters, is “Shibiya.” The atomic bomb was dropped on the city of “Shiroshima” (which is Hiroshima, of course), and on festival days, crowds of people—“shitode” (hitode in standard Japanese)—gather at the local shrine while cats bask in the sun—shinatabokko (hinatabokko in standard Japanese). No wonder it’s so difficult for Tokyoites to get the name of the newspaper Asahi Shimbun right. (No, it’s not Asashi Himbun!)
That’s why, when I was little, I thought for the longest time that my name was pronounced “Shiromi.” That was what Mom and my aunts called me. Across the narrow street from the house where I grew up lived a boy. Day and night, I heard his mother yell at him, “Masashiro! Masashiro!” Later, when I learned they were pronouncing his name right, and the second half of his name was indeed shiro, not hiro, my impressionable young self felt cheated somehow. Why was mine the only name with the funny pronunciation?
IF YOU GET OFF THE train at Itabashi Honcho Station and follow some of the twisting lanes, you soon come to the hilly streets of Iwanosaka. Many years before I was born, a series of murders took place there—a bunch of foster parents killed their infant adoptees. In the mid-nineteenth century, Itabashi was a stop on the Nakasendo highway where travelers could rest and find lodgings for the night. Even at the beginning of the twentieth century, there were still many wooden apartment buildings and cheap rowhouses near the station. All sorts of people congregated there: beggars, the homeless, vendors selling incense for the Jizo temple in Sugamo, and men who hung around waiting to push carts full of luggage for spare change. Locals started adopting unwanted children, but many of those children met with mysterious deaths. When the authorities finally took notice, it became apparent that the crime wasn’t the work of one or two rogues—the entire neighborhood was involved. In Japan, when parents send their children out for adoption, they usually send money and clothing along with them. In Iwanosaka, each time a new child arrived, the neighborhood confiscated those things, and the people drank, ate, and celebrated. Sometimes the community raised the child and put it to work. Sometimes they simply killed it. Dozens of infants were killed because they were too young to be of any use.
All of this took place way before I was born, back when Mom was a little girl. At the time, she was living with her down-and-out family close by Ryusenji temple in Shitaya, an old working-class neighborhood near Asakusa. At first, the family had no real connection to Iwanosaka, but their lives were hard and they decided to try their luck and moved into one of the shacks there. Their situation didn’t improve, and eventually Grandpa left to work in the gold mines on the island of Sado, far from Tokyo. About a year later, he had a stroke and returned home, partially paralyzed. Grandma had a really difficult time after that. And with five or six children to take care of too. Mom was the second oldest of the kids. The oldest was my aunt—in reality, Mom’s half-sister from a different father. She was sickly and weak. Mom, next in line, was healthy and strong. They said she worked hard—harder than anyone else.
Harder than anyone.
SOMETIMES I THINK ABOUT RECOUNTING our family’s story in the style of a Japanese folk tale. I might begin with a song and then launch into it, like some old-fashioned storyteller. Here, let me give it a try:
Come, come
To Iwanosaka
Where a bridge of tears
Crosses Oshito Stream
Once upon a time, there was a man named Tatsugoro who was tall and ruggedly handsome. He was educated and willing to do anything to make money, but he loved gambling, liquor, and ladies. (Ladies of the night, that is.) Still, he was a good man at heart. He had a strong sense of justice and got along well with everyone. He was a defender of the weak and enemy of the powerful. Because of that, a widow named Toyoko fell in love with him and brought her young daughter to live with him. She was a good woman, skilled at needlework and singing.
As soon as they moved in together, they started having children—not just one, but lots. Life grew harder and harder, so Tatsugoro went to work in the gold mines of Sado to provide for his family. While there, however, he suffered a stroke, became half-paralyzed, and had to return. Toyoko’s life grew even harder. She sent her oldest daughter out to work. Toyoko did anything and everything she could think of to make money. Anything and everything. Worked her fingers to the bone. She sewed, sang, and worked like mad to support her children and husband.
One day, a god possessed her. Day after day, she had been praying in the morning and at night, praying with single-minded devotion in front of the little Buddhist altar in their home. As she prayed, her voice suddenly rose, froth poured from her lips, and she collapsed. But then she sprang back up, glared at her husband, and started heaping abuse on him in a low voice. This had happened once before, and her second daughter, Mako, was the only one who could understand what she was saying. It was clear to Tatsugoro and the neighbors that Toyoko had been possessed, but no one knew which god it was or why it had chosen her. At that time, Mako was working as a nanny for a merchant family in Otsuka, so she was immediately sent for. Mako rushed home, and sure enough, she was able to understand her mother’s every word.
What’s she saying?
She’s saying, I’m the god of such-and-such, and if you don’t listen to what I’m telling you, you’ll be in a ton of trouble.
What else?
She says, the wallet you lost is behind the dresser, right where it fell. She says so-and-so is too stingy. He’s sure to be punished for not giving people more time to repay their loans.
Sure enough, the wallet was discovered behind the dresser, and that evening, on his way home from work, the stingy fellow she mentioned fell into the gutter. When the rumors got out that her predictions had come true, people began to show up at the house.
She says so-and-so’s husband is in Sueshiro in Itabashi. (That was how she pronounced the name of the brothel Suehiro. Tokyo dialect, you see.)
She says so-and-so’s son is either in Shinagawa or Gotanda somewhere in that direction.
Something something (There’s some song that appears in narratives like this, but I’ve forgotten it. Too bad, or I’d use it here.).
Come and see
The backside of the arrowroot leaves
Curling to show their backs
Curling to show their grudge
Her predictions were so accurate that before long, her half-paralyzed husband Tatsugoro, defender of the weak and enemy of the powerful, got to thinking. Lifting his pipe to his mouth with his trembling hand, he said, lots of people are coming to listen to the god speak through her. Let’s ask for offerings.
But the instant they started taking money from visitors, the god stopped speaking through her.
She lamented, I’ve lost everything, I’ve lost everything. Even the gods have abandoned me. My husband’s half-paralyzed, my sons and daughters are all too young to help. We can’t feed all these mouths. To make matters worse, my oldest daughter is sick. One of my sons is weak in the head. All my youngest daughter does is cough. As if that wasn’t enough, my half-paralyzed husband is playing around. He’d be a tall, rugged, handsome man if it weren’t for all his health problems. When he doesn’t come home at night, all I do is sit and worry.
One day she heard a rumor about the miraculous bodhisattva Jizo in Sugamo, said to relieve a visitor’s suffering as easily as if he was pulling a thorn from their body. In one of the nearby rowhouses lived an old woman who sold incense to offer Jizo. Just the other day, she’d visited Toyoko to borrow some rice.
Toyoko lamented, the incense vendor comes all the time, even though we’re desperately poor. Even so, my husband tells me to help her and shares our rice. She tells me, Toyoko-san, try going to Jizo, try praying to him just once. He’ll take away your suffering. So I did. There was such a huge crowd there that even when I looked for the incense vendor, I couldn’t find her. I ended up buying my incense from someone else. The crowd jostled me as I lit it and tossed it into the large burner. I swept the smoke toward me with my hands and rubbed the throat of my youngest daughter, praying her cough would go away.
I rubbed her head and prayed she’d be beautiful.
I rubbed her head and prayed she’d be smart.
I rubbed her shoulders and stomach so she’d be strong.
I rubbed the spot above my uterus so I wouldn’t have any more children.
I rubbed the spot above my legs so Tatsugoro would stop fooling around.
I rubbed my chest so all my suffering would end.
I rubbed my neck (so my coughing would end).
I rubbed my eyes (so my eye strain would end).
I rubbed my shoulders (so my stiffness would end).
So that Mako’s suffering would end.
So that Chiyoko’s suffering would end.
And I stood in the long line so I could wash the small stone statue.
So this suffering
And that suffering
Would all
Come to an end.
IN 1966, THE TOKYO METROPOLITAN Bureau of Transportation shut down the Shimura trolley. The idea was to install a subway. As they worked on the new subway line, they started running buses back and forth to Sugamo. In addition, the government was building an elevated highway nearby, so there were huge holes and piles of dirt all over the place. The new subway line would stop at Honcho, Nakajuku, the Itabashi Ward Government Office (it ran much closer to the Itabashi gas tanks than the old trolley had), Koshinzuka, Yatchaba, and then Sugamo. The buses wove their way through the construction, which left almost no place for large vehicles to stop and park. Finally, in late 1968, Subway Line Number Six opened, connecting the ten kilometers between Sugamo and Shimura.
Sigh . . . There are way too many stairs in Sugamo Station. Twenty-four steps, then another twenty-four steps, then thirteen steps, then out the ticket gate, then another forty-five steps, forty-five steps, and another forty-six steps. That’s one hundred ninety-seven altogether. It’s really far, really, really far, and the stairs only make the distance feel that much greater. I was running out of breath. The new subway made it much harder to visit Jizo than before. Pilgrims have to expend so much more effort that I couldn’t help but assume Jizo would be even more generous to anyone who makes the trip.
Up the stairs. One step. One step at a time. Then another. I ran out of breath climbing. I exited just outside Itabashi Honcho Station on Subway Line Number Six. I thought I’d be completely outdoors once I left the stairwell, but I found myself under a raised portion of Loop Number Seven, the highway that encircles much of central Tokyo. Something felt vaguely unsettling to me. It was there that the slope to Iwanosaka started. Downward it went.
At the top of the hill were a few shops, then a street lined with regular houses. Another street much the same. Then a funeral parlor so well camouflaged one could almost miss it. Then a bar, a pharmacy. A tea shop, a tobacco shop, a store selling electrical goods, another selling work uniforms, and in front of that, an old lady sitting outside on a chair.
A rice shop. A tiny police box for one or two policemen. Behind that, the entrance to a public bathhouse. Behind that, the entrance to some student lodgings. Then halfway down the slope on the left-hand side was the “relationship-ending hackberry tree.”
Why is it called that? Well, get someone to swallow the bark of that tree, and your relationship with them will end. We’ve all tried it: Grind some up and slip it into miso soup. Not just me—everyone around there. Lots of times. I’ve been known to get embroiled in bad relationships from time to time, but the bark of the tree saved my hide every time. I ditched all those guys. And good riddance too.
So much bark had been peeled from the trunk of the hackberry tree that the bumpy wood underneath was in plain sight. Behind the tree was a small Shinto shrine. A three-legged chair sat there. Across the street was an antique store and a barber shop. To the left beyond the tree was an elementary school, but I couldn’t hear any voices. The place was completely silent. Beside the school was a paper mill. It was surrounded by a wall, with a narrow alleyway beside it. Walking down the alley, I looked up and saw barbed wire running along the top of the wall. More than once when I was looking at the stained splotches on the wall, they started to talk to me.
Get stuck by this rusty wire, and it’ll be the end of you.
Soil the wire, and it’ll get you faster.
Nah, no need to bother, just steer clear.
I went down the alleyway alongside the talking wall and came to the house where Tatsugoro used to live. At some point in his eighties he developed what we’d now call Alzheimer’s. From time to time he’d disappear, and the family would have to go to the police. Eventually he grew weak and died at home. The official records list the cause of death as pneumonia, but who knows? Mako whispered to Chiyoko that the doctor who had come to check on him had given him some sort of injection, promising it would make him feel better. Was the doctor responsible? Who knows. Toyoko died several years later in hospital.
I walked further down the alley along the wall and came out along the Shakuji River, partway between Banbabashi bridge and Itabashi bridge.
I wasn’t the only little girl in the neighborhood who was told she’d been discovered underneath Banbabashi bridge and brought home. My cousins, uncles, and aunts were all told the same thing as kids. In fact, I used to say it to my daughters too.
At first, I repeated this local legend to tease them, but I’d be lying if I said there weren’t moments when, somewhere deep inside, I wished they really weren’t my kids. I told them the story to provoke them, but now just thinking about it makes me feel bad.
The path descended along the river from Banbabashi bridge. From the path, I could see into the nearby houses. I could catch glimpses of people’s lives that way. No one seemed to care that someone might be peeking in. Sometimes I even witnessed scenes of birth or death. No one seemed to care that someone might be watching as they died. They crawled around. They fell into the stream. They climbed back up. Or if they didn’t, they were carried away by the water’s flow.
My imagination is carrying me away. Let me get back to the story.
It was the twenty-fourth.
Old women were coming out of the woodwork from every direction.
Backs bent,
They wear kimonos covered in intricate gray designs.
They tie their sashes loosely to expose their chests.
Backs bent,
The women spill from the narrow alleyways
And converge on the old Nakasendo highway.
They pass through the store-lined streets,
Slowly, slowly climbing toward Iwanosaka,
And are swallowed by the subway entrance
On their way to the Thorn Puller in Sugamo.
THE NURSES TOLD ME MOM was disoriented. Every night she would chatter on and on about all sorts of things. It seemed to happen only after dark. It never happened during the day when the sun was shining.
One evening the nurse said, your mother was crying and repeating, “Mommy, Mommy,” then “Daddy, Daddy.” She said, “I want to go live with Daddy.” She said, “It’s the fourteenth of the month, I need to cook some rice,” then she asked in a loud voice, “How did I end up this way?” She kept asking, “How did I get here? Where am I going tomorrow?” She repeated this over and over until darkness fell. Then she started crying, “Mommy, Mommy” all over again.
Without thinking, I asked the nurse what she was talking about. Did Mom think she was a little girl again?
During the day, Mom was in her right mind, but she hardly ate, so her caretakers had to keep telling her to eat—you’ve got to eat, you’re on an IV, but you’ve still got to eat. She had lost a ton of weight, and her arms and legs were especially thin. Her face was still super wide, square, and grumpy-looking—exactly like mine. There are dodomeiro-colored spots spreading all over her face. (Hold on, I’ll say more about the word dodomeiro in a second.) Whiskers sprouted from her upper lip, and little skin tags had appeared here and there. Sometimes I would use my fingernails to pinch them off. Ouch! Ouch! she said. That hurts, just leave them, I don’t care, I’m an old lady, I don’t care. My efforts only seemed to irritate her.
I used to believe that the word dodomeiro was a vulgar word that referred to the purplish, bruised color of someone’s private parts after tons of sex, but I looked it up in my dictionary. It told me that dodomeiro is dialect from central Japan, and it refers to the color of ripe mulberries. My goodness, I thought. There’s always something new to learn. I’ve never seen the ripe fruit of a mulberry tree, but I do know what well-used genitals look like.
My mulberry-colored mother asked me the same question over and over: How did I end up like this?
How did I end up like this? Did I do something bad?
No doubt you did. Lots of bad things. I’d be telling the truth if I said that, but I bit my tongue. You did lots of bad things, and lots of people did bad things back.
She’d convinced herself that her condition was the result of her own actions. That everything that had happened during her life had created this inescapable suffering. Her life experiences were like needles piercing her body as her days dwindled. She had been mistreated by her parents, she was alone, she was beaten, she was sold, she was bought, she was forced into sex, she hated people, she was reviled, she picked on people, she was picked on, and she shouted back. Every one of her experiences was a needle piercing her flesh. She gave birth to children she couldn’t care for. She got pregnant and had an abortion, then later, a miscarriage. She had seen so, so, so many demons. Still, I wanted to ease her suffering, even if it was just a little.
So I made up a story.
Mom, you must’ve killed too many spiders.
Spiders? Spiders? I wonder. Did I really squash that many?
Sure you did. You killed them on first sight. You hated spiders, positively hated them. So much that you couldn’t stop yourself.
Spiders, eh? Well, if I ever get out of the hospital, I’ll go make some offerings for atonement.
For a moment, it seemed she’d accepted my explanation and returned to a normal state of mind, but then she got herself all worked up again.
No. No way. Couldn’t have been the spiders.
If she’d just believe me—if she could just believe in something, even my ridiculous assertion that spiders were the cause of all her suffering—then she’d feel so much better.
THE NURSE PHONED ME. IT was five o’clock in the morning.
Your mother is calling out, “Mommy, Mommy!” She called us and said, “I want to see Shiromi. Shiromi works at night so she’ll still be awake. Call her for me.” She asked us over and over to call you. (In her mental reversion to her youth, Mom’s Tokyo accent had returned.)
It’s true I work at night, but even night owls are usually asleep by five in the morning. Me, for instance. I threw something simple over my pajamas and headed out. She was in bed, and her eyes were full of tears. It was perhaps the first time I ever saw tears streaming down her face, but I couldn’t help feeling that it was somehow an all too familiar sight.
She said to me, I had a dream. I saw Jizo’s face with thousands of needles sticking out of it. Mom said, I thought, oh, my goodness, and as I stroked his face, the needles started coming out wherever I touched. I thought, oh, my goodness. I opened my clothes, and the wound in my chest had healed. (In reality, she had no wound on her chest.)
It was beginning to grow light outside. As I stroked her chest, caressing the wound that wasn’t there, I asked, on which day of the month did you go see Jizo?
The fourteenth.
Not the twenty-fourth?
Nope.
Why the fourteenth?
There were more people out then. There were so many people it’d be packed all the way from Sugamo Station to Koshinzuka. If you tried to get off at Sugamo, it’d be so crowded you couldn’t get off, and you’d have to go back. That’s why I’d get off at Koshinzuka instead.
So what did you do when you got to Sugamo?
I went to the temple, of course. They’ve got that big iron cauldron full of burning incense out front, and I’d rub the smoke on the parts of my body that were giving me trouble. Then I’d wash it, of course.
Wash what?
The statue of Jizo, with his clothes off.
Are you sure it was Jizo you washed? People who go there usually wash the statue of Kannon, the bodhisattva of mercy, the one outside the temple.
Nope. (Mom’s response was emphatic.) The statue didn’t have Kannon’s face. It had Jizo’s. They’ve got scrub brushes there, and if you scrub the part of the statue that’s giving you trouble, Jizo takes your thorns of suffering away.
Are you sure you’re not talking about the statue of Kannon right in front of the temple? It’s famous. Lots of people go there to wash it, hoping that Kannon will help them.
Nope. (Once again, Mom fired back without hesitation.) I’m telling you, it was a Jizo with the face of a young child. That’s not how Kannon looks.
By that point it was light outside.
I tried to change the subject. What do you call the kind of clothing Grandma wore when she went to the temple?
Those? Tokiyo took them all away.
No, Mom. That’s not what I’m asking.
I’ve still got one left, so if you want to wear it, I could lend it to you. You’d have to look through the chest of drawers, but I know it’s in there.
No, Mom. I’m not asking because I want to wear it. I was wondering what you call that kind of clothing.
It’s an akashi. In June, you used to wear an akashi. There was also something called a jofu. I’ve forgotten. Back in the old days, you’d wear certain things during certain months. In June you’d wear a such-and-such, in July a such-and-such, and so on. And then in July, you’d wear a silk gauze kimono.
The kind I’m thinking of is a single-layered kimono. It’s light gray and has a small intricate pattern.
Oh, that one. I’ve got one of those at my place.
Mom, I don’t want one. I’m just trying to find out what it’s called.
The reason I wanted to know is that I wanted to write about Grandma’s kimono. Whenever I think of her, that’s what I remember her wearing. Mom’s answers to my questions showed that she was thoroughly confused. Was her memory failing?
You think I’d remember something like that?
She looked so relaxed and comfortable wearing it.
She looked stylish and sexy—because of the kimonos she wore and the way she wore them. She’d wear them so loose in front that you could catch a glimpse of her breasts.
How’d she wear her hair?
Like you’re wearing yours now. In a bun. She’d wrap her hair around and around and pin it in place. She’d shave around her eyebrows to keep them nice and neat. And if anything happened, she’d immediately go to Jizo. Anything difficult or frustrating, she’d set off right away.
You mean she’d go on the special days for pilgrims?
That’s right. The fourteenth.
Isn’t the twenty-fourth the usual day to worship Jizo?
Yep, that’s right.
But just now, you said she’d go on the fourteenth.
Oh, I did? Well then, I guess I was right, maybe it was the fourteenth. I wonder why the fourteenth. Maybe because it was empty? If my daughter was with me, I’d hold her hand. I suppose it was easier when the place was empty. She was weak and always, always sick. We had so many doctor’s bills that we never knew how we’d pay. Your grandmother and I prayed. We even gave up drinking tea as a sacrifice to make Jizo more likely to listen. We went to pray and wash Jizo every month.
Hold on, Mom. I’m confused. Which daughter are you talking about?
Mako. No, wait. I’m Mako. It couldn’t have been Aiko, so who was it? Oh, I’m thinking of Shiromi. Shiromi was the one with the weak constitution. You know, when we were naming her, her Grandpa was steadfastly opposed to the name Shiromi. He kept on saying, you can’t give a kid a name that you can’t even pronounce properly!
(Of course, Mom was talking about me.)
I asked, did the wishes you made at the temple come true?
Shiromi got stronger so I knitted a little red bib for Jizo to thank him. I also bought two or three scrub brushes. Do people still do that these days? Probably not.
When Grandma went to visit Jizo at the temple, did she dress up or wear regular clothing?
I think she wore a cotton kimono.
Those are nice—those light-gray kimonos with intricate designs.
You’re talking about the ones Tokiyo took away.
No, I’m not talking about who took what kimono.
I’ve just got that one left.
No, Mom, that’s not the point. I just want to find out what that kind of kimono is called.
Mom said, in June, we’d wear an akashi.
Then she changed the subject.
I’m going to sleep.
And she closed her eyes.
Yes, go to sleep.
I left her hospital room and went outside. It was midmorning by then. The sun was shining brilliantly overhead. It was so bright I couldn’t help feel it was looking askance at how crazy I looked, with my coat thrown over some worn-out pajamas.