KAREN HILL ANTON
THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN
When I was growing up, a First Lady was just that. A lady. A woman who wore hats and smiled. Sometimes she waved a gloved hand. That’s my basic image of the women who were in your role before you. I can think of only one First Lady who left an impression on me. Jackie Kennedy stood out because of her glamour and style, her presence. Still, it would have never occurred to me to want to look like her, dress like her, be like her. You changed that. You changed a lot of things and I suspect that it will only be with time that we will fully be able to appreciate the legacy of your work and your husband’s presidency.
I left the United States for the first time when I was 19 years old and traveled for one year, mostly in Europe. I returned home in the early 1970s to find an America I no longer recognized. My family had moved from our apartment and community, a place where we knew everyone by name, to a housing project. My father had served as head of the Community League of 159th Street numerous times, actively participating in creating a neighborhood where the end-of-summer block party was the biggest event of our young lives, kids played outside until the streetlights came on, and keeping an eye on a neighbor’s child was like keeping an eye on your own. This new place was an alien landscape, devastated by drugs and violence. It was a place I wanted no part of, a place where I would not contemplate raising a family. When I got older and my partner and I did start a family, we moved to Vermont. There, we were able to find good jobs and a wonderful school for our daughter. We would probably still be there today if Billy hadn’t been offered the opportunity to study and live in Japan at a yoga training center where natural foods, meditation, and a simple healthy lifestyle were the center of the curriculum.
I have three daughters and a son. Our eldest daughter was born in Denmark, the other three children here in Japan. I’ve never used the term “expatriates” to describe my family and myself. My husband Billy and I, friends since we were teenagers, came to Japan in 1975. We just never left.
Forty years ago, we arrived in Japan, and moved into a farmhouse that we would call home for nearly a decade. Stepping out of the car at what seemed to be the top of the world, I knew I’d found the place in Japan I wanted to be. I’m not sure what it was, the old house or the view, which is not quite the word one wants for a panorama of bamboo groves, tea plantations, rice fields, mountains upon mountains, and endless sky. This unknown, strange place had been waiting for us to come to it.
“This is it, Billy,” I said.
“Yeah. This is it.”
It was called Futokoro Yama, which loosely translated means Breastpocket Mountain. In that old house we sat on zabuton, the thick floor cushions, because there were no chairs; heated the bath with wood, because that’s how we could make it hot. Our closest neighbors were the Ishikawa family. Almost all the families in that area shared the same name. The eldest Ishikawa, a man of perhaps sixty who looked seventy, made his presence known our first morning by piling up a load of wood in our yard. We were grateful and did not mention the noise had woken us up before the sun.
All throughout Japan, forty years ago when we first arrived and to this day, rural families live like the Ishikawas with children, parents, grandparents, perhaps an aunt or uncle, all under one roof. Japanese do not view autonomy as we do, and privacy is not prized in the same way. Even with paper-thin walls, shared family life is viewed for its benefits. Michelle, I was happy to learn your mother, the esteemed Marian Robinson, would move into the White House with all of you; it was a very important moment for me because it made me realize that yours was a family that I could not only respect, but relate to. Multigenerational households are one of the things I’ve liked most about traditional Japanese family life. While raising our family in a small village here, ours was the only family that could go by that uncomfortable name “nuclear.” We were not fortunate enough to have grandparents to share in our children’s lives, but I surely saw the value in it, and clearly you do, too.
We must all decide when and how we will make a life. We are all, in our own way, climbing a mountain. I can only imagine that your husband’s presidency and your family becoming the First Family was also a climb. As I watched you from afar—6,296 miles away to be exact—I marveled at the patience and grace with which you undertook the task of becoming the First Lady. Everything about you seemed to say, “I am going to do this. But I am going to do this my way.” What I have seen is that you decided, as I did, that life is too short to dispel too much energy on other people’s ignorance and the limitations that they might prescribe. Instead, you forged your own path. As you have said, “Success is only meaningful and enjoyable if it feels like your own.”
A COUNTRY WITHOUT GUNS
When I moved into that century-old farmhouse on top of a mountain in central Japan, I wondered how our family would adjust. Would I be able to communicate with my neighbors (all three of them)? Was I really going to be able to build a fire to heat the ritual nightly bath? My husband was starting a new job, our daughter a new school. Would she learn Japanese? There was a lot for me to learn. And among that new learning was that the most important thing expected of me in my community was cooperation. Being interdependent is a natural state for families and society. My neighbors accepted me, no doubt because I accepted them.
As you become a grown-up, in the deepest sense of the word, you discover that every choice involves gains and losses. Everything is a compromise, especially in a country like Japan, where the good of the whole outweighs the good of the individual. For me, the gains were monumental. As America mourns what has become a season of unchecked gun violence, I am most grateful for the fact that I live in a country where it would be front-page news if a policeman even took his gun out of its holster.
I know you remember (the whole world does) when Barack said that if he had a son, he would look like Trayvon Martin—implying he would fear for his son’s safety, and his son’s life.
I have a son. I have never, ever, in all the years we’ve lived in Japan, worried about his or any of our children’s safety. I’m talking about my girls walking home alone from ballet classes in the evenings. I’m talking about Mario, at ten years old, going to visit a friend in Osaka two hours away on a high-speed train, with a note pinned to his T-shirt and $100 in cash in his pocket. I’m forever grateful my children had that kind of childhood. It’s the childhood I’d wish for all children. I loved taking our children on visits to America so they could see that we truly have a rainbow nation. But Michelle, they could not enjoy the freedom they’ve always had in Japan, and I disliked having the role of the admonisher: don’t go there, be careful of that, be sure and check if …
I’m sure you know that handguns are illegal in Japan. Virtually no one is allowed to possess one. But what you don’t know is that my neighbors ask me, as if I, because I’m American, could somehow produce a reasonable answer: How can it be possible for Americans to have guns? They’re incredulous.
I can probably recite the Second Amendment by heart. I could explain it to them. But I doubt their question would change. In 2013 Japan recorded 0 gun deaths.
Michelle, I know you’ve taken a sincere interest in the health and well-being of American children. And I sincerely commend you for the changes you’ve effected. Still, it upsets me, and I bet you too, to think of the danger children face on a daily basis in communities across America. Walking to school, sitting on a porch, lying on a bed reading, going to the store, can all be daily activities that end in a tragic “incident” as a bullet (stray, intended, accidental—does it matter?) tears through kids’ young bodies. If this isn’t a public health crisis I truly don’t know what is.
Whenever there’s a mass shooting in the States I can see my Japanese neighbors are pained to even mention it. And I assure you mass shootings are the only ones my neighbors know about because they are reported in the Japanese news. They have no idea of the number of people who are killed in Chicago or Omaha or Baltimore on a regular basis. My neighbors are embarrassed for me. Because I’m American.
The proliferation of and easy accessibility to guns in the United States—factually easier to obtain than many mundane items—is an aberration of a modern society. Here, possession of handguns was banned in 1965 and there are strict penalties for violations. Before you can obtain a rifle for hunting, the police will first interview your family members to find out if there’s any domestic strife. They’ll talk to your neighbors. They will go to your job. You’ll be required to have a physical and mental examination. You will have to go to a firing range to show you know how to use your weapon, and your home will be inspected to see if you know how to store it.
Yes, these steps are repressive. But here it’s considered common sense to put the well-being of the society first. From this perspective, what we Americans call “rights” could be called irresponsibility. Seeing the daily carnage as a consequence of the proliferation of guns, from Japan, it appears Americans exact a heavy price for their so-called “freedoms.”
THE THINGS I MISS
For many years I was a columnist for The Japan Times. My columns covered the challenges of cross-cultural communication, the misunderstandings that may occur, the frustrations that can result. I wrote about food and exchanging recipes, and sometimes actual dishes, with my friends and neighbors. I told readers that when I went to the States I loved that I could eat corn on the cob and black cherries to my heart’s content, because they’re not as expensive as they are here. Readers knew that I returned to Japan like a pack horse, my luggage overweight with black-eyed peas, great northern beans, lima beans, maple syrup. When I wrote about my love for collard greens, and how much I missed them, one reader sent me collard green seeds, and another, writing from Hawaii, told me she would cook me up a pot of greens if I were ever to visit. I did, and she did.
In several columns I wrote about preparing obento (lunch boxes), which is serious business in Japan. It is expected your child’s school obento is healthy, tasty, and looks attractive. My children held me to a strict standard, and youngest daughter Lila would often draw diagrams for the obento layout!
I loved reading about the vegetable garden you planted in the White House, the first garden on those grounds since the Victory Gardens of World War 2. I truly admired the fact that you made it a quest to make healthier foods more accessible to all Americans. I have long appreciated the connection between good nutrition and good health, and indeed it was part of what built the bridge between America and Japan for me and my husband. Billy was one of the early members of the health foods movement in America in the mid-60s, and concern for our children’s and all children’s health was central to our lives. The summer before we left the U.S. Billy was asked to be head chef at a camp for disadvantaged children from New York City. Preparing healthy, simple food, based on the macriobiotic diet, we (I was his sous-chef) introduced the children (some clearly malnourished) to healthy foods. Ever curious, we were delighted the children would come into the kitchen to ask questions about what we were preparing, or have a new taste experience, sampling things like Japanese seaweed, burdock root, fresh tofu. We taught them the Japanese concept of hara hachibu—meaning that one should only eat until the stomach is 80 percent full, and stop. Everyone in Japan is familiar with this saying, and no doubt it contributes to the fact that obesity is still rare here.
YOUR JAPANESE COUNTERPART, CROWN PRINCESS MASAKO
Like women everywhere, women in Japan need role models. You’ve probably met Crown Princess Masako, and I’m sure you found her to be a remarkable woman. Raised internationally, she is multilingual, received a fine education and had a rising career as a diplomat. Just like you were able to bring your professional experience and accomplishments to enhance your role as First Lady, Masako Owada definitely represented a model of success for women in Japan (and that includes my daughters) who genuinely admired and respected her. But once she entered the Imperial Household, she was reduced to the pressures of providing the country with not just an heir, but a male heir. It was unthinkable that she should play any role on the international stage other than consort to the Crown Prince. The Imperial Household is an ancient and thoroughly fossilized institution. No one expects it to change. There is an expression in Japanese, shouganai, that could be translated as “it can’t be helped” or “it’s inevitable.” This pretty much sums up the national attitude toward unfortunate situations. When it had been made abundantly clear that Crown Princess Masako would not be permitted to step out of her antiquated and rigidly prescribed centuries-old role, I’m sure I heard, not a collective shouganai, but a national sigh of disappointment.
At the same time, my daughters have found powerful role models in the women of Japan. I was hardly surprised when I was once asked point-blank: “Aren’t you worried your daughters will become like Japanese women?” The American woman who put that question to me clearly thought that was the worst thing that could happen to them. I didn’t.
You see, Michelle, I didn’t share this woman’s view that my daughters—Nanao, Mie, and Lila—might be lesser women, somehow, if indeed they acquired whatever might be considered typical characteristics of whatever might be the typical “Japanese woman.” Just as you, and of course many black women, have suffered prejudice and bias for being who you are and having assumptions made about you, there are an abundance of stereotypes about Japanese women that don’t ring true. The qualities that characterize the Japanese women I know are intelligence, competence, selflessness, grace, perseverance, generosity, modesty, humility. I always thought my daughters could have worse examples to emulate. So could I.
THE FREEDOM TO BE YOURSELF
I remember once telephoning a store, here in Japan, to say that I’d be coming in to pick up an item I’d ordered. To refresh the salesperson’s memory, I said “I’m the kokujin”—which means black person. The salesperson responded: “Oh yes, you’re the foreign woman from Tenryu. We’ll hold your item for you.” I realized then and there that I could drop the baggage of labeling myself as a color.
Although Barack Obama becoming president was truly historic, I can’t help but think what it would have been like, and how it would have been different, for you to be able to enter the White House just as the First Lady—and not the qualifying “first African American First Lady.”
Living in Japan all these years, I’ve found that I could let go of the “yoke of color” and what a relief that is. To just be a human being. Here our family is referred to as foreigners. Specifically, Americans. The minute we land in America and go through passport control Billy and I are looked on as an “interracial couple” and our children become an abridged “Black.”
The last time you visited Japan, I actually thought I might be invited to meet you. It wasn’t just wishful thinking, or delusions of self-importance. A good friend was an advisor to the United States ambassador to Japan, Caroline Kennedy. He told me that when she was confirmed as ambassador, he’d given her my name as a person in Japan she might find valuable to contact.
Well, I didn’t make it on the guest list of dignitaries and distinguished expats you surely met while she was here. But, oh, Michelle, I would have loved to talk to you. I wish I could have invited you to our home. It’s not in super-hip Tokyo or don’t-miss Kyoto, but in the countryside of Shizuoka. Like all Japanese welcoming visitors, I would have been happy to share with you the best our region has to offer: green tea, shiitake, mikan—and magnificent views of Mt. Fuji. From our home we can see bamboo groves, pine forests, and the horizon of the Pacific Ocean. I would have liked you to meet my family. You’d see that just like you, I have strived to create a family that is harmonious, loving, caring, and achieving. I would have liked to have shared a pot of tea with you and talked about the art of composing a life.
Michelle, what I really like about you is that you did not settle for an assigned role. I imagine you saw early on the potential of the position of First Lady, and determined to use it to full advantage. I guess you also saw the risks, but went for it anyhow. Wow.
Michelle, I know your father was an important and beloved figure in your life, and that his memory serves as daily motivation for you. My father too was the center of my life. He was born into a poor family in Mississippi; I don’t have to tell you he faced adversity. But he prevailed, raising my brother, sister, and me as a single father. When we were growing up, he’d gather children in our neighborhood and teach penmanship, at a time in America when it was considered an accomplishment to have a “fine hand.” His love of transferring words to paper with pen and ink led me straight to my 30-year study of Japanese calligraphy with a sensei (master, literally “you who were born before me”). Pursuing this art is a discipline that teaches one to be diligent, not to search for an illusory “perfection,” but rather to endeavor to do one’s best. And so I say to you, yoku gambarimashita. You really did your best.
My favorite saying in Japanese is in a calligraphy I did that hangs on the wall in our living room:
Ichi go ichi e. Treasure this moment, it will never come again.
Wherever your life takes you after the White House, I hope every moment will be treasured.