Excerpt

"Way too salty. I bet the chef used instant dashi powder."

My judgment delivered, I laid down the chopsticks I'd used to spear a slippery cube of tofu from the unfortunate miso soup. The Asian-American waitress who'd served us passed by with a smile; apparently, she didn't understand Japanese. Well, this was San Francisco, packed full of people with faces that mirrored the world's races, but who often just spoke English. I guessed that I'd been saved.

"But this soup is so tasty!" Toshiro Shimura, my father, raked a hand through his salt and pepper hair. It was cut in a slightly shaggy style typical for a San Francisco psychiatrist — but was distinctly odd for a Japanese-born, fifty-something man. "Rei-chan, you don't realize how hard it is to find pure Japanese ingredients here. Anyway, I hear that in Japan, a lot of the cooks now use bonito powder."

"Not real cooks. I grate bonito fish — you know, the kind that's so hard that it feels like a piece of wood." I closed my eyes for a minute, feeling nostalgic for the petrified hunk of fish resting in a wooden box in my tiny kitchenette in North Tokyo. "It's worth the extra effort because then the soup tastes like it comes from the sea, not the convenience store. Now, Dad, where were we? The ten grave precepts of Buddhism. The ones your grandfather felt were so important to live by. I thought it was interesting that he had them on daily display."

Paperback (2004)

"Yes, they were recorded on a calligraphy scroll. I think it originally came from a monastery, but it hung in his office where he worked. Unfortunately, I don't know where it is now."

"Do you recall, approximately, what it said?"

"The precepts. You know them, don't you?"

I rolled my eyes. "I know some of them, but not all. You didn't raise me Buddhist, remember?"

"But you did take an Eastern religions class at Berkeley, yes?"

"It was so long ago, Dad. Just tell me. This is an oral history project, not a go-to-the-library project. I remember the first one: don't kill. The next, don't steal. And then the one about not lying—"

"Well, the precept against lying is actually the fourth, not the third, if I remember correctly. And in Japan, it's always been considered allowable to tell certain kinds of lies out of compassion, or because that lie serves a greater good."

"Well, I'd agree with that," I said. "What was the third one, then?"

"It's a precept against sex. Misusing sex, to be exact. That would cover situations such as rape and extramarital sex and—"

"Fine. Ah, what's number four?" I wasn't going to pursue the subtleties of the Buddhist rule governing sex — that was just a little too up-close and personal for a talk with my father. It was the first time that I'd been home to San Francisco in the last two years from my Tokyo home base, and I wanted to leave on as good terms as I'd arrived.

"That, if I remember correctly, is not to give or take drugs."

"But priests drink sake all the time!" I pointed out.

"Well, a person may take sake, but not in an amount to cause intoxication. My grandfather drank sake at supper, but only a single glass."

"Would you say in general that laypeople's interpretations of these rules were looser than that of priests? I mean, Zen priests don't eat meat, but most people in Japan do. But how is it that people are allowed to eat meat, when the first precept is against killing?"

"That's the rule I thought my vegetarian daughter would jump on." My father laughed. "The answer to that is killing animals in self defense, or to eat them, is permitted. It's just not right to kill them for sport."

"Aha. So the basis of the rule is that an animal's life is valued only when it might be threatened with involvement in a game, say hunting or cockfighting," I said. "I'm not sure I agree with that. A death is a death, to me. But the rule certainly provides an interesting look at the Japanese mind."

"The Buddhist mind," my father corrected me. "And as you know, Buddhism has its origins in India, and these laws are known to Buddhists in all nations. They are universal."

I put my notebook aside for a break, because as much as I'd complained about the noodles, I was hungry for them. Actually, my feelings about food, my hometown and my father were about as mixed up as the Buddhist rules.

San Francisco was a stereotyped tourist's dream, but it was a far second to Tokyo, in my mind. Sure, the architecture in San Francisco was superb. But how could you enjoy it with all the rolling power blackouts? My parents' lifestyles had changed dramatically since California had faced its energy crisis — their huge Victorian home was no longer lit up welcomingly in the evenings, not even now, at Christmas, when my mother once had routinely lit electric candles in all sixty windows.

Tokyo didn't have such problems yet. And when there, it was easy for me to live simply, keeping my appreciation low to the ground, for things like the miniature Shinto shrines decorated with good luck fox statues, and the gracious rows of persimmon trees that line the ugly train tracks. And then, there were the Japanese people: the serene older generation moving through their own private dances of Tai Chi in the city's small parks, and the serious kindergarten students striding off to school wearing the kind of saucer-shaped hat and tidy uniform that hadn't changed since the 1920s. Not to mention my father's brother, my Uncle Hiroshi, Aunt Norie and my cousin Tom, who had become an important part of my life: so important that I planned to hightail it out of America before December 31 so I wouldn't miss New Year's Day with them. The sad truth was that I found staying in an eight-bedroom house with just my parents depressing. Even though there was one more person with us — Manami Okada.

Manami was a twenty-five year old pathology resident from Kobe. She had been living with my parents for about a month, following a desperate call from a University of San Francisco administrator to my father, the unofficial godfather of the school's Japanese community. My father had explained to me that Manami was what the Japanese called a 'girl in a box' — someone whose family had sheltered her too long. Not surprisingly, her housing situation in San Francisco was a bit too open for her tastes. One of her apartment-mates was a lesbian, the other a Hostess cupcake junkie; these were the reasons, anyway, that my mother explained that my father and she had taken pity on the unworldly young doctor and offered her one of the third floor bedrooms for the token payment of $100 a month — which was one-eighth of what Manami had been paying for her previous apartment share.

Well, I knew that junk food could lead to murder — San Francisco was where the famous Hostess Twinkie legal defense had originated — but I didn't have any biases against gays. I'd viewed Manami with a great deal of skepticism when I'd met her about a week ago, but I had to admit she seemed pleasant. She was quiet, polite, studious — all those Japanese daughter qualities that I lacked.

She was serving her first year of residency, so she was usually gone all day, and occasionally on call at night. When she was home she joined us for meals, but chose to spend her quiet time behind a closed door to her room on the third floor. Her room was next to the big storage room where among the many boxes and trunks, there was one holding items from my father's old life in Japan. I'd gone through the papers slowly one evening, hearing an odd splashing sound on the other sound of the wall — it took me a while to realize that Manami was trying to bathe in the traditional Japanese way, pouring buckets of water over herself rather than using the shower.

"What are you thinking about?" my father asked.

"Manami. I wonder if she's any happier with us than her old roommates."

"Perhaps you should ask her."

I shook my head. "I don't want to be so direct. Maybe I'll just try to see if she perks up at the chance to help me with some ideas for my project. After all, since she's so old-fashioned, she might very well have lived a life in Kobe where they're still using traditional objects in the home."

My line of work is Japanese antiques. I buy them for people living in Japan who still care about old things, as well as for some clients in the US. I also do some writing and speaking on the topic; that's what had brought me to the US on this trip. Since I'd made enough from my recent work in Washington, DC., to pay a few months' rent on my tiny apartment in an unfashionable section of North Tokyo, I'd decided to take a sabbatical from antiquing to engage in a personal history project. I hoped to make a record of the style in which the Shimuras had lived before the massive modernization that came in the 1960s. I was interested in things such as the way the Buddhist precepts were followed, in a normal daily routine, and also in the artifacts of that life; the cooking pots my grandmother used, the quilt designs, the landscape design of the camellia garden that had surrounded the old house in West Tokyo.

As I ruminated about the project, the restaurant seemed to vanish. Since we were sitting on zabuton cushions at a low table, we could just as soon be father and child in old Japan — an eager, boisterous child with a naturally reserved father. Though of course in old Japan, the likelihood was next to none that a 28-year-old daughter would have the luxury of a gossipy restaurant lunch with her father. I would be taking care of my family-and perhaps sewing the quilts, and cooking the dishes that my descendents would nostalgically admire.

"Sorry. I've just been paged." My father gave me a rueful look and unclipped the phone at his waist. In the years that I'd been gone, he'd become a total technophile; the only problem was he rarely remembered the importance of recharging his combined phone/pager. "It's your mother, as usual."

"I bet she has a shopping errand for you." I knew my mother was on the verge of running out of votive candles. She'd made especially elaborate holiday decorations this year because she and my father were hosting a party for ALL, the Asian Language League, on December 26.

As my father punched in our home number, I watched his fingers, stockier than mine, but with the identical light golden skin color. Many children of Japanese and Caucasian unions turned out to have milky coloring, but I had the same complexion as my father and Uncle Hiroshi and my cousin Tom. My hair was more brown-black than black, though, and I couldn't say my nose was Japanese. But it was interesting. In the US, I was often assumed to be foreign born; in Japan, I was assumed to be Japanese until people realized I couldn't read.

I stopped pondering my weaknesses because my father had gotten through. He greeted my mother by name. Then, after a long pause, he spoke. "How soon? And she doesn't know yet?" My father listened a bit more, shook his head, and then handed the phone to me. "Here. The news is really meant for you."

I felt my stomach drop. Perhaps the emergency meant that she'd gotten a call that something terrible had happened back at my Tokyo apartment: a burst water pipe, or electricity turned off. I'd been away from home too long.

"Are you sitting down?" My mother asked with an odd mixture of breathlessness and pain — as if she'd run up Fillmore Street in her favorite Bally heels.

"Yes. Just tell me—"

"He's coming!"

"What?" For a minute, I was puzzled; until I figured out He might mean Jesus. This kind of talk coming from my mother was a surprise — she had always been a typically low-key Episcopalian. Carefully, I asked, "Is this about Christmas Eve?"

"Yes! He'll be here, so and we must prepare."

I saw my father watching me intently, waiting for my reaction. What was his issue? "Mom, you know I've never been that comfortable at the Cathedral. Spirituality, for me, is more private—"

"He doesn't mind going — it turns out he used to be an altar boy for the Church of Scotland! I'm so pleased he's coming that I've already put in a call to Williams-Sonoma to get a plum pudding. It's traditional in Scotland as well as England, apparently."

"Oh!" At last I understood the identity of the being in question: Hugh Glendinning, my on-again, off-again beau. We'd just said goodbye in Washington a few weeks earlier, when he flew off to China on business, and I went back to my parents. "Are you talking about Hugh? Did he call from China?"

"Yes, and he said his cell phone was stolen, so that's why he hadn't called you. He was calling from a hotel in Shanghai to say that he should reach San Francisco around noon tomorrow. He's got about a week's worth of work here, and his firm had booked him into the Mark Hopkins."

"The Mark Hopkins," I moaned, imagining what a great escape it would be for both of us — a beautiful room with a view of Nob Hill; room service, and of course, a California king bed.

"Don't worry, sweetie. After I invited him to stay with us, he agreed to cancel that reservation. I also cancelled the UPS man who was coming to pick up the box you were sending to his office in Washington — you could just give him the present while he's here, and I've already put flowers in the guest room on the third floor."

"That was very kind of you." Now that I understood he'd be sleeping directly over my parents, and within spitting distance of Manami, I stowed away all my fantasies about trysts.

"It's my pleasure, darling. I'm so pleased that he'd rather stay with us. Some of your old beaux were nervous about spending time with us, Rei. Not this one. He said he couldn't imagine a more wonderful invitation, and he understood completely about Daddy being conservative enough that he'd have to sleep apart from you—"

So she was going to blame it on my father, I thought wryly. A good cop, bad cop practice. Whatever. After another minute of hysterical exuberance from my mother, I managed to make my goodbye. I'd noticed that my father was looking at his watch.

"Happy?" he asked after I'd handed back his phone.

It was the second time he'd asked me the question. On the surface, it seemed rhetorical, but from my father's expression, I thought there was more going on. "Of course I'm happy. But I don't want you to think that because he's here, I will stop talking to you, or working on this family history."

"Actually, I wouldn't mind if we took a break."

I wagged a finger at my father. "With that kind of attitude, there would be no oral histories. We'd never know the experiences of slaves, of Holocaust survivors, of Civil War veterans — or the Shimuras! Come on, Daddy, you know I have a lot more work to do."

"As do I," my father said, raising his eyebrows as he looked just beyond me. He was signaling the waitress for the check, when we'd not even gotten our main courses. "I'm sorry to tell you this, but the secretary at my office over-scheduled me. I'm going to have to go to see five extra patients, starting at one. It's a quarter of one right now — I must leave."

"Of course," I said, watching my father slurp the remnants of his soup. He put a twenty on the table and left me to finish up the zaru soba and his seafood tempura.

I didn't believe my father's excuse for one minute. He was upset about something: either my history project, or my lover's arrival. Maybe both.

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All content © 1998-2008 Sujata Massey.
Photo of Sujata by Jim Burger.