Lost in dream-pity for Urashima, I was brought back to earth by Elder Sister’s voice. “Come on,” she said, “everyone is going home.” She grabbed my hand and made me run very fast. Urashima, the palace of the sea, and the beautiful princess disappeared in the deep black sea.
We hurried through the pine grove and reached the lighted business street. There, blinking our eyes in the unaccustomed light, we slowed our hastening steps to a well-bred saunter.
In the early fall we returned to Tokyo. As we passed huts, trees, fields and hills, my heart bade them regretful farewell.
THE CARETAKER of our school passed our house every day. She was short, and she waddled along slowly on her thin flat straw sandals, her back bent, her hands snuggled crosswise into the tight sleeves of her dark blue cotton kimono. When she met us, she smiled, showing her lone tooth. She had a pug nose, a large mouth, and gray hair pulled tight into a bun. At school the children called her “Granny” because even though she was only middle-aged, she looked so old. Her sweeping and dusting and satisfying the teachers’ wants and attending children who became ill left her little time to rest in her room, which was a few steps from the main corridor. But sometimes we saw her there, bending over her charcoal stove, blowing white steam off her cup of hot water. She was sweet to the children, and we were all fond of her.
One day just as Elder Sister and I started to school, Granny passed by and bowed to us, smiling as usual. After she was out of earshot, Nobu whispered, “I have heard that Granny lives differently from normal people. While she is at work in the school, her husband stays at home and does the housework and takes care of the children.”
I was shocked. What kind of man could this be to stay at home and let his wife go out to work? How could she stand such a life? Did she feel unhappy at the disgrace? I was enraged to think that this kind of woman had such a miserable husband.
Soon after this my teacher told us about the “new women.” “They do not want to stay at home, but wish to go out and work just as men do,” she said.
Immediately I thought of Granny. Was she a new woman? I could not be sure and finally I asked my teacher. At first she smiled; then her expression changed. “No,” she replied, “Granny is not a ‘new woman’ even though she is working.”
Teacher then launched into an attack on women who demanded freedom and equal rights with men. “New women insist that their husbands help them with their wraps and carry their parcels just because they do it for the men,” she said. “If Japanese women lose their gentleness and obedience, they will soon become base and useless creatures. These new women go to Yoshiwara (famous red-light district) and drink wine of five different colors. They have ‘own-choice’ men, called sweethearts, and they walk with them arm in arm. This public display is no better than the love practice of cats and dogs!”
By this time I pictured the new women as demons. I was relieved that Granny was not one of them. At home I asked Kimi whether she had ever heard of the new women. She said that she had, that she knew all about them.
“Do you know,” she said, “that they wear cotton kimonos with short sleeves like boys, and also men’s overcoats, and that they most improperly walk with men? Why, in my village, even married couples never walk together on the street.”
Elder Sister entered the conversation. “These new women all have ‘young swallows,’” she said.
I wondered what kind of bird a young swallow was.
Elder Sister laughed at my ignorance and explained, “A young swallow is a husband or sweetheart who is younger than his wife and supported by her.”
“Is Granny’s husband a young bird?” I wanted to know.
Nobu shrugged her shoulders and laughed again. “An old woman like that cannot have a young swallow. The new women are much younger. They read and write and make speeches. Some of them, Haru, even write novels and other books.”
By this time I was quite confused. Teacher, the maid, and Elder Sister all had different definitions of the new woman. I asked Nobu, “Is it proper to admire them—the new women?”
She said that she too was puzzled. I asked my mother about them. She looked thoughtful and said, “I disapprove of women abandoning their feminine customs. Woman’s lot is harder than man’s, but it is our fate. Only evil can come if we protest against it.”
Father voiced his opinion of new women when Elder Sister asked him, “Why are new women called ‘blue stocking’? What does it mean?”
He explained: “The name is taken from a similar group of free women who were active in England about a century ago.”
My only idea of stockings in the Western World—blue or any other color—was stockings filled with Christmas presents. I could not understand why this symbol should be used.
Father went on: “When I was a young boy, there was a movement among wealthy Japanese women to abandon the kimono entirely and to give social dances where men and women embraced each other to wild music. Soon they gave up this barbarism and returned to the Japanese customs. This time the imitation is less frivolous, but nevertheless Japanese women will soon come back again to their own ways. It is not,” he hastened to make himself clear, “that I object to women studying and bettering themselves culturally. But these extreme methods new women are pursuing—leaving their homes, competing with men, mocking their womanhood—these I cannot approve.” He looked at us earnestly. “Even though my daughters receive a Western education, I want them to maintain all of a Japanese woman’s virtue and charm.”
I had almost forgotten about the new women when Elder Sister showed me a picture of a bride in a newspaper. “There,” she said, “that is one of the new women.”
I was amazed. “Why, this is a beautiful Japanese bride,” I said. “She does not look at all like a demon.”
IT WAS LATE in October and the air was chill. Elder Sister and I sat quietly on our cushions, watching Father. He was leaning over the hibachi with bent head, and writing on the hot cinders. Quickly he erased what he had written, and absent-mindedly began again. His shadow was cast blackly on the opposite wall, and under the ceiling light I saw the gray hairs on his head. We sat voiceless. Second Mother’s cushion was empty. It was one week after her death.
Father at last raised his head and said, half to himself, “This is our fate and we must accept it. Life and death are in the will of heaven. There is no use lamenting endlessly.” He rose and asked Elder Sister to serve tea. As we started to sip the tea he took off his eye-glasses, saying that the steam from the tea had blurred them. He wiped his eyes and his glasses with his handkerchief, and assumed a more cheerful expression.
Because of the nature of Second Mother’s illness, typhoid fever, we children had not been permitted to visit her at the hospital. She had had to be cremated when she died, and only her ashes had been brought home. I missed her and hated to think that she never would come back, and my thoughts turned to the poor little stepsisters who were about the ages we had been when our own mother died, and to Younger Brother who would most of all miss Second Mother’s tender care.
Elder Sister, always so lively and gay, now became quiet and subdued. She took over many responsibilities of the house. She served tea, prepared Father’s clothes, and attended to other details reserved for the mistress. One evening when we were sitting in mournful meditation, she went to the storeroom, found the family shrine, dusted it and set it up. She pushed toward the back our ancestors’