These women remain with me. The sun burned their faces, the heat smeared them with dirt and sweat. Their broad grins bared white teeth.
The busy hum of men sawing and nailing rang clear in the autumn air. The timbers smelled strong of new wood. The freshly dug earth was red. The ropes hung lax from the log of the pile driver. Half a dozen women bent their backs and gripped the ropes. They tugged, and the huge log rose. They relaxed, and the log fell hard, pounding the foundation trench. The ground so leveled would make firm the building’s foundation. A single high voice started a chant, and others joined the chorus as the lamenting thud of the huge log kept time with the chant.
The women were clad in dark kimonos, their sleeves tucked up in the back. White leggings sheathed their legs. Over their feet were black, rubber-soled socks. Sweat streamed from their foreheads. Their heads were protected from the sun by printed towels. On the backs of a few of them, babies were strapped securely. Babies bending and lifting with their mothers, with the log, with the chant. Gagging, gurgling, crying, sleeping babies, strapped to their mothers’ backs. Hungry babies.
The rest period came. The women dropped to the ground in a circle, wiping the sweat with printed towels. Mothers bared their large breasts and suckled their young. They laughed and joked with the men. In loud voices.
They frightened me, these women. I ran, afraid, to my father. Are these strange people who work with men, banter their men, roll up their sleeves—are they women?
These women are no longer strange to me. I have seen them everywhere, working, singing, laughing with their men. These women no longer dismay me. I have seen them again and again bending their backs to support their young. These women no longer make me fear. I can see them occupying the house whose foundation they make firm. These women give me hope.
ELDER SISTER and I were dressed alike, in kimonos of the same pattern, with obi-sashes of the same color. In winter we wore thickly padded kimonos. I buried my neck in my collar like a turtle, and looked like a round ball. We had long black hair, brushed to a lustrous shine, hanging down our backs.
Elder Sister Nobu was a bright, attractive girl. Her black eyes danced with laughter and sparkled with wit. But I was slow in mind and action. Elder Sister teased me, saying, “You can move faster rolling than walking on your feet.” I looked upon her with admiration, but sometimes with resentment.
We played tag and skipped rope in the garden facing the living room. When we played tag, I found the pool beyond the garden a great handicap. It was shaped like a bottle-gourd for sake wine, narrow in the middle. At the narrow part lay an islet which served as a stepping stone across the pool. Elder Sister Nobu jumped over the islet to reach the other side. She was light, and as fast as a rabbit. But I was heavy. My feet were too short. I had to run all around the pool to tag her, and by that time she was over the hill on the other side. “How slow you are, Haru!” she called down to me. “Catch me if you can!” She squatted and beckoned, laughingly. I was defeated.
I was shy and wretched when invited to meet guests. My throat parched, and my face turned red. I could only hide behind Elder Sister and depend on her for my answers. No wonder nobody was attracted to me.
My grandmother pitied me. “You are gentle and obedient, Haru,” she said. “You will make an ideal bride when you grow up. I shall recommend you as bride to a large family, where you can live with your husband’s parents. They will be pleased with an obedient daughter like you.”
My grandmother’s praise made me happy. I dreamed of myself as a beautiful bride in long-sleeved bridal kimono and glossy hairdress studded with flowered jewels. Throughout my childhood and into my teens I was docile and obedient, holding my grandmother’s ideal as my ideal. She took pride in the unselfishness, submissiveness and endurance of a Japanese wife. The Code of Greater Duties of Women, drawn up in the seventeenth century, taught that woman’s highest obligation is obedience to man: to her father before marriage; to her husband when she marries; to her son if she becomes a widow. To my grandmother, complete submission was the highest virtue of woman.
I was born in Tokyo, in the last stage of the Meiji period. Japan was no longer the dreamland of Hiroshige’s beautiful prints. Smoky cities had sprung up all over the country. Wars had been fought with China and with Russia. Things were changing, breathlessly. Old and new clashed everywhere. Feudal Japan had jumped with a single bound into a new age. But my grandmother refused to see any change. She wished her grandchildren to live in the past customs of her own childhood.
It was not only my grandmother. Even those who considered themselves modern could not cast off inconsistent traditional conceptions. Girls were taught the value of exercise and then made to sit stiffly, legs under them, knees close together, eyes straight ahead, and faces blank. Educational ideas from Western countries were coming into the schools, but they were supposed not to conflict with semi-feudal customs. I lived my childhood in the old tradition.
I never saw my father so happy as the day his son was born. Elder Sister and I had been sent to Grandmother’s so as not to disturb Mother while she gave birth. When we returned home, Father rushed out to welcome us, saying, “It is a boy baby!” He embraced Elder Sister, and lifted her high over his head.
Elder Sister screamed with joy, “A baby brother!” She twisted her lips like a grownup. Knowing it would please Father, she said, “Honorable Father, you look very, very happy.”
Father burst into a laugh and tickled her under the chin. “My little daughter knows everything, doesn’t she?” He became excited like this very seldom.
I, the younger, stood silently, unnoticed by Father, wondering what a baby brother looked like. It was a hot summer day. The new baby, wearing a white silk gown, was sleeping in a high crib screened by mosquito net. A nurse lifted me up to see him. I thought he was like a monkey with a funny red face, but I did not say anything. I wanted my mother. It was not permitted. Everyone was busy and excited, and I felt lonesome and neglected. I knew it had not been like this when I, second daughter, was born.
When I returned to the living room, our gardener was there in his new coolie coat. It was dark blue with our house name on the collar in white letters. “Honorable master,” he said, “I deeply congratulate you on the birth of your first son.” Prostrating himself on the hard wooden floor of the corridor to the living room, he bowed his head many times. Aunts and uncles came to offer congratulations. “The foundation of the house is now sound and solid,” they repeated again and again. Younger Brother was treated like a treasure from the day of his birth.
When he was two years old, my mother died. It was Boys’ Day, on the fifth day of the fifth month, and Younger Brother’s streamer was flying high outside the house. I wanted to join him as he reached out toward the streamer from the arms of his maid, but I was held back by the feeling that something unusual was happening. I, four years old, knew nothing of death. Mysterious death had no connection with Mother, lying so quiet, covered with silken spread as if she were alive. But Elder Sister was crying uncontrollably, leaning against Grandmother’s knee. Grandmother too was sobbing. I stared at them, motionless, then looked again at Mother’s face as she lay so still, her eyes closed, her lovely white hands crossed on her chest. Why did she not open her eyes and call, “Haru”?
She was young and beautiful. Often she had held me on her lap and said, “I shall love you always.” When she was sick I had wanted to lie in her bed, but she had refused me sternly. Much later I knew she died of tuberculosis. Her skin was smooth, and always she had used a sweet-smelling lip pomade, daintily putting the tip of her little finger into a beautifully painted jar, and applying the pomade to the center of her lower lip.
On this