A Father-in-Law's Passing
I first met my father-in-law in December of
1988. It was right before the New Year’s
break that Japanese people traditionally take at the end of every year. I had just gotten out of the Marine Corps and
my wife and I decided that we should return to Okinawa
and make a new life for both my wife, and our one year old daughter.
I had never had the opportunity to meet my
father-in-law or mother-in-law prior to getting married. In fact I never had the opportunity to meet
anyone from my wife’s family up until that point. You see my wife had told her parents and
family that she was going to go to the states to visit her former English
teacher she had met while she was in college.
I left that decision, on whether or not to meet her family, up to her.
Anyway, the moment I walked into her father’s
house after we had returned to Okinawa from my
home in Wisconsin (USA), I could feel the tension in the air. I felt like the looks my father-in-law gave
me were lightening bolts coming down from the sky and were piercing me from the
top of my head to my feet. After a
moment that seemed like years to me, my daughter, who had been clinging onto my
pants behind me, stuck her head out and looked up at her grandfather and
smiled. His gaze changed
from disappointment to one of happiness and joy as he reached out his
hands to my daughter and welcomed her into his arms. I felt a huge sigh
of relief as he gave her a big hug and kiss on her cheek. At that very moment I felt like things were
going to be all right, eventually.
That was 22 years ago. My father-in-law, Masahiro, died on Thursday
afternoon, February 25th,
2010 .
After moving to Okinawa
with my wife and daughter we initially lived in his house for about six
months. Things were not easy as I look
back upon it, for all parties involved.
I could speak next to no Japanese and he and his wife, my mother-in-law,
could speak no English beyond being able to say “sank you”.
In fact my first New Year’s at his house he
invited all of my wife’s closest relatives and had them all sit in a
semi-circle in the living room of his house. My wife and I had to sit on
chairs facing all of them and had to listen to their questions and
comments about us and what we were going to do with our future. I couldn’t understand a single thing of what
they were talking about and my wife, looking back at it, thankfully, only
translated less than 1% of what they were actually talking about. They were speaking a mixture of both Japanese
and the traditional Okinawan language called Uchinaguchi or hogen (dialect) as it is
called. It sounded to my ears like they
were arguing with each other and made me feel like they were going to gang up
on me and beat me to a pulp.
Fortunately, that didn’t happen.
After all that happened, in what seemed like
hours, even days, but was actually only about 45 minutes, the family
meeting broke up and my father-in-law took my daughter into another room to
play, and I was left alone with my brother-in-law and other relatives. They broke out a bottle of whiskey and some
beer and it seemed like even though there was a communication
barrier, everything would be ok, the power of alcohol and the New Year’s
holiday in Okinawa .
After the festivities of the New Year’s ended
I settled into the life of trying to adapt to living in a totally new,
different, and in many ways, exciting culture.
I walked around my new neighborhood with an English and Japanese
dictionary, trying to learn and understand what was going on around me. I asked my wife so many questions about who,
what, where, when and especially WHY things were the way they were. Looking back on it, I think she got tired of
me asking so many questions and was thankful that she was able to find a new
job within a couple of weeks of returning to her hometown.
Her father left for work every morning around
7:00 AM , which left
me to fend for myself and take care of our daughter. He was the
koucho sensei or principal at
a local driving school. He used to
be a police officer and like many before him after leaving the police force,
went to work as a driving school instructor or administrator.
However, there was a cloud of mystery about
him and why he left the police force. I never learned why he quit
being an officer until after his death last week. One of his fellow officers was found to have
been accepting bribes from local business people and because he was associated
with him, he had to quit as well.
He never did anything wrong, but because of the way Japanese tradition
and culture is, he had to accept responsibility for another person’s errors and
was forced to resign.
He was a proud man and was always thinking
about those around himself, particularly caring about how people outside of his
family viewed him. This was sometimes to the detriment of his own
family. He took responsibility for
another person’s mistakes, even though he never did anything wrong. He was always thought of highly by his fellow
officers and left the force with his reputation intact.
He was a man that placed more importance on
how others viewed him than how his own family felt. He was in his own way arrogant, but not
arrogant in a manner in which many westerner’s view arrogance. He commanded respect from all those around
him for the way he kept himself, took care of those around him, and never once
as far as I know, was ever viewed as being anything more than an honest and
honorable man.
He grew up without ever knowing his
father. During WWII he was forced into
service in the Japanese military and sent to Manchuria
to fight for the Imperial Army of Japan.
He ended up being held as a prisoner of war, held by the former Soviet Union , and he nearly died of malaria while being
held in captivity as well. He once told my
daughter on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Okinawa that
he always feared he would never get the chance to return back home.
Over the past few days I have learned much
about his past. Regrettably to me at
least, it seems that people, particularly close friends and relatives, were
willing to share stories of their memories of my father-in-law, after his death
and not while he was alive. I have
gained a new and added respect for the man because of the stories
they shared. I cannot even begin to write about all of them, as they would
be a story all of their own.
When he was a young man, after returning from
Manchuria , his dream was to be a
schoolteacher, but due to the events of the time, he had to work to help take
care of his mother and older sister. Unfortunately he was never able to fulfill
his dream of finishing high school and college, but always kept the dream alive
and often pushed those dreams upon my children, his grandchildren.
He was a typical Okinawan in many ways as
well -- practicing the way of being able to tell others how they should do
things but never having done them himself.
"Do as I say!" not 'as I do' way-of-thinking. I don't think he ever once felt he was out of
place for saying what he did and trusted in his own knowledge, intelligence and
experience to guide him.
Well, as time went on and I got accustomed to
living in Okinawa , there were a number of
occasions where both my father-in-law and I didn’t see eye-to-eye with regards
to how I should do things here. He took
it as a personal insult that I had the nerve to disagree with any advice or
suggestion he had to give me. He called
me "stubborn" and he often made comments that I should just up and
leave Okinawa , of course leaving my wife and
daughter behind.
We ended up moving out of his house after
about six months, but not for this reason alone. There were other
issues that factored into the decision, like my mother-in-law wanting to throw
out a pair of shoes I owned purely because they were “too big” to her and they
took up too much space in the shoe rack at the front door. When I “complained" I was missing a pair
of shoes, she took offense because she thought what she was doing was
right and that I had no place to question her or her actions. She blew the situation out of proportion
and telephoned all the relatives and neighbors complaining in shock about
the gaijin that her daughter brought into
the house.
I admit, I might have been a
tad stubborn at times and openly expressed my disagreement, but
I didn’t feel communicating my opinion was wrong. But in Japan
We moved out of the in-law's house and found
a condominium about 50 minutes away.
They often came over to see their granddaughter and, of course, to
complain about me. Beside the
complaints, things were starting to settle down into a relatively quiet pattern
of living and being out of my in-law's house helped relieve some tension. I came to find out that in my wife’s family,
it is typical to settle differences by simply ignoring the incident ever
occurred.
Nearly two years later, after the
Japanese economic “bubble” burst, I was laid off from my job and at the
same time my father-in-law became ill with a stomach disorder. He was in the hospital for roughly a month
and when he was released he needed help in his recovery. You see, his wife really didn’t do much for him,
other than tell him what to do all the time.
That is a different story though.
We moved back into the house and helped take
care of oyaji I usually called him oyaji because for as long as I have been living
here I only once called him ottosan
or dad. He got angry with me and once
told me that he never wanted me calling him dad because he wasn’t my biological
father and that I should call him oyaji which
while literally meaning the same thing is also used in slang to refer to an
older man and was a name that he was accustomed to everyone in the family using
when talking to him.
Moving
back home was convenient at the time for both of us as I was out of work for
about 3-4 months collecting unemployment and looking for another job. With my father-in-law's help, I was
introduced to someone who helped me get a job working at a local
family-run hospital. I became a driver
for an elderly day care service and eventually, after roughly eight years
or so, moved up to a position of being the facilities manager for three
hospitals. Along the way, I did a lot of
studying. But this isn’t about me, it’s
about my father-in-law.
It was at this time in my life that the relationship
between my father-in-law and I changed. He refused to believe I was
let go from my previous job because of the economic conditions and felt it was
somehow my own fault I wasn’t able to retain the job, so he took
it upon himself to ensure I "understood" how to succeed in a
Japanese/Okinawan company.
Nearly every single day after I came home
from my new job, he had me sit down at the kitchen table and describe in detail
what I had done that day and how I was getting along with my co-workers. He constantly harped on my language abilities
and nearly every day told me that if I didn’t learn more Japanese that there
was going to be no way for me to succeed.
This went on for roughly six months, him
sitting at the table drinking awamori, a local Okinawan sake, getting
drunk, doling out advice, and commenting how my wife and I should be
raising our children. I cannot count how
many times I got angry with him for coming across as a hypocrite because by
this time I had learned enough of his past with his own son and daughter that I
knew the things he was saying were in response to his own perceived “failures”
with his own children. Neither of his
kids became schoolteachers or government employees, which he saw as being the
only jobs deserving respect.
Things got contentious between us on a number
of occasions and typically we both went to bed dissatisfied in how we viewed
each other. He, feeling that I had no
right to question his thoughts or opinions, and I, feeling that he was just
talking like an arrogant drunk because the only time he ever talked like this
was when he had been drinking. Otherwise
things were civil between us, almost friendly.
Being a typical Okinawan father, he expected everyone to take what
he had to say without question. And me,
being a typical American, always questioning what he thought was
"law".
Eventually things calmed down and a grudging
respect was earned from both of us. I
learned to take much of what he said with a grain of salt, well at least
letting it go in one ear and circle around in my brain a time or two before
letting it go out the other. He started
asking for my assistance around the house more, as he was getting older by then
and didn’t have the energy to do all the things he was used to doing on his
own.
He was well-respected in our local community,
President of the local Senior Citizen's Association.
He taught people how to play the sanshin, a three string guitar, which is famous here
in Okinawa .
He had a teacher’s license for this musical instrument and took
great pride in the fact that he was finally able to teach. He was always concerned with how people
viewed him from outside-the-family, and with my being his son-in-law, me as
well. However he always took family
for granted and I cannot recall ever seeing him care about what I or anyone
else in the family thought about him.
Life went on, and again I was let go from my
job because of, once again, an economic crisis that hit Japan
Again, I found a new job and after studying
to get certified, I started working as an English teacher at a local high
school. My father-in-law was happy I had became a teacher and he
found new things to comment on: my clothes, haircut (too short for
his liking), beard, etc. He became more concerned about the
impression I was giving to the students at the high school.
Also around this time our children were
growing up. We had two more children
while we were living with them and they, grandma, and especially grandpa, were
a blessing in helping take care of them.
Neither of my sons had to go to daycare because their grandparents watched
over them. It was a marriage of
convenience -- we took over more and more of the daily things around the house
and they helped us by raising our kids.
And I would say that between us we were
growing to accept and respect each other as well. We entered a different stage in our
relationship, but not one that was ever
discussed.
My father-in-law was becoming ill
more often. The common cold and flu
started becoming a serious concern, but that was overshadowed by his glaucoma
and two eye surgeries. I cannot recall how many times I took
him to the different doctors and specialists, even though it meant taking 3-4
hours out of my day to assist him. But looking back on it, it was well
worth the time. However, I will never understand why he would make
the appointments at the times he did, knowing full well someone had to assist
him because he couldn’t drive.
Roughly five years ago he was
diagnosed as having lung cancer and had to have two-thirds of his left lung
removed. He was in-and-out of the
hospital for nearly ten months. He never fully recovered.
During the days that followed his death, and
while he was laid out for his wake in a simple pine casket in our living room, I
have heard stories from close family members about the type of man he was. I never knew that man. I wish I was told those stories before his
death. I wish I had gotten to know that man and seen him as others knew him.
While death might be viewed as bleak or sad,
it does open the door for reflection and soul-searching contemplation. Since my father-in-law's passing, I have
started thinking about how I felt and our relationship over the years -- our
arguments, disagreements, anger, frustration, good times and the bad. Reflection.
It took my father-in-law passing on for me to
finally come to the realization that from out of everything that had happened
between us, he did what he had done, and said what he had said, out of concern
not for himself or how people viewed him or me, but because he wanted, without
ever putting into words, for me to be the best I could be.
I cannot
express in words my feelings about his death, without first explaining a bit
about my own father.
I grew
up feeling that as a male son I was never allowed to show any emotions of
disappointment or sorrow. A “man” wasn’t
allowed to cry, and I always felt if I ever cried about anything I was twice
punished for any misdeeds. And I
committed plenty and was deserving of the punishments that I received.
My
father died when I was 24 years old. I
don’t think that I ever had the best of relationships with him and grew up
feeling like I was always at odds with what he had wanted for me and that I
never lived up to the expectations he had for me. To this day I probably still hold regrets in
my heart for not becoming the “man” he wanted me to be.
Don’t
get me wrong here, my father always loved me, but I think over time it was me
that didn’t live up to his expectations.
Much like my own father and the generation
and way he was raised, here in Japan
Probably more so for my father-in-law, and for
Japanese and Okinawan men of his generation, emotions were not talked about,
nor were feelings a part of daily life.
People did what they did out of a sense of duty, real or perceived. I find myself reflecting on the fact that
while neither of them showed any outward signs of love or affection and while
they were from different cultures they were both similar in many ways.
My father-in-law is laying peacefully on a
futon downstairs in the tatami room. I wish he could
hear my thoughts right now. I wish we could sit around drinking Okinawan
sake and I could tell him I have finally come to the realization of my
feelings about him. I wish he could hear me tell him that I love
him. What had started off as a relationship of hard feelings,
frustration and anger, slowly turned to that of love because of my
concern for his well-being, health and happiness. I had finally learned to love the man, not
only as my father-in-law, but as my father.
Masahiro was a good man, in both life and
death. I hope someday someone will say the same thing about me.
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