The two sisters' education extended beyond the formal education of the classroom. Grandmother Yamamoto, Obaasan*, taught the girls traditional Japanese values based on haji, and respect. Haji can be translated as shame or disgrace. The girls were taught never to bring haji or shame to themselves or their family by misbehaving. There were certain rules of behavior governing such things as the way they talked and dressed that had to be learned. It did not matter if your kimono was an expensive one, for instance you had to look the best you could, "not like a beggar," by keeping it clean and neat. The kind of respect Obaasan taught the two girls was not simply reserved for teachers or titled people, but also for elders and men. Men, for example, were accorded the right to bathe first, to eat first, and the male head of a family always sat at a seat specially reserved for him nearest the tokonoma (an alcove where a flower arrangement and a hanging scroll were formally placed).
[*"Obaasan" is the Japanese form of "grandmother" used when speaking about someone else's grandmother. Typically when used within English text it is not capitalized, yet we chose to do so here because it refers throughout to one specific person, Grandmother Yamamoto.]
There were times when Obaasan's traditions and understanding of the world conflicted with her granddaughters who were raised in America before coming to Japan. She was born in a generation when it was common for married women to dye their teeth black. Though she had long since dropped this practice, it helps to illustrate the gulf separating her world from her granddaughters. Obaasan led a life that conformed to traditional Shinto beliefs of cleanliness and purity as well as Buddhist beliefs concerning killing. In an incident exemplifying this clash of cultures, she had become extremely angry when before the war, Coralee, Harry's eldest daughter, butchered chickens that she had raised after bringing the chicks in an incubator from America. Obaasan believed that killing and butchering were things that only the lowest class of people did. Because of this, the girls' diet consisted of a reduced variety of protein from what they had beend accustomed to though they ate soy bean products and fish whenever they could both during and after the war.
A source of conflict grew out of the fact that Obaasan's life centered on the practical knowledge essential for her generation of farmer's wives while her granddaughters were being educated in new ways with a matter-of-fact understanding of new technologies. Obaasan could not read and so it was common for her to mispronounce words associated with these new technologies. Denki (electricity), for example, became "renki" and denwa (telephone) became "renwa". When her granddaughters would try and correct her she would get upset and tell them, "No, this is the way I have pronounced it all my life and it is correct." Nor could she understand the true significance of her granddauthters' report cards when they were placed so proudly before her. New technologies would remain a mystery to Obaasan throughout her later years as when she walked outside and looked up at a telephone wire expecting to see something moving along it. Because she had a simple, practical education, Obaasan mistrusted the new medicine that doctors practiced and never visited one for treatment. The medicine that Obaasan had faith in was symbolized by two scarred indentations she had on her shoulders. She would have Hinako wad up a small amount of a weed of some sort and place it in the furrows on her grandmother's shoulders. These furrows were marked shiatsu pressure points where nerve endings were located. Then Hinako would light the wadded up weeds with a burning incense stick. She never complained when she applied this treatment to herself to alleviate the gnawing pain caused by her chronic arthritis.
Obaasan had a near reverent respect for snakes. Snakes ate the mice who otherwise did damage to house and field. Takeko and Hinako were afraid of snakes and yet Obaasan would not even permit them to say anything bad about the snakes which could be heard slithering along the attic floor. Sometimes one would be seen slithering in the house perhaps with a bulge in a portion of its body revealing the undigested mouse it had caught. Obaasan would gently kick the snakes out of her way, but Takeko and Hinako stayed away from them. Ironically, one of the few times that the sisters' limited protein diet was expanded involved snakes. Prompted by the difficulties encountered during the war, Uncle Taichi fileted a snake for the girls and served it telling them it was an eel. When after eating the snake he confessed that it was indeed a snake, Hinako promptly regurgitated the meal.
Obaasan was raised to believe that a woman's responsibilities included learning the tea ceremony, flower arrangement, and to serve her husband so these things were passed on to her granddaughters. She spoke sparingly. So much so that whenever she did say something its meaning was always amplified in Hinako's mind. One day Obaasan met Hinako on the porch of their house after Hinako had just returned home from working in their fields and said, "I was watching you come down the hill and I was so proud of you!" Such simple comments and gestures held a world of meaning her granddaughter who understood her. When Hinako would wake up in the morning, she would see Obaasan holding her school uniform in front of the fireplace so that it would be warm when she put it on.
If hate is passed on and transformed from one person to another in a never ending cycle then certainly it must also be true that love has its own equal cycle. Sometimes it is difficult to articulate the love you have for someone or the respect and compassion that they draw forth from you, but your actions often speak more than anything. In this way it may be more useful to describe some of the attention that the young Hinako gave to her grandmother in such a loving and selfless way that may in some way reflect the love that she was attempting to return. Every night after her school work was finished, Hinako would spend two hours massaging Obaasan's arthritic knees. She also had the responsibility of relieving her grandmother's constipation with the aid of three chopsticks. In these days there were no practical ways to relieve constipation that the elderly suffered and it was the duty of the sons and daughters or grandchildren to manually assist mother nature. The embarrassment of both parties was extreme, yet it was also a simple necessity, and Obaasan's embarrassment was such that she asked Hinako never to tell her elder sister.
In keeping with Obaasan's understanding of a woman's place in society, her granddaughters were not expected to have a social life though they were permitted to join the seinendan, Community Youth Group, through which members volunteered as a group to clean, and maintain Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines. They also helped families whose husbands, brothers and sons were off fighting the war by assisting in harvesting crops and other labor-intensive activities. A woman's true place was at home and so she was expected to pursue the art of flower arrangement and the tea ceremony. Takeko, the older of the two girls, had to meet boys for "dates" in another town so that her grandmother would not learn of such meetings. The five year age gap between Takeko and her sister often meant that they led different lives. Since Takeko learned and had to deal with matters first, she may have had a more difficult time in coping with the cultural, generational, and technological gaps that existed between her grandmother and the two sisters and her maturity also provided her with the opportunity to escape from this conflict. Hinako, on the other hand, had the advantage of being young, having more time to reflect on the situation, and less mobility than her sister due to her age. As a result of these differences that were intertwined with so many factors, they often led two completely different lives.
In spite of the restrictions placed on Takeko during the vital teenage years, she was popular and led social life that may have helped her remember these years with more happiness, even in the difficulties, than her young sister could summon.
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