Roots

a few reflective thoughts prior to Kate’s graduation from university in 2018

“Where are you going?” he casually asked.

As I had no idea and no deep roots to a fixed address on planet earth, his simple question pricked my insecurities.  Three or four languages, four or five countries to call home, and a university degree in hand – but I couldn’t answer his simple question - until I returned to Toba Village.

Like the Nobel laureate Kawabata, Yasunari, I moved to this village at the foot of Susuku Mountain when I was young and attended Toyokawa Elementary School. Surrounded by rice paddies and bamboo forests,   I was fortunate to be able to spend early summer evenings roaming freely with friends, in search of fireflies.
 
Our year was marked with rituals such as rising before dawn to light the dondoyaki in January, entrance ceremonies and picnics under the cherry blossoms in Spring, the annual sports day at school in September, catching goldfish with paper nets at the aki matsuri (Autumn Festival), harvesting sweet potatoes and pounding mochi at New Year. And, as a Gaijin, I had double the festivities because we also celebrated Easter, Halloween, Christmas and birthdays with our expat friends. I guess it was a privileged childhood.

Or would I have been better off, growing up like my neighbors with one cultural identity, one language and roots that were a thousand years deep in this village?  In some ways, I envied my Japanese friends’ solid sense of self and predictable lives. They knew they weren’t going anywhere – they would live and die in the family home - just as their ancestors had done for the past 40 generations, bound by responsibilities for the honken (main family home), looking after the ihai (ancestral tablets), helping with the festivals, and ploughing the fields.

If I did have a privileged childhood, then it was partly because of these people, whose lives brought boundaries to my own.  When I take a break from my schizophrenic, modern life and go home to the quiet village of my childhood, part of the joy comes from the fact that so little will have changed.  Kishidasan will still have her flimsy plastic holder hanging off her front gate, waiting for the newspapers she hasn’t subscribed to for years.  Miyazakisan will still have his perfect rows of vegetables thriving outside our front door and his lotus roots growing in an old, blue rubbish bin.  Shukusan will still have a few vegetables or flowers for sale in a tiny box and Okadasan will, no doubt, pop in to tell me to close my shutters when a storm is coming.

While I can reminisce and enjoy the predictability of life in Toba Village, I’m no stranger to the frustrations of the younger generation. Their attempts to bring change are invariably overruled by the stubborn, xenophobic patriarchs who still yearn for the days when this little village was an autonomous fiefdom - the days before Japan lost the war and everything changed. Change continues to be as welcome as an earthquake or snake bite in this village. Despite their efforts to maintain traditions, there’s a new kind of change totally upsetting the rhythm of life in Toba Village. The younger generation is actually leaving - uprooting their families and uprooting themselves - breaking with over forty generations of living on this land - and choosing to raise their children in modern, concrete apartments!

Is it that our roots to home are no longer tied to a specific place?  Can we effectively replace the roots that gave us sustenance from the soil with co-axial cable that connect us wherever we are? Or does that leave us blowing around in the wind, like tumbleweeds?

Speed and convenience drive us ever faster. While drinking coffee in Istanbul, I can say hi to my dog in his pet hotel in Osaka and visit the grave of my deceased grandfather via satellite cameras. 

But is this progress? Part of me thinks that this life of virtual reality is a sad substitute for living off the land, feeling the sun on one’s back, stopping to watch a bird feed its young or listening to the frogs singing in the rice paddies. Maybe I was wrong to spurn these grumpy, old men who continue to resist change in this little village. Who am I to judge their decisions, when their roots are a thousand years deep in this soil they tend so lovingly?

As a foreigner growing up in Toba Village, I didn’t think I could set down any roots. I was more like a firefly, a welcome visitor who should come and go.  But this time, the familiar sights, sounds and smells of this quirky, old village are kind of intoxicating.  Maybe if I just plant myself here for a bit…