An Author's Return to Japan After 28 Years

After being invited to my alma mater in Kobe, Japan, I was asked to write a piece for the Canadian Academy Review.  Here it is in the Fall Issue.

An Author’s Return

Observing the Sunday morning activity at Hankyu Umeda station brought back those memories that come with so much nostalgia—the kind that almost forces you to abandon your plans, sit on the platform, and write.  That’s what writers do, making non-writers convinced that we’re a peculiar bunch; we carry notebooks and pens with the spontaneity of capturing life onto the page. I wanted to write about what was new since the last time I was in Japan.  My list consisted of cell phones, the Internet, Starbucks, Family Marts, 100 Yen stores, Yodobashi Camera stores, fashion, high-tech toilets, and my alma mater—Canadian Academy.   

When the train sailed into the station right on schedule, I waited my turn and then gravitated toward a seat by the window just as I had done as child. The other passengers were absorbed with their cell phones. Unlike the old days, no one opened a magazine or paperback. 

I reached in my purse for my journal and pen as a young girl with a Hello Kitty bag sat across from me.  Some things haven’t changed, I thought, and made a list of what had not:  Hello Kitty’s hair bow, vending machines that sell everything from cigarettes to energy drinks, student uniforms, the speed of the Shinkansen, the taste of hot takoyaki on a winter evening, and the politeness of train station personnel.

Twenty-eight years was a long time to be away from the country of my birth.  I felt like Urashima Taro, the man in the folk story who goes back home to his fishing village after being gone for three hundred years. I was both disoriented and delighted. I also felt a bit like a dork when I had to pull out my reading glasses. The last time I was in Kansai, I’d come back to visit my missionary parents and ended up taking a job as an ESL teacher.  Back then I was able to study train schedules without reading glasses.  Now I clung to them and just to be safe, asked conductors if I was getting on the correct train, especially when I had to take the JR Line, which I was unfamiliar with.  

There was no time to spend being lost; I had only eight days in Japan as Canadian Academy’s Alumna in Residence.

When I was a C.A. high school student, back in the 70s—about the time that dinosaurs roamed—we had a rickety school building where the floors and stairs creaked and the classrooms had radiators that hissed. Now the new school on Ryokko Island is state-of-the-art with a theater, two gymnasiums, an auditorium, and an atrium where flags hang from all the represented countries.  I was back at my alma mater and yet, I was in a space so new to me that I was at the mercy of ninth graders to get me to my assigned classes.

However, the curiosity of students had not changed.   After I gave a tip on writing for a specific amount of time each day and the value of setting an egg timer, I was asked, “What’s an egg timer?”  The students’ faces showed confusion until their English teacher explained the history of the wind-up device for keeping time, especially in the kitchen.  

“How do you not get lazy?” 

An excellent question!  Unfortunately, there wasn’t time to share all the tricks of the trade, so I made my reply succinct. “There’s only way to stay disciplined,” I said. “You have to plant your bottom on the chair in front of the computer. That’s the way writing gets done.” 

A boy in the back raised his hand. “Can you speak Japanese?” 

“After twenty-eight years of not using it on a daily basis, it’s rusty, but I can.”

I couldn’t help but reminisce about some of the missionaries from my youth who came from states like Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alabama and spoke Japanese in Southern accents.  A request was made.  “Can you speak Japanese with a Southern accent for us?” 

The thrill of the task was so great, and yes, I could have continued to talk in that syrupy twang for twenty minutes. But that was not what I’d been invited to C.A. for.  Quickly, I put on my glasses, looked over my notes, and finished the lesson with instruction on editing your writing. “You could be the world’s best story teller, but if your grammar, spelling, and sentence structure are flawed, then who is going to read your work?”

Except for Bob Hengal, who is still known after all these years for his terrific baking, all of the teachers were new.  I wondered if a few were actually high school students; they looked much too young to be teaching. One said that I had his permission to include him as a character in my next novel. 

 

“You can kill me off,” he whispered while his class engaged in a writing exercise that started with the line, I knew why the coastal town was haunted.  “Really.” He smiled. “I won’t mind if you do.”

On the weekend, I was grateful for two fellow class of 1979 graduates who met me in Kyoto for a mini-reunion.  After all, I needed to touch base with those who remembered the way things used to be.  Of course, Hanae Hosoda and Ioanna Sillavan recalled the long and tiresome walks up to C.A. when it was on the hill with the picturesque view of Kobe Harbor. They agreed that the school had felt old and creaky, but that it had been the familiar kind of old, like a worn pair of favorite tennis shoes.  Over a lunch of sukiyaki, and later, at a kissaten, we talked and laughed, weaving in the past with our current lives, our kids, work, and spouses.  No one would have guessed that it had been thirty-seven years since the three of us had last seen each other. 

My days back in Japan were a gift.  In the legend, Urashima Taro was given a lacquer box by the beautiful princess from the enchanted paradise under the sea.   Although she told him not to open it upon returning home, it was too late. The desire to peek inside turned Taro from his preserved youth into an old man with a gray beard.  

While I might have felt like an old graduate, there was a vitality that sprung while I was at C.A. In spite of jet-lag and culture shock, I felt renewed and rejuvenated.  I was so inspired that my current work-in-progress is about the return to my home land, the place where my love of writing began so many years ago.

And no, I do not plan to kill anyone off.

~ Alice J. (Stubbs) Wisler, Class of 1979

Author, Blogger, Bread Maker, Business Owner

Durham, North Carolina

"If I hate, I should hate war itself."

Hiroshima
(Taken during the 9th grade field trip, January 29, 2016.)

When I wrote my novel, I didn't know her. But because I wrote my novel, I got the opportunity to meet her in Kobe, Japan. Sometimes things happen that you never expect.

Tiny, humorous, endearing, Koko Tanimoto Kondo told her story inside the Canadian Academy auditorium to ninth grade students. She was just eight months old the day her world exploded.  Literally. The Enola Gay did what it was sent to do over her hometown of Hiroshima. At just 1.2 kilometers away from the epicenter, the Tanimoto house crashed around Koko and her mother. When Mrs. Tanimoto regained consciousness, she heard a baby cry.

That baby belonged to her. She had to do something quick.

Koko was too little to know what was happening to her city at that moment, but over the years, she heard the story and now tells it to audiences across Japan and the USA. "My mother made a hole (in the debris) and was able to make it out," she said.  "Our house was on fire."   Her father was working at his church that morning, but desperate to find his family.

Koko grew up angry.  She wanted to "get back" at the people who had destroyed her city. She wanted to punch and kick those who had marred the faces of the older girls who came to her father's church after the attack. Their faces----distorted from the burns of the bomb's blast. Their bodies, disfigured and permanently scarred.

Authors always have their characters and novels close by in their hearts.  More than anything, we want to be authentic in our portrayal of both history and human emotions. As I listened to Koko talk, I briefly made a mental note:  It's in line.  What I meant was how I portrayed my characters following the attack. In my World War II novel, Under the Silk Hibiscus, I let my characters (Japanese-Americans living in Heart Mountain, a Wyoming internment camp) be devastated by what the USA had done to their country of origin. Papa Mori had family in Hiroshima----his home town before coming to California to raise his own family----and getting letters about relatives dying from radiation tore him up inside. He was only a shadow of the man he once was when the war finally ended.

Koko's words brought another scene from my novel to mind as she continued her talk.

When she was in fifth grade, she and her family (after their story had been documented in John Hersey's Hiroshima) were invited to be on the American show, This is Your Life. Koko recalled that day and lifting a fist into the air, told us that at that time she was ready to punch and kick the co-pilot of the Enola Gay, also a guest on the show.  She wanted revenge.  When the host of the show asked Captain Robert Lewis how he felt after dropping the bomb on Hiroshima, the co-pilot said, "Hiroshima disappeared. And I said, 'My God, what have we done?'"

Instantly, Koko saw the "bad evil" in herself.  "If I hate, I should hate war itself.  Not this person," she recalled. Slowly, like a crab, she walked over to Captain Robert Lewis. She just wanted to touch his hand. When she got close to him and reached out her hand, he took it and squeezed.

Forgiveness.

Nathan, my main character, forgives an American soldier from Heart Mountain, the camp where Nathan was interned.  Was the forgiveness realistic? As I listened to Koko's rationale for forgiveness, I knew that forgiveness for a act so grievous could be granted. For like Koko, my fictitious Nathan realized that he was just as wretched in his own heart as the soldier was. He desired to be forgiven and, in turn, knew that he wanted to forgive his enemy. God's grace.

Under the Silk Hibiscus at Canadian Academy in Kobe, Japan

Again, I made a note:  It's in line. Check!

Koko, now 71-years-old, promotes peace.  "It's up to you," she said to the students in the auditorium, as she encouraged them to become peace keepers. "Will you help me to spread peace in this world?  I want you to be the ones to change the world."

After her talk, I was invited to eat lunch with her and Bob Hengal, a teacher at Canadian Academy who was instrumental in bringing me from my home in North Carolina to the school as an alumna author. Koko's lively comments over each course that was served showed appreciation for the culinary experience. Before we parted at the train station, we had photos taken together.

It was an unexpected day of inspiration coupled with a wealth of history for this missionary kid born and raised in Osaka.  It was one of those experiences that are so monumental that you feel you don't deserve, but you are graciously given.

And gratitude dances in your heart.

Koko Kondo and me, daughters of ministers
Kobe, Japan

Under the Silk Hibiscus on Amazon.

See why this novel is invited to Japan!

I grew up in classrooms filled with kids and teachers from all over the world. My high school, Canadian Academy, located in Kobe on top of a hill, had a view of the harbor which looked beautiful. My school also had a grassy area where we ate lunch in the warmer months. I recall looking around at my senior friends and noting the countries they represented. Malfrid from Norway, Sophie from France, Jules from Canada (the French region of Quebec), Sangeeta from India and Japan, Nada from Lebanon, Katie from California, USA. We are like a United Nations, I thought.

I know I almost failed algebra. And hated biology. But I never recalled learning anything in history about internment camps for Japanese-Americans during War World II.

I wish I had listened. One of my classmates' mom was in a camp during her youth. But that didn't register in my mind until long after I held my high school diploma.

It would be years later when I felt the need to write about this period of history. It would be when living in another country, at another setting. In North Carolina, I heard my friend Artie Kamiya talk about his mother who had been forced to spend years in a camp in Colorado after President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066. Shortly after Pearl Harbor was bombed, those of Japanese descent on the West Coast of the U.S. were sent to various camps. Many forced to these camps were American citizens. Most had never even been to Japan.

This shows just has strong fear and prejudice go and how they eat at people's hearts and minds. Americans, born in the United States, had to leave their homes, board trains with one suitcase each, and head to bleak camps where barracks became dwelling places.

I wrote Under the Silk Hibiscus with the help of materials I received from Artie's mom. I was also able to interview Terri Takiguchi, a woman in my church who was sent from her life in California to a camp in Arizona during the war.

And this time I listened. At my computer, I heard the voices of dozens of others as I watched videos about one camp in particular---Heart Mountain in Wyoming. This camp became the setting for my fictional family, Nathan Mori, his siblings, mother, and aunt.

When I got the news that my high school wants me to come to Japan as an alumni author in residence, I couldn't believe it! Even now, most days, I think that I'm still dreaming. It's been since 1988 when I was there last as a teacher of English.

Early next year, I'll be flying to Japan, the country of my birth and childhood. In addition to going on a field trip with ninth graders to Hiroshima, I'll share about being an author and how I researched for my novel. I hear authentic food calling my name, too: Unagi, katsudon, chirashizushi, oyakodomburi, an pan, and of course, green tea ice cream (as pictured below).

I know it will be a most wonderful reunion.


You can read more about Under the Silk Hibiscus here.