Tatako and Ishiguro

Again first published on December 26, 2017--Here it is again, these two posts should go hand in hand, Ishiguro and Tatako, will always remind me of two different sides of Japan, the Spiritual (meditative) and the stoic!

None of these pictures have any connection to the story here. They are just being used so that I have some happy and some not-depressing (neutral) pictures to this strange story of identity crisis and home-sickness. Most of these pictures were taken in 2009, first visit to Japan. 

Train to Kamakura, 2009

Buddha at Kamakura, Japan, 2009

Young women in Kimono

For my research and data collection, during my Phd, I had returned to the city I had lived in, only two years before.  Washington DC.

At the library of congress where the research process itself was something to marvel, I remember staring in awe as microfiche that I requested was brought up by a cable.  The process was that --you fill out a form --usually based on research from Lexus-Nexus, the data base for news articles, and then send it through a tube.  Upon arrival in the basement, some person/staff would locate the document you asked for and send it through a lift, a cable.  Actually the entire process is blurry now, but I do remember being fascinated by it.

So, in the middle of that hectic, energy consuming work, I would take a break and just look out the window, wondering about things that bothered me then and have continued since then.

Who I was, what was I doing, why was I doing this research, what would it accomplish, did I really  care about the topic and issues or was it a way to finish something I had started, just to show perseverance but I truly was not interested in anything.

I had a semi-science background but I had acknowledged that I was a story teller, I thought in images and visuals, my mind kept dropping me characters and sentences and dialogues and words ---that came with their own personality and told me that I was to be their caretaker and gardener.  That I was to place them in the right place and in right order.

While I wrote for as long as I can remember (I wrote a short play when I was eight, and then directed it... will write about it later)---I started writing on a regular basis in my teens, when I also started keeping a daily journal.  From then till mid-twenties, I wrote a page or two --sometimes more every day.  Today I have a whole shelf filled of many hand written journals, in many shapes and colours.  The most common ones are the 'mead' notebooks from the US.  

With my move to the US, handwriting shifted to word-processing.  I started putting down things onto a computer.  From there, though I could write and store much, but I also became fragmented.  Thanks to this blog, I put together some memories and put them out, for the sake to having them in one place.

But the fragmentation which started with regular and increasing use of computers, combined with world-travel and possibly an identity loss, often makes me feel numb.

As strange as it sounds, numbness, has its own unique pain.

And so, this story of a Japanese woman I met years ago at the library of Congress and the recent talk by Ishiguro made me look nostalgically on a time, that was utterly painful, in real 'pain' sense of the word.

I actually felt the pain, tears would flow down at the drop of a hat, I would often write in my journal 'my heart was dangling over my abdomen'.  A way of explaining a 'drowning' feeling.

It was during that time, when I had to be in DC for research that I happened to sit next to Tatako.  I remember her name. Very clearly. I had thought of writing to her for the longest time. We had exchanged addresses and emails.  But I never did write.  

She was a middle aged Japanese woman married to an American man.  Loneliness and isolation emanated from her aura.  Shrunken even more than her slight frame.  It would be more appropriate to say, 'loneliness and isolation was where her aura receded', for there was nothing that 'emanated.'  That feeling was so strong, that one felt sucked into that vortex.

Since, I was myself in that space, somewhat, I was not in any danger in being around her.

But, just being around her made me realize what had become a modern state for many of us.  

Displaced, dislocated, and disoriented.

We did not know who we were, and simply stuck in inertia of not being able to do anything, even though time and things around us were in constant motion.  And those like me were in perpetual motion, meaning a physical move from one place to another. 

Tatako had married an American and had no children.  When she sat next to me, we started talking to each other, as if in a trance, of the directionless-ness of our lives.  Maybe both of us missing a sense of familiarity of expressions and emotions!  We did not recognize ourselves in the way world and life represented itself around us. 

We dare not express, for the fear of being misunderstood and misrepresented by our out of place feelings.  

And we shut out the joys of a childhood that was rich and colorful, for none of that was reflected in our world.

I felt her pain, as she slowly talked about the silence at home. It reminded me of my landlady from when I lived in the city. She was from south America and had married a divorcee with a child, who did not want any more children, while she desperately desired children.  When I met her, she was taking a break from her husband and trying to sort herself out, trying to connect with her childhood friends and even sweethearts, to find a lost piece of herself. 

I took Tatako’s address but did not know what to say to her. A few months later, I moved to another state and became even more lost than before.  Her name is written in one of my old diaries, that I have been meaning to discard for a while.  I had torn the page that had her name and saved it, but thrown the diary away this past summer, so that I may clear some space.  May be now that I have immortalized her memories and feelings and non-existence in a foreign culture, I can get rid of that page.

But writing about Ishiguro and listening to him talk about a Japan that he wanted to 'capture before it faded away', made me realize how much I have wanted to do that. Capture my India.

I had a magical childhood. Yes, not without problems and issues, but magical childhood.  So much so that the problems remain in the background and manifest here and there in fear, but it is the memories of that beautiful childhood and the character of strength that learnt from those around me that has helped me live with the integrity that I have lived with.

When Ishiguro talked about memory, I thought about Tatako.  Would she be upset, if she had no memory of a ‘richer, fuller’ time in Japan?

Tatako, in her very simple English, had talked about the lack of movement--a stillness that had become stale-- in her life in the US.  Stillness instead of deepening, had started a stench of fear.  She looked calm from the outside but was unquiet on the inside.  But it was the stoicism of Japan that allowed her to function as a normal human being, or at least no more bruised than we all are. (the blue part has been added this time, upon reflection on it). 

At the time, I was also reading ‘The road less travelled.’  And what I clearly remember from that book is this one incident, where the author says that the ‘Japanese brides that accompanied US soldiers after WWII back to the US had great marriage for several years and even decades.  But as they started to learn better English and could express themselves, the marriages started to break. Because now they had expression and could express, their discontent or disagreement.’

Would being inarticulate then be a blessing?  Not being able to name a feeling.  Just name it dullness for a while and hope for it to move and shift?

Something, I hope to consider more and think about…..as I continue on this journey to write and share.