The Foreign Teacher's Heart: December 2009

In 1991 I married Tetsuo Kuramoto, only son of Akira and Keiko Kuramoto. In 1994 I moved into Akira and Keiko’s home in Minamata when Tetsuo was transferred to a school within commuting distance of their home.

My friends warned me, “don’t live with your in-laws” but I ignored them. It was my idea to move in with Tetsuo’s parents. I wanted my children to grow up knowing who they were as Japanese children. I wanted them to have a strong identity in both of the cultures they were born into. Tetsuo was busy with work and it was clear to me that he was not going to be the person who could pass on Japanese family traditions to my children.

My in-laws were always nice to me; though I’m sure I got on their nerves on a regular basis. As I’ve matured over the years, I can look back and really see that there must have been many times that their “foreign daughter-in-law” shocked and dismayed them, but they never showed it.

My father-in-law (Otoosan) was the strong silent type--a typical old-fashioned Kumamoto man. However, when he started drinking he became very talkative and liked to chat for hours as he sipped on his shochu (rice licquor). He told me stories of how he had lived in North Korea and was arrested and taken to Russia during the war. He miraculously worked his way home to Minamata, and upon his return tried to join the “kamikaze” but was refused because he was only 15.

I remember that he always went around opening all of the windows of the house on hot summer days. That was no problem, but it always made me crazy that he would open the screens wide too. I would follow him around closing the screens. I just couldn’t stand all of the bugs that came in when the screens were open. Otoosan, however, seemed to believe that it was much hotter with the screens closed.

I was a Washington-State girl, who grew up in the Northern land of small insects and closed screens that couldn’t be opened. There was nothing more shocking to me than the size, variety, and tenacity of insects in Kyushu. I sometimes felt that I should own a small handgun to protect myself and my family from the huge bugs here.

Anyway, Otoosan and I went on like that for many years. He opened the screens. I closed them.

Bugs came in. I screamed. Okaasan (mother) saved me.

Every time a giant spider scurried up the wall or I awoke in the night with the irritating sound of a mosquito buzzing in my ear, I would think “the screens,” and silently fume about Otoosans habit of opening them.

Until one day, when I made “the mistake.”

I was in my kitchen one day washing the dishes when I saw a big black bug flying around. I quickly started looking for a weapon as I thought to myself “the screens!”

I found a newspaper lying nearby, rolled it tightly and began my hunt. I followed the bug around, flailing my newspaper like a madman. The bug seemed fairly uninterested as is slowly flew around landing on the light far above my head. I decided to increase my arsenal by grabbing the bug spray.

I began dispersing clouds of bug spray as I continued to flail my newspaper weapon. I was coughing and gasping, but the bug seemed unaffected. Eventually, however, the bug slowly flew in an erratic pattern until it reached the floor where I gave it the final blow with my newspaper.

I was ecstatic! I had won! The dreadful bug was dead.

I grabbed a tissue and carefully placed the bug in the newspaper and laid it to rest in my kitchen garbage can.

It was over. I had triumphed over the enemy.

Shortly after my victory, my son came up the stairs and announced. “Momma! Ojiichan (Grandpa) found a firefly and tonight he’s going to show me how it glows!” I replied “That’s nice honey.”

Later, I wandered downstairs and bumped into Otoosan. “Joshie says you found a firefly. Where are you keeping it?” Otoosan replied, “it’s flying around the house, I’ll catch it later.”

“Flying around the house!???”

My heart was suddenly in my throat.

I suppressed my feelings of panic as I calmly asked “Otoosan, what does a firefly look like when it’s not glowing?”

He replied “a big black bug.”

I ran upstairs to my kitchen garbage can, extracted the corpse of the bug I had killed and rushed back to Otoosan’s side.

“Otoosan?”
“Yes?”
“Is this the firefly?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sooooooooooooooooo sorry!”
He just smiled and said “I’ll find another one.”

I took a walk in Otoosan’s shoes that day. I saw things through his eyes for the first time. I saw the beauty in the beast, the fire in the fly. I learned that he knew how to see a treasure in something that I had thought was an enemy. And I realized that perhaps his patience with me had been because he could see the potential in his awkward, young, daughter-in-law.

The last time I was with Otoosan before he died, he was thin and feverish and lying in his hospice bed. He couldn't talk anymore. But he struggled with all of his might to sit up in his bed. He reached for me and moved his mouth trying to say something. I held his hands and said “It’s OK Otoosan. You don't have to say anything. I know. I know. And I love you too.”