The author at her stall in the Zine Fest. Photo provided by the author.
As an American writer in Japan, who writes and publishes in English, I tend to meet a lot of fellow expatriate writers. I know a few Japanese writers and poets who write in English, and of course, I am familiar with many Japanese authors through their works which have been translated into English. However, although I had read about the burgeoning Japanese zine scene, I had never actually witnessed it. As a professor of Japanese students who seem to hate reading and writing (at least in English), I could hardly imagine a hall full of self-published writers marketing their wares.
When an ad for a Zine Fest in Kobe popped up in my Instagram feed, I decided to sign up. The invitation was for creators and vendors of all kinds, including handicrafts, books, clothing, and yes, zines. I invited my artistic daughter to join me, thinking that she could sell postcards of some of her illustrations, but she had already made plans for that weekend.
I boarded a bus in Tokushima with a small suitcase full of books taken from the stash in a futon closet in my house. The bus went across Awaji Island, then onto the bridge that led into Kobe. I got off on the bridge and took an elevator down to ground level and found my way to the nearest train station. Although it was hot and humid, navigating my way to the venue, an old-style community center with dark wooden floors, gave me a sense of satisfaction.
I paid the modest participation fee and made my way to my designated spot in a room down the hall, a small table right at the entrance, with just enough space for all of the books that I had brought to display. My boothmate was a student from a college in Kyoto, majoring in political science, who was selling a chapbook about her job-hunting experiences. I bought a copy for my son, who was about to finish his graduate degree in history, and would soon have to start job-hunting himself.
The Zine Fest was happening on three floors of the building. We were on the first floor. I looked around the room and saw a wide range of handmade goods on display – jewelry, postcards, board games, and even food. As far as I could tell, I was the only foreign vendor and the only person selling materials in English. (I would later discover that this was not true.)
My boothmate had decorated her half of the table with small stuffed animals – characters from the Bam and Kero picture book series. She had come up with this idea after her first zine festival experience. It was a good conversation starter. Every now and then, she got up to reposition the figures.
In the first hour, a few foreigners sauntered through. Most pointedly ignored me, but I managed to sell one book to a cheerful young American woman in a dress appliqued with lesser pandas. I had known from the beginning that it would be difficult to sell English-language books at a Japanese event. It was almost impossible for me to convince the English majors at our university to read books in English. Nevertheless, I tried. I chatted up my books in Japanese to a few other people, to no avail: “This one is easy!” “This one has pictures!”
I saw that a vendor at another table was nodding off. One was crocheting. I thought it would be okay to eat the rice balls my husband had made for me while sitting at the table. After my lunch, I took a break and looked around. I went upstairs to what appeared to be the main room. I bought a graphic novel from a Polish publisher, and a fantasy story featuring a dragon from a Japanese creator, both in English. I was tempted by the quirky travel journals on interesting places, like Yemen, of another. For the time being, I picked up her business card so that I could follow her on social media. In another booth, a guy was selling fresh vegetables. The attendees were eclectic as well: a woman with pink hair and tattoos, men in skirts.
I perused some sample zines that had been set out on a table, then I went back to my booth. My boothmate told me that a few people had stopped by and looked at my books while I was gone. I found this heartening.
One guy picked up my book Waiting, which is a story in poems. He flipped through it, paused on certain pages, and asked a lot of questions. It seemed as if we talked for about five minutes, and I was sure that he would buy a copy. But then he asked, “What does RIP mean?” and after I explained, he said, “Dark!” He put the book down and made his escape. Maybe I wasn’t so good at hyping my books in Japanese.
Even so, I managed to sell a few more copies, and so did my boothmate. We clapped for each other every time one of us sold a book. At the end of the session, I packed up my remaining stock and went to meet my son for dinner. I gave him the chapbook, which he later read and said was depressing. Job-hunting is hard, and my boothmate suffered many setbacks. But spoiler-alert: she eventually found a job, and now I am following her on social media.
At the Zine Fest: Photos provided by the author
Suzanne Kamatawas born and raised in Grand Haven, Michigan. She now lives in Japan with her husband and two children. Her short stories, essays, articles and book reviews have appeared in over 100 publications. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times, and received a Special Mention in 2006. She is also a two-time winner of the All Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest, winner of the Paris Book Festival, and winner of a SCBWI Magazine Merit Award.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Call me simple, call me old-fashioned, but I often find myself yearning for the days of on-and-off buttons, the getting out of one’s chair to change the channel, the times before remote controls were scattered throughout my house.
Most evenings, my husband and I convene in the living room to watch TV. Most evenings, it seems, we have the same conversation.
“Where is that (grumble grumble) remote control?” he asks.
I look at the remote control caddy next to the TV. Of course it’s empty.
“Here it is!” I say, pointing to the coffee table.
“That’s not it. That’s the one for the ceiling fan.”
We look under the sofa, on the bookshelves, and beneath the TV. We search between the sofa cushions, and under the pile of newspapers.
Finally, one of us finds it in some unlikely place – on the kitchen counter, or maybe next to the telephone.
My husband presses a button. “It’s not working.”
“I guess it needs new batteries,” I say.
We change the batteries. Finally, ten minutes after our initial search, we are ready to watch TV.
Of course the complications of TV remote controls are not unique to Japan. On a recent visit to a friend’s apartment in the States, we were told, “If you want to watch TV, push this button on this remote control, and then this button on this remote control, but whatever you do, don’t push this one!” Someone, please, invent an easier way for accessing cable TV channels!
It might not be so bad if the TV remote controls were the only ones in our lives, but here in high-tech Japan, every electronic device seems to come with one of those gadgets. I can appreciate having a remote control device to unlock the car when rain is pouring down and I need to dash from my porch to my hatchback, but do I really need one to operate my portable radio? Or my desk top computer?
And where is the sense in using a remote control to turn the lights on and off instead of flicking a switch? The light fixture we recently installed in my son’s room, a small space which can be crossed in three big steps, came with a remote control. This means that when I enter his room at night, to, say, put his clean socks in the drawer, I often find myself stumbling around in the dark, trying to find that darned remocon so I can see what I’m doing.
Perhaps remote controls are part of an interim phase. It’s conceivable that someday all of our appliances will be voice activated or will turn on and off in response to brain waves. In the meantime, I remind myself of something that my family members are apt to forget. There’s a little button in the back of the television. With just a push, the screen comes to life.
Suzanne Kamatawas born and raised in Grand Haven, Michigan. She now lives in Japan with her husband and two children. Her short stories, essays, articles and book reviews have appeared in over 100 publications. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times, and received a Special Mention in 2006. She is also a two-time winner of the All Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest, winner of the Paris Book Festival, and winner of a SCBWI Magazine Merit Award.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Some Japanese customs are pretty much common sense (no shoes in the house, no soap in the bath). Some, I have learned from my Japanese mother-in-law (do not store the broom in the entryway!). And others, I have learned from observation. For example, I’ve figured out that it’s best not to leave my wet umbrella unfurled when I poke it into a public umbrella stand, that I should back into a parking space, and that whenever I hand something over, it should be wrapped or in a bag.
Back in the day, department stores wrapped each purchased item individually and put them in a bag, so that once you got home, it was like a birthday or Christmas. In these ecologically-minded days, shop clerks don’t wrap things in paper, and I am more likely to carry my own cloth shopping bag. Naked gifts, however, are still a no-no.
Most souvenir shops in Japan give out multiple bags, so that if you buy five boxes of sweets for five different neighbors, each one can be presented in its own bag. This is a bit problematic when it comes to gifts purchased abroad. However, I now have a supply of sturdy, attractive paper bags with handles that I can use in a pinch. One of my friends said that she sometimes gets excited when she receives something in a bag from a big city boutique, thinking that they’ve opened a local branch. But typically, the bag’s origins don’t really matter, and the bag doesn’t have to match the gift.
I used to think that only new things were put into bags, but when I loaned a book or a dish or a piece of clothing to a Japanese friend, it was inevitably returned in a bag – like a present! I finally figured out that I should do the same. When I returned that yukata I borrowed for my daughter’s school festival, I tucked it into a paper bag emblazoned with the name of a Parisian shop. When I gave back a plastic container that had held food leftover from a party, I put it in a shiny bag from a popular local bakery. I brought a loaf of carrot cake to my neighbour in a sack from an upscale clothing store.
Yukata, a kimono for summer. From Public domain
Just the other day, I loaned a book to an Australian friend who has lived in Japan for many years. Because we are both foreigners in Japan, this one time I didn’t package up the book, but handed it over without cover, as I might have in the United States. I should have known better. When the book came back to me, it was in a crinkly paper bag decorated with strawberries, and tucked into another bag, from a pastry shop, printed with ribbons – a reminder that presentation counts.
From Public Domain
Suzanne Kamatawas born and raised in Grand Haven, Michigan. She now lives in Japan with her husband and two children. Her short stories, essays, articles and book reviews have appeared in over 100 publications. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times, and received a Special Mention in 2006. She is also a two-time winner of the All Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest, winner of the Paris Book Festival, and winner of a SCBWI Magazine Merit Award.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Like many people, I have complicated feelings about AI. On a recent trip to the United States, my daughter, who is deaf and has never learned English, was able to keep up with dinner table conversations with the help of an app which transcribed and translated spoken words, almost in real time. However, as one who teaches English as a foreign language, I am dismayed by the extent to which students outsource their learning.
As a writer, I was both flattered to find that my writing had been used to train Large Language Models, and angry that it had been done without my consent. Meanwhile, just the other day I enjoyed a movie featuring a computer-generated octopus, but I also worry that moviemakers will substitute human actors with AI ones. Apparently, this is already happening in China and other places.
I am also alarmed by how often my husband consults ChatGPT in his decision-making. For example, we recently decided to purchase new curtains for our living/dining room. Previously, the three windows in question had been hung with floral curtains in coordinating but different patterns. How nice it would be to finally have matching curtains on all three windows! We went curtain-shopping and fell for a beautiful set of drapes with deep crimson roses that would go well with our deep red cabinets. We didn’t buy them right away, however.
In the interim, my husband asked ChatGPT what colour curtains would go best with our décor. “Greige,” came the reply. A neutral colour, such as a cross between gray and beige, would go with everything. We would easily tire of a busy print, and loud colors would overwhelm.
We went curtain-shopping again. This time, we considered more subdued designs. I still thought that a floral print would be nice, but I was willing to go in for a change. We wound up selecting curtains in an elegant gray ombre. They are fine, but not quite as cheerful as the ones we had before.
Next, my husband and I began painting the cement wall that separated our lot from the neighbour’s. Surprisingly, he agreed to a mint green. It reminded me of the lovely pastel houses on Rainbow Row in Charleston, South Carolina, or San Francisco, California. A few houses down, some other neighbours had painted their house yellow. I supported this trend.
When we had finished the wall, my husband said that he was going to paint the gate. “What colour do you think would be best?” he asked.
“How about blue?” Sky blue would be uplifting. A darker blue would be a nod to the indigo for which our town was named.
My husband went to ChatGPT for confirmation. “He says that we should paint it greige.”
I rolled my eyes. First of all, it was not a “he,” not a sentient being. Secondly, it was becoming clear that if we always relied on AI’s advice, the whole world would soon be bland and inoffensive – in other words, greige.
This time, I refused to go along with the verdict. My husband asked again, apparently with different wording. He read the reply out loud to me: “Your wife is not wrong…”
Another thing about AI is that it aims to please.
Ultimately, my husband painted the gate blue.
From Public Domain
Suzanne Kamatawas born and raised in Grand Haven, Michigan. She now lives in Japan with her husband and two children. Her short stories, essays, articles and book reviews have appeared in over 100 publications. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times, and received a Special Mention in 2006. She is also a two-time winner of the All Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest, winner of the Paris Book Festival, and winner of a SCBWI Magazine Merit Award.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
My daughter Lilia and I were in Wakayama Station, on our way to see the cat station master in the small town of Kishi. Because Lilia uses a wheelchair, we had to ask for assistance getting on and off the train.
“What time are you coming back?” a Japan Railways employee asked. They would have to prepare for our return later in the day.
“We want to come back on the Tamaden,” I said, referring to a train with a cat theme. I had taken a photo of the train schedule, and I opened my phone to check the time. It was now about twelve-thirty. Although there were trains every thirty minutes – the Animal Train, the Plum Train, the Cha Train – the Tama Train (aka Tamaden) only ran from Kishi twice a day. The next would be at 2:38, which wouldn’t give us much time to see everything. We didn’t want to rush. The final one would be at five fifteen.
“Five fifteen,” I said.
The man gave me a dubious look. “There isn’t very much to do in Kishi,” he said. “There’s nothing there. Are you sure you want to stay that long?”
What about the café? The museum? The shrine? The cat? We had come all this way, and we would only be there for a couple of hours. If we ran out of things to do, we could go for a walk. It was a lovely day, after all.
“You want to ride on the Tama Train, don’t you?” I asked Lilia.
“Yes,” she replied.
“What if we change our minds and want to come back early?” I asked the JR attendant.
He told me that would be difficult.
“Okay, then. Five fifteen.”
After showing our tickets, we were given Wakayama Electric Railway Kishigawa Line postcards. On the platform, there was a rubber stamp featuring a cartoonish Tama, with Wakayama Castle, and citrus fruits in the background. Little blank books meant for collecting stamps from various places were sold in gift shops. We didn’t have such books, so we stamped our postcards. A clock with cat ears – one black, one brown, like a calico – hung overhead.
I deduced that the train on the tracks, decorated with colored hearts, illustrations of dogs and cats, and the letters JSPCA, was the Animal Train. Other than the banners featuring cats clutching flowers and a white dog holding a bone, the inside of the car was ordinary. Like most Japanese trains, it was clean, with plush benches along each side, and an orange ticket dispenser at the entrance and exit.
Lilia marveled at how empty the train was. Now that she lived in Osaka, she had become a city girl, used to being squished between passengers on her morning and evening commutes. I was pretty sure that most of the people getting on board were tourists on their way to see Tama.
During the thirty-minute ride, the train swayed on the tracks, past rice paddies, and orange orchards.
“Maybe in the future they will make it easier for people in wheelchairs to visit,” I said.
Lilia frowned and made the sign for money. Yes, it might cost a lot to add an elevator in the station, but was it really too much to ask?
At the end of our journey, which was also the end of the line, a young man wearing white gloves laid out the ramp. Again, we conferred about what time we would go back. He gave me a paper schedule, folded into the size of a credit card, and showed me the phone number at the bottom.
“If you change your mind about what time you want to go back, just call this number,” he said.
“Thank you.” I looked around. We were indeed in the middle of nowhere. Yes, there were many houses, but I could already tell that the station itself was quite small, and, as the attendants in Wakayama had said, there weren’t any shops and restaurants around. But there were quite a few people, many from abroad. I saw a young woman in a pink hijab, and a group of Chinese tourists.
We paused before the shrine to the original cat station master, Tama, on the platform, then went down a ramp, and to the front of the station. By now, we were hungry. But first, the cat.
On this day, Yontama, a calico like her predecessor, was in a little room behind glass at the side of the station. She was napping on the wooden floor, next to a soft, plush mat. Many people were taking photos of her, but no one was bothering her. She wasn’t wearing the hat or suit of a stationmaster or doing anything special. She looked – and I say this with love – like an ordinary cat.
To the left of the window stood a fortune dispenser. Lilia dropped a hundred-yen coin into the box and extracted a rolled-up piece of paper. She unfurled it and showed it to me: “Very happy!”
“Great!” I gestured to the café behind us. “Now let’s go eat.”
We entered the Tama Café, which also seemed to function as the museum. The original cat station master’s hat, decorated with a strawberry emblem, a lace-trimmed blue velvet cloak worn by Tama, and various framed documents were displayed in a glass-fronted cabinet.
I ordered two Hot Cat Sets for us — fish sausages on hot dog buns, strawberry sodas, and cookie wafers printed with Tama’s image. We topped that off with green tea floats, with a scoop of green tea ice cream with almond ears and chocolate chip eyes.
After we had finished our meal, we visited the gift shop next door. From there, we could see Yontama from a different angle. She was awake but still lolling about. I bought little Yontama towels, which are always used in Japan for blotting your hands dry after washing them in public places. Then I paid for a fortune of my own. “Very happy,” it said. I wondered if all of the fortunes in the box were exactly the same.
Across the street was a tourist information center. Despite the JR employees’ skepticism, the people of Kinokawa City had taken the time to consider ways to occupy and engage the many visitors who would come to see the cats. Brochures in many languages were arranged in a rack. I plucked a few and discovered that a beautiful park dating back to the medieval period was within walking distance. The region also produced a lot of fruit, such as strawberries, figs, and oranges.
“Shall we go for a walk?” I asked Lilia.
She nodded. Using a map app on my phone, we set out for Hiraike Park Land. Part of the walk was uphill. Although Lilia’s wheelchair was electric-assisted, she still had to turn the wheels. Her arms started to get tired, so I helped her out for some of the way. We passed fields of cabbages, rice paddies, and groves of lemons, oranges, and figs. Unattended farm stands offered clear plastic bags of freshly picked persimmons and citrus fruits at bargain prices, much cheaper that those sold at the supermarket back home.
We finally arrived at the park. We stopped to observe the ducks and herons, the placid blue pond. According to the map, some ancient burial mounds, made distinctive by their key-holed shape, were nearby. I thought that we might be in danger of exhausting the wheelchair’s battery, however, so we didn’t go in search of them.
On the way back to the station, I stopped at one of the farm stands, put a couple of coins in the money box, and bought a bag of oranges. I would take it back as a souvenir for my husband and me to enjoy.
At one point, Lilia stopped, threw back her head and looked at the sky. “Ao,” she said in Japanese, drawing her fingers across her cheek in the sign for “blue.” She signed that there were no clouds. Indeed, it was a perfect autumn day.
When we were almost to the station, Lilia spotted a general store. She wanted to go inside, so we did. The lone woman behind the counter did not greet us, as is customary in Japan. I wondered if she was put off at the sight of a couple of foreigners. Of course, my daughter is half-Japanese, and has spent her entire life in Japan, but when she is with me, people assume that she is from abroad.
At the front of the store, school uniforms were displayed on mannequins Further inside, various goods were haphazardly arranged – a rack of flannel shirts, a shelf of liquor bottles, snacks for kids dropping in after school. It looked like the aftermath of a rummage sale. When Lilia started down a narrow aisle in her wheelchair, the woman drew in her breath. I could sense her fretting behind us, but she didn’t say anything. What must it be like for these country people to deal with the many foreigners traipsing through their small town? I was reminded of how people in Tokushima, where I live now, used to literally tremble when they saw my foreign face and thought that they might have to speak English.
Lilia decided to buy a packet of shrimp chips. The woman took her money, thanked her, and we got out of her hair.
Back at the station, we returned to the gift shop. Although Yontama was on the clock until four, and it was past four thirty, she was still relaxing in her little room. She probably didn’t mind. No one was tapping on the glass or otherwise harassing her. She had a good view of tourists buying cat themed T-shirts, cookies, and keychains. Lilia bought an ema, a small wooden plaque on which she would write a wish, and appeal to the cat deity, Tama Daimyojin.
We went onto the platform, and I tied Lilia’s ema onto a wooden board, along with wooden plaques inscribed by people from all over the world: “Wishing happiness and peace to animals all around the world.” “May all the strays and rescues get a good and loving home.” “May Pomelo, Walnut, and I live a long healthy life together.”
Dusk was already falling. The platform began to fill with other visitors, who apparently had the same desire to ride the Tama Train as we did. A young Chinese woman with flowing bleached-blonde hair in Lolita-meets-Little-Bo-Peep fashion – bonnet, and a tiered plaid dress with frills, eyelet, and ribbons — posed while her friends took photos. I wanted to take her picture, too, and post it on my Instagram account. She probably wouldn’t have minded, because she seemed to be some kind of influencer, but my daughter frowned and shook her head when I indicated my intentions.
As the train finally approached, everyone tried to get the best spot on the platform for the best shot. The front of the train was painted with a cat’s face. The windows served as eyes, and just below were a nose and whiskers. Cat’s ears were affixed to the top of the car. Pawprints and a cartoon version of Tama in various poses illustrated the sides. Inside, passengers could sit on colorful Tama-themed sofas.
Our friend from earlier showed up with a ramp, and helped us get onto the car with a space for wheelchair users. Lilia was delighted to find a bookshelf stocked with cat-related manga in the car. I handed her a stack of them to read over the duration of the train ride.
Although many of those onboard were obviously tourists, like the young Chinese women continuing their photo shoot, I realised that this train was also used by the residents of the towns on the Kitagawa Line. Observing a man in a business suit who appeared to be among them, I wondered what it was like for him to share his commute with eccentric travelers. I suppose it would be entertaining. At any rate, I couldn’t help but be impressed by this small town’s ability to create a new identity for itself and capitalize on it.
We returned to Wakayama Station tired but satisfied at having completed our mission. When I reached home, my cats were there to meet me, yowling and needy.
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Suzanne Kamatawas born and raised in Grand Haven, Michigan. She now lives in Japan with her husband and two children. Her short stories, essays, articles and book reviews have appeared in over 100 publications. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times, and received a Special Mention in 2006. She is also a two-time winner of the All Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest, winner of the Paris Book Festival, and winner of a SCBWI Magazine Merit Award.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Several years ago, I published a short book, A Girls’ Guide to the Islands (Gemma Open Door, 2017) about traveling amongst the islands of Japan’s Inland Sea with my daughter, who is deaf and uses a wheelchair. One of the islands that we visited was Naoshima, the site of several art museums, including the Chichu Art Museum, which houses five paintings from Claude Monet’s Water Lilies series. In addition to writing about our responses to the various artworks, I touched upon the difficulties and differences in traveling with a wheelchair user. For one thing, the ferry which conveyed us from Takamatsu City to the island, did not have an elevator to the upper decks. While others got out of their vehicles to take in the scenery from above decks, my daughter and I spent the crossing in my car.
Shortly after this trip, I received a grant from the Sustainable Arts Foundation for a longer book about traveling with my daughter, which became the award-winning Squeaky Wheels: Travels with My Daughter by Train, Plane, Metro, Tuk-tuk, and Wheelchair(Wyatt-Mackenzie Publishing, 2019). A slightly different variation of our trip to Naoshima appears in that book.
Although I loved our time on the island, and had not yet visited all the museums and installations, I had not been back since that trip with my daughter. I finally had a chance to revisit last month when I learned that the couple who had administered the grant that had made my book possible would be visiting Naoshima. I arranged to meet with them on my way back from Kyoto, where I was going to attend a book launch. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t be going with my daughter this time. She is now an adult living in Osaka, and it takes a bit of effort to coordinate our schedules. Nevertheless, I figured I could scout out the situation before planning our next mother-daughter adventure.
Although on previous visits, I had taken a ferry from Takamatsu, on the island of Shikoku, this time I took the shinkansen, Japan’s high speed bullet train, from Kyoto to Okayama, where I spent the night in a hotel. The next morning, I easily found the stop for the bus bound for the ferry terminal. Almost everyone in the queue was foreign. As far as I could tell, most of them were from Europe.
No doubt some had timed their visit with the Setouchi Trienalle, an art festival which takes place mainly in the ports and amongst eleven islands every three years. Japan, in general, has seen a huge surge in tourism over recent years due to the weak yen and governmental efforts to promote inbound tourism. While this has been good for Japan’s economy, it has driven prices up for local residents. It also means that public transportation is often crowded.
When we arrived at the ferry terminal, I purchased my ticket and joined the tail end of a very long line. Luckily, I was able to board the ferry and find a seat. I was pleasantly surprised to find the ferry had been upgraded since my last visit. Not only was it appointed with plush seats facing the water, but also there was now an elevator!
About twenty minutes later, we arrived at Minoura Port. Armies of English-speaking guides were readily available. I quickly found my way to the bus stop and onto the bus that would take me to the recently opened Naoshima New Museum of Art. I had just enough time before meeting my benefactors to check it out and have lunch.
The inaugural exhibition featured the work of twelve artists and groups, including Takashi Murakami, who has achieved worldwide fame. His cartoonish characters appear on coveted Louis Vuitton bags. He also designed a special shirt, printed with cherry blossoms, for fans of the Los Angeles Dodgers. His work on display, a 13-meter-wide painting, is modeled after a 17th century folding screen titled Scenes In and Around Kyoto by Iwasa Matabei. Murakami’s rendition portrays scenes of everyday life in early modern Kyoto. But look closely, and you will find some of his iconic original characters!
Another impressive exhibit, Head On, by Cai Guo-Qiang, features lifelike wolves running toward and colliding with a glass wall. According to the exhibit brochure, the wall “symbolizes the intangible yet deeply felt ideological and cultural divisions between people and communities.”
After going through the exhibits, and vowing to return with my daughter, I popped into the museum café for a quick lunch. The dining area was in open air, with a view of the sea and the islands beyond. I ordered pumpkin toast, perhaps Naoshima’s answer to America’s ubiquitous avocado toast, and a nod to the famous Yayoi Kusama pumpkin sculptures which grace the island.
Finally, I took another bus and went to meet my friends. They are no longer awarding grants to parent artists, having shifted their focus to indigenous groups, however, I will remain forever grateful for their support. We met and had a drink near the Benesse House Park, just outside the Terrace, where my daughter and I had dined several years ago. Then it was time for me to head to the ferry terminal and back to Takamatsu, where I would catch a bus. I happened to cross at sunset – a final blast of beauty before returning home.
Suzanne Kamatawas born and raised in Grand Haven, Michigan. She now lives in Japan with her husband and two children. Her short stories, essays, articles and book reviews have appeared in over 100 publications. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times, and received a Special Mention in 2006. She is also a two-time winner of the All Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest, winner of the Paris Book Festival, and winner of a SCBWI Magazine Merit Award.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
I felt some trepidation as I prepared to enter the United States from Japan. It would be my first time to return to my native country since the new administration took office. Rumour had it that immigration officials would check my phone for leftist activity on social networks (they didn’t). I’d heard about books being banned, libraries and museums being closed, and the words “diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion” being suddenly prohibited in government documents.
My parents, originally from Michigan, in the North, live in South Carolina. This is where the Civil War began in 1861 when state legislators voted to secede from the union. They wanted to preserve slavery and allow its expansion into western territories. South Carolina and six other Southern states formed what was called the Confederacy.
The Confederate flag, a symbol, for many, of an ugly past, was first flown from a flagpole in front of the capitol building in 1961, in commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the Civil War. It remained flying in protest of the Civil Rights movement, and was only taken down in 2017, after a twenty-one-year-old white supremacist entered a historically black church in Charleston and opened fire on a prayer group. He killed nine people and injured one. Now the flag is on display in a special room at the State Museum.
My visit to South Carolina coincided with a visit from my son, a student of history with a keen interest in politics. My dad thought it might be fun to take his grandson to the Statehouse for a tour. My son was enthusiastic about this idea. I went along, too, with some reservations.
We drove into the city of Columbia and parked in a public lot at the back of the Statehouse. As we entered the grounds, we came upon a statue of Strom Thurmond. He was a teacher, a lawyer, and a highly decorated soldier. He served as governor of South Carolina from 1947-1951, and as senator for 47 years after that, right up until his death at the age of 100. Until very recently, he held the record for the longest filibuster, which is a tactic used to delay voting upon a contentious bill. Basically, a senator takes the floor and keeps talking for as long as he possibly can. In August of 1957, Strom Thurmond gave a speech lasting 24 hours and 18 minutes in opposition to a law promoting civil rights. After his death, it was revealed that he had fathered a child with his family’s 16-year-old African American maid. Of course, that is not inscribed on the plaque at the base of the statue.
To be honest, I had expected to see this statue, as well as other monuments devoted to Confederate generals and segregationists. But I was pleasantly surprised to find a new monument commemorating the accomplishments of South Carolinian African Americans.
We went inside the building and were ushered to a room off to the side for a short film before the tour began. I noted that the film was narrated by a young African American man, which seemed like a nod to diversity, equity and inclusion. He mentioned, perhaps with false pride, that Strom Thurmond held the record for longest filibuster in the history of the United States. Nevertheless, I was glad to see that the film highlighted the achievements of women and minorities, such as South Carolina’s first – and so far, only – female governor, Nikki Haley, the one who ordered that the Confederate flag be removed from state grounds.
During the rest of the tour, I breathed a bit easier, admiring the intricate ironwork on the stair railings, and the stained glass above the chambers. I enjoyed hearing that Magdalen Feline, a woman goldsmith had crafted the symbolic mace, which is placed in a rack at the front of the Speaker’s podium when the House of Representatives is in session. And I was pleased to see a portrait of African American educator, philanthropist, and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955) prominently displayed.
South Carolina is a complicated state, and this is an increasingly complicated world. However, going on this tour gave me hope that my fellow Americans might get back to celebrating diversity, equity, and inclusion, and all of the best parts of human nature.
Suzanne Kamatawas born and raised in Grand Haven, Michigan. She now lives in Japan with her husband and two children. Her short stories, essays, articles and book reviews have appeared in over 100 publications. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times, and received a Special Mention in 2006. She is also a two-time winner of the All Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest, winner of the Paris Book Festival, and winner of a SCBWI Magazine Merit Award.
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Japan is generally considered a safe country with a low crime rate. I feel comfortable walking around our neighbourhood alone, in the dark. In fact, I usually go for a walk in the evening after dinner, when night has already fallen. My walking course is mostly along sidewalks, generally well-lit, and the roads are well-traveled. Part of my usual course goes through a tunnel which is across the street from a large shopping mall.
I’d never had any concerns until a couple of months ago when I discovered a tent in the corner of the tunnel. How odd! Once or twice, I’d come across skateboarding teens, but never anyone who seemed to be living there. I couldn’t tell if anyone was inside, cuddled up within canvas. It was zipped shut, and malodourous. I hurried past, hoping it would be gone the next day, but it was still there.
While Japan is a very safe country, bad things sometimes do happen here. There was the guy who dressed up like the Joker and lit a fire on a Tokyo subway on Halloween. There was the woman who killed her neighbors by poisoned curry. Every now and then, some knife-wielding psycho starts slashing strangers in a crowd.
I mentioned the tent to my husband. He thought it was strange, too.
“But there is a camera in the tunnel,” I said.
‘It’s just for show,” he countered. “It’s probably not activated.”
“Maybe I should tell the police,” I said. After I had thought about it, though, I changed my mind. Maybe someone was fleeing an abusive home. Maybe an elderly person who couldn’t make rent was holed up inside. Even though I suspected the worst — some crazed criminal lying in wait — it was possible that there was a perfectly good explanation.
Nevertheless, I avoided going for a walk for the rest of the week. A few days later, I decided that it would probably be safe if I crossed the road instead of going through the tunnel. I set out after dark, as usual, but when I got to the crosswalk before the tunnel, I waited for the light. I saw a patrol car parked on the other side of the road, and two policemen waiting to cross. Maybe I should tell them about the tent, I thought. But I said nothing. We crossed paths without a word.
As I watched them, I realised that they already knew about the situation in the tunnel. That’s where they were headed. I observed as they made their way to the tent and peered at it. I felt sure that everything would be back to normal the next day.
But it wasn’t.
The next time I drove by, I noticed that the tent was still standing. Maybe no one had been inside of it when the police officers dropped by to check it out. Maybe they had left it standing out of consideration for the person who was using it for shelter. Or maybe it was more of a trap, so that they could catch the person when they came back.
At any rate, I was relieved that the police were aware of the tent, and that I no longer had to feel conflicted about whether or not I called them. I continued to cross the road instead of going through the tunnel.
A couple of weeks later, my husband and I had dinner with a friend who often went jogging. She knew about the tent, too, and remarked on how odd it was. No one seemed to know what was going on. I’d heard of out-of-work men sleeping on scraps of cardboard in a Tokyo park, but there were no homeless people in our small town. Not that I knew of, anyway.
Finally, my husband came back from a visit to the shopping mall one evening. He told me that he’d seen a police car and an ambulance near the tent. After that, it was gone. I scanned the local newspaper the next day and watched the evening news, but no one mentioned the tent in the tunnel. Maybe I would never find out what had happened.
I thought of other potentially scandalous events that had never been reported — a preschool teacher knifed by her ex-boyfriend on school grounds, a principal who’d hung himself in his office — and I realised that many things were kept under wraps.
I was reminded not to take my personal safety for granted. It also occurred to me that while people in small towns often complain that everyone knows everyone else’s business, the folks in the small town where I lived were good at keeping each other’s secrets, too.
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Suzanne Kamatawas born and raised in Grand Haven, Michigan. She now lives in Japan with her husband and two children. Her short stories, essays, articles and book reviews have appeared in over 100 publications. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times, and received a Special Mention in 2006. She is also a two-time winner of the All Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest, winner of the Paris Book Festival, and winner of a SCBWI Magazine Merit Award.
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Here is my son, as a toddler, an ice cream cone in one hand, the other signing “peace.” Here is my daughter at five, posing in front of the Inland Sea, two fingers held up in the air. Here is my son, aged ten, sitting on a park bench in Charleston, South Carolina. Peace!
From pretty much the time that my Japanese-born children learned to say “cheese,” whenever they’ve found themselves in the presence of a camera, they stuck up two fingers in a “V.” Pick up any family photo from our children’s first ten years, and you’ll find someone making this gesture.
It drove my American parents crazy. “Be natural,” they’d say. “Don’t do that!” Candid shots were nearly impossible because as soon as my kids realised they were about to be photographed, those two fingers went up in the air.
My children were not exceptions, of course. I first noticed this practice when I arrived in Japan over thirty years ago. I have a drawer full of photos of myself and various Japanese kids making the sign. Me, I sometimes did it ironically. For Japanese youth, it seemed to be a Pavlovian response.
It hadn’t always been this way. An older Japanese woman friend told me that when she was a child, no one made a “V” when having their picture taken. She lamented that her own children had picked up the same habit, that her daughter signed “peace” even in her wedding photos. When I asked her how it all got started, she couldn’t tell me. However, theories abound.
According to one source, the trend originated in a baseball manga. A character made the “V” for Victory sign in imitation of Winston Churchill. The gesture caught on, and remains.
One of my foreign friends, hoping to break her kids of the tendency, refused to take their picture if they were making the sign. I was not quite so strict. The peace sign may, in fact, be the Japanese equivalent of the smile. In the United States, whenever someone has their picture taken, the photographer tries to get a grin out of them. I’m sure that many of us have faked a smile in order to comply with custom. I certainly have.
Here in Japan, however, smiling for the camera is relatively new. Back in the day, only the very vulgar would show their teeth. In school and other formal photos, gravitas is seemingly required. Thus, in the group portrait taken at my own wedding, the Japanese guests wear poker faces, better suited to a court date. My American relatives are all smiles, though their posed grins may be frozen in place. No one, I might add, is making the peace sign. My husband and I got married in Hawaii, so everyone’s hands are raised with pinkie and thumb extended, a gesture that means “hang loose” in the islands. Shaka shaka.
These days, thanks to the influence of K-pop artists in Japan, people posing for photos are likely to use another gesture. At a recent party celebrating graduating students at the university where I teach, we all got into formation.
“What should we do?” one professor asked. “Peace signs?”
“How about K-pop hearts?” I suggested. The others agreed. We touched our thumbs and index fingers, forming hearts. The picture was taken.
Suzanne Kamatawas born and raised in Grand Haven, Michigan. She now lives in Japan with her husband and two children. Her short stories, essays, articles and book reviews have appeared in over 100 publications. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times, and received a Special Mention in 2006. She is also a two-time winner of the All Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest, winner of the Paris Book Festival, and winner of a SCBWI Magazine Merit Award.
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Unlike the rowdy reveling in my native US, the New Year’s holiday in Japan is usually a solemn and sedate affair, spent quietly with family. Usually, schools and businesses allow a holiday of a few days.
My adult children had returned home from Kyoto and Tokyo, and we enjoyed an American holiday meal complete with roast chicken, mashed potatoes, lemon-flavored squash, and cranberry sauce. The next day, New Year’s Eve, we started in on the o-sechi ryori, the food traditionally eaten on January 1, and the following days. In the past, the woman of the house spent days preparing these special foods, each with a particular meaning. For example, fish eggs are meant to encourage fertility, and sweetened black beans signify good health. The food is beautifully arranged in lacquer boxes.
In our family, my Japanese husband has been in charge of the New Year’s cooking in recent years, sometimes with help from our children. This year, however, we opted to buy already-made o-sechi ryori. We gathered at the table and sampled the various delicacies, then watched a music competition show on TV — another traditional Japanese activity. All across Japan, many other families were doing the same.
According to the Chinese zodiac, 2024 is the year of the wood dragon. In dragon years, it is said that people can harness the creature’s powers to unleash creativity, passion, courage and confidence. It is thought to be the ideal time to achieve one’s dreams, a time of hope and opportunity.
The aftermath of Noto Peninsula Earthquake in Japan that struck on 1st January 2024
My family and I awoke on January 1st, feeling renewed and refreshed, ready to continue pursuing our dreams. However, our moods changed when an earthquake occurred that afternoon in Ishikawa Prefecture. TV broadcasts were interrupted by frantic voices telling those in the affected area to evacuate immediately and to take cover. All across Japan, we were reminded of the devastating earthquake and tsunami of the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011 which claimed nearly 20,000 souls (with many more remaining missing). I remembered, as well, being shaken awake in our fifth-floor apartment by the Great Hanshin Earthquake of January 17, 1995, during which 6,434 people were killed.
Although the loss of life in Ishikawa (still being tallied as I write this) has not been quite so severe, the devastation displayed on TV, in newspapers, and online is heartbreaking. We have heard of middle-aged parents who lost their two daughters who were home for the holidays, of thousands whose home were reduced to rubble, of hundreds of people in an evacuation center with only two toilets. The day after the initial earthquake, a Japan Airlines plane crashed into a smaller Coast Guard plane on the runway at Haneda airport. The latter was preparing to carry supplies to earthquake victims in Ishikawa. Again, my family was glued to the TV, unable to look away as the jet burned to the ground. We were relieved to learn that all crew and passengers escaped from the plane, but saddened by the deaths of five Coast Guard members who were seeking to help others.
Plane crash on January 2nd, 2024 in Tokyo
The foreign media often celebrates the resilience of the Japanese people: all those earthquakes and landslides and floods, and still they get on with their lives! However, Japan ranks only 54th on the 2022 Happiness Report, and suicide is the leading cause of death for men between the ages of 20-44 and women 15-34. The Japan Times reported in 2019 that according to a survey conducted by The Policy Institute and King’s College, London, only 24% of respondents in Japan agreed that “seeing a mental health professional is a sign of strength.”
Two of the first expressions that I learned when I first came to Japan were, “gaman wo suru” (“be patient”/ “endure”) and “shikata ga nai” (“it can’t be helped”). I came to understand that many Japanese have a sense of fatalism and helplessness, which might account for the general malaise in spite of Japan being a safe, peaceful, prosperous, orderly country with an excellent education system and exemplary healthcare.
During this past week, however, I have also been reflecting upon the changes wrought in response to disasters. After the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, schools stepped up their earthquake drills, and a disaster prevention center was established in our town. The school my daughter attended held a workshop on how to make dishes out of newspapers in the event of a disaster and began holding “disaster camps” simulating evacuation centers in the summer. Neighbourhood-wide disaster drills also increased, and signs were put up indicating sea levels and designated evacuation centers. Although it has been reported that evacuation centers in Ishikawa do not support those with disabilities, at least there is now an awareness of what needs to be changed.
Earthquakes and other natural disasters are unavoidable, but I admire the effort that the Japanese people put into mitigating their effects. My hope is that more and more people here will begin to understand that it is okay to cry, to mourn, to grieve, and to talk about our suffering. My wish for the Japanese people in the new year is happiness and the achievement of dreams.
Suzanne Kamatawas born and raised in Grand Haven, Michigan. She now lives in Japan with her husband and two children. Her short stories, essays, articles and book reviews have appeared in over 100 publications. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times, and received a Special Mention in 2006. She is also a two-time winner of the All Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest, winner of the Paris Book Festival, and winner of a SCBWI Magazine Merit Award.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
