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on "orchards" etc
Jul. 22nd, 2011 09:28 pm [You know it’s bad when I’m writing away at notes for the volume-four-that-is-never-going-to-let-me-finish-it, and in between fragments on character development and thematic connection I keep finding the words Oh fuck me, it’s hot!. I do have the air conditioner on, in despite of all pleas to conserve electricity, and it’s not THAT bad YET—better than New York is right now, and a lot better than it’s going to be in August—but, oh man.]
I’m reading a beautiful YA novel-in-poetry called Orchards, by Holly Thompson, about Kana, a half-Japanese girl from upstate New York who goes to spend the summer on her mother’s family’s farm in rural Japan after a classmate commits suicide. (Was that enough summary?) I cried the first time through, and even after a couple of months and a couple of rereads it still makes me tear up a little. The writing is lovely, poetry elegantly constructed from everyday details, and the strength of the characters’ presence—and that of the setting—balances perfectly with the gentleness of the story arc.
Why did I cry over it? Partly the story itself, Kana’s grief and guilt and the ways she learns to cope with it, worth shedding tears for. Also, though, I think I had some envy for Kana too—with her strict and nurturing Japanese side of the family, and their tangerine orchards, solid and traditional but making it in the modern day. I’ve lived here now for going on ten years, and make no mistake, there is a freedom in being a white-skinned foreigner here that I would never have if I were physically, ethnically Japanese, no matter where I’d grown up. I know I’m doing some grass-is-greener. But…
There’s an expression in Japanese, kuni ni kaeru, which just means “go back to [one’s home] country.” I often hear it, mostly from people asking me am I going back to America for summer or winter vacation. A couple of generations ago, though, the same expression was frequently used to mean “go back from Tokyo to the rural area where one was born,” roughly, with other big cities sometimes subbing for Tokyo. It goes without saying that this isn’t a universal pattern, but even these days, at New Year’s and at the summer O-Bon holiday, the news invariably shows crowded bullet trains outbound from the city, with a quick platform interview with the nearest cute kid: “What are you going to do over the holiday, hon?” “I’m gonna play at Gramma and Grandpa’s place!”
I have a close friend, about fifteen years older than I am, who grew up in Toyama on the Japan Sea. Toyama Prefecture doesn’t get a lot of English-language press (although Toyama women are historically tough and awesome: look up the Rice Riots); it’s mostly a slice of land with the seacoast on one side and high, impressive mountains on the other. Growing up in this relatively isolated context, my friend developed strong the-bear-who-went-over-the-mountain tendencies. He became a policeman first, and that community-oriented profession turned out to be his way out—he eventually came to work security for the UN and the Foreign Ministry. They love him there, because he’s good at his job, and because he requests the tough places like Iraq and Afghanistan. I’ve visited his Toyama home, and been invited back by his kind parents—we exchange New Year’s cards. He’s recently hit fifty, but I can’t imagine that even in his declining years he’ll choose to settle back on the far side of the mountains.
Another friend of mine, a fellow student from grad school, is the only son of a farming family in Nara. A committed and original scholar and researcher, he surely has a promising career as a professor ahead of him. He’s also one of the best amateur photographers I’ve ever had the pleasure of encountering, and many of his photographs are of the family farm—greenhouses and new-picked vegetables and tractors and rice-paddy snails, his grandparents and parents, sometimes his older sister and her husband and his four-year-old nephew. He chose to leave the farm and go to college and then grad school, get a doctorate yet, and I don’t know if he’ll ever go back to stay—hard choices waiting, I guess, as his parents grow older—but the photographs are developed in the light of his love for it, and he wouldn’t be him without this place he comes from.
Family and stability, safety, history that belongs to you (geography, too), your own personal origin story, the place where when you have to go there they have to take you in, roots. These things come as a matched set with tradition, conformity, demands, responsibilities, narrow closed viewpoints, lack of opportunities, sacrifice. I’ll admit it, I would give anything to have a place here in Japan where I had family and roots and history; but if I had it, the demands and the narrowness and the sacrifices would be all mine too. Kana’s story, the one I’ve been reading, doesn’t leave that out either. Anyway, we don’t get to choose. As it works out, I find myself frei aber einsam, as a flutist I know is fond of quoting. In my life there may still be a time when things turn around the other way. We’ll see what happens.
I’m reading a beautiful YA novel-in-poetry called Orchards, by Holly Thompson, about Kana, a half-Japanese girl from upstate New York who goes to spend the summer on her mother’s family’s farm in rural Japan after a classmate commits suicide. (Was that enough summary?) I cried the first time through, and even after a couple of months and a couple of rereads it still makes me tear up a little. The writing is lovely, poetry elegantly constructed from everyday details, and the strength of the characters’ presence—and that of the setting—balances perfectly with the gentleness of the story arc.
Why did I cry over it? Partly the story itself, Kana’s grief and guilt and the ways she learns to cope with it, worth shedding tears for. Also, though, I think I had some envy for Kana too—with her strict and nurturing Japanese side of the family, and their tangerine orchards, solid and traditional but making it in the modern day. I’ve lived here now for going on ten years, and make no mistake, there is a freedom in being a white-skinned foreigner here that I would never have if I were physically, ethnically Japanese, no matter where I’d grown up. I know I’m doing some grass-is-greener. But…
There’s an expression in Japanese, kuni ni kaeru, which just means “go back to [one’s home] country.” I often hear it, mostly from people asking me am I going back to America for summer or winter vacation. A couple of generations ago, though, the same expression was frequently used to mean “go back from Tokyo to the rural area where one was born,” roughly, with other big cities sometimes subbing for Tokyo. It goes without saying that this isn’t a universal pattern, but even these days, at New Year’s and at the summer O-Bon holiday, the news invariably shows crowded bullet trains outbound from the city, with a quick platform interview with the nearest cute kid: “What are you going to do over the holiday, hon?” “I’m gonna play at Gramma and Grandpa’s place!”
I have a close friend, about fifteen years older than I am, who grew up in Toyama on the Japan Sea. Toyama Prefecture doesn’t get a lot of English-language press (although Toyama women are historically tough and awesome: look up the Rice Riots); it’s mostly a slice of land with the seacoast on one side and high, impressive mountains on the other. Growing up in this relatively isolated context, my friend developed strong the-bear-who-went-over-the-mountain tendencies. He became a policeman first, and that community-oriented profession turned out to be his way out—he eventually came to work security for the UN and the Foreign Ministry. They love him there, because he’s good at his job, and because he requests the tough places like Iraq and Afghanistan. I’ve visited his Toyama home, and been invited back by his kind parents—we exchange New Year’s cards. He’s recently hit fifty, but I can’t imagine that even in his declining years he’ll choose to settle back on the far side of the mountains.
Another friend of mine, a fellow student from grad school, is the only son of a farming family in Nara. A committed and original scholar and researcher, he surely has a promising career as a professor ahead of him. He’s also one of the best amateur photographers I’ve ever had the pleasure of encountering, and many of his photographs are of the family farm—greenhouses and new-picked vegetables and tractors and rice-paddy snails, his grandparents and parents, sometimes his older sister and her husband and his four-year-old nephew. He chose to leave the farm and go to college and then grad school, get a doctorate yet, and I don’t know if he’ll ever go back to stay—hard choices waiting, I guess, as his parents grow older—but the photographs are developed in the light of his love for it, and he wouldn’t be him without this place he comes from.
Family and stability, safety, history that belongs to you (geography, too), your own personal origin story, the place where when you have to go there they have to take you in, roots. These things come as a matched set with tradition, conformity, demands, responsibilities, narrow closed viewpoints, lack of opportunities, sacrifice. I’ll admit it, I would give anything to have a place here in Japan where I had family and roots and history; but if I had it, the demands and the narrowness and the sacrifices would be all mine too. Kana’s story, the one I’ve been reading, doesn’t leave that out either. Anyway, we don’t get to choose. As it works out, I find myself frei aber einsam, as a flutist I know is fond of quoting. In my life there may still be a time when things turn around the other way. We’ll see what happens.
