Go Gentle Into That Good Night

I do not pretend to know anything about the poem or the poet. I'm not even sure why this popped up as a recommendation, but I suspect it's because a Rush song makes a reference ("Let us not go gently to the endless winter night" - Red Tide), and I might have searched for its origin a long time ago. All I can say about this video is that it captures a hauntingly intense performance by a fine actor.

I can also say that this was not what I felt when my father was dying. He had raged for years, but he was finally done raging. I actually wished that he would go gently, to be free from a lifetime of pain and suffering, and I told him it was okay.

I shall get back to writing about him.

The "F" Word

Getting back to the scar on Dad's forehead...

The umbilical cord became somehow attached to his forehead while he was in the womb. When he came out, there was a surgical procedure involved that left a sizable mound of soft tissue that grew with age. It was reportedly quite grotesque, and caused concern that it might even be malignant. He had surgery to remove it when he was a preteen, and that led to the peanut-sized bump and scar that we were familiar with. He eventually got even the peanut smoothed out in his 60's when he was recommended a laser treatment by his doctor. I doubt if that was a particularly painful procedure, but I'm willing to bet the earlier one was.

My father’s life was a series of one pain after another. He told me that he suffered from migraines even as a kid. He described it as like having a headband that squeezed around his head, much like the legend of Songokuu, the Monkey King. I imagine how debilitating a headache is for me, and then he would tell me there was not one day in his life when he didn't have a headache. I suspected that his skull was too small for his brain (and as macabre as it may seem, I had hoped to visibly confirm that when we went through his ashes, but I couldn't tell). Other than that, however, he seems to have enjoyed good health and physical fitness in his youth. He was a gymnast in his high teens, excelling in the still rings. But as soon as it became legal for him at 20 years old, he started smoking cigarettes, as was widespread and fashionable at the time. The habit would continue for 30-odd years, reaching up to three packs a day with his Kents. My mother noted that we sons were baptized by his cigarette smoke.

When I was about eight years old, and the family was living in Japan, Dad had to undergo surgery to fix an ingrown toenail. Nowadays, it wouldn’t be a big deal anywhere, but in Japan in the late 1970’s, the procedure still must not have been widely known even at a relatively advanced medical facility. Only his foot was numbed. Dad was able to watch the procedure (why he would have wanted to, I'm not sure). The operation took four hours, near the end of which the local anesthesia had started to wear off.

The ingrown toenail made him walk with a limp, which may have somewhat contributed to permanent lower back pain. But in the mid-1980’s, he began experiencing a different kind of pain in his lower back and thighs. He would literally jump out of his seat as if struck by a bolt of lightning. He described the pain as “like a dull knife cutting a jagged wound” which in many instances attacked him in his privates. When there wasn’t pain, there was cold numbness. Headaches remained a constant, worse on some days than others. All of this led to sleep deprivation, which, in a vicious cycle, made the symptoms worse.

He sought the counsel of all types of doctors and masseuses based in both Eastern and Western medicines. An extreme acupuncturist of sorts would repeatedly draw round patches of blood from his back; my father would go back to him before the scabs healed. Some pursuits led him to dubious characters - one offered him a supposedly energized potion which my father was told to rub in a circle around his navel. I don’t blame him for not going to back to that quack.

What was amazing is that not one of even the more legitimate treatments helped. There was only one time he vividly remembered when he received a huge injection near where the spine meets the pelvis - during which he says he screamed like a banshee - but it cleared up his pain. "This is it!" he thought. He felt a sense of freedom he hadn’t felt in years, and enjoyed it for the rest of the day. But the dull pain was back the next morning.

The trouble was that none of the doctors at the time could detect any physiological cause for pain. Some thought perhaps the pain was all imagined, and even recommended psychiatric help. It would be a few more years of misdiagnoses and tests before he was diagnosed as having fibromyalgia. The name of the disease was not widely known then as it is now, especially recently when Lady Gaga made it known that she suffers from it.

By that time, he was forced to make several lifestyle changes. For one, he stopped smoking, cold turkey, made possible only by having that iron will only men born in a certain era were seemingly able to have. Of greater importance, he had to take some time off work to try to recover from his illness. Once he realized its permanency, however, he started working on his own from home and became a one-man corporation as a business consultant, leaving Yamaha, the company for which by then he had worked for more than 30 years. He once explained his decision to me this way: He had worked for Yamaha with the sense that he was always doing more for the company than the company was doing for him, that the company was indebted to him - until the last few years since he had gotten sick, when he was beginning to feel indebted to the company, and his pride wouldn't allow him to continue to work that way. Leaving the company due to illness did not only finalize the separation; it also meant that he was staying in the United States of his own volition. Although he continued to work with Yamaha's local subsidiaries as a consultant, he was no longer the typical "salary man" that dedicates his whole working life to one company. This decision was a big deal.

Moreover, he was now free to pursue a passion and lifelong dream - to become an author. He had a deep love for books of all kinds, his collection easily surpassing a large library aisle or two. Drawing from his decades of experience in international business, and constantly staying on top of world affairs, he began writing magazine articles and newsletters for his clients, but it was not long before he started on his first book. But that probably deserves a separate entry.

I still want to write about the other samurai scar, the "C" word, and the two gaping holes in his torso. And none of those was what killed him in the end.

Bullets, Butter, and Beyond

When the pastor asked us to write a brief, bullet-point bio of my father to be included in the pamphlet for his funeral, I took it upon myself to write it on behalf of the family. The bio here will consist of several entries and obviously not be brief.

***

My father Tetsuya was born in Tokyo in 1936, the youngest of five children. His mother died of illness when he was two - and we found out, as fate would have it, her cause of death was pancreatitis, the same disease from which Dad ultimately died. Dad recalled one of his earliest memories as one of being carried on his father's back and going up and down the street in front of their house. He said he was probably crying and unable to sleep because he missed his mother. His two older sisters, already near or at college age, helped raise him and sister Kyoko with their father, but eventually, his mother's younger sister and her husband, the Hachiyas, decided to take him and Kyoko into their home. Aunt Hachiya (along with Dad's mother) was a third-generation Christian (making Dad fourth-generation), which was rare in Japan; uncle Hachiya was also a rare man for his worldliness at the time, a son of a minister who was also a charter member of the glee club at Doshisha University, one of the earliest English missionary schools in Japan. Uncle Hachiya taught young Tetsuya how to read music - specifically hymns. This instilled in Dad his love of hymns and choral music that lasted a lifetime. Dad also felt a lasting gratitude to his nurturing parents to the point that he asked for half of his ashes to be buried in the Hachiya grave.

One day during World War II, when Tokyo was a frequent target of bombing, he and a friend were walking home from school when they were shot at by an American plane. As the sirens blared, they ran towards a bunker but knew they wouldn't make it in time, so they hopped into a ditch at the last second. The plane apparently got so close that Dad was able to see the pilot's profile. The pilot missed them, but left bullet holes in the daikon radishes in the field next to them.

At school, he memorized and sang military songs, and was being taught by his teachers that Japan was winning the war as they praised the divine emperor and cursed the barbaric Americans. Then, all of a sudden in the middle of August of 1945, the teachers changed their tune as if a switch was flipped, praising America's merciful greatness. Dad thought it was bizarre; the changes in the adults' behavior were incomprehensible to an eight-year old kid. Only later was he able to relate to how difficult it must have been back then for the adults themselves to understand what democracy was, let alone teach it to children.

After the war, he experienced real hunger when there was no food for anyone. White rice, known as a staple food in Asian cuisine today, was a luxury item available only through shady channels; most people had to live on humbler, less refined grains, and even those were rationed. He was so hungry that he would pick acorns up off the ground to eat. They were, of course, inedible - he might as well have swallowed rocks. He once confided to me that he had almost a Pavlovian reaction that made him salivate at seeing onigiri (rice balls) made of white rice - even if it were just on a TV commercial - and this was decades after he was able to afford anything. But I suppose that's the kind of scar that is left when the simplest of foods was most out of reach when he wanted it the most growing up.

Dad continued to live in Tokyo until eventually, around when he was finishing middle school, and the older sisters were graduating college and getting married, it was decided that the Hachiyas would move to Imabari, a seaport town in the prefecture of Ehime, where his mother was originally from, taking Dad and Kyoko with them. Ehime is a prefecture on another island called Shikoku, 400 miles west-southwest of Tokyo. The islands are now connected by bridges between smaller islands, over which you can drive or ride buses and trains. You can also take a plane for a 75-minute flight from Tokyo. But with only a steam engine and a glacial ferry ride back then, who knows how long it would have taken? Once he arrived in Imabari, the strong dialect left him thoroughly confused, and he often told us with good humor that it took him a while to start understanding what his peers at high school were saying. But he joined the church in Imabari, where he was baptized and became a registered member. It was there that he sang in the choir and further nurtured his love for hymns sung in harmony. And it was there, at the youth program, that he met his future wife, Akiko. Aunt Kyoko takes credit for bringing and keeping the two of them together, even through a relationship that became long-distance when they eventually went to separate colleges. This formed the basis of a funny and touching moment in the hospital at Dad's dying bed. That will be another story.

He was, in his own words in English, "too square," but the vulgar Japanese term クソまじめ (straitlaced-as-shit) is probably more accurate (and that term came out of his own mouth). He often deliberately got into discussion with teachers mid-class, challenging their knowledge until he was told to stop disrupting the lesson. He would do this by request from classmates who wanted Dad to buy them time to prepare for a test at the end of class. His studiousness was exemplified by how he would tape a pencil to his torso, with the sharp end pointing to his thigh, so that if he were to doze off in the middle of his late-night studies, the pencil would stab him in the thigh and wake him up. Those were his keisetsu days, Dad would say. The term (蛍雪), imported into Japan from ancient China, was based on the anecdote that where the rich could afford to burn the midnight oil, poor Buddhist monks had to study under the light of "fireflies and snow" - one of the historic and rather poetic terms my dad was eager to share with me - although, in reality, I'm sure he had better sources of light himself.

As a high school student with top-tier grades, he wanted to enter Tokyo University (better known as To-Dai), the public school that has traditionally produced captains of finance and government, but he failed the entrance exam. After a year of further studies, he entered the private Keio University on scholarship, and graduated summa cum laude in Economics - which earned him a silver watch from the school, similar to the gold watch that is awarded to top graduates from To-Dai. Another scholarship program eventually led to his employment at Nippon Gakki (NGK), then just a small maker of musical instruments. The condition for the scholarship was that he could pay back the debt over time (under generous terms), or have the debt forgiven in exchange for employment at the company.

Though he sang in choirs at church and in university, he was not an instrumentalist, so the decision to work for NGK was not based on any hobby or talent related to music. Faced with some options thanks to his excellent grades, he wasn't exactly keen on working for Nippon Gakki, about which he wasn't even knowledgeable enough to equate with the Yamaha brand, and to his mind was a shabby local operation in the boondocks. But having just lived through the horrors of war, he was conscious about joining a "peace industry," which was apparently a buzzword of the time. Adding to that, it was the start of the 1960’s, which may have been the most exciting time to be a “salary man” in Japan. A post-war economy meant the only way to go was up for everybody. As for Yamaha, not only did they make and sell pianos, but they were also setting up local schools for piano lessons all over the country, which caught the wave of an exponentially growing economy, and led to the enrichment of musical culture throughout Japan, as well as household ownership of the piano becoming somewhat of a status symbol. The industry may have been small, but NGK was the top company in a growing peace industry. On top of that, he consulted three mentors, and they all recommended that he take the chance with NGK for its potential for opportunities. So after graduating, he went to work for NGK, and sure enough, opportunities came fast; after several transfers within Japan to lead local branches, and a swift rise through the ranks, he was given orders (based on his own request to "go out") to move to Los Angeles to lay the groundwork for Yamaha's operations in America.

By then, Dad was married to Mom and had one child. Aunt Hachiya had passed away 6 months before they got married, so uncle Hachiya was part of the family that moved around with them. But regulations at the time stipulated that he could not accompany Dad on his transfer overseas because he was not his legal parent. Dad never talked about it with me, but I can easily surmise now what a painful farewell this would have been for him. Uncle Hachiya spent his last years close to Dad's real father. I never got to meet either of them.

Despite his desire to venture out from Japan, Dad did not necessarily have a favorable impression of America at the time. This was, after all, the country with which his country was at war before it was beaten down to submission. They shot at him! He spent his childhood in hunger because of America. But he had heard, with a mix of awe, envy, and disbelief, stories of Americans eating toast with a pat of butter thicker than the slice of bread it was on, and wondered what exactly that was like. Renting an apartment near Hollywood, he found himself in the lair of the victors, where he was immediately struck by America’s spaciousness and material abundance. Japan’s economy in the 1960's may have been rapidly recovering through industry and commerce, but living standards were still behind, and it was not rich in resources to begin with. "No wonder we lost the war," he thought. "We never stood a chance."

The year was 1969 - a time, according to Dad, when the streets of Hollywood were considered safe, and Japanese cars were not. My parents would take evening strolls in Hollywood during the early years in the US. I was born the year after, my younger brother less than three years after that. By then, we had moved to Fullerton, a town the brothers and I still consider our hometown. It was in Orange County that my father was part of the team that set up Yamaha’s full-scale corporate offices in the US and built its foundations. The language and cultural barriers were naturally a constant source of headache (in addition to his preexisting migraines). But he found American business culture to be cut and dry, much like the arid southern Californian weather; what would take weeks of mulling over for reasons unknown in Japan would be decided and executed in a matter of days in the US. Red tape was non-existent; if anything, he was probably considered part of the red tape by the locally hired American employees. Whenever the Japanese expats would group up only by themselves, the Americans would sarcastically call the gathering "Panasonic," after the Japanese brand name formerly known as "National." But Dad took steps for the company to be a part of the local community. For example, to avoid the appearance of favoritism by using Japanese cars, it was his policy that dictated that managers only use American cars as company cars. Besides, the engines of Japanese cars were considered dangerously unreliable into the early 1970's (my parents always drove American cars until the mid-1980's - and my first car was my mom's 1981 Buick Century). Above all, he appreciated the openness, swiftness, and dynamism with which things were decided and acted on. He grew to like the American way of doing business. He liked the US, not only for himself, but for his family, too. For the first stretch, we stayed until 1977, when my father was ordered back to Japan.

His exact job content, let alone company politics, were way above my seven year-old head at the time. All I knew was that Dad was working most of the week apart from the family. While the family lived in Tokyo, Dad would be in Hamamatsu, where Yamaha's headquarters were. He would come home on the weekends, but would have to return after one or two nights with us. What I came to understand only after I had grown up was that, at the time, Yamaha's legendary autocrat had retired to be replaced by a newly appointed young president, who was Dad's friend and long-time boss - and Dad, in essence, was the chief of staff, the new president's right-hand man. I can imagine only now how these men, still only in their 40's, were in the prime of their lives, running a by-then global company according to their own grand design. But just three years later, almost immediately after the whole family had moved to Hamamatsu, the president was fired by the autocrat, who staged what some would call a coup and came out of retirement. Dad was spared the ax, presumably because he was found to be potentially useful to the returning regime. But Dad found the whole process despicable. In one of the many supposed tell-all books about Yamaha that Dad owned, he showed me a passage that described one employee as a refugee who escaped to the US. "That's me," he said. In reality, Dad told the un-retired management that he would be of use to the company only if he were allowed to work in the US. Again, I was not aware of any of this at the time; all I knew was that after just one trimester at school in Hamamatsu (which was sort of miserable for me), Dad said we were moving back to our old house in Fullerton, where we had a pool in our own backyard. I was overjoyed, but only now do I realize how mixed my father's feelings must have been.

We came back to our old house in Fullerton in the fall of 1980. As my younger brother and I had a lot of catching up to do in terms of our schoolwork in English, Dad would come home early to take the time to help us with our reading, which in hindsight was quite remarkable. He was always known, inside and outside of the family, for working late hours. One of the first words I remember learning was juuji, which is "10 o' clock" in Japanese, because he often wouldn't be home even after 10:00 PM. I later heard that some neighbors assumed that he worked two jobs. Even within the company, his colleagues called him "the 5 o' clock guy" - not because he left the office at 5:00 PM, but because his eyes seemed to light up after 5:00 PM to dig deeper into work. But for that year, or at least most of it, he often came home while it was still bright outside.

Two years later, my older brother left home to go to university in Japan. This coincided with my puberty, discovery of rock music, and starting guitar lessons. Subsequently, for Dad, there was new physical pain that he had not experienced before, which would last for most of his life. But his relationship with pain went back many, many years.

The Sambika Christian

"Kowai... Kowai..."
(I'm scared... I'm scared...)

Those were among the last coherent words my father spoke to me as he looked at me in his dying hours. It came as a slight shock to me that his faith didn't give him comfort in the face of his own death.

***

My father was baptized in his teens and belonged to a church in Imabari, where he lived at the time, but as far as I know, he was not a regular churchgoer no matter where he lived. In fact, he expressed a healthy disregard for church in general. Back when we all lived in Fullerton, on a few Christmas Eves, we went to what was then called the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove to attend one of their grand services led by Robert Schuller, sing a few carols, and soak in the vibes of the season - and Dad would later point out that money (made of our offerings!) was being wasted to put on such an epic but cheesy production for dramatic effect - not to mention the upkeep of the glass-walled architectural monstrosity that thousands of people were flocking to.

Later on one of those nights, we happened upon the televised broadcast of the Christmas service at the Vatican. To me, it was another display of excess in the name of God, with so much of the interior and garments covered in gold, and I might have made a disparaging, smart-ass remark about it. Dad's reaction, however, was neither scolding nor sympathetic. He said, "Well, here we are, almost 2000 years later, and we're still making a big deal out of it. Something must have happened that night."

I was bemused by this comment at first. Was that really the extent of his faith? It turns out this straight-laced man, who I thought was a devout Christian, was a skeptic - which (as it dawned on me later) is perfectly reasonable for an intellectual like him.

There is no doubt Christian teachings formed the core of his values as a human being. Among the many lectures he gave us sons as we became adults and entered into relationships, there were stern warnings against "living in sin." It made him sound like a prude, and made us and our significant others roll our eyes, but in hindsight, I think he was trying to mask his discomfort in talking about love and sex - which certainly is one distinct way Christianity can make its mark on a person.

He also instilled in us the sense that we were being watched by God, and that we should therefore always strive to be the best that we could be, to choose right over wrong, and that acting in the interests of others over your own was a virtue. I grew up assuming these values were universal, and it has been painful to find out that they were not. Still, I thank Dad for instilling these values in me.

When I was a child, and into my teens, Dad nudged me more than a few times to go to church myself - probably for me to gain the same core values as he had. It wasn't necessarily because of this, but there were two separate periods during my childhood in which I went to church. The first was when the family was living in Japan, and I went to the local church in Kunitachi, where a few of my elementary school classmates went to as well. The second was when we were back in the States, and I was in my teens, having started playing guitar, when a friend invited me to form a band to play Japanese heavy metal - at a Japanese church. Nobody accused us of playing the devil's music - in fact, all the adults were supportive because they thought it would help get more young people to join the congregation. Neither experience made me a believer to the point that I wanted to be baptized.

There is a part of me that yearns to believe, that wants to be able to lose myself believing in something so fervently and devotedly to the point that I could dispose of all of my earthly fixations. I have even briefly entertained the notion of becoming a priest. I thought to myself, if I'm devoting any part of my life to religion, I might as well go all in. As I found out later, Dad had once thought of the same thing when he was younger. But ultimately, my reasoning against further involvement with church was probably similar to what Dad was thinking - that for religion to truly matter, it had to be a personal experience, not a group activity.

But in his youth, he was a participant in one group activity, and that was singing hymns. His love of hymns was so deep, he went so far as to say he might not be Christian if it weren't for hymns. Hymns in Japanese are called sambika. He thus referred to himself as a sambika Christian.

***

What kind of horrors do people feel when they know they are dying?

Dad was hospitalized for the last six months of life. He fought hard on multiple fronts, but when his legs got weak from being bedridden for so long, he went through weeks of rehabilitation to start walking again. The stoicism with which he engaged in it was a remarkable show of spirit, of an indomitable will to live. He was on the verge of being released, and preparations were underway for him to go home, when his condition deteriorated in a single week. Pancreatitis was fast, violent and merciless. During the last conversation I had with him by phone, he wept, not just because he was in pain, but it was as if his spirit was finally broken. He was having difficulty speaking by then, but he pretty much said he was too tired to fight anymore. It became so bad so fast that we didn't have time to confirm with him directly (I don't know how I would have asked him, anyway), but I think he knew he was dying.

Years ago, Dad had told me about uncle Noboru, aunt Reiko's husband, when his health was failing. He had told Dad about how he feared death. And he was a very religious man as far as I know. And now, here was Dad, saying that he was scared of dying.

I honestly never shared that sentiment. I have always been afraid of how I was going to die - and I have long hoped, however it is, that it be quick and painless. It's the potentially long and painful suffering, up to the moment of death, that I feared the most, but as for the actual moment of death, I thought I was pretty cool with it. But now, with my own father's death, and as I have gotten older, death has become more real than ever before. And I do feel a tinge of fear towards death itself.

Could Dad have been feeling the same fear as I do now - except it was exponentially amplified because he knew he was almost there?

My older brother - who was baptized by choice in his youth - sang hymns to Dad many times over the course of three days since we gathered until Dad died. I didn't sing; I can only hope that it provided the sambika Christian with a measure of comfort in his last moments.

But I think I will be haunted for a long time by the way he looked me in the eyes when he said "Kowai... kowai..."

Genes, Tears, and Spirits

https://www.namm.org/library/oral-history/tetsuya-takagi

(English entry to follow)

「これなに？」

「グランパのビデオだよ」

「え？」

驚きの表情で映像を凝視。そういえばこんな映像があった事を話していなかったかも知れない。

生前の親父に娘はあまり懐かなかった。親父とお袋がまだアメリカに住んでいて、一番頻繁に実家に連れて帰って会わせていた頃の娘が当時はまだ2歳。大きな手術をした直後の親父はいかにも病人のような顔をしていて、少々気持ち悪かったかも知れない。その夏、両親の金婚を祝った頃には、親父は比較的元気そうにしていたが、その頃の思い出が多少はあるのだろうか。翌年に日本へ帰国した後の親父に娘は片手で数えられるくらいの回数しか会っていない。

昨年11月の下旬に妻と娘は日本の田舎に行く予定を立てていたのだが、 お袋から親父の危篤の知らせを受けて、訪日の予定の無かったボクが彼らより一日先に日本へ行く事に決めた。翌日に親父の病床を訪れた娘。学校に行き始める前は、お年を召した病人の世話をしていた義母に付き添う事が多かったせいで、同年代の他の子と比べてそのような状況に慣れてはいたのかも知れない。だが娘が来た頃には親父は膵炎による痛みのあまりに顔も体も歪んだまま硬直しており、強力な痛み止めのせいで口もきけなくなっていた。それを見た娘は怖かったであろうに、それでもその手を握りながら話しかけて、親父の5人の孫を代表する大役をこなしたのだった。

死の瞬間には立ち会わなかった娘。死亡確認後、娘を連れて田舎に帰っていた妻に連絡を入れた所、親父の死亡時刻に娘は「おなかが痛い」と訴えたらしい。周りの大人に「霊感の強い子だね」と言われたと言う。

その後、葬式に参列し、火葬場にまで同行した娘には、棺桶の中の痩せ細った親父の顔が記憶に残っているのだろうか。娘の生まれた年に撮影された映像に見られるような、肉付きの良い元気な親父の顔は知らなかったと思う。

その映像をボクの膝の上に座って見ながら、娘はボクのシャツで涙を何度も拭いた。見上げた顔を覗いたら目が真っ赤で、その生々しい反応にビックリしてしまった。

「もう会えなくて悲しい」

愚直な言葉は不器用な芝居ではなく、小学校2年生の限られた語彙で純粋な感情を表した表現だったと思う。

気難しくて頑固で本を読むのが好きな所がグランパにそっくりな娘である。

***

"What are you watching?"

"It's a video of Grandpa."

"Huh?"

She seemed genuinely shocked. Only then did I realize that I hadn't told her about this video.

My daughter didn't always connect with my dad. She was only 2 years old during the time my parents were still living in the States, and I was taking her to see them most often. After major surgery, he looked like a sick man for a while, which may have freaked her out. But later that summer, when we celebrated my parents' golden anniversary, he was looking better. Maybe she has some memory of that time. After that, over four years since my parents moved to Japan, she had met my dad no more than a handful of times.

My wife and daughter had scheduled a trip in late November last year to visit the countryside in Japan without me, when I received the call from Mom about Dad's critical condition. I decided to fly out before they did. My daughter came to my dad's bedside the next day. Before she had started going to school, she would accompany my mother-in-law who visited the sick and elderly often, so she is probably used to those situations more than her peers. But by the time my daughter came, my dad's face and body had become contorted due to the pain caused by pancreatitis. He was also no longer able to speak because of the potent painkillers. It may have been scary for her, but she admirably performed her duty representing Dad's five grandchildren, holding his hand and talking to him.

She was not there the moment Dad died. After he was confirmed dead, I notified my wife, who had taken our daughter to the countryside. She told me that around the time of Dad's passing, my daughter said her stomach hurt. The grownups supposed she must have a spiritual sensitivity.

She attended the funeral and even the cremation. I don't know if perhaps Dad's gaunt face in the casket had left a lasting impression on her. But I am pretty sure that she had never seen my dad as full-fleshed and healthy as he looks in this video, which was shot in the same year as my daughter was born.

As she sat on my lap and watched the video, she started wiping her tears on my shirt. When she looked up, her eyes were red. I was surprised by the rawness of her reaction.

"I'm sad that I can't see him again."

Such straightforward words can be construed as awkward acting, but in her case, it was probably as pure as her feelings could be through her limited 2nd-grade vocabulary.

She is sometimes difficult, stubborn, and loves to read books - just like Grandpa.

Music, Part 1 - Star Wars and Beethoven

The greatest irony in my relationship with my father was that he discouraged me from a career as a musician when he worked in the music industry himself.

In order to illustrate what music meant to my father, I feel the need to illustrate in detail what it meant to me. Music began for me with theme songs of Japanese animation on vinyl records. In hindsight, it's weird that we had so many records when we couldn't watch most of the shows on TV in the US. These were times when TV was barely in color, still years before even VHS came into existence. Looking at it another way, the records might have been one of the few ways in which we stayed in touch with contemporary Japanese culture.

Honestly, back then, it was the graphics of the robots, and even their names in flashy katakana fonts, that captured my attention and imagination more than the music. I would spend hours drawing these robots - I remember Grendizer being one of my favorites. I was a pretty good artist, and people at school told me so. As I got older, that turned into a desire to draw my own manga. But Dad told me to give that up - for one, he rarely appreciated my talents as an artist, and two, he told me that being a manga artist was not what it was glammed up to be, that I was romanticizing what is actually a hard and highly unstable life. I didn't really understand the second half of that reasoning at 10 years old; I only knew that he didn't approve of what I wanted for my own life. This, of course, would become a recurring theme.

I must have been about 8 years old, in my dad's car with the family, in Japan, when I heard the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah playing on the car stereo. I became aware that Dad was once in a chorus himself. The music was certainly gorgeous and memorable, and has stuck with me to this day.

But that didn't have as big an impact as seeing a full orchestra on a field trip. We were back in the States, and I was in 5th grade. They loaded us up on a bus and took us to a venue that no longer exists near Disneyland. I wish I remembered the name of the orchestra. They played a few classical pieces that I might recognize now but didn't know then.

Then they played the main theme of Star Wars. This changed everything.

Of course, it went over fantastically with the kids - so much so that the orchestra came out and played it again as an encore. But I don't know if anybody else was moved by it as much as I was.

That night, when I talked about the field trip, my parents asked me which instrument I found most interesting. I replied, "Instrument? I want to be the one who WRITES that music!" I meant it then, and I still mean it now. Too bad Dad didn't take me seriously.

It must have been close to my birthday, because I remember going to the record store the next day and getting my mom to buy me the two-record set of the original soundtrack to The Empire Strikes Back (which I had seen. In fact, Empire was the first Star Wars movie I saw. And it was a rare occasion when my dad took me and my younger brother to a movie theater in Japan). I now realize how complex and sophisticated the music was (even the catchy hits like the main title and Darth Vader march), but I gobbled it up. I soon became a John Williams fanatic, with the E.T. and Superman soundtracks also affecting me deeply.

I was 11 years old when my dad, probably bemused by my sudden and intense interest in orchestral music, introduced me to Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5. That record of the Emperor concerto was performed by Rudolf Serkin on piano and Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic. Hearing this was just as shocking as hearing the Star Wars theme was. The overwhelming emotion I felt was: "Why am I just now discovering this music that was written almost 200 years ago?" Soon I was getting into my dad's collection of classical music records. He had quite the collection, mostly of popular conductors leading orchestral works by major composers. Dad often liked only certain parts of a work - like the opening of the first movement of Tchaikovski's Piano Concerto, or mid-way through the fourth movement of Brahms's 1st Symphony. A favorite of both my dad's and mine was Beethoven's 9th Symphony with Charles Munch conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In fact, I became obsessed with Beethoven's 9th, listening to it practically everyday after school. Who woulda thunk we would actually sing it almost 30 years later? But that's another story.

All this happened before I embraced rock music. And started playing guitar. Not that those two were necessarily related in the beginning. And of course, Dad didn't care much for either.

To be continued.

In His Own Words

What did my dad do? Listen to the man himself talk about the history of Yamaha in America, and how he came to join it:

https://www.namm.org/library/oral-history/tetsuya-takagi

It was two days after he had passed away when we found this footage online for the first time. Imagine our surprise! Recorded in 2010, he still looked healthy and robust. None of us knew he had done this!

The folks at NAMM are including him in their "in memoriam" tribute footage at their main stage show scheduled on January 25 at the 2018 NAMM show at Anaheim Convention Center.

After the NAMM show is done, I have been promised a full version of the interview, perhaps sometime in February. Hopefully, I will be able to share that with you somehow.

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If you can read Japanese, you may be interested in my dad's books:

https://www.amazon.com/Tetsuya-Takagi/e/B001I7KLNK

There is also this:

http://a.co/2jj59Tt

This was not written by my father, and the subject is about his boss at Yamaha, but he was extensively interviewed, and the book does offer a clear picture of what they did.