Samurai Scars

One night, when I was a teen, we had company over at our house, as we occasionally did. They were the families of several of my father's colleagues. One of the guests' daughters, who was younger than me, so probably pre-teen at the time, innocently asked my father what had happened to his forehead.

My father had a pronounced scar on his forehead, accentuated by a bump the size and shape of a peanut, slightly off center and running vertically almost two inches. So I don't blame the girl for asking.

My father told her that when he was a young boy, he was struck by the sword of a samurai.

The girl may or may not have been emotionally traumatized for life upon hearing this, but if you know 20th-century Japanese history, you would know that this was a joke. As ancient as my father may have been, there were, in fact, no samurais (at least not officially) by the time he was born.

But he was also fond of telling us - and this story seems more true - about when he was a kid, one of his older sisters (12 years his senior) took him and another sister aside, sat them down on the tatami floor, sat herself down facing them, and placed a katana in front of her, as she told them that if Japan were to lose World War II and the Americans were to invade the land and come into their house, she was going to kill him and his sister before killing herself with that sword, rather than live with the humiliation that they were sure to suffer. Well, Japan did lose the war, and was occupied for a while, but thankfully, none of the other stuff happened, and the hot-blooded big sister (my aunt Taeko) continues to live in relatively good physical and mental health, as does the other sister in the story, Kyoko, who is three years older than Dad.

In fact, Aunts Taeko and Kyoko are now the two sole survivors of five siblings, my father, Tetsuya, having been the youngest. Their older brother Shun-ichi had died years ago. Older sister Reiko, more recently. It was quite sad that they had to see their younger brother wither on the hospital bed. "I don't think this is the end. I think he's going to recover from this," said Aunt Kyoko. I wasn't so sure, and deep down, I don't think she was, either.

The day before Dad died, Aunt Kyoko and I had lunch at the restaurant in the hospital. Through many stories both known and unknown to me, she painted a picture of my father in his youth - a boy who lost his mother at two years old, a kid who got bullied because of the scar on his forehead (and whose beautiful, heroic sister - her words - came to his rescue by throwing the bullies’ shoes into the river!), a teen who fought back through hard work to enter university on scholarship and become a successful businessman later. He was perhaps among the last of a generation with old-fashioned values, who grew up with wartime hunger and horror, and helped build Japan to literally rise up from the ashes through perseverance and hard work. “He is a samurai - the last samurai,” she said, obviously alluding to the Tom Cruise movie.

While desperately trying to AVOID naming this blog "The Last Samurai," I already knew this series of essays was going to have a samurai theme, so to hear her utter those words was reassuring. In spirit and in attitude, he was considered old-school even among his own peers. He had an iron will and an unshakable commitment to integrity that demanded nothing but the best out of anyone who associated with him - and that included colleagues and family.

As dedicated as he was to his work, I never questioned his devotion to us, but he was strict. He was not violent, but there was nobody I feared more than him. If I were to dare challenge him with my teenage idiot mind, he would run circles around me with impenetrable logic and forceful speech. He made me feel like I HAD to get away from his grip on me, which was part of why I chose to go to Japan for college. Ten years later, when I was physically suffering, he invited me back home to the US. It was only after I had gotten married, another eleven years later, that I was able to stand up to him, and half of that was by me shutting down all attempts at communication from him. I had to have a kid of my own, and admit to my troubles at the time, to finally drop all pretenses and effectively communicate with him as an adult.

For better AND for worse, he was the most influential man in my life, but there is so much that he was able to achieve in his life that I will never even come close to achieving in mine. Just to skim the basics, he helped bring a fledgling musical instruments company from Japan to flourish in the US, and that was before he decided to become an author and write four books on Japan-US business and cultural relations - all while providing for a family of five in a foreign land whose official language was not his mother tongue.

But another reason he left the company was because of a debilitating illness that caused him unimaginable physical pain. One ailment seemed to pile on top of another as he grew older. It was a near-miracle that he lived so long after an especially life-altering operation in 2011. His mind was as sharp as ever until very near the end, but over the last six years of his life, he was essentially a broken man.

I will be touching on all of these themes in this blog. Including the real reason for the scar on his forehead. And, no, I have not seen the Tom Cruise movie.