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.
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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.
