We promised, and tea drunk, they bowed and we bowed, and thus we parted.
The next day a large banner was hung on the wall of the main street, which in English and Japanese welcomed us to the city of Obama. The hotel, not to be outdone, made a similar banner, photographers took our pictures holding bouquets, and banners continued to wave during our entire stay. As time passed, a few letters faded in the sudden rains to which we were liable and in general the banners took on a spotted appearance, but the welcome, I am happy to say, remained as warm as ever.
And speaking of letters, I am reminded that Japanese school children are condemned to learn three languages, all Japanese. One is the ancient Chinese still used in formal writing, one Japanese phonetics, and the third the new language necessary in modern times, which is phonetic for English words incorporated into the Japanese tongue.
In spite of this linguistic burden, the children looked healthy and happy all day long except for the boy I saw on the way to our village, Kitsu. We turned an unexpected corner one day and came upon a robust and irate mother spanking the boy for some wrongdoing. She finished the job, in spite of our appearance, the boy howling as loudly as possible, then she dusted her hands, smiled at us cheerfully while the boy retired to a corner of the wall to finish off his sobs, and went back to her housework.
Should one spank children? I lingered behind the others on the narrow hillside path while I pondered the question. It was an old one in our American family, never settled. He said he believed in spanking children at certain ages because they were not open to reason and functioned entirely on instinct and emotion. I said I hated all physical punishment and believed it did no good. The difference between us was that when a child provoked me to anger, which in fairness to myself I must say was not often and only after outrageous provocation, I could and did find myself administering a swift and well-placed spanking. He, in spite of his belief in the principle, never had the heart to spank any child for any cause — except on one momentous occasion when I refused to have anything to do with it.
“The boys should be spanked,” he told me one day, his face very grave.
I do not remember what they had done, but they had got into some devilishness together. They stood before us one fine summer’s day, the three of them so near of an age, all handsome and healthy and unrepentant.
“I can’t do it,” I said.
“Then I will have to,” he said firmly.
To our mutual astonishment, mine and the boys’, he actually spanked each of them in turn. Grown men that they are now, they still roar with laughter when they talk of it together. They too do not remember what naughtiness they committed, but him they remember with love and amusement.
“We knew we ought to cry,” the second son says, he with the gay sense of humor. “Just for his sake we should have cried, so that he’d have the satisfaction of knowing he was doing a good job, but it was so damned funny — we had to laugh.”
I remember some sort of muffled noise and a pretense of rubbing their eyes with their knuckles and I was not fooled for one second. I knew they were laughing, bless them, and trying not to, because they did not want to hurt his feelings.
I suspected the Japanese boy of somewhat the same pretense. She was not hitting him very hard, and he was making a noise out of all proportion. Let my mother enjoy herself, he was thinking — Let her believe she is doing me good. … Let us, in short, be kind to our parents!
That evening, at my solitary dinner — it was a great scarlet crab — I found myself laughing aloud as I remembered. It was the first time I had laughed spontaneously alone since we used to laugh together and it was another milestone toward my new life.
The farmhouse was our first location and we worked there for days, each day like the one before. This was the pattern: I woke at half past five and went downstairs for my bath. The little maid, always watchful, needed no summons. While I was out of my room she came in and folded away the bed, set out the table and the cushion seat, and brought in my breakfast. This was, I must confess, the least successful meal of the day, made tolerable only by a special fruit that looked like an apple, but was a pear, not of the soft American variety but the crisp Chinese one. Two boiled eggs, thick toast and strange coffee completed the menu. I explained that I ate only one egg at breakfast and only one slice of toast, but explanations meant nothing. The company manager had ordered what I was to have and what he had commanded appeared. I suppose the little maid finished off the surplus, and I let it go at that.
In any case I had to be at the front door by seven o’clock. There we all gathered to exchange our slippers for our shoes, little maids waiting to help. Then we filled several cars, bowed to the assembled company of maids who waited to bow us away, and so we were off. The streets were clean, as everything is in Japan, the dust laid with fresh water and the cobblestones gleaming. The mountains pressing closely upon the sea were brightly green and the sea sparkled blue under the morning sun, if the day were fair. We drove through the city at reckless speed, passing hundreds of gaily dressed school children and out into the country on graveled roads between fields of ripening rice. There are times when I think Japan is the most beautiful country in the world. Yet it is the enchantment of Asia that every country is beautiful in its own way. We say Asia, and think in terms of a vast and swarming continent, the people indistinguishable one from another, but nothing can be more mistaken. The countries and peoples of Asia are as different one from the other as they can possibly be — more different than Americans are from Europeans. “That’s for sure,” as my Pennsylvania Dutch neighbors say. True, India and China are the two great mother civilizations, and their influence spreads into the neighboring lands and cultures, yet each land and each culture, acknowledging the influence, has nevertheless developed with individual and peculiar grace.
Arriving at the farmhouse, an appreciative audience awaiting us, we entered the gate every morning and found everything ready for us. The family had got up, put away their beds, made breakfast and departed for the day. From time to time some of them would come and see what we were doing, but courtesy forbade comment, whatever they thought. The surrounding villagers, however, frankly came to stare and they came in relays.
The first crowd, the early one, was always school children. Obviously they had risen early and were stopping on their way to school. They were mannerly and silent, their eyes unblinking. Precisely at a quarter past eight they left us in a body to begin school at half past. The next contingent were mothers, who by this time had put their houses in order and planned lunch. They arrived with babies strapped to their backs, and were not quite so mannerly. They could not refrain from whispered exclamations and laughter smothered behind their hands. They left, also promptly, at half past eleven in order to see that their working husbands were fed. About three o’clock grandparents and village elders arrived, after food and naps, to spend the rest of the afternoon with us. They were joined at five by the working fathers, whose day was done. These stayed with us faithfully until we left about seven.
On our part, we began filming as soon as the cameras were set up, moving from room to room as the story required. The make-up man and his assistant kept a zealous watch on the actors, lest the heat cause cream and rouge to run in rivulets down their faces and spot their costumes — a true artist and a charming man, our make-up man, with his secret formulas and brushes made by his own hands. I found one of those fine brushes on the beach after the work was over, and he had gone back to Tokyo, and I kept it for memory’s sake. It is made of bamboo, splinter fine, and set with a narrow line of the best bristles.