Chapter 60: Land of the Rising Sun, Part VI

July 9, 1994, Oguni, Yamagata Prefecture, Japan

“Would you do something for me?” Sakurako asked on Saturday morning.

“If it’s within my power, and won’t upset your grandparents.”

“Ask Grandfather for tomorrow and next Sunday to be free days so I can spend some time with you before you leave.”

“You don’t think he’ll be upset?”

“No, I don’t think so. Of course, you could choose to stay longer. We have our summer break in August.”

I was, for many reasons, tempted to stay in Japan for another month, but, in the end, I had serious responsibilities back home that I needed to attend to, and, more importantly, I missed my family.

“I need to go home to my family,” I said. “And my business.”

“Do you think you’ll come back some day?”

“I would love to, but I can’t make any promises. I will write. That I can promise.”

“So will you ask permission?”

I nodded, “Yes, I will.”

“Good! So, what happened yesterday?”

Sensei Hiro had praised my discretion, but I had promised Sakurako to explain what had happened. I weighed my options, and decided to tell her without using names. That fit, more or less, with what I’d told Sensei Hiro.

“Your grandfather and Sensei Robert smelled the liniment, probably at my training session before lunch, so they knew I’d been hurt, and they knew that someone, perhaps your grandmother, had helped me. They didn’t say anything. Then, when it was time for me to teach, the three «karateka» who had confronted me in the morning showed up for class, looking as if they’d been beaten up. Sensei Robert looked at me with a raised eyebrow, which said he knew, so I smiled and shrugged. Then when class began, I opted to spar with the brown and black belts.”

“But your issue with your head injury?”

I nodded, “A calculated risk. I couldn’t count on them to not try to violate the rules, in fact, I expected it. But I could block blows to the head from a single person. I challenged the black belt first, and decided I wasn’t going to follow any rules. When he tried to hit me, I used a wrist-lock taught me by a «nidan» in Aikido to drive him to the mat. He was very unhappy, and struck wildly at me. I accepted the glancing blow, grappled him, and threw him to the mat again.”

“You were not using Shōtōkan in Grandfather’s dojo! Oh my!”

I nodded, “I did on the last attack he made. He was so upset, he decided to try for a spinning jump kick and I struck him, hard, between the legs.”

Sakurako giggled, “I think Keiko might be very sad for a few days! But what did Grandfather say?”

She had, somehow, figured out which black belt it was, which didn’t really surprise me.

“They complained that I cheated and he admonished them that if they started an unprovoked fight, they didn’t get to determine the rules. He then let me select their punishments.”

“What did you decide?”

“I asked about the usual punishments, and after I heard what they were, I said I didn’t think punishment was appropriate. They had already been humiliated and lost respect.”

“Wow! Grandfather has expelled students for less!”

I nodded, “I don’t doubt that. But do you think these «karateka» learned a lesson?”

“Yes,” she smiled impishly. “Not to fight with you!”

“Among other things, but I don’t think that was the main lesson. You and your brother are the ones who led me to make that decision.”

“How so?”

“I looked at the situation from their perspective, and saw a «gaijin» who seemed to be upsetting the natural order of things. I realized that they weren’t attacking me, they were attacking your grandfather, albeit indirectly. And now, they have to face him for the rest of his life, knowing they were humiliated by one of his senior students who was defending him.”

“I wonder if Grandfather will do something else to them.”

“I doubt it. I explained why I decided the way I did. And then Mitsuo apologized last night at dinner.”

“A very difficult thing for a Japanese to do to a «gaikokujin».”

“Yes. And that’s the right word. I could tell I was no longer «gaijin», I was «gaikokujin». He learned. But remember, too, he was apologizing to your grandfather through me. And everyone knew that.”

“Thank you for telling me, but now I need to go to school! See you this afternoon!”

We stood, bowed, then she gathered the breakfast things and left my room. I gathered my things for my morning meditation session, and went to sit in the garden, deciding this time to sit in the grass by the stream, just across a small bridge from my usual bench. I laughed softly to myself when I realized I was going to miss this. My back yard was nowhere near large enough to create even a small version of this garden. And I knew if I mentioned it to Elyse, she’d remind me she’d been pointing this out for years. My refuge was indoors, in a steamy sauna; hers, outdoors in nature.

My life, since I’d left Milford, had become almost completely urbanized. And not just urbanized, but busy in the extreme. What I’d learned here, in peaceful, quiet, rural Japan, was something I’d never considered - I needed a way to recharge my batteries. The sauna was a good maintenance tool, but my experience these last three weeks had turned my thinking upside down. I had been burned out and hadn’t even known it.

This was something I’d have to give serious thought to at home. For now, I needed to continue reading The Lotus Sutra and meditate. I’d be seeing Yoshiro in about a week, just a few days before my flight home, and I wasn’t yet sure what I’d say to him. And in two weeks, what I’d say to people in Chicago.

The morning training session was uneventful, as was lunch. Sakurako kept me company during my afternoon chores, and asked if I had spoken to her grandfather, but I said I would do that at an appropriate time at dinner. I finished my chores, with a bit of help from Sakurako, then bathed and dressed for the training session. As I walked into the dojo, the two brown belts, Hikaru and Katsu, stopped me.

“We talk?” Hikaru asked, then turned to Hiroshi who was a few steps away and spoke Japanese, then added, “Privately” via Hiroshi’s translation.

“Yes.”

Hiroshi led us to a small room and was about to walk out when Hikaru stopped him. Their English wasn’t good enough and they needed a translator.

“We sorry,” Hikaru said.

“I accept your apology,” I said.

Hiroshi quickly translated.

“You welcome Japan,” Hikaru said, then asked Hiroshi for help to add, “Please visit again.”

I smiled, and said, “«Arigatou gozaimasu». I would like that.”

We bowed and they left the room. Hiroshi stopped me.

“They were grateful because my grandfather would have expelled them, and that loss of respect in a small town like Oguni might destroy their lives.”

“There are many things I don’t understand about Japan,” I said. “But I do understand honor and duty. And I also understand mercy. I believe showing mercy might well have made three friends out of three enemies.”

“Grandfather was very surprised by your choice. After the strike to the gonads, I wasn’t. You made your point quite directly!”

I nodded, “Indeed. May I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“Your sister wants me to ask for tomorrow and next Sunday to be free days, so she can spend time with me. Is that going to cause trouble with your grandparents?”

He laughed softly, “No. Grandmother will be amused. Grandfather will allow it. He knows you have befriended her and have treated her with the utmost respect.”

“Amused?” I asked.

“At the play-acting. The «歌舞伎» (kabuki).”

“Stylized Japanese theater? What am I missing?”

“Let it play out to the end,” he said with a smile.

“Let what play out to which end?”

He shrugged, “The play. I have no idea how it ends, but the theater is more fun when you don’t know the ending to the play in advance!”

He left the room and I followed him. Once again, as I had the other day, I felt I was missing something. In just about any other context, I’d have reached an obvious conclusion. Was this an elaborate seduction similar to what Jacqui had done? I didn’t think so, but then again, Jacqui had been very careful to keep her cards well concealed, and only revealed them at the showdown.

In that case, I’d had an early clue which I hadn’t understood - Jacqui asking me to take her on a date as a reward for getting into shape. But now, I didn’t think I had any such clues. Or did I? Was asking me to stay past my planned return home a very indirect, very careful, very subtle, very conservative way of sending the message? But she hadn’t flirted with me at all. Even Jacqui had, very occasionally, done things which could be considered flirtatious, but I had never understood them to be flirting.

As I walked into the dojo, I wondered if I would even recognize flirting from a young Japanese girl in a rural area of Japan. I actually had no idea what traditional Japanese dating was like, or how courtship occurred, or anything like that. Maybe she WAS sending me those signals, and not only did I not understand them, she didn’t understand that I didn’t understand! So therefore, I couldn’t drink the wine in front of her!

I chuckled at my mind going straight to The Princess Bride and then steeled myself for leading the training session. The Advil and liniment had the pain under control, so fortunately that wasn’t an issue. That said, I had a fairly ugly purple bruise that I hoped would fade completely before I went home. I didn’t need any more grief from Jessica than I was going to get for fighting. And I was sure I had to tell my wives and Sensei Jim about it.

After warm-up exercises, I elected to work with the purple and brown belts, going over kata they would need for their eventual black-belt test. I made a point to work closely with the two young men who had been my nemeses the previous morning, carefully and gently correcting and guiding while Hiroshi translated for me. Sensei Hiro was working with the black belts, and what I saw caused me to smile - he was teaching them to defend against the exact attacks I’d used against them.

After the session, I went back to my room to bathe and change for dinner. I had initially planned to wait until it was just the men in the room to ask my question, but my brief conversation with Hiroshi caused me to rethink that plan. I would ask as dinner was being served, so that both Sakurako and her grandmother were in the room. If Emiko, her grandmother, was going to be amused, I certainly wanted to see it! And I wanted to tease Sakurako just a little bit.

I waited until the food was being served to ask my question.

“«Shihan», your granddaughter has requested that I ask you for tomorrow and next Sunday to be ‘free’ days so she can spend some time with me before I return home.”

Sakurako gasped, and covered her mouth as Hiroshi translated. I kept my gaze fixed on Sensei Hiro, and saw his eyes move towards his wife, who I could see out of the corner of my eye. Her eyes twinkled and the corners of her mouth turned up in a slight smile, and she made the briefest of nods.

“This is what you want?” he asked Sakurako.

I was grateful for Hiroshi’s whispered translation in my year.

“Yes, Grandfather. I asked Grandmother if it would be OK before I asked Steve-san if he would ask you. But we need your permission.”

He nodded, and responded with a soft ‘Hai’, but I knew from the little experience I had, that was an acknowledgement of her statement, not agreement with it. Usually, agreement or disagreement would be conveyed by restating the sentence in such a way as to accept or reject it. ‘Yes’ and ‘no’ were context driven, even more so than in English, but even in English, there were ways to phrase a question where a simple ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ were ambiguous, and you would reply with a rephrased version of the question.

“We will eat and I will consider it,” he said.

Hiroshi added to his translation, “This is normal. He’ll answer when it’s just the men.”

I nodded.

“«Arigatou gozaimasu», «Shihan»,” I said.

He nodded and the meal continued as if the question had not been asked. Sakurako averted her eyes from everyone as she went about serving the meal, and I realized I’d embarrassed her. But, I had also seen the amusement in their grandmother that Hiroshi had predicted. When I put all the pieces together, I realized that this might be infinitely more complicated than I’d imagined. What if the «kabuki» actually was leading, in her mind, to the ending I’d discounted when she’d come to my room?

First and foremost, and ignoring every other consideration, she was underage. Well, maybe. I had no clue what the age of consent was in Japan and I sure as heck wasn’t going to ask THAT question of anyone I knew here. I could think of no possible way to raise it, and given the request I’d just made, even asking might get me in serious trouble.

Second, and again ignoring several other potentially more vital considerations, was an STD test. There was no possible way for me to even broach that subject with Sakurako unless we got to a point where her intent was clear. The problem was, if we were at THAT point, denying her request would likely crush her. I had little time left in Japan, and I was unsure how quickly she could arrange such a test, if she even could at her age.

I could certainly minimize the risk by using a condom, but again, I didn’t have any, didn’t expect her to have any, and didn’t have any easy way to acquire them. Heck, I didn’t know where a grocery or drug store was, or if I could even buy them in either of those two places if I did know where they were! That left the question of the actual risk. Japan had, according to Bethany’s journals and anecdotal evidence, very low STD rates. And I also knew that if she hadn’t had a transfusion, didn’t use intravenous drugs, and had never engaged in sex, the chances of her having HIV were negligible.

But negligible was not zero. And I couldn’t take that risk. Well, that wasn’t quite true. I could take that risk personally, but what I couldn’t do was put Jessica, Kara, and Michelle at risk that way. They weren’t signing up for the risk analysis and I couldn’t sign up for them. Nor did I think I could or should justify an ‘after-the-fact’ test, even if it was passed with flying colors. The STD test was, indeed, an insurmountable barrier.

All of THAT aside, the biggest consideration was sitting at the head of the table in the form of Hisakawa Hiro Sensei, to use the correct, Japanese form of his name and title. I owed him complete respect in every possible meaning of the word. And that meant respecting his family as well. Hiroshi had said that Sensei Hiro felt I’d treated his granddaughter with utmost respect. I had made one small error, but I was sure he didn’t know about it.

The question came down to one of balancing respect for him and respect for Sakurako. Michelle would insist respect required me to refuse Sakurako out of respect for her purity or indirectly to her future husband. But that very notion went counter to the conclusions I’d come to recently, and my limited knowledge of Japanese culture and morals. Respect meant treating a woman as a person who could and would make a decision about her sexual activity without me imposing my own views on her. Views which I had rejected for myself. And that meant not defining respect for Sakurako in terms of keeping her pure, though, in a way, even that term was problematic.

That said, in this traditional culture, respect for Sensei Hiro might indeed mean refusing what I now strongly suspected Sakurako was going to request. When I’d done the mental gymnastics about Ailea, I had concluded, in the end, that she was eighteen and I couldn’t impose her grandfather’s rules on her any more than I would accept the ones my mom tried to impose on me. And what happened between Ailea and me had to be private between us. But, as I’d thought just a few minutes earlier, Sakurako was probably under the age of consent, and that meant that I had to at least consider Sensei Hiro’s feelings, out of self-defense if nothing else.