Minae Mizumura - A True Novel

As she listed the various trials the family had endured, the Demon sometimes let her guard down, saying, “I feel bad, because they keep me on even though they can’t really afford me.” But I must admit, I had a hard time feeling much sympathy for them. They still owned the land and the house we were sitting in in Karuizawa, along with furniture, an art collection, and all sorts of things from before the war. They also had land in Seijo. In fact, after I got to know them, the Americans left the area, and Seijo real estate went up in value as a result of people from all over Japan moving to the capital looking for jobs. The place became one of the most sought-after neighborhoods. The Shigemitsus, by tearing down the Victorian house and selling off more than half their land, managed to get back on their feet. Masao built a stylish house on the remaining plot. He also started to earn some extra money by writing for magazines. Both generations had happy marriages. As far as I could see, they were living the good life, a life that most ordinary people could only dream about.

By contrast, the Saegusas never had as much to lose. Still, they’d done well, and they continued to do well after the war. They brought home more each month than their neighbors did. Grampy’s company seemed to have had a few precarious years immediately following the war, but by the time I met them it had already recovered, thanks partly to the booming economy during the Korean War. Added to that was Primavera, the dressmaking school that Harue had started with Natsue’s help, which eventually made a healthy profit selling women’s clothes. Furthermore, though Harue liked to joke that it was only due to his skills on the golf course, her husband, Hiroshi, surprised everyone by rising to the top in the corporate world, getting one promotion after another. Fuyue, who had continued her formal piano studies during and after the war at Tokyo University of the Arts, left not long after I met them to study for a year in Germany. When she came back, she taught at a private music conservatory and also gave expensive lessons in her home. The family brimmed with the energy of talented and intelligent people. At a time when the rest of the country was still poor, money just seemed to roll into their pockets.

Not only the Demon but also the Saegusa girls always kept the Shigemitsus on a pedestal. But when the two families began living in roughly comparable houses, they appeared on the surface, at least, to be of equal standing. A stranger would have thought they were just two well-to-do families, one much like the other.

“I GOT THE raw end of the deal,” Natsue would often say. True enough, among the three sisters, she did have the roughest time—at least, I could understand why she would look at it that way. Working for them at the Chitose Funabashi house, I myself wondered why she had married into this family. It was only after I patched together bits of information from here and there that I could figure out what had actually happened.

The Utagawas had been practicing medicine in Saitama since the Edo period. It was Takero’s father who, in the early twentieth century, moved to Tokyo, to a place called Kichijoji—in those days a village without a doctor—and opened a practice there. The Utagawa Clinic prospered. On the one hand, the father got involved in politics, frequented geishas, and enjoyed all the pleasures available to the well-to-do. On the other hand, in his capacity as a doctor he worked hard at caring for the local people: during the war, he treated them at no charge if the man in the family was on active service or had been killed. For someone who had set himself up locally less than a generation before, he was very well liked and respected.

But there was a fly in the ointment, as far as he was concerned: his one son, Takero, as well as being socially awkward, wanted only to continue his laboratory research. Natsue had been aware when she married him that he had no intention of following his father into the clinic and eventually taking over, or of going into politics. She knew that, as a researcher, he would never have an income like his father’s. Even so, the couple expected the clinic itself to continue doing well, and some of the profits from it to trickle down to them, once the war was over.

Not long after Natsue moved out to Karuizawa as a young bride, it all changed. Takero’s father had a massive heart attack, without warning, one day as he was getting out of the bath, and after remaining in a coma for two weeks, he died. This calamity was followed by another one: bill collectors descended, one after another, on the Utagawa household. Without Takero knowing, his father had borrowed huge amounts of money to subsidize his political activities and to support his extravagant personal habits. He’d also helped other people get loans by letting them use his name as a guarantor. Things might have turned out differently if Takero, as heir, had agreed to take over the clinic, but he was bent on continuing his research. The bill collectors must have taken advantage of his financial naïveté: they offered to trade his father’s debts for the clinic and house. In the wink of an eye, the clinic was sold to another doctor. All he got to keep was some furnishings, a few antiques in the storehouse, and three houses across the road that the family rented out. His father had promised to set up the newlyweds in a house of their own after the war, but when Natsue came back from Karuizawa with her baby, she found herself living with Takero’s stepmother in one of the rental properties, a small two-story place, which the previous tenants had vacated during the war to escape the bombings.

With this turn of events, Natsue saw no reason for them to stay in Kichijoji. She insisted that they move closer to her parents’ house, where they’d be able to get some practical and financial support. Her husband agreed to this, partly because he felt sorry for her and partly because it was painful for him to see the clinic in someone else’s hands. To start with, they looked for land in Seijo, but even after selling off their property and all their things and getting a loan from Grampy, buying a plot of land in that area meant they would have no money left to build a house. Natsue resigned herself to their building something inexpensive with just enough rooms to get by on, in Chitose Funabashi.

That, I finally understood, was why Natsue said the words “Chitose Funabashi” in such a resentful way that day. “They tricked me into this marriage,” she used to say. “I wouldn’t feel this way if the clinic had burned down in the bombings, but to have it taken away to pay off creditors! Besides, how could he be so extravagant when he was so deeply in debt!”

My own impression—if it’s fair to say so—is that Natsue by nature wasn’t strong or persevering enough to cope with the disaster that hit her husband’s family. She had married a man very much in love with her, and had always assumed—almost as a birthright—that she should have a happier life than other people. In this she had Harue to thank for encouraging the attitude she took.

HARUE AND NATSUE shared a degree of closeness that was unusual even in close sisters. Perhaps because they grew up feeling that they were special, theirs was a kind of intimacy rarely seen among ordinary people. They also had confusingly similar names, they were born only a year apart, and they resembled one another in face, figure, and voice; it was natural that, as children, they were often mistaken for twins. The first time I ever saw them together side by side, I found their alikeness almost comical.

All the same, you couldn’t find another pair of sisters who were more different. Contrasting personalities aside, it was their differing abilities that set them so far apart. Harue was dominant not only through strength of character—she was simply smarter, if I may be so blunt. Siblings often compete with one another, but there was almost no rivalry between these two—because, I think, the difference in intelligence made competition unnecessary. Naturally, Harue was conscious of this difference. I believe she not only coddled her younger sister but took her under her wing and protected her. From an early age, Harue must have decided to continue helping her throughout their lives, to compensate wherever Natsue fell short. The other side of the story was, of course, that she expected more out of life herself than she thought Natsue would end up with.