<Begin Segment 9>

[Translated from Japanese]

AT: Then, the flowers, there was a barber whose name was Mr. Tsumura. The barber liked me very much since he didn't have any children. So he said, "Asano, a flower arrangement teacher asked me if she could rent upstairs, and Asano, you should come take lessons since a group of three to four obasan [Ed. note: Aunts. In this case, Mrs. Terao referred the ladies of her mother's age who were not related to her as aunts.] have already signed up." So I said that I was going to ask my mother, and I asked her if it was okay, then she said that I should try if I was learning with other obasan. She said it was okay for me to go, it was only a block away from my house. The barber lived there, and he said that he would release the second floor for the flower arrangement, he said, and there were just a group of obasan. Miss Oki, I had a friend called Miss Oki, so I asked her if she wanted to join us to learn the flower arrangement, I told her that she should go and that it would be fun, so Miss Oki and I were the only children there. All others were obasan. There were about five of them. Of course, it was a good extra income for the teacher.

DG: Why did you want to learn the flower arrangement?

AT: You mean, how did I come to want to learn it? I have told you that there was the barber, Mr. Tsumura. He learned the flower arrangement and arranged flowers in his shop. That looked very nice. I thought, "Oh, how nice the flowers were!" So I told my mother that I wanted to learn the flower arrangement, then she said, "Say, you can go learn since the teacher comes to the Tsumura's." Then, Mr. Tsumura, the barber, came to where young girls lived, three of them, there were three young girls in the neighborhood. This way, 10 sen [Ed. note: Sen, an old Japanese monetary unit, is 1/100 of yen.] to the teacher. We took 10 sen each. It was the extra income for the teacher. Anyway, since my mother said that I could take lessons if it was flower arrangement, [inaudible] we did. 10 sen, 10 sen, we took 10 cents each with us and gave it to her, and we took our own flowers with us. So she taught us, and then I said, "Teacher, please take a look at my work," then she came to look at my work and said, "Why don't you go ahead and arrange in that way?" so I arranged the flowers, and she advised me by telling me like this; "this kind of part, you should take off the twig," or "You should add one more stem since it's a little empty here." So she taught me. When I entered here, in this way, flowers... "Let's see, I can do it," I said. "Don't you have to buy aspidistras?" "I have done aspidistras long time ago, so I don't buy them." But, it was so many decades ago. I was like that... when I was still young. Then my friends said, "Oh, so you have done already." I had the same teacher.

TY: At the girls' school, besides the flower arrangement, did you learn things like the tea ceremony or the Japanese dance?

AT: I started learning the tea ceremony, but I just couldn't sit still. My feet hurt. Also, I was told to take only six steps to walk on the tatami mattress, but I couldn't take six steps. I took about four steps rapidly. So I tried a little. But, I didn't like it. I was fidgeting. But, I learned the basic, the tea ceremony. I have chatted with my friends, yapping that we didn't have to learn tea ceremony and that we could just continue the flower arrangement.

DG: So, Obasan. Were you thinking about what you should do to shape characters then?

AT: No, I wasn't thinking, not back then.

TY: So you just did what you wanted to do.

AT: Yeah, that's right. Well, I mean, the flower arrangement was popular in those days. Ikebana was. Anybody and everybody said, the flower arrangement, the flower arrangement, and they learned it. My mother... there was a poor family called the Tsukudas, and they were so poor that everybody made fun of them. My mother said, "Their daughter, even her, the daughter of the Tsukudas -- what was her name -- but even while she is taking lessons, it does not look good when you can't even arrange flowers, so go learn it." That's how I came to it, and I thought it was so nice to have neatly arranged flowers. I thought it would be very nice to have flowers arranged in the alcove. Then, I told my friends, then Miss Oki said that she also wanted to learn it, so, in this way, four or five more students joined it.

DG: At such time, it was good for families when women learn such things?

AT: Uh-huh, because I was a young girl. Then, again, my friends came and saw the flowers I arranged, and they said, "Oh, that is nice. It is better than having nothing in the alcove." Then, those friends prepared to learn the flower arrangement. Then my teacher's income increased again. In this way, there was a barber, whose name was Mr. Tsumura, but he took care of it very well. He came to my place and told my mom that she should let me learn the flower arrangement, so my mother said, "Oh, sure. I don't know when you have classes, but she sometimes just plays at night without studying, so..." "No, no, it takes place on Friday evenings, so the next morning," we went to school just half a day on Saturdays, "she doesn't have to study too much anyway." So we learned from teacher on Friday evenings. There was a school called Numata High Grade School in my town. They had a supplementary course, and they taught the flower arrangement. We were invited to the Tsumura's for dinner because Mr. Tsumura, the owner of the barber shop, liked doing things like that, so he invited us for dinner at his place, and four to five people... even if it was 10 sen each, if there were five people it would be 50 sen. Back then, 50 sen was a lot of money. Nowadays, 50 sen is nothing though.

TY: What could you buy with 50 sen?

AT: You could buy anything, if you had 50 sen. Anyway, it was 10 sen per class. Nowadays, nobody would teach you for 10 sen. [Laughs] It was so many decades ago. My days, many decades ago from now.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.