<Begin Segment 5>

[Translated from Japanese]

TY: Okay. Now I would like to hear more about your mother, father and grandmother. What kind of values and ethics did they emphasize? When you were a child, your parents and grandmother must have emphasized certain values and ethics. The rules like, "Do this," and, "Don't do that."

YI: Let me see. My grandmother or father did not say, "You should not do this or that." My father or mother were not very strict.

TY: I have read before the book you wrote about your life for your family. In it, you wrote about a bully in the elementary school, a principal's son. Do you remember that ?

YI: There was this mean boy. He caused a lot of trouble.

TY: At that time, the principal got angry. Is this the book on family upbringing?

YI: Yes. I remember that he took his son out into the hallway and beat him.

TY: What kind of book was this book on family upbringing? I heard that he used the book on manners.

YI: That book. The book on morals.

TY: What kind of the book was that?

YI: We had a book on morals in those days. The things we had to obey were listed one after another. There were pictures of people who followed such moral lessons. We had to have good manners and be respectful of the elders. When you have to show respect to the elders, you walk behind them. Stories of people of long ago who obeyed these rules... Another story was about a little girl who threw trash on the street. Her father who saw her doing this told her not to do this, but to put it into a trash can. And we have to obey such things... Also there was a picture of somebody bowing in front of the altar. You have your ancestors, and you must respect them. For all these things that we had to obey, there was a course on morals. Nowadays we do not have such a course.

TY: Was there such a class in school?

YI: Uh-huh. Morals. It was taught by the principal at my country school.

TY: By the way, in those days, you said that women didn't have to go to school. That...

YI: Yes, there was such a bad custom. They said that girls did not have to study much.

TY: But in your family, you were allowed to receive a higher education.

YI: No, in my family, my parents did not say such a thing.

TY: Then, you didn't feel there was anything in particular that you were expected to do as a girl?

YI: I don't know. My father was rather open-minded and did not preach traditional values.

TY: But the people with the traditional values would say that women should simply get married...

YI: Yes. Most people thought that the girls should just learn how to cook, cook good rice, cook well, learn flower arrangement... That should be the women's job. Women should be obedient to their husbands. In those days men were considered dominant over women, and men were respected more. When I was a child. So when a girl was born, people would be disappointed and say, "Oh, another girl." And I had many sisters.

TY: Girls were born one after another.

YI: I remember my father saying, "Oh, another girl. I wish we had a boy."

TY: Did your father say that?

YI: What?

TY: Did your father say such a thing? Even your father?

YI: What?

TY: Even your father said such a thing...

YI: Yes. Such a trend prevailed in Japan. Too many girls. If you had three daughters, you would go bankrupt, they said. There was a saying that if you had three daughters, you would lose your family fortune.

TY: But when it comes to education, your father was open-minded, wasn't he?

YI: Yes, in that area. But Japan had such a system in those days, and my father probably thought like everybody else.

TY: Did your younger sisters go to a girls' high school?

YI: Yes, all of them did.

TY: Then, since your mother was a daughter of a dry goods store, did your mother go to a girls' high school?

YI: My mother did not go to a girls' high school. In those days very few girls went. But I think my mother went to a sewing school. She was very good at sewing. She was fast. She could sew up a kimono in one night. She was very fast.

TY: Did you take such a class, too?

YI: Yes. The girls' high school had many subjects. The regular girls' high school taught sewing, cooking, history, etc. Each subject had a different teacher. They taught everything.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.