<Begin Segment 38>

AI: Excuse me, before we get into that, something else that happened in the '80s was that you went back to Japan.

MY: Yes, I did. That was interesting. It was the first time since 1935 that I went there. And I had a cousin who was the president of a publishing house and he used to come out here. I mean, he was trilingual, he had a publishing house where he translated Japanese -- English novels like John Steinbeck and Faulkner and so forth into Japanese. And he was publishing Camus into, and Colette into Japanese. So that was, it was a very unusual and wonderful publishing house. And so he used to come out to California to visit occasionally and I thought, oh, this is just great. A liberated Japanese man who just seems so worldly, and he spoke fluent English, he spoke fluent French and then I went to, he lives in Tokyo with his wife and three children, with two girls and a, his son. And I went there and he was just a totally different man. I mean, he was just like any other husband, who never came home at night. I never had dinner with his family because he went out after dinner and he came creeping home about two or three o'clock. And because of my time change, I was up in the middle of the night and he came in -- I thought gosh, Kazusuke, what time is this, three o'clock, you know. What are you doing? I said, "What time, what time does your company close?" And he said, "Oh, about six." And I said, "Well, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, one, two," I said, "That's eight hours. What are you doing?" He said, "Oh, I go out to dinner and entertain, you have to have business meetings after working hours to talk to clients, and to talk to writers and to translate their work and things like that." I said, "Well, that's eight hours -- that's like a whole 'nother working day, you know, and what do you talk about for eight hours?" [Laughs] And then I was talking to his wife and his wife would always say, "Matta ku, Mitsuye san ga ii koto iutte kureru," she's absolutely right about this, you know. So he thought I was kind of ruining his family life but he...

And then one day I went to his company, he asked me to come to his... he had a chauffeur and he was driving me around and then he was sitting in the front seat and I was sitting in the back, with his wife, Yoshiko and I were sitting in the back and he said, "Do you want to see my office?" And I said, "Oh yeah, that would be" -- a publishing house? Really great. So we stopped and he told the, his chauffeur, and he told his wife, he told his chauffer, "You stay here." So I said, "Come on, Yoshiko, let's go out." You know, so she kind of giggled and started going out, and we got -- he told her to wait in the car, and I said, "You don't have to wait in the car, you can come with me." So we got into the elevator, because his main office was up on the fourth floor or whatever, and we got in the elevator and I saw her looking like this. And I said to her, "Have you ever been here before?" And she said, "No." So I said, "Kazusuke, how many years, how long ago did you move here to this building?" And he said, "Oh, about four years ago," or something. And she's never been here. [Laughs] And so then we got into his office, and it was just sort of like the big press room with all the editors, there were all different editors, you know, in different languages that were sitting in... and so we got out of the elevator and stepped out and all of a sudden all the editors got up, and they bowed. They were bowing as we walked down the corridor -- his office was way in the back. And I thought whoa, this is really something. And so we got in, because he's a shacho san, he is the CO, the commanding officer. So we went into his room, into his office and he had to make a couple of phone calls. So Yoshiko and I sat down, and suddenly there was a knock on the door and she came in, and she came in with some tea, she had this little tray, and she kind of bowed and she set the tea down on the table in front of the two of us, and then she kind of sidled backwards. She didn't even, she kind went, kind of shuffled backwards and -- now when is this? 1980, yeah, it was 1979. She, and then she kind of fumbled for the doorknob behind her back, to get out, and then she got out, you know, and then my cousin was talking and I said, "Did you train her to do that?" [Laughs] I just could hardly believe that she was -- well, first of all I asked him, "Who is she?" He said, "Oh, she's one of my editors." And I said, "Well, do any of the men do that?" And he said, "Do what?" And I'm going, you know, serve tea to everybody. And then, in the meantime his wife who doesn't understand English is saying, "What did she say, what did she say?" [Laughs] Was asking what am I talking about, so I translated it for her and she said, "Oh yes, she's one of the editors." And so we, and then my, and then my cousin said, "If you're going to mind everybody's business all the time, Sonna," -- the Japanese was -- "Sonna irankoto bakari." You know, "You're don't have to be, you might be kind of a busybody all the time -- go back to (U.S.)." [Laughs] I mean, he was kidding, you know, but it was just sort of like, "Why do you have to comment about everything, single thing that's going on around here?" So after I came back, I had this little postcard that said, "If you want the job done, hire a woman." They used to have that little, so I sent that to him. [Laughs] But it was interesting... and then when I came back, my brother, who used to lecture in Japan, looked up Kazusuke-san of course. He came back about a few months later and he said, "What did you do in Japan? They're all still talking about you over there." [Laughs]

<End Segment 38> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.