<Begin Segment 46>

SY: You had mentioned one more thing that I really would like to touch upon, and that was when I first met you, you mentioned how much you think about your mother at night even, to this day. Tell me about that?

MN: Well, I, really felt that after my father died, my sister and my sister-in-law, they wanted to raise us, raise us with all the advantages as possible, with the right clothes and the right everything. And so that was quite demanding. But at night when I was with my mother, and we'd sit around the big stove with a wood fire in it, and she in her rocking chair, and my sister and my brother and me. And we could just let our hair down and do whatever we wanted to, and it was so nice. That, that I remember her, and she was always tired from working, but she would be in her rocking chair. And I always felt that my mother had me in her thoughts, foremost. So when I'd come home late at night, I'd get off the bus, and I could see her silhouette in that window. She'd be watching for me, and that was a very comforting feeling, that somebody was waiting for you. And at one time, I was using my brother's business typewriter 'cause I needed a typewriter, and sometimes I'd take it to the studio with me. And then he would want it. And he was always complaining about the typewriter (...). So my mother bought me a typewriter, so I could have one of my own.

SY: Why is it, though, when you, you mentioned when you wake up at night, sometimes there's a lot of guilt that you have felt?

MN: Well, I have guilt because of the fact that she, she was always, for me. But towards the end, when I spent more time dancing than taking care of her, and I could have seen to it that she had warmer clothes or more comfortable shoes, or didn't have to do the cooking. And 'cause I used to do the grocery shopping and do the cooking, until I just got so involved with dance that I couldn't. And then when I was going to school and working at the university and doing all this teaching, there was just, I was always so tired. But it never dawned on me how much pressure was going on her because what I was supposed to be doing, she would have to do. So she was, always had my, my feelings first. And then, and she had a chronic back injury that -- it would, every once in a while when she'd twist or fall (...) it would come back. And it would take a long time for her to recover from it. I had taken her to the doctor several times, and tried to get exercises and things for her, but then, she had hurt her back, and she was in bed. And I had been in Canada, seeing a program (...) and when I came back, my brother said that she had fallen and she was in bed. And she was in pain, but she'd never say very much and then she said, she said she thought maybe she would die because she was eighty-two at that time. And so I got my sister to get medication for her. So she, she was taking that and getting slightly better, but then... I never knew what happened, and I never asked, but she died when we were gone to the (Seafair) parade (...). Anyway, then this terrible guilt feeling, because I could have made her life so much easier, if I'd just been a little more thoughtful. So (...) it really bothers me still to this day, and she died back in the '60s. But I never have gotten over the fact that she was the one person who thought the most of me and did the most for me, but I neglected her. I really neglected her. And she didn't get sick and die. She (...) just, (suffered) a few days, and then she died. And I wasn't even there when she died, I was at the parade. (Hiromu was there with their mother.) And I didn't want to go to the parade, but my sister wanted me to go, so I went. Anyway, so that's, that's a guilt feeling. And I stopped choreographing for a long time after she died, because I just couldn't bring myself around to do anything in dance (...). And I think I'll always, to the day I die, think about her at least once a day. There's hardly a day that goes by that I don't think about her, because no one else ever loved me as much as she did, or gave me the attention or feelings that she, that she gave me. And I just ignored her towards the end for which I can't forgive myself (...).

<End Segment 46> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.