Densho Digital Archive - Helen Mori Interview (denshovh-mhelen

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RP: Give us a little personal picture of your mother.

HM: Oh, my mother?

RP: Physically and her personality.

HM: [Laughs] She was a strong-minded woman. Fairly attractive, wore glasses. Loved, unlike me, she loved jewelry and fancy clothes and all that stuff. Me, I'm just a plain Jane. But she, she tended to be dressed nicely. She didn't wear too much makeup but... she was, I would say she was pretty fair looking. In fact a couple times she'd be walking in downtown L.A. or Japantown, and they thought she was Madame Chang Kai-shek. [Laughs] Isn't that funny? She didn't really look like her I don't think. She didn't have sunglasses on or anything but they thought she was Madame Chang Kai-shek, couple times. Not the same person either. So she thought that was pretty funny.

RP: Being well-educated as she was, was, did she have a, a creative side to her? Did she...

HM: Oh yeah, she wrote poetry from, when she was in Japan I'm sure. I don't know when she really started. But many, many, many years. And she wrote tanka poetry, the thirty-one syllables, the old-fashioned one that you see it in the Heike, you know that period? The court, that's the kind of poetry that they wrote. And they don't just read it. They go... [chants]. It almost sounds like a sutra or something, you know. A certain way they have to read it, it's really something. I heard her a couple times and I thought, wow. You don't just read it da-da-da-da-da like that. Yeah. She really enjoyed her tanka. And after the war there were several tanka clubs, various teachers had their students, you know. But she stuck with the same one, Takayanagi sensei. And he was very well-known. In fact I think they picked his poem for the New Year's contest twice I think. But he was born in Japan and raised in Japan and all that stuff, so, he didn't get the hoopla my mother got. Yeah, she got a great big ol' party when she won that, she was picked I should say in the contest, the Rafu Shimpo, you know the vernacular, Japanese vernacular in L.A.? They threw a great big ol' party. And they give her a trophy like this. Big trophy. Yeah. I didn't get to go 'cause I had to watch my kid brother. I had to stay home and watch him but, so I didn't get to go to the party. I heard about it.

RP: Helen, you mentioned when you first talked about your mom that she was a Meiji-woman?

HM: Yeah.

RP: Can you describe what you meant by that?

HM: Well usually the Meiji women are, she was on the cusp, you know, up to about people who are born... around that period by 1910, say, maybe 1907. I really don't know. But all that, from eighteen hundred to, you know, the latter part of 1800 to... it's when the change came. You know when they went, quit having the Shogun and started, imperial families started being the leader of the country and all that. That period is known as the Meiji period. And at that time the women were starting to get educated even in Japan, with culture and arts and all this other stuff, besides literature and reading and writing and all that. They, they started, they were able to go more advanced after the Meiji Restoration.

RP: Kind of an age of enlightenment?

HM: No, it's just it had more equality. [Laughs] You know, Japan's a chauvinistic country from way back when and...

RP: Yeah it is.

HM: And they started getting more advanced with the Meiji Restoration.

RP: Right, and your mom was able to take advantage of that by going to college.

HM: Probably, probably.