Midnight Mutterings | Thinking about Japan: Part 3

Kyoko and her family moved to a less expensive house after a year or so, and as a result, we saw less of each other, without the convenience of next door proximity. Yuki was growing up and I had left my job in extended day kindergarten to take a ‘real’ position teaching first grade at a different school. Eventually they returned to Japan, where Susumu had a prestigious position at University of Tokyo. He had told me about the Japanese ‘system’ of medical education at that time in the 1980s. If I remember correctly, entrance to medical school at Japan’s most prestigious university was a bit like royalty: men whose fathers had gone to school there were likely to be admitted. (Not unlike ‘legacy admissions’ to Ivy League colleges in the US.)

Susumu’s father was a teacher who couldn’t help him, but somehow a mentor made it possible to gain entrance. From there, he was able to study abroad and, as I said, in an earlier post, he was able to take a fellowship in hematology at University of Washington, which is how the family ended up next door to us in the Revenna-Bryant neighborhood in Seattle. I don’t know how many, if any women were in medical school with him I Japan. Also, as I also wrote, Kyoko and Susumu were reluctant to talk about anything that seemed like bragging.

It was harder to keep in touch after they returned to Japan in those pre-internet/expensive telephone call years following their departure, though they did return to the US (without children) at least once before I moved to Waldron Island then to Orcas, and I did get to see them then. By then, they had a second child, Koki, whom I’ve never met. (I’m bad at keeping in touch even with people I love, after we are geographically separated.) I had been living on Orcas more than 15 years, when one day there was a letter in my mailbox at Obstruction Pass from Kyoko, forwarded from an old Post Office address, in which she said she was trying to get in touch with me, but if the reader was someone besides me, to please not inconvenience themselves in a search. (That was pure Kyoko, ever modest in her requests.) The letter contained an e-mail address and I think I sent about five emails that first day, in appreciation and she responded in kind. Then came a long, hand written letter from Susumu, saying he had to leave his post when his mentor died and had changed medical specialties, but not exactly why.

Which reminded me of an incident when we were still neighbors in Seattle. I was interested in Japanese architecture and asked if they lived in a traditional house. Kyoko said they did not, in fact had lived in a high rise apartment. Later, she said that her parents lived in a traditional house and she had a photograph of their house which she showed me. In addition to the architecture and furnishings, I was interested in the three men in the photograph. One was her father, whom I had met when he visited Seattle. Another was an Hispanic man whom I did not recognize, and the third was a Caucasian who seemed familiar. I had asked Kyoko about his identity, to which she replied, ‘You don’t know?’ When I admitted I did not, she said it was Henry Ford II. I asked her how he came to be sitting in her parents’ house. She was hesitant, ever modest, she finally admitted her father was President of Mazda. Of course, I had not been told that when he visited Seattle, along with his lavish gift (in the Japanese tradition) of one of those fancy, wildly traditionally dressed dolls in a glass case. I was always unprepared for the required gift exchange, and had dusted off a ceramic vase I had made years ago in the Bay Area when we were all throwing pots without benefit of talent or technique. Later I was shown a photograph of that humble, un-beautiful object in a place of honor (at least for the moment) in Kyoko’s parent’s house in Japan. The beautiful doll in her glass case disappeared sometime in the years I rented out the Seattle house after I moved to the San Juans.

Meanwhile, Kyoko wrote that both Yuki and her brother had completed medical school, and that Yuki had since left medical practice for other interests. (I had read that the prevailing sexism in the medical field adversely affected many women in Japan.) Not long after Kyoko and Susumu and I reconnected, my daughter became critically ill in Portland, finally discharged, without diagnosis after 38 days in various ICU’s in a Portland hospital. It wasn’t that they weren’t trying for a diagnosis. She received excellent care and lots of knowledgeable specialists were doing their best for her. I had emailed Susumu about the situation and several heavy packets of medical papers arrived at my house. By that time we had moved her to Seattle, to SCCA (now called Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center). From those papers and the internet, I was able to find a seriously unlikely diagnosis: CMML (Chronic Myelomonocytic Leukemia), that affected a very few old men. That diagnosis was confirmed at SCCA and she underwent a successful stem cell (bone marrow) transplant from an unrelated donor from the registry, a male college student in Kentucky.

I’m not sure at all why I’m going into all this history, except that I had decided to visit Japan this last fall. To take a commercial tour and visit with the family along the way when I was in Tokyo. I texted Kyoko about my plan, and her reply came unexpectedly late—several weeks later. That both her father at age 101 (or 102) AND Susumu had died in the summer and she was very busy closing Susumu’s medical practice office (where she had been office manager). Too polite to say ‘don’t come,’ it was clear that this was an impossible time for her in her grief and responsibilities. Though it’s been forty plus years since I’ve seen them, it seems impossible that I’ll never see Susumu’s face again. That it has been my own carelessness in not keeping in touch over these decades, that make that loss of opportunity, says much about me that doesn’t make me proud. Nor does writing all this personal stuff say anything positive about me, but it’s too late to think of another topic.

Part 1

Part 2