a forgotten story is renewed

MAMOTARO



When I was between five and seven years old, my father was stationed in Nagoya, Japan, where I started first grade. When my family first arrived in Nagoya, there was no room in air base housing, so we rented part of a Japanese house with tatami mats on the floor, sliding rice-paper doors, and a bathtub on the back porch.

We did many things the Japanese way. We removed our shoes at the entrance of the house and wore socks inside. We slept on futons barely higher than the floor. We bathed by wetting ourselves with a cloth, washing and rinsing ourselves outside the tub before actually getting inside the tub for a soak. We sat cross-legged to eat at the short-legged table (Dad grumbled at that because of his girth). Mother even bought everyone gata-gatas (raised wooden shoes) and kimonos.

Even though we didn’t speak one another’s language, I played with the neighborhood children. We did have baseball in common, and knocking a ball around the narrow, cobblestone street was a favorite pastime, although the bounces were erratic. We fed the landlord’s penned rabbits (not pets). Across the street from us bloomed a forbidden Geisha house, and we dared to climb the trees near the stone wall of the Geishas and peer into the fragrant, paper-lantern garden to see if we could discern what mysteries transpired inside. The childish giggles that this transgression inspired were international. We bought sweet rice cakes at the local store and watched masked, noisy, fire-cracking Shinto festivals. Eventually, I learned to speak skoshi (a little) Japanese.

I learned that the Japanese had a holiday to celebrate people like me: Boys Day. On Boys Day, every household that held a son flew fish pennants – hollow, tubular cloth streamers painted like fish with open round mouths. When I went outside that morning and saw all the green, blue, yellow and red fish pennants streaming from the roofs in the wind, I grew excited. “Mother, what’s going on?” I asked. “Today is Boys Day. It’s a Japanese holiday to celebrate all the male children. Look at our roof.” There swam our own green fish weaving through the morning air. I ran happy all that day.

Mother believed in reading and searched mightily for reading material in English. She found some translations of Japanese tales and brought them home. My favorite was the story of the Peach Boy.

"The Peach Boy" was one of the most popular children’s stories in Japan. An elderly, poor, rural, childless couple one day find a giant peach floating in a creek near their house. The husband brings the peach home because it alone would make several meals. However, when the peach is opened, inside is a baby boy. The couple rejoices because they have a son. They raise the Peach Boy, who turns out to have a facility for communicating with animals. As he grows, his friends are the creatures of the wild: a monkey, an owl, a raccoon and other creatures. The Peach Boy grows into a fierce warrior, and when Japan is threatened by long-nosed, blue- and red-haired demons that live on outlying islands, he takes his animal friends and they go to subdue the demons and save Japan. The Peach Boy is victorious and his parents are very proud of him.

Eventually, my family moved to the air force base and lived in the Western-style housing in American Village, but we had become enamored of Japanese culture. We hired Japanese maids (Miekosan was my first love and broke my heart when she married because she was so beautiful in her traditional brightly-colored wedding kimono and white face) and house boys, and mother brought in a Japanese artist to teach my sister and me how to draw. “Look! See!” He would admonish us as we struggled with pencils on thick drawing paper. Mother took classes in ikebana and origami, bought Noritake table settings, and collected glass-cased Japanese dolls in traditional dress. My father took us to tour Buddhist temples and the imperial castle in Yokohama, to visit silkworm factories, and around the countryside to see the cherry blossoms. He developed friendships with Japanese Christians, and several times we ate sukiyaki or tempura in their homes before prayer and Bible study sessions.

When I was seven, we returned to the continental United States, but the early experience stuck, and as I matured, I realized that I had developed some Asian sensibilities that I cherished. I loved Asian cooking, art, philosophy and manners. My favorite European painter is Van Gogh, who – I learned eventually – had been influenced by Japanese art. I read the Sea of Fertility tetralogy by Yukio Mishima and understood its irony better than most Westerners could have. I watched every Akiro Kurosawa film I could find and felt I was watching a familiar mythology. Once when I had four cats, I named them Mieko, Kieko, Hanabi and Taro (first-born son).

However, the basics of my Japanese experience got lost in the hustling shuffle of life until nearly three decades later when I taught English as a second language to students at the University of Tampa. In one class was a Japanese student named Yoko. One day I looked at Yoko and through my memory came trickling the story of the Peach Boy; it was a sudden, nebulous memory, but I couldn’t let it go.

The story of the Peach Boy dominated my mind, flying there like a green fish pennant. I thought of him while I ate, while I read, while I wrote, while I passed into sleep. I wanted to grasp the essence of the story for myself. I wanted to know his name in Japanese.

After the next class I pulled Yoko aside and said, “This might seem strange to you, but I lived in Japan as a small boy, and lately I’ve been thinking of a story that I read as a child. Perhaps you know the name of the story?”

Regarding me as if I were a bit crazed, she said, “I not sure.”

“It’s about an old couple who find a giant peach, and inside they find a baby boy who grows up to be a hero.”

She wasn’t my best student and struggled to understand all the unfamiliar words that were streaming at her: couple, peach, giant, hero. “I not sure. What is beach?”

Fortunately, she had her Japanese-English dictionary with her. I took it, found peach (mamo) and pointed at it. “He was a boy who was found in a peach.”

Suddenly, the memory lights in Yoko’s mind ignited. She smiled and said, “Ah, Mamotaro!”

“Yes! That’s it!” I said with gleeful recognition.

She laughed and said, “You very strange man.”

“Thank you. Thank you,” I said as I handed back her dictionary.

As she walked away, I realized that I had had something in common with every Japanese child, and I had recovered it.

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