A Japanese Vagabond: Bicycling 35,000 Km Around Four Continents 1986–1989 Part 1

By Mayumi Yamada-Shimotai

In 1986, Mayumi left Japan with a bicycle to flee from constrains of life as a Japanese girl. Without a plan nor travelling experiences, she kept pedalling around the globe – during the final epoch of the Cold War – for about 35,000 kilometres, facing various kinds of difficulties and taking advantage of people’s goodwill. This is the travel story of about the first half of her drifting passage, from Japan up to the last stop in South America – Brazil – in which there are clues to interpret the enigma of Japan and Japanese as well as a cross section of Latin America in the Cold War era.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493153268

Mayumi Yamada-Shimotai

Mayumi (Yamada-)Shimotai was born in Niigata, Japan. As a daughter of a humble rice-farmer, she was brought up amid drastic social changes in post-war Japan. At the age of 21, she left Japan for new horizons and drifted around four continents, mostly by bicycle. Consequently, she worked in Egypt as a tour guide for nearly three years, and in 1993, she returned home finally. She began working for The Daily Telegraph (UK), Tokyo bureau, as a correspondent’s assistant, and later she became a freelance interpreter, researcher, and coordinator for foreign media. Additionally, since 1997, she has been a freelance writer. Presently, she is teaching English to schoolchildren.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

A RICE WORLD

Niigata, Japan

(1964 - 1985)

A Red Roof and a Blue Roof

B ack in the 1960s, when I was a preschool girl, I lived in a house situated in the middle of rice paddy fields in Niigata, Japan, a region known for producing some of the best quality rice in Japan owing to the fresh water and air produced by heavy snowfall falling on the surrounding mountain ranges.

At that time in Japan, most marriages took place between neighbouring villages and were coordinated by relatives or acquaintances. My parents were one of these couples.

The great majority of the people were rice farmers, even though many of them had taken on other jobs and farming was becoming side work, and rice paddy fields were powerful and vivid.

Naturally, I was brought up understanding seasonal shifts according to the changing face of the rice paddy field: waving, tender green seedlings in the watered field in spring; flickering, fully-grown rice crops bowing to the earth in summer; shinning golden crops under the sun in autumn; and empty fields covered by snow in winter. Needless to say, my meals consisted of rice three times daily.

There were about fifty households in the village, but there was only one neighbour close to our house. The rest were located many hundreds of metres away, and they seldom came to see us, as we were situated well off the main route. Therefore, I hardly had a chance to meet people apart from my parents, brother, and our neighbours’ family members.

Automobiles were still reserved for either affluent people or for particular professions. It seemed that many village people, including my parents, were living within the village only, cultivating small pieces of land in the same way as their ancestors had done since the first settlement began, presumably more than hundreds of years ago.

002.tif

The house, which I was born and brought up in until I was six years old, was of a traditional design, with a thatched roof and plastered wooden walls filled with clay-and-straw paste. It was over one hundred years old and built in the late Edo era.

In front of the house was a row of trees that stood alongside a small dirt path. These were very important trees indeed, as they were used in the autumn as hazagi for hanging and drying harvested rice crops. This small area also doubled as the greatest play spot for me.

I used to climb on the trees and look out at the scene beyond the fields. From my narrow view, I could see a few houses far away. Of all the houses, one had a red roof and another had a blue roof. For some reason, I imagined the blue one as Niigata City, the capital city of the prefecture, and the red one as Tokyo, the capital of Japan. To this day, I cannot understand why I visualised them in this way, but I do know that I never told anyone. The only clear thing was that at the very end of my sight was a short hill that sat just about on the boundary of our village, and the red roof was very close to the edge and the blue one was the one before it.

My daydreams usually took place while I was hanging upside-down on the hazagi, swinging like a monkey. It made me feel a little seasick, but it drew me into the feeling of travelling to my wonderland, with the sky underneath instead of the field. Blood would rush to my head, and I would feel heavier and hotter on my face. Obviously, it was not particularly comfortable playing like this, but the worse I felt, the further my senses seemed to be tripping from my grey old house to the blue Niigata and eventually to the red Tokyo.

As a result, I often remained swinging on the hazagi until I could almost no longer breathe. As soon as I straightened myself up, I recognised that I was still in the paddy field and wondered how much longer it would be until I could actually travel to the wonderland where I wished to visit.

003.tif004.tif

CHAPTER 2

MY KIMONOS

Niigata, Japan

(1960s - 1985)

I hate ‘Kimonos’

I have a couple of kimonos , made from beautifully woven silk, which my mother bought more than a decade ago; according to Japanese custom, parents need to prepare basic items, including kimonos , for their daughters’ weddings.

However, up to and including today, my kimonos have been left untouched in large flat cases at my parents’ place, even though I was married in 2000. I am afraid that they have become a special treat for insects by now.

When I was an infant, I used to wear a kimono for a harvesting festival our village held every year on 27th August. In addition, until I was five or six, I used to sleep in a kimono, although it was not very common because pyjamas had become popular throughout Japan. Most people wore kimonos purely for special occasions by then, although they constitute one of the most symbolic items of Japanese culture.

There were a few formal occasions in the past decade that I could have worn one, but I gave it no consideration at all.

Why do I not wear a kimono?

Well, to wear a formal kimono requires a lot of work, such as preparing special items like a sash, underwear, a pair of sandals and a bag; moreover, it requires the right technique to wear it properly, as well as the correct manner in which to behave in it decently.

To be an invisible being is my ideal, as I hate to show myself to others; I rather want to see others. I even used to dream about living in a corrugated paper box—as most homeless people do—or to have fur like animals do. Therefore, a kimono is not for me.

Nevertheless, there is a more essential reason for my not wearing a kimono: I think I used to wear too many anyway, so I hardly feel like doing it again.

005.tif

The reasons why I do not wear my Kimonos

1. As a daughter:

My birthplace, Niigata, is considered one of the best rice-producing regions in Japan. I assume that it has something to do with the fact that Niigata is one of the most conservative areas in the country—farmers tend to be attached to one place and to set routines because of their occupation. One of the most characteristic cultural aspects of Japan, feudalistic custom, used to rule society in general, and so it is even now, although not as powerful as before.

As described above, my parents were very much village people who seldom travelled anywhere, even domestically, so naturally they were Japanese in every way, following customs and ideas that had been in existence since presumably centuries ago.

I have one brother, who is two years older than I am, and we were the only children born to our parents.

From early childhood, my mother would tell me, You are a girl, and your brother is a boy. It is a very natural fact, and perhaps it sounds nothing special to most of you. However, it was a big deal to me because it was heard when I would complain to my mother about her unfair treatment of me compared to my brother—she ordered me to do housework, while my brother was allowed to do almost anything he wanted. The same applied to study. I was told not to keep studying after high school, no matter how good I might be, or how strongly I wished to continue, while my brother was encouraged to keep studying as much as he wanted. In fact, he remained in the same university even after finishing his Master’s course.

In addition, I was told repeatedly at home, "You are the one who is leaving here one day to become a member of another family, while your brother is the one who is going to inherit this uchi [house/family]. He is very important and this is his house, not yours."

Now I can see that my mother was just being so obedient to traditions that she could never think of other measures for one’s life, but it was not understandable to me at that time. I was awash with questions: Why should there be such a big difference in treatment between my brother and me? Why is he important and I am not? and Why do I have to leave here by all means?

From the age of about 10, I began wondering about the answers to these questions, but it was too strange a situation for me to find any. If ever I had had more brothers or sisters, things would have been quite different, I think.

006.tif

2. As a country girl:

When I was about at ten, I began to feel very ashamed of myself.

During a school class, one teacher, who was a 23-year-old man and in charge of our class for the first time after completing his study at university, said, Mayumi is ugly. At first, I tried to take it as a joke and laughed with the others, but he kept saying it for months, so gradually the boys in class started teasing me, saying, "You are ugly."

Before this incident, sometimes the girls in class were hard on me, such as excluding me from their gatherings. Then the teacher’s comment accelerated my isolation. It was a satellite school, surrounded by mountains and rice paddy fields, with only a little more than one hundred pupils in the whole school. Our class was the biggest with 28 pupils including me, but still it was too small for me to hide myself.

I had never thought of my appearance up to that point. I was a very active child, exploring mountains and rivers and following my brother and his friends. However, the reactions of the teacher and my ‘schoolmates’ made me aware of the fact that I was a girl—and I was an ugly one.

Perhaps both the teacher and my classmates were so bored in such a closed, small world that they needed a target to criticise in order to have some kind of amusement. Yet, it was too much for me to digest—don’t forget, I was only ten—and I began to think of vanishing from the place where I was situated. At first, I wanted to leave my homeland, but of course, it was impossible. I contemplated committing suicide, but that was also impossible. Finally, I persuaded myself that I should wait until I got a little older before making a decision.

From that moment on, I had to fight against the frustration of being a girl or a woman, and sometimes I thought that I was born in the form of a female by mistake.

3. As a Japanese woman:

After a troublesome period between the ages of 10 and 18, I entered the Department of Physics at Niigata University, located in Niigata City, which I used to symbolise as the ‘Blue-Roof ’(see Chapter 1).

Somehow, I wanted to be away from people and investigate the absolute truth beyond others and me. It seemed to be the best way for me to keep living. I was not stupid enough to believe that any talent I might have would lead to me being an astronaut, but I was committed to devoting my life to an academic field, hopefully, specialising in the universe.

My mother objected to my wish to enter academia, and we clashed over the matter for many years, but finally she admitted that I could keep studying, but only on the condition that it should be at Niigata University. It was not exactly where I wanted to go, but I compromised because she had done the same for me.

I moved to Niigata, received a scholarship, and rented a small flat near the university.

However, after about one year, when I was talking to one of the professors in the department, he knocked my ambition into touch. He said, Well, you had better not think about it. There has been no female researcher in physics so far, and even if you try hard, you could be an assistant at best.

There were forty students in the department, four of whom, including me, were women. It was an exceptional year, apparently, as there used to be no women, or one at most before then. The general perception was that physics was not for women, probably because of the fixed idea that advanced study was not for women either, as my mother had foretold years previously.

Later, I learned that even at that time there were in fact a good number of female researchers, not only abroad but also in Japan, although there were never that many in Japan. Nevertheless, it was most likely I would feel the same way, even if I’d had better comments from the professor. I was already depressed in so many ways, mainly because the mere fact I was a woman meant that I could not expect anything in life. I thought there were people whose lives were not worth living, or who were not suited to the ongoing world—and I was one of them.

As a result, I decided to commit suicide just before my twentieth birthday. When this attempt failed, I decided that the next best thing would be to drop out of university.

I know this is not the fault of the kimono itself at all. Undoubtedly, I appreciate it as one of the most beautiful Japanese traditions that should never vanish, yet I do not feel comfortable wearing one because it makes it hard to breathe fully from the bottom of my stomach and it is hard to walk, since I cannot move my legs freely.

Unintentionally, the kimono is a traumatic symbol of the time when I was at a dead-end, teetering at the entrance to a narrow dark tunnel that led to a place without an exit.

CHAPTER 3

GOODBYE TO MY RICE PADDY FIELDS

Niigata—Tokyo—Kumagaya, Saitama, Japan

(Spring 1985)

Far over the Horizon and the Sea

I n spring 1985, I left my homeland, Niigata, for Tokyo—my ‘ Red-Roof ’—to find a new direction that would convince me to keep living.

At first, I depended on Yumiko, my best friend in Niigata, who had left for Tokyo to study in one of the universities there. She offered me the chance to stay in her flat, but naturally, I wanted to be independent sooner rather than later.

I searched for a job in recruiting magazines, which were getting thicker and thicker by the day as economic growth rose steeply.

When I left Niigata, I had a little more than a few hundred dollars with me, which was the money I had saved by working alongside my study and from the scholarship. Obviously, it would not last more than a few months, so I had to get a job in a hurry; however, it was not so easy, as I was a university dropout with no special skills to my name. Moreover, I did not know what I wanted to do, either at that time or in the future. It was a big problem.

It was becoming commonplace for young Japanese to not seek any fixed occupations but instead find temporary jobs on a contract basis. They are called freeters in Japanese, which is a coined word mixed with ‘free’ and ‘arbeiter’ (‘worker’ in German), and is not found in the classic Japanese dictionary.

Certainly, the word ‘arbeit [work]’ existed in the Japanese lexicon during my youth. It was the influence of Western medicine introduced after the mid-19th century, which led to its inclusion and a greater presence of German in Japanese society. Even when I was a university student in 1983-1985, the majority of students were taking German classes as well as English, and it was essential for those working in the department of medicine. Actually, there are quite a few German words in the Japanese dictionary, such as ‘jacke [jacket]’ and ‘kocher [cooker]’. In fact, most of the words related to mountaineering activities have come from the German language. It was not a very long time ago that Japanese doctors began writing medical records on ‘karte [medical sheet]’ fully in English, and German words are often used instead of English in medical fields in Japan even now.

I think that I heard the word ‘freeter’ for the first time when I returned to Japan in 1993. The definition is not clear, but it is often used to refer to those who are living on a temporary basis and have no special skill. By now (2006), it has become a decent Japanese word. According to the White Paper issued by the Cabinet office in 2003, the number of ‘freeters’ at that time was 4,170,000, which was a number that had doubled since the previous decade.

Freeters are often criticised negatively: They earn a comparatively small income, and they tend to live in economic difficulties, so that quite a few of them try not to pay for social security.

Nonetheless, to me they are very understandable and I would like to praise them because few people in the world can find what they really to do without experiencing different options. Besides, I think that there should be diverse ways of living life, and being a freeter is just one of them.

Why should all the people be uniformed? Why should all the people dream of being rich in monetary terms? Why should the definition of happiness be the same for everybody?

In the post-war period, when people in Japan were busy working hard in order to eat better and possess more, the measurement was different. The majority were happy with the work they had, as long as they could expect a better life. For example, my parents used to work day and night, farming as well as labouring in the construction trade. It was not the work that they chose but was the only work available in the circumstances.

Apparently, the advent of freeters emerged in Japanese society because of drastic economic growth in the 1980s. The unemployment rate stayed at under 3 per cent until the so-called Bubble Economy collapsed in the early 1990s, and there were all kinds of work available in Tokyo.

In the mid-80s, the word ‘freeter’ did not exist; however, in Tokyo, I would barely be able to exist doing temporary work, unless I did not demand much, and there were still very limited chances of finding a good job in rural areas like my homeland in Niigata. Therefore, I tried out a few short-term jobs, such as counting pedestrians on the streets or marking students’ test sheets.

However, it did not take me much time for me to feel empty with such small pieces of work.

Becoming an Animal-sitter

Then, out of the blue, a classified advertisement jumped into my view:

WANTED! Animal Sitters at a Travelling Zoo.

This is it! I thought instinctively. The monthly pay was 100,000 Yen (about US$650 at the rate at that time) for more than a six-day week. It was not very much, even for an unskilled youth, but I found many advantages in the position besides the pay.

Firstly, I did not have to pay for housing; the sitters were supposed to stay in a tent or a shed built temporarily near the animals’ cages. Secondly, three square meals were guaranteed daily; I would not have to starve, even if I ran out of money by the end of the month. And thirdly, I was good at dealing with animals; at least much better than dealing with people.

Rice paddy fields were not only the source of my main daily diet but also my playground, as I wrote in Chapter 1. There I used to spend most of the daytime playing around, eating, watching beyond the field for trains, and sometimes helping my parents. I was surrounded by various kinds of living creatures, except for human beings. In summertime, it was my custom to lie down on a furrow in the middle of the rice paddy, and often I would fall asleep while talking to the birds. Their songs were my lullabies.

Naturally, I was familiar with animals. I realised this fact only after I entered high school, when I thought about what I should become in the future and decided that being a veterinarian would be good. However, it was not a pure dream or a positive wish; rather, it was the last option left for me to avoid dealing with people as much as possible.

My real desire was to travel around the globe, but by then I had admitted that this dream was too far away to reach in reality. So again, by elimination, I decided that dealing with animals was an option.

Kumagaya

The first destination for the travelling zoo was Kumagaya, located about 70 kilometres northwest of the heart of Tokyo. By chance, I am writing this near Kumagaya right now (2006).

In 2003, just before I left for a second visit to South America, the copy in an advertisement posted by a real estate agency caught my eye, just in the same way as when I found the Animal-Sitter Wanted ad:

Property with an old house

The property was only about 100 square metres in size, and even by Japanese standards, it was rather small and it sounded like the house was just an add-on. In fact, it was an old two-storey wooden building, which had been built around 1970 but was now destined for demolition.

However, despite its dilapidated state, I took up the real estate agent’s offer and it is still my home today. I have been very happy here, no matter how much I have had to work on it by painting and nailing. It is not because this is my own home, but because it is small and humble enough for me to consider it a mobile home, just like a big tent or a shed. It reminds me of the temporary shed-like house set up next to the circus tent in Kumagaya, where my roaming life truly began. Otherwise, I would not have thought of possessing a fixed property.

007.tif

CHAPTER 4

KAKINUMA CIRCUS AND A TRAVELLING ZOO

Kumagaya, Saitama—

Tateyama, Chiba—Tokyo, Japan

(Summer 1985)

‘Yakuza’—The Japanese Mafia

A camel, an emu, a horse, a wild boar, two donkeys, a goat, rabbits, and ducks were the main cast members of the moving zoo, which were all looked after by a few sitters including me. All of them except for me were students, and we were staying in prefabricated houses that were set up at a corner of Arakawa River Park.

On the other side of the park was the Kakinuma Circus tent, which was one of the five biggest circuses in Japan at that time.

The zoo and the circus were completely separated, but both were closely related because yakuza—the Japanese mafia or the Japanese gangster organisations—ran the show. Territory management is one of their major tasks, and in many business fields yakuza used to be somehow related, especially in small businesses. Actually, there were a few yakuza members staying in circus tent, not doing much work but watching their territory instead.

Yakuza is known as part of the Japanese culture, but not many people, even in Japan, get to know what they are really like. I used to imagine that they were living on the proceeds of indecent businesses such as drug smuggling, fighting over territories between different groups and using weapons illegally, as this is the stereotypical image of yakuza here in Japan.

Naturally, I was frightened when some of the circus staff told me that they belonged to a ‘kumi’, which means ‘group’ in common use in Japan but also means yakuza in reality.

I wondered if I had made the wrong decision to join a travelling zoo—I had wanted to change the course of my life, but I never wished to be that outrageous.

008.tif

Nevertheless, it did not take me much time to realise that I was biased against yakuza without knowing much about them. They were living an outlaw life to some extent, but they were trained to be loyal to the kumi they belonged to and to be well disciplined. They were honest and decent, normally, when dealing with common people like me. In fact, all the yakuza members were the most friendly and kindest of all the circus staff, which changed my view about yakuza completely.

The more I learned about them, the more I felt a certain familiarity with them. I enjoyed chatting with them. It seemed to be the same for the yakuza people, too; in fact, one of the members offered me a marriage proposal. He said, "I would like to leave kumi sooner rather than later. For that, I need to pay one million Yen and I have to cut off my little finger. But I haven’t saved enough, so please wait a while."

Honestly speaking, for a moment I felt like taking him up on his offer, as he looked very kind and reliable. Nevertheless, I shook my head because I had never dated anybody in my life and I could hardly tell it was right to do.

One day, I saw him rushing out wildly and grave-faced. It was so obvious that something urgent was happening.

I asked him, What’s going on?

He left without responding to me, but he seemed to have weapons hiding in his pocket. Later I heard that it was a dispute against other kumi. Then I realise that had I accepted his proposal, I would have been entering an unimaginable yakuza world that no one could grasp well unless involved in it as a member.

A Petit Melting Pot

Normally, there were twenty to thirty staff in the circus tent including yakuza members. In addition, there were trained animals, such as a chimpanzee and a black bear. They all had facilities that were essential for daily life, while us animal sitters had nothing but a shelter in which to sleep. Therefore, we had to depend on the circus team to eat and to bathe, which involved paying them about US$100 a month for the privilege.

It was the first time I had stayed in mobile style, sharing everything with others. It was so much different from what I had been used to in Niigata, and unsurprisingly I was nervous at first and thought that I would not last that long in such conditions. Yet, it was easier than I had imagined. The environment helped me refresh my mind and dark mentality, which had soaked deep inside me while in the rice paddy fields.

009.tif

The greatest aspects of my life there were the circus people: two dancers from the Philippines, a young Japanese female trapeze artist (who was also a university dropout), a few senior men who had dedicated their lives to being animal trainers or clowns, the yakuza and some others. Each of them was so unique and none of them seemed to place any emphasis on the values of qualifications or money. In this place, this travelling menagerie of animals and people, I did not feel that I was unusual or a dropout—and I certainly forgot about my previous life as an ugly girl.

On the other hand, the zoo staff were not as charming as their circus counterparts. Nevertheless, I felt at ease with them, too, because we all had at least one thing in common: all of us loved animals and felt in harmony and at one with them. We worked outside, no matter how cold or how heavily it was raining, cleaning away animal waste, collecting food, feeding our stock and selling tickets. It was clear that none of us cared about looks, titles, qualifications, or income. There was warmth among us.

I wondered if I would ever again feel so relaxed being with my own brother or with my friends in the same way I had done before. Perhaps the impression would change somehow if we were going to stay together longer, but fortunately, or unfortunately, it never happened.

Poor Animals

The mobile commune life lasted for three months only. The travelling zoo project at Kumagaya resulted in failure because there were not enough visitors and we therefore had to close it down much earlier than initially planned. It had opened in mid-March, just before the spring holiday, but even on a sunny day in the holiday period, there were no more than fifty visitors. Sometimes, when it was raining, there were just a bare few.

There were not many animals like a normal zoo, either, but the admission was still 400 Yen, almost the same as a normal public zoo, and it was thus considered expensive. That said, I thought that the admission price was not the main reason for the failure. When I thought about it later, the reason it had failed to attract people was because the animals were unhappy. The environment in which they lived was terrible: the space in each cage, which we had built using pipes and tools under the supervision of the owner-president, was so small that soon after the zoo opened, many of the animals began bleating. Especially the camel looked incredibly stressed. He was bleating day and night, so loudly that some of the visitors were annoyed and complained instead of being delighted to see him. It was not hard to imagine that all the larger animals were stressed out. I thought we should walk them regularly unless the cage sizes could be extended.

Additionally, food shortages made them suffer physically. Old bread, vegetables, and hay were the main diet for the animals, and the wild boar especially was fed chicken heads. Usually we supplied food bought from shops in town, but later the money ran out and we could not supply them with enough to keep them healthy. The owner was absent and we had no money with us. He was located in Tateyama (in Chiba), where there was another travelling zoo camp set up at the same time as Kumagaya. Initially, he visited us from time to time, but after he found that the business was not going well, he almost never came back until the closing day.

Thanks to the circus, we ate three meals a day, although our salaries were not paid, but we had no funds to buy food for the animals. So eventually, we visited shops nearby and went from door to door begging for some date-expired items or vegetable waste, for no charge. However, it did not work well, and we could feed them only hay and bread in the end. I wondered how we humans would cope if all we had to eat was dry food and crackers day after day. I imagined that we could possibly survive, but I was sure that we would become frustrated mentally and physically—as I could see happening to the animals.

The wild boar was becoming weak and finally lost the power to move around, while the female donkey suffered from heavy constipation. Others kept bleating repeatedly. We were dreadfully upset for the animals, but all we could do for them was to apologise.

It was unbearable for us to see them in such conditions any longer, so we expressed our anger to the owner: We can’t keep working like this.

Then owner replied, OK, we will close here and you can join the Tateyama team.

It was a great relief for us, although it was heartbreaking to see the animals being packed into the trucks.

The environment in Tateyama was far better, there were more animals, including lions and tigers, and the business was going well economically. Nevertheless, I left Tateyama after working there for just a month.

In Kumagaya, I had not had the chance to learn much about the owner, but in Tateyama, I grew to know him far better. It was at this point that I was convinced he did not care about the animals. Since he had to manage everything in the zoo as a business, he had to care about money. I could understand it, but his carelessness regarding the animals was unacceptable, so I decided to leave there right away and to go to Tokyo to look for a job again.

010.tif

By the way, in order to write this story, I looked for traces of the Kakinuma Circus on the Internet. To my surprise, it is still in business (at least until now—2006)! It says that currently there are four circuses in Japan and one of them is Kakinuma, and that the two biggest ones are from old times. It means that two circuses that used to be bigger than Kakinuma have been closed down, as Kakinuma was the fifth biggest during my time. It is understandable that circus entertainment has been declining because even traditional cinema theatres have closed down, as there are various options available now, such as videos and computers.

What a pleasure it is, though, to find that Kakinuma has survived up until now. I feel very proud of Kakinuma. At the same time, I feel insecure about how it will cope in the future, although it seems that one of the four active circuses in Japan today was founded in the 1990s. I hope that it means that the public demand for traditional entertainment like circuses is still alive and kicking.

I remember seeing queues of people waiting for a show in front of the Kakinuma Circus tent almost every opening day, and there were plenty of repeat attendees in subsequent days.

(*While proofreading this manuscript in February 2012, I confirmed that the Kakinuma Circus had closed down, which saddened me greatly).

CHAPTER 5

AWAKENING OF MY WISH

Tokyo, Japan

(Summer 1985)

Off to My ‘Red-Roof’ Tokyo Again

I left the travelling zoo much earlier than I had originally planned. I wondered if I was too impatient, remembering the fact that I had been criticised by people, many of whom said, You are short of patience.

However, I felt very positive with the result because the three-month experience gave me a chance to face realities, both in the outside world and inside myself, with a slightly wider vision of what life was like than when I was in Niigata:

1. I like animals, not because I prefer them to humans, but because they live on instinct, no matter how difficult it is to deal with them.

2. It was wrong of me to work in a zoo where I had to make animals live against their instincts. I should have gone where wild animals were living if I really wanted to be close to them.

3. I am not as bad as I thought at dealing with people. It is the matter of whom I am dealing with. There are various kinds of people in this world, even amongst the Japanese.

4. I like to be somewhere new and I am relaxed even in humble conditions.

Actually, it was while I was working in the zoo that the idea of cycling around the globe came into my mind. In my diary, I wrote about it as follows: Now I have one wish.

With this one wish, I felt energised; it appeared to me that anything was possible. I immediately wanted to hop on my bike and start travelling to wherever I felt and for as long as possible.

However, there was one burning issue: I had very little money.

When I left the zoo, the owner finally paid me the salary promised beforehand. I had about US$1,500 in my pocket, but that was all that I had. Evidently it was too little—not only too little to travel but also too little to rent a flat in Tokyo.

While riding on a train from Tateyama to Tokyo, I suddenly realised what I had to do next: I have to find a job. This was why I did not hesitate to go to Tokyo, where there were numbers of job opportunities. Besides, I had learned that I would meet new friends where there were more people around.

My US$100 Castle

It took me about six weeks to adjust to Tokyo. I did not intend to settle down for a long time, but I thought that I would not be able to move out of there so easily because I had spent the last of my money while searching for a job.

The flat in which I lived was not actually a flat but a renting room. The area I stayed in was called Minami-Nagasaki, located a few kilometres west of Ikebukuro Station, one of the main hub stations in central Tokyo, and it was an old community with few modern buildings. Most of the buildings were individual, old wooden houses, and quite a few of them seemed to have been built before or just after World War II. My room was in one of them.

The rent was less than US$100, which could have been one of the lowest in the area at that time, but so was the quality. However, it did matter much to me because it was the first castle of my very own, where everything was up to me. (*When I visited the place in 1994, I found a tall modern building on the site instead of the house where my US$100 castle was in.)

You might think that US$100 a month in a capital city like Tokyo is unbelievable. It was cheap even by living standards at that time, but you would understand the reason why it was so ‘affordable’ if you saw the conditions on offer.

It was a 4.5-mat-room; in Japan, we call it a "4.5-jou-ma [room]". A ‘jou’ is a unit of counting room size, and the ‘Kanji (one of the Japanese letters derived from Chinese characters)’ of a ‘tatami’ is applied, which is a Japanese traditional mat knitted from grass and called an igusa. One tatami is about 1 metre x 2 metres.

NUMBER%20011_PAGE%2043.tif012.tif

The Japanese custom whereby everybody has to take off their shoes when entering a house from an entrance space is necessary because Japanese houses usually have a number of rooms covered by tatami. Lately, modern houses have been designed in the Western style with wooden or carpeted floors, but still I have never seen a single private house where people could step in with their shoes on.

The size of my room was just about 12 square metres. In modern houses, the living room is often in a Western style and is connected to a dining kitchen. Still, in most cases, there are rooms of ‘4.5-jou’ or ‘6-jou’ room in Japanese houses.

‘Sentou’—The Japanese Communal Bath

It was out of question to have a bathroom or a washroom in those 12 square metres, so instead there was an old sink with a one-way water tap that spat out cold water only.

Did I wash myself in the sink instead of using a bath or a shower? No, I did not because there was a communal bath, called a sentou, located about 100 metres away from the house. There I could take a bath in a huge tub as well as have a shower for 260 Japanese Yen, about US$1.50, for the same amount of time.

In the old times in Japan, especially in cities, many houses had no bathroom for bathing. Instead, there were many communal baths. In 1985, when I settled down in my ‘Red-Roof’ Tokyo, there were at least three communal baths within walking distance. They seemed to be making a union and each regular holiday was different, so that I never missed the chance to wash myself.

There was a washroom (toilette) at the edge of a narrow corridor, along which four tenant rooms, including mine, were situated. The rooms were rented to women only, while there was a middle-aged single male owner living downstairs. It was secure and peaceful. The only and the biggest point that annoyed me was the noise that came from other tenants. Between the four tenant rooms were walls, but they were made of thin board so any talking was heard, and it was easy to imagine what others were doing, especially from some of the noises coming from the room of a young bar hostess who would come back late at night, often with a man. These noises left little to the imagination, so I tried to be as quiet as possible and often used earphones to listen to the radio or to watch the television.

013.tif

The reason that I did not install a telephone line had nothing to do with the noise. I did not find the need or have the money. Even in the flat that I rented near Niigata University, there was no private telephone either, and actually, it was very rare to find a student who had an individual phone line. When I needed to contact someone, I often visited the person’s residence directly to leave a note, if absent; otherwise, I used the payphone installed at a corner of the flat building.

You have been a good tenant, the owner said to me when I was leaving my ‘4.5-jou’ room one day. I felt good about his comment, as I had tried hard to be an upright tenant because I knew I would not be able to find another room so easily if I were evicted for poor behaviour.

‘Super-Sentou’

As time passes by, old wooden houses have to be torn down and then rebuilt in a modern style designed to be private and practical. Very few houses have no bathroom nowadays. As a result, those traditional communal baths, sentou, have fewer and fewer customers and most have been closed down. Yet, a few of them have been surviving until now (in 2006), but they are often so quiet unlike in the 1980s and have serious financial problems.

On the other hand, a new type of sentou, called a super-sentou, has been opening since the 1990s. The traditional sentou was usually located in highly populated areas and not in remote countrysides such as where I was brought up. However, they are now being built in remote areas as huge buildings with various kinds of baths, including saunas, and facilities such as extensive parking lots, restaurants, bars, rest places, movie rooms, games corners, hair salons, shops, gardens and so on.

The super-sentou is a new part of Japanese culture, and one or more is seen in every town. It seems that the scale of development is gaining momentum, too. In the town where I currently reside, there was a super-sentou called Saino-yu, and I would go there from time to time, despite the fact that I have a bathroom in my home. However, it closed down in February 2006 because the owner decided to build the biggest super-sentou in one of the neighbouring towns.

Besides, a new type of communal bath has opened in almost every town since the 1990s. They are part of a social welfare facility being managed by municipal corporations, and they are often free or nearly free for those who are over sixty-five years old, while it costs a few US dollars for those who are younger. These public ones are much cheaper than newer facilities, which often cost about US$10, but the facility is small and simple, and is never as fashionable as super-sentou, with senior visitors mostly.

Drastic Change in the 1980s

Initially, when I first moved in to the rental room, I was afraid of the sentou. I wondered how I could stand naked in front of strangers, as I had not had such an experience before. I felt tense from the moment I took my clothes off, and I tried to hide my body with a towel as much as possible. I tended to finish all the procedures as quickly as possible and could never relax.

Gradually, though, I became used to the environment and could observe things, and after a few months, I realised that all the people consisted of almost the same parts as me, although there were differences in size, shape, and colour. I felt I did not need to be shy about how I looked, and by the time I left the place to become a vagabond on a bicycle, going to the sentou had become a great source of fun.

I love communal baths so much now. They always remind me of my blue but sparking time with a hungry spirit. In remote areas, like where I am now, every house has a bath and people can bathe at home; nevertheless, they still seem to love going to communal baths. It seems that the more our lives become busier and the less community ties we enjoy, the stronger we appreciate communal baths where everybody can be more open with others than on other occasions.

Yet, there is one big difference between the 1985 sentou and those of the present day:

In the past, it was the site of information exchange, including gossip, in the same way a village well would have functioned in older times. Now it is more like a sports club or leisure spa, where people try to rid themselves of stress and fatigue.

CHAPTER 6

UNIFORMED LIFE

Tokyo, Japan

(Summer 1985 - Summer 1986)

‘Passed’ with Compromise

A fter setting up my own castle, at just US$100 a month rent, I concentrated on looking for a job.

It was a tough task, though, especially because I was looking for positions in the creative or commercial fields, as I wanted to change the course of my life. I applied for more than 10 positions in about a month, but with no luck. Sometimes I received a positive reply and attended an interview, but it ended as soon as it started with an excuse such as, We are looking for someone who has a literary background, or, You are a university dropout and I am afraid that you would not stay in the same job too long. I tried to explain my idea and to appeal to their better judgement, but it was all in vain.

Soon money began to run out and I knew I had to find any work by any means. I decided to look for positions that required a background in science or mathematics, as I was more likely to have a chance because of what I studied in my short university career. These positions were not what I was really looking to do, but there was no future without ‘rice’ (‘bread’ in Western culture).

My plan worked instantly. I received a telegram in which there was a word, ‘Passed,’ and I was employed as a computer programmer for a new firm specialising in developing software for its parent company Hitachi Machine Tool.

According to the announcement in the classifieds in a magazine, they were looking for a woman with a scientific background. Later I heard that there were 57 female applicants and they interviewed only a few. It was obvious that the phrase ‘department of physics’ in my resume attracted the executives, as generally it was very rare to find female students in the department, even though I was a dropout.

014.tif

I was pleased to have a job, but I was not truly happy. Firstly, I was disappointed by the fact that people cared about one’s background so much, almost ignoring what one was wishing for the future. Moreover, I had no interest in computer programming. Nonetheless, I convinced myself that I had to appreciate the chance—not for fun but for rice and for saving money in order to realise my newly awakening wish.

At that time, I did not think of the reason why they were looking for a woman. I never thought it would be such an important point for me as to be a trigger for making me feel like leaving Japan as soon as possible.

My Routine Life as an ‘OL (=lady who works in a Japanese office)’

1 —I would get up before 6:00 a.m. and leave my castle at 6:45 a.m., after making up a lunch box and having a quick breakfast. I would arrive at the office and unlock the door at 7:30 a.m.

The parent company was old, originally founded in 1936, and the culture was very traditional Japanese; however, the office I was hired for was a new satellite branch and had applied so-called flextime, with the core time being 11:00 to 16:00. Consequently, the earlier I started, the earlier I could leave the office. Actually, there was a great deal of work to do, and I often worked overtime up to 20:00 or later, hoping that I would be able to save money quicker. Because the basic monthly salary was less than US$1,000, including tax and social security, there was not much surplus for me to save money once I had taken care of bills, food, and so on. Indeed, I preferred to work on weekends too, and I started earlier than anybody else in order to avoid crowded trains during rush hours.

2 —As soon as I opened the door, I would change out of my clothes and into a uniform.

3 —I would switch on the computer and rush to the kitchen to wash all the dirty cups from the previous day. At that time, it was very common for female workers to serve tea or coffee to their male colleagues and to clean it all up at the end of the day.

015.tif

There were 12 people in the office, three of whom were women, including me. One of the three women was an administrator who was three years older than I was. Part of her important duties involved serving tea or coffee to every worker three times a day, and she was in charge of washing cups, too. Therefore, I did not have to wash the dirty cups, but I did it with pleasure because I was the youngest of all. According to Japanese feudalistic customs, I felt that I should do so in order to make myself feel comfortable. In fact, after I started helping her, she softened her attitude to me and eventually I felt much better, so I kept this custom up until I quit the place.

4 —Just after noon, I would go into the guestroom to have lunch with all the ‘OLs’ working on the same floor. A sales department, which shared the same floor, employed two women, so five women altogether would share their lunchtimes every day. There were restaurants near to the office, but it was not common to eat lunch outside, so we would all prepare a lunchbox at home except for special occasions.

5 —At 12:45, I would resume work and stay until 17:15.

Regular working hours were from 9:00 to 17:15, and everybody had to break from work at 17:15, even though one might be working afterwards. Very often, some of the male workers and I would venture out at this time to eat soba (Japanese soba noodle) at the quick soba stand situated next to the office building, and then resume work at 17:30.

6 —At 20:00 or 21:00, I would leave the office and return to my castle. (A few men would always work up to midnight.)

7 —I would grab a quick meal and then visit the local sentou to wash myself. I would go to bed (a futon) just before midnight.

8 —On weekends, I would often go to the office on Saturdays to work quietly. On Sundays, I did all my grocery shopping, cleaning, ironing, and washing, and then I would relax by quietly considering my future.

It was not a bad life and I was contented with it. The salary was not great, but there was a chance to earn extra by working overtime. The harder I worked, the more I could learn to be a good computer engineer. In fact, I was gaining a good reputation in the firm. I had no real friends around me then, but I had no complaints, as all of the people at the office were decent—they appeared so at least for the first a few months—and moderately friendly. Moreover, at weekends, I did not have time to do something with friends anyway.

016.tif

Actions and Reactions

However, the routine life lasted only for one year.

It was not my intention to end it so abruptly, as I had committed to working for the company for at least five years. I had calculated that I could save roughly 500 million Yen (about US$30,000) by working for five years and living as humbly as possible in every respect. In the meantime, I thought I would find a few friends with whom I could share my bicycle journey around the world. Actually, I even put an announcement in a recruiting magazine as follows:

I have a plan to take a bicycle journey around the world for two years. I would like to find friends to join me who are strong physically and mentally.

The editorial office forwarded at least ten postcards. The respondents numbered females and males in equal respect, and all of them were around my age, 20-25. They seemed to be keen on my idea. I replied to all of them in writing by asking, Shall we meet and talk?

As a result, I met with about six people in person and talked about the plan. There were no mobile phones or the Internet at that time, and I had no telephone line at my castle, which was not so common, but it was not so strange either then. The only communication method I had was writing cards or letters, and it was not so easy for us to develop a friendship. Besides, I had little time for a social life.

Still, I met with some of them repeatedly and I expected to have at least one friend with whom to share my wish. Nevertheless, an unexpected obstacle appeared in front of me without warning.

High Walls between Men and Women

One day, when a couple of months had passed working for the firm, there was an office meeting regarding a new project in which I was also involved. Naturally, I expected that the manager would call me to attend, but it did not happen. The manager called in my colleague, who had joined the firm at the same time as I did and shared every aspect of work with me—we even sat next to one another. Two other women were also ignored; one was a programmer who had joined just before I started and the other was the administrator.

There were three women left in the office, with all the men in the meeting.

Why? I asked the other programmer woman. All she said, smiling, was, Well, it’s so.

I could not understand why she would accept such reality so naturally. If the male colleague who was next to me had not attended, it would have been understandable. If there was even a slight difference between what I was doing and what he was doing, it would have been easier for me to find a decent excuse. However, there was no difference at all between us—apart from gender.

I had wondered about the firm’s customs once before, when my manager passed business cards to my male colleague but not to me. I tried to dismiss it, thinking it was just the matter of timing and that I would have one later; however, that never transpired. Obviously, it was a company policy to treat people differently according to their gender.

The Sooner, the Better

From that point on, I began to feel uncomfortable working in the office. I found that women were excluded in many ways, and I felt like leaving the firm as soon as possible. Perhaps it was very common at that time to have such unfair treatment in Japan. In fact, in some firms in Japan, it is still commonplace, just like the custom whereby women are expected to play the role of a wallflower at work and not be part of the real workforce. It is easy to call this discrimination part of a culture, and I would have accepted it had I had no alternative but to do so.

However, I did have one alternative: I could leave not only the firm but also Japan to see other parts of the globe.

I looked at my bank statement. I had saved about US$3,000 in six months. It seemed to be too little to do something tangible; therefore, I decided to keep working for the company for a while in order to save the least amount of money I could get away with.

At the same time, I decided to forget about those who wanted to ride with me, as none of them had any money at all. They were keen on the idea, but they seemed to think it was no more than a dream. I did not wish to go by myself at all, but I did not want to risk losing a chance because of others’ convenience. I took the risk of doing it all alone.

When I told my 70-year-old boss the reason for my resignation, he said, Do you really know what it means? You don’t know anything. I have a son who studied in a high school in Michigan, USA. He said it is so dangerous there. Many people have guns and rape women so easily.

I listened to him and tried to say as little as possible, not only because I was not in a position to object to him but also because I knew that it was not so easy to make myself understood. I took his angry face as the sign of a closed mind.

I think I know what it means, I answered. Or maybe I do not know really. But it doesn’t matter. I just can’t help trying it.

Well, I have nothing to say then, he retorted. "You are also a shin-jinrui ([new human race]—a popular word used mostly by seniors to describe the younger generation at that time). I just can’t understand it."

I was not happy to hear that, but I accepted it as a natural reaction.

When