Suzanne Kamata's Blog, page 7

About “Peace on Earth”

I contributed a story called “Peace on Earth,” about a biracial boy with divided loyalties who goes on a trip to Okinawa with his family, to the forthcoming anthology Tomo, edited by Holly Thompson. Proceeds from this book will benefit teen survivors of the tsunami that hit north-eastern Japan on March 3 of last year. You can read an interview with me about the story here.

First Fuji

Nothing quite says Japan like Mt. Fuji. In fact, one of my earliest and most enduring images of the country was a photo in the World Book encyclopedia of the Shinkansen  speeding past the iconic peak. Mt. Fuji, with its distinctive gentle, asymmetrical slopes and its cone-shaped top, has inspired poetry and prose, art, a religion, and at least one pop song (“Funk Fujiyama” as sung by the popular mid-1990s group Kome Kome Club). The renowned woodblock artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) created the series 36 Views of Mt. Fuji, which now show up on souvenir T-shirts and mugs. The mountain – or, more accurately, the volcano – appears on Japanese coins and bills, on the tiled walls of bathhouses nationwide, in movies and in manga.

My first real-life view of Fuji-san was from a Shinjuku hotel window on a clear day, just after I’d arrived in Japan. I’d seen it several times since then – from airplane windows, from a park in Yokoyama, and once, up close, during a visit with my parents. Perhaps my twelve-year-old children would see Mt. Fuji for the first time on a road trip en route to Tokyo Disneyland.

 

That morning we piled our car with blankets and food – tuna sandwiches, bento-boxed lunches, Soy Joy bars, tangerines, and homemade banana bread – and set off from our home in Tokushima Prefecture. The sun was just bursting through the clouds, painting the sky pink and orange. Since it was a Sunday, there were few cars on the road. We’d heard rumors of snow in Kyoto and its environs, but so far, the signs boded well. Although Mt. Fuji is often obscured by clouds, if the weather held, we just might be able to catch a glimpse.

My daughter, in the backseat, tracked our progress on a road map. Her finger fell on Naruto as we crossed the bridge connecting Shikoku to Awaji Island. Underneath, we could see the white froth of the whirlpools churning the waters. After we crossed the island with its many onion fields, and traversed another suspension bridge, we entered Kobe.

Beyond Hamamatsu, a city known for its large Brazilian immigrant population and its Honda plant, we began to spot the tea fields of Shizuoka, some of them studded with small wind turbines. Deep pink sazanka blossoms decorated the bushes along the meridian.

And then, finally – “Fuji-san!” my husband cried. “Shutter chance!”

Yes, there it was, looming unmistakably over the surrounding mountains, its peak dolloped with a fluffy white cloud. Surprisingly, there was no snow on the slopes.

“Waaaa!” my daughter exclaimed.

My son, in the front passenger seat, began snapping pictures like a  modern-day digital Hokusai. My daughter drew a picture of the mountain in her notebook.

In Japan, it’s said that if you dream of Mt. Fuji on the first day of the New Year, you’ll have good luck. Perhaps seeing the mountain live, in person at the end of the year will have the same effect.

 

My 1980s novel – The Screaming Divas

I’ve often talked and written about The Screaming Divas, a novel set in underground 1980s Columbia, South Carolina. The novel was inspired by the all-girl groups of the early 1990s, such as Bikini Kill, and also by my nights hanging out at a club called The Beat. I have a certain fondness for this novel and all that it evokes. It was once represented by a big-time agent, who, alas, couldn’t sell it. The timing was off, I guess, and I’m not sure that it’s publishable now. I think most editors would want me to make the main character nicer, or to set it in the present, and it just won’t work that way. But I’ve published bits of it here and there, and readers have said that they’d like to read more, so I went ahead and uploaded a Kindle version. If you’d like to read it, you can find it here. I’m thinking I’ll create a better cover later, but for now, I think the DIY vibe fits the story.

Hot Off The Press!

I’m happy to report that an excerpt from my unpublished novel, The Screaming Divas, is now published in Hunger Mountain. You can read it here. If you like this part, you can read another chapter, published as “How Harumi Became a Punk Rocker” in Woman’s Work: Stories.

Also, if you’ve got an e-reader, or if you’re giving one for Christmas, consider downloading Anthology: Realistic Fiction from Cicada, which includes my novella “Pilgrimage.”

And finally, thanks to Liz at Motherlogue for a wonderful review of my most recent book, The Beautiful One Has Come: Stories.

Welcome to Our Home

A couple of months ago, my son brought home a memo from school calling for families to host a group of students who would be visiting from Australia. They’d been planning on visiting the Tokyo area, but due to the March 11th earthquake and worries about radiation, they’d had a change in itinerary.

At first, I hesitated to volunteer. After all, the students were probably eager to experience Japanese culture, and our family is hardly typical. I’m an American and my husband is Japanese. Our children embrace both cultures.

We eat with chopsticks much of the time and take off our shoes before entering the house. We soak in the same bathwater in winter. But we communicate in English and Japanese Sign Language as well as Japanese. Sometimes we draw pictures to get our point across. Mealtimes are also a little unusual. Ordinarily, my husband makes breakfast for our family. The morning menu ranges from spaghetti peperoncino to fried rice and Chinese pot-stickers. Occasionally we start the day with blueberry pie. What would a teen-ager from Down Under make of our cultural mish-mash? Wouldn’t she be happier immersed in traditional Japan?

On the other hand, many other families were reluctant to open their homes at relatively short notice. Maybe they were busy, or worried about communication, or didn’t have enough space for a guest. I wanted to be welcoming. Japan is known for its hospitality, after all. And, come to think of it, our family may have its own unique habits and customs, but doesn’t everyone? These days, just as many Japanese people sleep in beds as on futons, and many houses have carpeting or hardwood floors instead of tatami. Furthermore, mixed marriages are on the rise in Japan, having more than doubled over the past ten years or so, according to government sources. Now, 1 in 30 babies in Japan is born to parents of different cultures. So perhaps our multicultural family is not all that unusual.

At any rate, I signed up. The Australian junior high school students arrived during a torrential downpour. School was let out early that day and cancelled the following day due to flooding. We wound up spending more time than we’d expected with our guest, a tall, 15-year-old girl who liked to dance. While she was here, she communicated with us in all three of our languages. (My daughter taught her some Japanese Sign Language, which she immediately put to use.) She played video games with our children (the same ones that she played at home). She slept in a bed and took showers. At breakfast, we offered her miso soup, which she declined, and at dinner, we served the popular Japanese dish curry and rice, which she told us she enjoys back home on the Gold Coast as well. As far as I could tell, the exchange was a success.

A month later, my son set out for Hawaii where he would spend a night with a local family. With his hazel eyes and fondness for macaroni and cheese, he was hardly the emissary most Americans would expect from the East. But perhaps when they opened their home to him, they became acquainted with the future of Japan.

The first time I had sushi

I’ve recently become a big fan of Kristin Bair O’Keeffe’s blog Writerhead, which is directed at expatriate writers, but offers inspiration for anyone. Once a week, there’s an interview with a writer. (Click here, for Kristin’s spotlight on me) and every Saturday, there’s a writing prompt. I wrote the following in response to the prompt “The first time I…”

I had sushi for the first time in Columbia, South Carolina with a guy named Keith. This was back in the 80s, before raw fish on vinegared rice was cool. Before you could buy California rolls at

WinnDixie.

Keith had been born and raised in the state. He’d never lived anywhere else, and he had no aspirations to move away. Me, I was from Michigan. I’d moved down south for my senior year of high school, but I didn’t plan to stay for long. From way back I had dreams of settling in New York City or Paris or maybe someplace in Australia. I wanted to have adventures, to see the world.

We didn’t have sushi in the small northern town where I’d grown up. But Keith knew a place. It was out in Forest Acres, on the edge of the capital city. The storefront was non-descript, the parking lot

dirt, and I took it to be something of a dive. Inside, it was dark. We settled in a vinyl booth and a Japanese waitress with dyed blonde hair came to take our order.

I let Keith do the talking. He’d worked in restaurants and he knew how to cook. Even in his early twenties, back before the age of celebrity chefs, he was something of a foodie. Anyway, he knew his

sushi and his sake better than I did. I knew nothing.

A little while later, the neon-haired waitress, who knew Keith from previous visits, brought platters of sushi to the table. I pinched a morsel of maguro on rice with my lacquered chopsticks and

took a bite. Oh, how it melted in my mouth! And that dab of wasabi – so exciting! The glistening salmon roe, like small ruby beads, burst in my mouth. It was like nothing I’d ever tasted before. And the warmed sake was like liquid bread infusing my limbs.

Not long after, I moved to Japan to teach English. I’ve now lived on the island of Shikoku for twenty-three years. Here, of course, sushi is readily available, and probably better in quality than the

first sushi I sampled inland. But sometimes I get stuck in a rut. These days, I often go for weeks if not months without trying something new.

My friend Keith left this world the other day. In his obituary, he was described as a lifelong resident of South Carolina. That makes him sound kind of boring, like he never went anywhere or

did anything special. But I know different. Keith was the kind of person who could find adventure just around the corner, who knew that life was right in front of you, waiting to be seized.

For Keith, With Love

So I’m here at my computer, drinking coffee and checking Facebook updates, thinking about how I should be hanging out the laundry, or how I should be out on a power walk, or working on a novel. And then this message pops up: “Sue, are you there?”

 It’s one of my Facebook friends, one of my real life friends. She wants to know if I’ve seen the post on her wall. If I’ve heard about you.

  And before she writes any more, I know what she’s going to say. I remember that email you sent a couple years ago, after attending our high school reunion, which began “Geez I didn’t think I’d live this long,” and I remember the closet full of guns and your hero worship of Yukio Mishima.

  And then I remember other things, like the first time we actually met. I was the new girl at school, the Yankee from up north. I’d made a friend – a classmate who lived in a haunted house who had a crush on you. I can’t recall under what ruse we went to visit you at your house, but I remember the three of us listening to home-grown punk rock in your bedroom, and laughing a lot. The next day at school, you sent me a note.

 At the time, I was pining for some bad boy in Michigan, so I didn’t appreciate your interest. I’m sorry. But we were young, and I think you liked to pine, too. Before me, you’d spent years longing for somebody else.

Now I’m remembering that you’re the only guy, in my 45 years, who ever sent me a dozen red roses. The only guy to ever paint my portrait. The only guy who ever wrote a song about me. You were there at the end of every crappy college relationship. There was that time when the guy I had fallen in love with hooked up with somebody else at The Beat, leaving me stranded. You gave me a ride on the back of your motorcycle all the way back to Lexington, forty miles or so in the middle of the night. You were a dependable and caring kind of guy. And you cooked like a demon. Man, you could cook.

 Maybe I wasn’t a good enough friend. Maybe I didn’t listen hard enough. I remember going down to the riverside at night (with a bottle of booze, probably) and hearing about your latest heartbreak. I know I listened, but maybe I didn’t say the right thing. And that email message you sent on Valentine’s Day three and a half years ago. Was that some kind of cry for help? I figured you were drunk and feeling nostalgic, that you probably felt better a few days later. Now I find myself regretting my perky reply. But I was there. I wrote back, didn’t I? And there were others among us who wanted to be with you, to be there for you. Hey, and why didn’t you come to any of my readings or book signings like you said you would?

 I dig into my drawer of old photos, trying to find that one of you holding a sword in front of the portrait you painted of Yukio Mishima. I come across a postcard from Graceland sent in 1988, back before I was married.  You wrote: “I went to see the Big E for Thanksgiving. I went by myself and it kind of bummed me out ‘cos it rained all day, was really commercialized, and 90% of the people never really care about Elvis it seems.”

 I think you cared about Elvis. I think you cared about a lot of things.

Later, when you finally met my husband, you told me that you liked him in spite of yourself. He felt the same about you. He’ll always remember you because you helped him realize that typical Japanese fantasy of firing a gun. You were careful with guns, though. Although you accidentally shot yourself in the toe that one time, I remember that you were safety-conscious.

 Those boys I pined for, they’re all on Facebook now – married and having barbecues, or divorced with three kids, selling used cars, “looking for a relationship.” Last I heard, you were still spinning records, cooking gourmet meals, making movies with friends and entering them in film festivals, going out, painting. I sent you a message, telling you that there were photos of you on Facebook, urging you to “be my friend,” but you replied that you weren’t interested in social networking.

 That was two years ago.

I can’t believe you’re gone.

I send a message to you via email: “Please tell me that rumors of your death have been greatly exaggerated.

 But there is no reply.

(In memory of Ernest Keith Wilson 1965-2011)