An Unforgettable Primal Scene | Kikuko Ota (Dean, Faculty of Nursing and Medical Care)

2009.11.30

A train runs through the mountains. When a voice from somewhere calls out, "We're entering a tunnel!" everyone rushes to close the windows to keep the smoke out.

Amidst a landscape of mandarin orange groves, likely unchanged for over fifty years, I am immersed in a memory that suddenly surfaces: "We all closed the windows together, didn't we?" This is a journey tracing the past with my older sister and brothers.

I was born on Hatsushima Island, near the mouth of the Arida River in Wakayama Prefecture, and lived there until I was three. Due to my father's job transfer, we lived in a duplex company house. It was on sandy ground near the seashore, and sometimes crabs would jump out when we turned on the garden tap. Occasionally, we would be told, "The 'bomb' is here!" We would put rice in a bowl and go to an empty lot, where they would make arare (puffed rice) for us with a loud bang.

We found the site of the company housing, now overgrown with weeds. Relying on the memories of my sister and brother, we took a picture of the spot where we thought our home once stood.

The kindergarten, which used to be in a pine grove, was still there in its original building, now surrounded by houses. I walked for over thirty minutes to get there, and it was said that the children from the beach were fast runners.

My mother, then around thirty, must have been very busy raising her children, but she enjoyed the company of her young friends in ways she couldn't in Tokyo, participating in a chorus group and taking tea ceremony lessons at the company housing. When my father took our dog, Pochi, for a walk on the sandy beach, he would throw his prized Pochi, with his white "tabi" paws, into the sea to make him swim.

When the tide receded, perhaps during a spring tide, we could walk across to "Karumo Island," which lay in front of the beach. My sister fondly recalls how everyone, adults and children alike, would go out together to enjoy it.

Now, a concrete causeway has been built, allowing people to walk to the island at any time. The sandy beach was gone; the sea had been dredged, and a pier had been built. From "Karumo Island," I scanned the horizon, searching for the direction of the old sandy beach and the company housing. It was then that I realized for the first time. My faint memories had always been of the sea, but in fact, our town was surrounded by low, green mountains right behind it. I had always wondered why I had this persistent desire to live somewhere with a view of the mountains, and for the first time, it all made sense. This was part of my primal scene. The calm sea, the gentle ridgelines as if embracing it, and the lives of the people nestled in between. The vibrant days of my young parents were here. I continued my journey, feeling as if I were enveloped in the presence of my parents, the very people I had most wanted to come here with.

(Published: 2009/11/30)