This is not exactly about the relationship between son and I, but I'm sure it relates:

On the train yesterday, I ran into another American. We'd met once before. I remembered he lived in the next town over, had a Japanese wife and daughter, and also taught English.

"How's it going?" I asked.

"Not bad, you know."

After some more chit chat about work and stuff, I asked after his family.

"Oh, you know, we're probably getting a divorce."

"Sorry. Say no more: I know how difficult it is to be married to a Japanese woman. We're Americans. Completely different cultures. Even if you both understand what each other is saying, perfectly, there's so much that gets misunderstood, culturally, that there's going to be tension and stress no matter what. Been there, done that, dozens and dozens of times."

"Yeah?"

"Oh, yes. My only advice is to just be patient. It's difficult. You've really only got one choice, but it can two ways: Give up and walk away or give up and stay. What's the problem? Money? Work?"

"Oh, no. The problem's with me. I just can't be tied down to one woman. I want to have sex with other women, lots of other women. I should have stayed single."

Yeah, you should have. What about your kid, you selfish wanker? was all I could think from this point on. He said other things, but none of it really registered. I wished him luck and pulled out my notebook and worked on a story, just so I wouldn't have to talk to him anymore. He got off the train; I nodded at him. I have no desire ever to speak to him again.




 

When I write, I think and realize things by going back over what I've written. I realize I have a choice: study Japanese or write.

If I devote all my free time to studying Japanese instead of writing, I will be able to talk to son now. However, if I devote most of my free time to writing, I will have just a little time to study Japanese, make some progress on that front, and leave a body of writing for son to have access to when he is old enough to read and understand all the things that I could not say to him when he was. Write now and talk later or talk now and write later?

It's like the old adage: we write to our dead selves and dead others, never certain if what we write will be received, never sure if it will even arrive at its destination (thank you, Derrida's Poste Carte). My writing is what son will read when I can no longer speak. To write or to speak: which has primacy? Sorry, Plato, but I have to cast my vote on the side of writing. I write to my son who does not understand my speaking.
 

We started well this morning. Momma went to school early, so i figured I'd give him a treat and let him watch his favorite TV program during breakfast. Everything was going well--he ate well, he ate fast, and he liked the food--but when I told him to go to the bathroom and wash his face and then come back and change clothes, he told me to not do something. I could catch the not part, and it was about clothes, so i figured he said that I shouldn't lay his clothes out as usual--he's a big boy now, I figured, and didn't want his father's help so much. I was wrong.

When I told him to get dressed, he started screaming about how I never listen to him, about how I don't understand. He screamed really loud. He hit the floor. He tried kicking me. These were signs of real frustration. When I finally calmed him down enough to explain, he said that he told me he wasn't going to change clothes until his program was finished, and that I said that was okay. "Why did you change? Why do you always change?" {i]Nan de wakaran-cha?

I wanted to give up. I can't understand him. I don't have the time or energy to study enough to catch up to his level of Japanese. I never will.

Yesterday, they were laughing at breakfast. He had made a joke: Konbu tabette nai. "I won't eat konbu." Konbu is a Japanese food.

"I don't get it."

"Eh? Why not? Does papa want to eat fox farts?"

"What?"

"Kon kon: that's the sound a fox makes. Bu: that's the sound of a fart. Get it?"

How can I ever catch up to this?
 

So, I talked to my students today, trying to get to the reasoning behind the system of school lunches in Japan. Pretty amazing differences in assumptions and thinking.

For one thing, most schools in Japan don't have enough money to afford a separate building in which to have school lunches, or enough money to afford a janitor for cleaning up after the kids. What is more, they don't want students to "look down" on the people who do such jobs; by having the children do this cleaning themselves, they learn respect for others (and for themselves). Do we look down on janitors in America? Definitely. Japanese people try to teach kids not to rank jobs--if the kids are cleaning up after themselves and helping to prepare the food, then they may think badly of the people who do these kinds of jobs for a living.
 

I visited son's school the other day to learn more about how they do school lunches in Japan. I was blown away by the sheer time and effort put into it, both by the students and by the teachers.

A group of students bring large containers of food from the kitchen to the classroom. While they are doing that, the other students prepare their desks and lunch sets for eating. The teacher, wearing an apron, directs the proceedings. The students serve the food, eat the food, clean up after themselves; the teacher, again, directs all, helps with mistakes, clears up misunderstandings. So different from the way I'd done it in the States.

I have new-found pity for teachers in Japan (I already felt bad for Japanese teachers, anyway), and renewed frustration with the education system here. The students and teachers lose so much time this way, time they could better use for educational pursuits.

I have asked other teachers about the reasoning behind this, and they have told me that the parents believe it is the teacher's responsibility to teach the children about healthy food and eating manners; principals and such believe it teaches discipline.

I believe it is the responsibility of parents to teach their children about food, manners and discipline. The teachers I spoke to agreed, but, "regrettably, there are some children who, if they don't learn it at school, will not learn it at all." I am not sure if this is a comment about lax or absent parents, or about the sheer fetish for rules exhibited at all levels in Japanese society.

Still, son smiled at me as he ate his food, laughed and joked with the other students as they pointed me out. I waved back at him, a war of conflicting emotions and concerns raging within. I was surrounded by mothers, people whose entire demeanor seemed to be that they wanted only to be seen being involved. None of them complain; I am afraid nothing will change. My teacher-friends have said they believe the system will change, they hope it will change; I have my doubts.
 

For years, we have had trouble getting son to eat, especially breakfast. He eats slow, or doesn't eat at all. He plays with his shirt and pants, daydreams, chews slow, and scratches himself all the time. We have tried everything, but he always complains that he is itchy. He shifts around, rubs his eyes, scratches and scratches. He has allergies. Strangely, they never hit when he's doing something he likes. I lost my temper with him this morning because he laughed at me when yelled at him to eat (after asking 10 times, mind you). Finally, he ate--half the amount I asked him to, but we were running out of time. He needed to go to school. And then, five minutes to get out the door, he is surprised, even angry, that we don't have time to play. Am I such a terrible parent? I played with him, quickly, so that he could start the day happier than I. I am spoiling him. I am failing, again.
 

When I came home from work at 9:30 last night, wife was sleeping as usual, but son had stayed awake, secretly, and was hiding in the darkened kitchen to surprise me. I thanked him, gave him a big hug, told him I loved him, but that he needed to go to bed. He said OK and, "Ashita good day shiou." Tomorrow let's have a good day. I hugged him again and put him to bed. I ate my dinner and then worked on my own business and writing until about 11:30pm.

Very busy morning, with wife scrambling to finish her homework and catch the bus to university, so I did the laundry, the dishes, made breakfast and got son ready for school. He was a little slow eating breakfast, but we managed to get 10 minutes of playing in there before I had to push him out the door to school. He was smiling and acting silly. The sun was shining--a brief break in the rainy season.

*P.S.: ridiculously unintelligent censorship may reduce some of the Japanese words to asterisks. Take it up with the site managers, please.
 

Obviously, it is a homophone of "raising the son".

But why? And why "the"?

I have only one child; though we have tried for many years, we will not have another. Therefore "the". I also like the fact that "son" emphasis the relationship.

OK. Why the homophone? Why the wordplay?

I like the fact that such a word play erases without really erasing the original; also, such homophones highlight the difference between writing and speech; since I consider myself more of a writer than a storyteller, I consider myself behold to bring people's attention to this difference. "Raising the son" is still there, it's easy enough to see, but the homophone title suggests so many other things. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida utilized a lot of word play to emphasize the difference between writing and speaking, and I would like to continue that work in my own way.

Is there any special significance to your "razing" or "sun"?

Well, I chose them became of their similarity in sound, but now that I think about it more, it makes sense. "The sun" is a Western image of rationality, and the black American poet Phyllis Wheatly did some nice reversals on that. Furthermore, my son and I often communicate outside rationality, both because of our lack of a shared tongue, forcing us into some very emotional non-rational exchanges and because, I suspect, and the doctors have warned, we both operate inside of the condition known as Asberger's. Thus, when we speak, we attack rationality, and when we don't speak we avoid rationality; we love, which is not rational: we raze the sun, though the sun is still there, lurking behind us, judging us. And this is Japan, and the rising sun is sacred to the Japanese. So there's also the issue of colonialism.

Colonialism?

In order to stay competitive in the world markets, the government has created strong incentives for Japanese people to learn English. Millions of people learn English in Japan. However, learning English is not a neutral act. English communication carries with it all the detritus of Western culture, especially Western modes of exchange. When Japanese people communicate in English, they are forced to think and communicate in ways that are decidedly Western--thus, little by little, their own culture is attacked. I grew up reading books about the "Indian Wars," my first wife was an anthropologist and Lakota Souix, so I'm fairly familiar with the process of colonization. Anyone who believes that can teach or learn English without affecting their own thinking is naive. Sorry. My son is not billingual, not "half" as they say in Japan (a term I loathe), is not multi-cultural: he is a cultural mileau, his mother's culture and my own getting mixed up in there amidst all the other elements he gets from TV, movies, the Internet, books, music and such. Razing: the cultures are there, they can, perhaps, be seen, but are no longer what they were before.

So, you're saying that even though you chose the title merely on the whims of wordplay, you want us to believe that all these other messages are in there, too?

Yes. Why not?

But you didn't intend them.

What writer can control all the possible readings their work might be subjected to? Such control is illusory and depends to much on outmoded notions of property and exchange. Once I write something, I try to get it away from me as much as possible, much as I am trying to get my son to be more and more independent of me.

How was your morning with your son?

It was good, actually. The first good morning in a long, long time. We played a little last night, and we played with his mother a little this morning. It is raining heavily outside (the rainy season has struck in Japan) and I have to go to the store to buy him the new umbrella he asked for.

Will you return to these issues again?

Definitely. I have just barely touched on them here.

Why are you conducting this mock interview with yourself?

Because the house is empty and I have no one else to talk to.


 

More tears this morning.

A common refrain is my son's repeated reprimand that I don't wait until he's finished speaking before I speak. Interesting turn of the tables there.

I do wait. I wait until there's a long pause--sometimes I do not understand what he says, so I just wait until it seems that he's finished. Sometimes I am mistaken and have interrupted, unwittingly, before he's finished his thought. This frustrates him so much. But I suspect, now, that he's just using this against me, that I haven't really interrupted him, that he knows how frustrating it is for me to have him yelling at me for being bad at communication. Is he using it as a weapon against me? I honestly do not know. I cannot tell. I am bad, perhaps, at reading the air, worse at understanding my son when he is angry and speaking fast.

How difficult this must be for him. My clearest childhood memories are from around the age of five or six, so there's always this voice in my head telling me that these days are going to be my son's earliest memories of me, and him memories are going to be full of frustration, anger and sadness. I could walk away, like my fathers did, and perhaps his life would be easier for him, for me. Would he have finished talking by then? Would I know how to reply? Or should I just sit and listen and wonder if what he says is what he means, if of what he accuses me really is at it seems? Will things get worse? I am afraid of that.

By the way, if you see an immigrant father or mother in your country, please understand that they are probably going through the same as I. If you have any sympathy at all, know that their life is not easy, that they may not have chosen to be there, that they may, above all, just want a normal life but are denied by the very language and society that holds them outside--this is neither wholly society or the immigrant's doing, but instead a dynamic inter-tension that never resolves. Assimilation never occurs intra-generation. Smile, but do not condescend. Listen hard, share the burden of their broken tongue; it was not always thus broken and they may not have the time or energy to fix.
 

Yet more tears this morning as I told my son to hurry up and do his homework before school.

"Iike" his said. Go away! I translated.

"No, you do your homework!"

"Iike! Nan de wakaran?" Go away. Why don't you understand?

"Because you have to do your homework."

He started crying. It was a terrible morning. He did not want to go to school after that.

It wasn't until hours later that I remember that in our part of Japan, "ke" is a dialect form of "da kara" or, in English "therefore". That meant that "ii" was the usual "OK". He was telling me "It's no problem. I'll do it." So much in Japanese depends on context. I can't read the context, can't read the air, as they say, because I was raised in America, not Japan, and in America we don't raise kids to read the situation to the extent that Japanese do.

I failed again. Wonderful.
 

I am tired of hearing the surprise in so many Japanese people's voices when I tell them that my son usually speaks Japanese, and that he does not like speaking English. They always assume that because his father is American, he must be fully bi-lingual. I always have to explain that I only get to spend a couple hours a day with him--and in that time, I do try to speak only English to him--but the rest of his day, the rest of his friends and family, is filled with Japanese. He sees little reason to speak English. He understands it well enough for a kid of six, but he is not at all comfortable speaking it. I am just tired of having to explain it to people--sometimes for the second or third time.
 

Yes, there is a mother. I will no say more about the mother.
 

We had our usual morning fight, even though we did manage to sneak some play time in and had a fairly good breakfast. But just before heading out the door for school, he wanted a snack. I told him one would be okay, but he insisted on two: his new candy and the old standby, kanyuu, which is basically like soft, sweet cough drop. Kanyuu is medicine, or so his mother and grandparents have convinced him. It's candy. I know it's candy. I've told him it's candy, but he doesn't believe me. I told him "only one," but he got angry, insisted that he needed both because he wanted candy and medicine. He launched into the complicated, speedy kid's Japanese, the grammar structures I can't follow, only words popping out at me like road signs at night, hinting at the convoluted yet beautiful landscape beyond the headlights. I could catch the word "medicine." He fired off a question at me. I assumed he just wanted the candy. I said, "No. You can't have two. Only one." He grew frustrated, screamed the question at me again. Is this the Asberger's? I wondered. I wanted so much to calm him, so I guessed an answer, but I had little clue as to what he was saying. He started crying, throwing things around the room. I did my best to calm him but, failing to understand his questions about "medicine," only succeeded in frustrating him, and me, further. My insides twisted in knots. I, who have spent so many years perfecting my English, a published writer and former university English teacher, one of the best ESL teachers in this region of Japan, can't handle to simplest communications with my son, who I love more than anyone else in my life, who, I fear, I am losing. Finally, I realized his question was not about the candy that he thinks is medicine but the medicine his sometimes takes for his allergies.

"Where is my medicine?" he was asking.

"You don't need that medicine today," I said, relieved to be getting somewhere.

"Oh, really. So, you want me to die?" He is six, so he has yet to master the art of guilt-trips.

We argued more. I gave up. He gave up. We stood tense, facing off against each other in the kitchen, finally apologizing. We left for school, but before we walked down the stairs, we sat down.

"I love you, you know," I said in English.

"I know," he said in Japanese. "But, papa, even Americans have to study Japanese in Japan."

Anger rose in me as I heard this reprimand again. Two years ago, the company I worked for went bankrupt, the largest in Japanese history. Since then, I have struggled to bring in money by setting up my own school and working two other part-time jobs to make ends meet. I also write, hoping that someday I can make a living this way. Perhaps I don't study Japanese as much as I could, but I do study about three or four hours a week. I try. I have no friends, no family other than my wife and son, and I get to speak English, naturally, about twice a month. I know I should study more. I want to study more. I do not have the energy to study more. I am tired. I am very, very tired.

I kissed him and sent him off to school.

Tomorrow is Saturday. We will not have to fight like this again for two more days. What can I do to make the most of it?