Prepared by W Kelly for Anthro 254
Reading notes for Elisabeth Bumiller,
The Secrets of Mariko: A Year in the
Life of a Japanese Woman and Her Family
(Random House, 1995)
Cast
of characters: (see also the genealogy of the
Tanaka family)
Mariko: turned 44 on the day that
Bumiller first met her in February, 1991
Takeshi: husband; electrical engineer
Shunsuke: sixteen-year-old elder
son, entering eleventh grade in April, 1991
Chiaki: fifteen-year-old daughter,
who graduated from junior high school and entered high school in April, 1991
Ken-chan: nine-year-old younger
son, entering fifth grade in April, 1991
Saburō: Mariko’s father,
born 1913
Ito: Mariko’s mother, born in
1916, and bedridden for the last twenty years
Setting:
Ichomachi
Time
period of research: February, 1991 to March, 1992
Author's
background.
Bumiller graduated from the Columbia School of Journalism with a Master's
degree in 1979 and worked as a reporter for the Style Section of the Washington
Post until 1985. From 1985 to 1987, she reported for the Post from New Delhi;
she went with her husband Steven R. Weisman (a Yale B.A.), who served as the
correspondent for the New York Times. Bumiller wrote an extended account of
her explorations in India as May You Be the Mother of A Hundred Sons: A
Journey Among the Women of India (Random House, 1990). Then from spring,
1989 through spring, 1992, she was a Washington Post correspondent in Tokyo,
with Weisman, who reported there for the New York Times. In 1995, she joined the New York Times
as a reporter on the New York City metropolitan staff (and later City Hall
Bureau Chief), and on September 10, 2001, she took up a post as White House
correspondent for the New York Times.
(February-March)
EB met
Mariko first on Valentine’s Day, 1991 (which was also the day of Mariko’s
44th birthday): initial meeting and impressions
Why did
Mariko consent to such an extended intrusion?
23-27: a brief run through Japanese history.
What does Bumiller claim to be the ways of the past that have shaped
Mariko’s life?
(March-April)
Begins
on March 20th, the day of Chiaki’s graduation from ninth-grade
(i.e., from junior high school), and this introduces the younger generation—Mariko’s
children—and Mariko as mother.
In April,
EB met and spoke with Mariko’s parents, and the chapter then shifts to introducing
the older generation, and setting Mariko in context as child of Saburō
and Ito.
Her mother
Ito was from a rural family (like the Satōs in Allinson’s opening chapter)
and she came to Tokyo for work as a live-in maid. Saburō was a lumberyard worker and
had already been drafted once in 1933, spending a year in Beijing.
Saburō
and Ito were introduced in late 1939, when she was 23 and he was 27. They married in February, 1940. In late
September, their first child was born and five days later, Saburō left
for what was to be five years of military service, ending with a horrendous
time in New Guinea, and his capture and internment by Australian forces.
Saburō
came home in April, 1946; note his great difficulties of finding work. On
February 14, 1947, Mariko was born, by which time they had moved back to their
house in Ichomachi. Her younger
brother was born in 1948. Mariko
recounts that all five of the family slept in the same room, while the rest
of the house was rented out to boarders (as many as six at one time).
Note her
brother’s fall in the school hallway, when both were in junior high. It was a turning point in his life—and
for the whole family (i.e., his lingering pain, his heavy drinking, his violence
and early death in 1985, six years before EB met Mariko).
Mariko
graduated from high school in 1965, in the midst of the great economic boom.
She didn’t pass her university entrance exams, and went to work, ending
up at Japan Travel Bureau. She
had known Takeshi since junior high school, but while she was working and
he was in college, they had little interaction, although they had met (and
kissed) at a 1967 high school reunion.
He graduated in 1971 and went to work as an electrical engineer.
They "kind of fell into" marriage in December of 1971.
Mariko
kept working at JTB until their first child was born in 1974. Chiaki was born twelve months later.
Mariko didn’t want to go back to work, although she returned part-time
to JTB. The third child was born six years later
(there is no indication if this was planned, desired, or couldn’t be avoided).
Chapter 3: “I Forget I’m a Housewife”
(April-May)
This chapter
on women in contemporary Japan begins with her excursion to Asakusa’s Sanja
Matsuri (“the biggest, noisiest—and raunchiest—religious festival
in all of Tokyo”). Mariko was
part of a mikoshi-carrying club.
Because yakuza groups are involved, this leads to a brief excursus
on their proud self-image and their less noble reality (although other sources
are much more informative, for those of you who wish to pursue this topic).
The section ends with Mariko’s explanation for why she so enjoys this
activity, which becomes the chapter title and the segue into the chapter’s
main section on women in contemporary Japan.
See the
opening paragraph on 72-73.
This becomes
a short contemplation, including a critique of Sumiko Iwao’s The Japanese
Woman. Bumiller then reviews
interviews she did with six women who have pursued professional careers (all
born in the 1930s and 1940s and were graduates of Tokyo University).
The chapter
concludes with a brief visit with Mariko to her shamisen classes, which
she has taken for thirty years (and which cost, with requisite clothing, about
$2500 per year, a fact she conceals from her husband).
The chapter
opens with Takeshi's drinking problem and Mariko's frustration and concern
about him. Bumiller goes to interview
Takeshi at his office, where after 20 years, he has become one of five assistant
managers among 28 people in the electric-equipment division.
96-102:
broadens into discussion of drinking and alcoholism in Japan, especially among
middle-aged men
102-110:
July 13 was O-bon, and Mariko's visit to her brother's grave occasions a commentary
on her religion and that of Japanese people more generally
The chapter
ends with mention of the incident on May 24th when the neighborhood
was shocked and mobilized by the cutting of 30 gingko trees in the hillside
of the local shrine in order to build a parking lot. In short notice, 8,000 protest signatures
were collected
(August)
Describes
summer vacation excursions, including karaoke box singing (114-115) and a
digression on one of Mariko's favorite television shows, Tokyo Love Story
(116-119). This "trendy drama"
showcases the lives of five 20-something friends starting out in Tokyo and
was popular for capturing the spirit of OLs. Rika was especially appealing among the
show's main characters.
119-124:
visiting and watching Mariko cook in the kitchen
125-129:
the Tanaka summer vacation to Hokkaido
129-132:
on the summer national high school baseball tournament at Kōshien
132-140:
on political corruption and Bumiller's interviews with Kikuchi Koichi, boss
of the Takahashi-gumi
(September)
Begins
with an account of EB's visit to Ken-chan's fourth grade class and then shifts
to more general discussion of the pros and cons of Japanese education. She concludes this section by returning
to Shunsuke (156-158), on whom family ambitions had focused as he passed into
one of the four Waseda high schools that fed into the university. Shunsuke was accepted into the lowest prestige
of the four, Sōjitsu, and he chose the commercial course. Still, he still this gave him an easy road
to an elite university.
The third
section recounts a visit on September 21 to Shunsuke's class, and EB notes
immediately how boring it is compared to Ken-chan's fourth grade class. She was intrigued by his social studies
teacher, Eiichi Kojima, who was showing Night and Fog to stir debate
about the war, and she returns to several of his classes and for interviewing. Much of the section deals with his teaching
of wartime lessons (161-168).
The final
sections (168-178) are about cram schools, including the experiences of the
Tanaka kids, those of a wealthier family, and a visit to a cram school classroom.
(October)
The chapter
describes a neighborhood festival, a visit with Tanizaki Yukio (known as the
"unofficial mayor" of Ichomachi), and a meeting of the ward council.
(October-November)
Takeshi's
depression seems in large part work-related, as Nippon Electric suffers from
the recession, loses contracts, and faces others delayed. Takeshi finds he has a job but no work. Bumiller says: "For the first time
I realized he was trapped by his society in a way that Mariko was not. Unhappy in his job, emotionally cut off
from his family, Takeshi went blindly through the paces expected of a salaryman."
(205)
205-212:
on how the three children are doing (Shunsuke has a new girl friend, and Chiaki
is fed up with her mother)
212-220:
more discussion of the estranged marriage, the separate worlds of Mariko and
Takeshi, and Mariko's claiming to think about divorce much of the time. EB prods Mariko into commenting on a weekly
magazine article profiling some successful professional women (220-222).
(December)
223-228:
opens with Mariko's shamisen concert but the chapter focuses on neighborhood
politics and Mariko's role in and view of local matters. This begins with a fractious meeting of
Action Committee of the elementary school PTA, whose president was Mrs. Mori,
the wife of shrine priest. Mrs. Mori dismissed several of the members who
complained of closed-doors decision making as being Sōka Gakkai members. Bumiller goes to talk to one of them, Mrs.
Sato (236-247)
(January and February)
On January
13, Mariko's father had bloody urine and was hospitalized. His wife was admitted too because Mariko
couldn't care for her full-time. "Now
here Mariko was, at age forty-five, caring for a mother who needed to have
her adult diapers changed five times a day and could be left for only two
or three hours at a time." Even
so, Mariko had to spend much of the middle of the day helping to look after
both at the hospital. Much of
the chapter details the dilemmas of eldercare (Mariko's father returns home
on February 14th, Mariko's birthday).
The chapter
also reports Bumiller and Sachiko taking the children out to their choice
of a restaurant, one by one, to get them to talk some more. Shunsuke is on the Waseda Commercial football
team, while Chiaki was finally allowed to quit the school volleyball team.
276-283: chapter concludes with another talk with
Takeshi, about the ongoing trade frictions with the US and his continuing
troubles at work
Chapter 11: Mariko’s Secret
(February and March)
285-291:
Opens with Bumiller taking Mariko to watch a filming of You Can Laugh,
the top show with Tamori, whom Bumiller later interviews.
294-299:
another PTA meeting about the controversy about using collecting stamps from
Bellmark to purchase a unicycle.
Chapter
continues with comments on the depression into which Mariko seemed to have
sunk, and which Bumiller interprets as caused by the press of obligations
to others. She notes that although
Mariko saw herself as a mother and wife (and daughter) first, she also depended
on her jobs to give her an identity and "lift her spirits."
304-310: Come March, Mariko was feeling better (and
Bumiller was preparing to leave for the States), when a chance glance through
her high school yearbook brought out the sudden admission that Mariko had
had an affair for three years earlier in her marriage (when Ken-chan was two)
with a man who was a friend of Takeshi's. (This came after she discovered that her
husband was having an affair with a bar waitress.) "I didn't feel guilty to have this
man as a lover. But it wasn't
fun at all. It was a very, very
hard time…He had so many qualities my husband didn't." (It ended when the man turned forty and
wanted to settle down and married someone else.)
309: Bumiller tries to fit Mariko into a universalist
frame: "…every life, no matter how plain its surface, is a drama of
roiling emotion underneath."
(April)
Mariko
finally got back to work on April 1 and also plunged into PTA and into managing
her son's basketball team. Bumiller
makes a final attempt to understand the ginkgo tree controversy (314-318),
and takes Takeshi to dinner for some further probing on their relationship
(321-326).
322: his
account of their getting married
328-332:
Note especially Bumiller's
final thoughts "on why the family is the lifeblood of Japan, critical
to its identity, social order, and economic success." She moves from that to what she believes
to be the mix of cooperation and coercion in Japanese society. "I still don't know what it is about
the Japanese that makes them so bound to the group" she confesses on
329, and goes on to conclude that "it is the rewards of participation
rather the penalties of dissent that keep the nation together" (330).
This is
a work by a print journalist, and a well-received example of extended journalistic
portraiture. What are its advantages
and its limitations? How is it recognizably “journalistic,” and how does
it compare with other examples of journalism that we have encountered?
As noted
above, Bumiller was in Tokyo with her husband, Steven Weisman, also a journalist.
For his final assessment of Japan at the end of his time in the Tokyo Bureau,
see Steven R. Weisman, "An American in Tokyo," New York Times Sunday Magazine,
July 26, 1992, pp. 24-27, 38, 40
The book’s
title promises the “secrets” of Mariko. Should Bumiller (as journalist and/or as
anthropologist) be telling us such secrets? What are the ethics of making such revelations?