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Common
ground across an ocean
Diversity by choice, not fiat Melvyn D. Magree Originally published in the Reader Weekly November 11, 2004 People named Magree include people who have ancestors from Ireland, England, Germany, Poland, China, Africa, pre-Columbian America, and who knows where else. Two weeks ago Japan was added to this list. Our son was married on October 16 to a Japanese woman who serendipitously appeared in his life five years ago. She volunteered at the Japanese-American cultural and business society where our son is executive director. Over time their connection became closer and closer until they brought two families together across an ocean. We met Yukiko’s parents last year when they came to visit her in Minnesota. As the wedding date approached, we exchanged more and more emails with them. These exchanges sometimes were twice a day and we became eager for the next message. If you think my articles are lengthy with complex thoughts, consider how they would seem to someone who is not confident of his or her English. Masako had learned a lot of English to take a test for nursing school, but she has not used it for years. Kokichi had traveled in the U.S. as an engineer and by his reckoning has an English vocabulary of 4,000 words. But since he retired and became a rice farmer, he has grown rusty in English. We made an attempt to learn Japanese, but without a class it takes discipline to study regularly. I have learned some characters and probably know about 400 Japanese words. But one needs more than “Ohayo gozaimas (Good morning)”(1) and “Birru, nihon, onegai shimas (two bottles of beer please)” to have any meaningful conversation. It does help to have software (Macintosh OS 10.3) that allows one to “flip a switch” and type Roman characters and get the corresponding characters in the target language. Such ease does not help one remember those characters. The excitement grew as the wedding day approached. Fifteen of Yukiko’s relatives arrived three days before the wedding, rested, and did some sightseeing. We went down to the Twin Cities on the day before the wedding and hosted the groom’s dinner that evening. Talk about culture change; I never heard of a groom’s dinner before I moved back to Minnesota and our daughter was married. Another culture change was forgetting how bad traffic in the Twin Cities is. It took us over forty minutes to go from Wayzata (a western suburb) to Dinkytown (the neighborhood of the U of M), a nominal 20 minute trip. I started the dinner off with a small speech in Japanese and English. Kokichi had given me in email the Japanese for what I wanted to say. My first statement was “Watashi-wa nihongo gozaimas (I don’t understand Japanese)”. This drew a big laugh from the Japanese because I said it so well. It is so easy to appear knowledgeable with so little. I went on with who we were and presented a little gift to each household of the Minnesota state bird, the mosquito. I finished with a Japanese phrase many readers know, “Kampai (Cheers)”. After the dinner, we invited everyone back to our room for a sing-along. Kokichi wanted to sing “Bridge over Troubled Waters” and my wife and I sang “Sunrise, Sunset” from “The Fiddler on the Roof”. I think we did a verse of “Sakura, Sakura (Cherry Blossoms) and a few other songs, but mostly we chatted as best we could. Some will think I shortchange the bride and groom by saying so little about the wedding ceremony, but so be it. My main purpose is to write about the merging of cultures. First, there wasn’t a single kimono at the wedding. Yukiko wore a long white dress and Darryl a tux. Yukiko had a traditional Japanese flower arranger put up the flowers. One feature of the ceremony was that my daughter read an excerpt from Robert Fulghum’s All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten and Yukiko’s aunt read it in Japanese. Darryl gave his vows in English and Yukiko gave hers in Japanese. I will say there wasn’t a dry eye in the church as the ceremony proceeded. We had a humongous buffet after the ceremony with everyone hurrying and scurrying to set up tables, place settings, and set out the food and drink. We had sashimi (raw fish) and rice, Swedish meatballs and lasagna, sake and Spanish wine, and much, much more. After we ate, everyone pitched into to clear the area for dancing. I danced once with the bride and twice with my wife and tried to avoid it thereafter. But one of Yukiko’s uncles was a real high-stepper in rock and roll. I didn’t move fast enough to take a picture of him kicking a leg up as high as his waist. The only really Japanese thing that happened was that Yukiko’s grandfather and great uncle sang a couple of Japanese folk songs in the “minyo” style. “Minyo” is a high-pitched, nasal style of singing that is still popular. Both of these gentlemen are still active performers and have won prizes in tournaments. It is amazing the lung power that a small, 79-year-old minyo singer has. There were three more days of celebrating and visiting with a dwindling number of participants. Now most have returned to their normal lives and the bride and groom are starting their joint life adventure. But all of us have been changed by the experience, gaining from and giving to the others something different. Many on the left bemoan the loss of old cultures or the “contamination” of “traditional” cultures by “Western” culture. But if these bemoaners are truly liberal, they should embrace the opportunity for people to adopt their cultures as they see fit. I read recently that one of the strengths of America is our ability to change our culture. One only need go to the Lantern Lighting Festival in St. Paul to see the variety of skin colors engaged in Japanese exercise or musical groups. On the other hand, besides rock and roll and hip-hop, many Japanese love European style classical music. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony has been a New Year’s tradition in Japan since the end of World War I. In the end, remember that we are all, on average, 50th cousins (2). (1) I wrote the Japanese phrases as Americans hear them rather than in the correct rendering. For example, we do not hear the whispered “u” in “gozaimasu”. (2) “The Mountain of Names”, Alex Shoumatoff, New Yorker, May 13, 1985. ©2004, 2007 Melvyn D. Magree |