A Chat in the Rain
It's 5 in the morning and decide to pop out for a second just to see if the sunrise is pretty or not. It's summer, but the humidity in the air makes the breeze feel clammy and cold despite. Even this early in the morning it is already warm, but the sensations on my skin are giving me mixed messages. I walk across the train tracks to the flat expanse of rice fields behind my house. And hovering over the mountain across the bay is a cloud being illuminated pink on its underside. Suddenly the cloud begins to rain over there, in little misty trails hanging down from the cloud's flat bottom.
It's pink rain.
Pink rain.
I grab my camera, my baby, and my keys, and now we're sprinting over to the river's edge to watch this phenomenon. I find a place to sit down along the old stone wall that keeps the water at bay. (Is that a pun?)
The rice fields all behind me are green like the color in a crayon box. Just that perfect, perfect flawless green in soft waves. Overhead the sky is a pale blue with pink clouds here and there drifting along in the breeze. The water before me is choppy, reflecting sometimes the pink, the blue, the green, and the deep grey-purple of early morning shadows. At some point the sun rises and everything goes yellow and grey for a moment. And then suddenly it's day, it's hot, it's way too bright, and I wonder what I'm doing outside.
I walk back toward my house between the rice plants that rustle in the wind. A weasel darts away from me in the direction of someone's garden. A nutria slinks over for a morning swim in the river. Herons fly overhead. I feel so satisfied. I feel like me. I feel the most like me when I'm not me at all, but blending in with the world around me.
An older woman is also talking a walk. Our paths cross and she strikes up conversation. "What a sight!" she says to me. I assume she's going to talk about me being a foreigner, or me having a baby, or how beautiful the sunrise was. But no, she goes off on a different tangent entirely.
"Recently there aren't any young people around here," she says. "You used to be able to hear the laughter of children, but these days you can't."
This is one of those topics I have massive opinions about. A lot has been written about the aging population in Japan. Some of the reasons given are things like the lack of childcare, the expense and over-crowdedness of daycares and preschools, so that working mothers can't find a place for their children while they are at work. I know some people who are working and almost their whole salary goes into keeping the kids in daycare, which sorta defeats the purpose. And the government's way of dealing with this is to give monetary handouts to families, to make kindergarten free, to make basic medical care for kids less expensive. To provide monetary assistance in fertility treatment. Which on the surface level seems like a good idea, but let's look a little deeper.
Traditionally, a family has a "Jikka" which is the home of the parent's. The "home base" of the family. It would be on the land that the family owns. The land would have been in the family for generations and you would have large multi-generational families living together. In the USA, this sounds like something of a bygone era, but in Japan that era was only a generation earlier. In that kind of jikka, it doesn't matter if one of the husbands has a 60 hour work week, because someone's always home to take care of the many kids running around. Maybe it's grandma. Maybe mom and grandma have part time work in different shifts. Maybe when one uncle has a business trip, we all eat dinner at the other uncle's house instead, which is two steps away. Maybe kids come home after school and there are two or three adults hanging around.
In that kind of situation, daddy's 60, 70, 80 hour work week doesn't mean so much. It means kids grow up almost without a father, but it doesn't mean they have any lack of love or care in their lives. How do such long hours accumulate anyway? It's the unspoken rule that if you don't get there early, you look lazy. It's the need to show your boss you're serious by not leaving until he does. It's having to go out for drinks with customers. Or a "business meeting" with the boss at the local bar. Every Friday. It's the company trip, or the mandatory game of golf, or the way your coworkers guilt trip you into working harder, or the weird looks you get for taking a day off to see your kid's soccer game. I mean wasn't grandma home to do that? C'mon.
And then suddenly the bubble economy was gone and women needed to work, too.
So now women are also going to the bars with the boss, and being guilt tripped into not taking any holidays. The convenience of transportation means that you can hop on a Shinkansen and be at the branch office in Nagoya at 9am sharp without missing a beat. Just missing out on taking care of your kids. And now say you're a family of two, without grandma.
And the government's idea is to throw money at families.
Does money give me less guilt at work?
Does money let me take paid holidays?
Does money ley me go home from work on time?
Does money mean I don't have to go on that business trip?
I feel like the government, by giving out money, is saying, "Women shouldn't have to work."
I think if we want people in Japan having more kids, adjustments need to be made to the work environment that allows for two people to have full time jobs without sacrificing for their family.
Before I can say anything, though, this lady goes off in an unanticipated direction. "The population of Chinese people is growing around here. But the population of Japanese people isn't. Older people stay here in our traditional homes, but young Japanese people don't stick around. Young Chinese people come and stay in cheap housing."
Okay then, lady, let's go in that direction. The problem of youth migrating to the cities. At a glance, you'd think it's just something that can't be helped. But actually, there are a lot of ways youth are coming back to their Jikka. One is the appeal of the artistic crowed and the recent popularity of home improvement. Old, traditional buildings are being transformed into trendy cafes, art galleries, workshops, and mini music venues. Guest houses pop up, appealing to people wanting a traditional Japanese experience, without having to pay for a high end ryokan.
And I would love to transform my town in this way. I have tons of ideas on how we could attract more of these people here. But the problem I have is, well, the older generation and their "it can't be helped" attitude. For example, the sightseeing committee in my town is comprised of 8 people, the youngest being 70. I tried to join but they told me not to bother. I made up 3 attractive ways to get younger people to join, but they were all denied because "That's not the way we've always done things" and "What if it really worked and tons and tons of people actually starting coming here, what a mess that would be."
I wonder, however, if this lady would even care if I told her about this. She looks like the same age bracket as one of "them."
As I wonder what to say, she continues on. "I'm not saying it's Chinese people's fault, but way back in my day, no one locked their doors. The town was safe and everyone was honest. The head of the village was the person who controlled the waterways for the rice fields. We all honored him because most of us were farmers. Then Japan decided to copy America and now we've got people trying to follow the American Dream. Instead of staying with their family, they jump into the world of dog-eats-dog capitalism where you can only get ahead by screwing someone else over. My son became a business man, and really, he had to make decisions that ruined other people just to keep up with business. So eventually he quit and got a degree in nursing instead. That's the only sane profession these days. Work as a doctor, or in a hospital. All these foreigners with their modern ideas coming in to rural Japan have ruined how things used to be."
At first I wonder how she dare talk about these "foreigners" in front of me, who is obviously from overseas. But then I remember I'm holding a baby. She sees me as someone safe to let on these opinions to. She sees me as her "in group." Because I'm a mother, a wife, and therefore how could I possibly be part of the capitalist rat race. Oops. I'd better not tell her about my job.
It starts raining a fine mist, made sparkling by the sun. I let her know I have to get home. She leaves me with a few parting words. "Be careful. For the sake of your child. And remember to lock your doors."
As we part ways, I turn to the bridge over the river and suddenly before me is a beautiful rainbow. The colors are bright, creamy pastels above the rich greens of summer rice and trees. I am in total awe. A few other people are up walking there dogs and I stop each one to point it out. "Look there's a rainbow."
I feel like nothing that lady said to me really matters in the face of all the beauty I see around me. Maybe those Chinese people see it too. Maybe those businessmen on their way to work wondering if they will be screwing anyone over today see it too. We're all in this town together, in the shadow of the same hills, next to the same river, sharing with the weasels, nutria, and herons, and looking up at the same rainbow.
Jennifer