family style
by Takumi Ono | July 29, 2008
My mother was the first to take maternity leave and return to work at the publicity department of the Kobe City Council of Social Welfare.
When my parents found out that they were going to be parents in 1971, Japan was still enjoying the rapid economic growth that started in 1955. “I didn’t even think about quitting my job,” my mother said. “I can’t remember if it was common in Japan back then, but I was actually the first woman in my office to return to work after giving birth to a child. How long was the maternity leave? It was probably a total of six weeks before and after the birth.”
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by Takumi Ono | May 12, 2008
My grandmother in a black suit with my mother holding my hand and my father holding my brother at Sumiyoshi Shrine. We celebrated Shichi-Go-San, a popular traditional event to pray for the longevity and health of three- and five-year-old boys and three- and seven-year-old girls. I was three when this photo was taken by my grandfather.
My paternal grandmother, Sumie Ono, is a funny character. She took deep pride in her work as a treasurer at a local post office and enjoyed working with numbers until her retirement at 64. She received a high-school diploma by completing the curriculum in a distant-learning program when she was in her late 60s. She took care of her mother-in-law, who passed away at the age of 99, and she used to hike and run a lot until she injured her knees running in her late 70s. She taught me how to use the abacus and is still good at numbers at the age of 83, even though she suffers from dementia. But she usually kept her true feelings under wraps and became the very affectionate grandmother whenever my brother and I were around.
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by Takumi Ono | April 3, 2008
A photo of my grandmother and my mother in front of their house in Ashiya in 1948.
When my maternal grandmother, Sugayo, passed away in 2001 shortly after 9/11, my mom told me not to fly back to Japan for the funeral. “I don’t want to be worried about your safety on an airplane flying back to Japan.” I understood my mother’s concern and decided to stay in Seattle, but I had a hard time with the fact that the grandmother with whom I shared some girlish secrets — secrets I couldn’t even tell my own mother as I was growing up — was no longer with us in this world.
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by Takumi Ono | February 18, 2008
A snapshot from the New Year’s feast at my cousins’ house when I was 4. My dad is in the middle smiling with me sitting on his lap.
My dad must be getting to the stage where he looks back and wonders if he has done the right thing or made the right choices in life. Once in a while, he voices his subtle concerns about the seemingly small but important choices he made for me and my brother. Over a dinner my mom and I prepared when we visited last November, he asked us whether he did enough to teach us the importance of good food.
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by Takumi Ono | January 8, 2008
I had seen photos from my parents’ wedding many times as a child. Whenever I looked at them, I felt that they were truly happy at that time. Though it may sound cheesy or simplistic, this is how I viewed marriage as a child.
However, when it came to my paternal grandparents, it was quite a different story. They were wonderful grandparents, showering me — their first grandchild — with affection, but I didn’t perceive any warmth between them. My mom later told me that I was a peacemaker for my grandparents. “Whenever your grandpa lost his temper with your grandma, she called us up and asked us to bring you over.”
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by Takumi Ono | October 25, 2007
My dad and his class with several other teachers at Mikage Industrial High School. (1969)
My dad wanted to be a teacher more than anything. But when he got his teaching license in 1968, there were no teaching posts available. Instead, he joined a very respected corporation, Fujitsu, which made my grandfather very proud and my father very quiet about his secret ambition to eventually return to the classroom.
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by Takumi Ono | August 9, 2007
My mother, Keiko Ono, at work in the publicity department of the Kobe City Council of Social Welfare. (1969)
Ever since I was a little girl, I loved old folk tales. Not the typical Japanese folk tales like “Momotaro” and “Issunboshi,” mind you. I liked the stories passed down from my parents and grandparents. The food they ate, the way they played, their relationships with their parents and friends sounded so foreign to me because Japan has dramatically changed in the last 100 years.
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