Becoming Parents

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.”

Then she told me for the first time that I was scheduled to be born in October but wasn’t born until November 12. A strange feeling came upon me when I imagined having a birthday in October instead of November. “So I had to take another four weeks off,” my mom continued. “My tummy grew so large in the end that I couldn’t even breathe easily and just hoped to give birth as soon as I could. I kept thinking that my tummy would be instantly flat and I would feel so much lighter once I had given birth. I felt bad for my coworker who covered for me during my extra-long maternity leave. I was anxious to give birth as soon as possible.”

My father remembers not doing anything special during my mother’s first pregnancy except helping her stay healthy. “She had morning sickness, and she was eating lots of shaved ice and kitsune udon (A Kansai style of udon with sweet and thin fried tofu in clear soup). What else? Oh, I was responsible for finding a preschool where six-month-olds were accepted.”

More and more preschools were built around the nation under the slogan, “Building as many preschools as mailboxes.” My parents were impressed with the child-care philosophy of raising kids via preschool, which emerged after the War as a way of helping households where both parents worked full-time. “I wanted to raise my child using this new preschool,” my dad recalls. “Preschools with professional teachers offered a lot more opportunities and experiences to kids than daycare, where kids were just stored until someone picked them up. We checked the one in the office building where your mother worked, but it was impossible for her to take you there in packed trains every morning. So we checked Mikage Preschool, across National Highway #2 from Mikage Industrial High School where I worked, and found it was perfect because I could drop you off before I went to work. But we had to arrange for your grandmother or someone to pick you up before 5pm since I never got off work that early. When we couldn’t arrange anyone to pick you up, I had to run there, strap you to my back or put you in a stroller and continue working in the teachers’ office. Some of my students looked at you like, ‘What’s this thing doing here?’ I couldn’t have done that if I were a businessman.”

My mother’s many friends and my aunt gave her second-hand maternity clothes. My aunt also gave her a lot of hand-me-down baby clothes. It was common to wear a haraobi (obstetrical binder) at that time to support your body and to avoid cooling it too much. “I wrapped sarashi (cotton cloth) around instead of the haraobi, but it didn’t stay on my round belly. So I bought an elastic one in a department store with a logo of a dog. I suppose it came from wishing to have easy birth like dogs. But I quit wearing it a while later because I felt it wasn’t really protecting my body, and I wasn’t sensitive to cold to begin with.”

As we talked about the end of my mother’s first pregnancy, I asked my father if he remembers them discussing how to raise their first child. “Didn’t you ask that question to your mother? What did she say?” he replied.

“Well, she said that you two didn’t talk much about it because raising a child is an extension of how you have been living your life. For example, you encouraged me to stand up on my own when I tripped over while walking. Mom read me as many good children’s books as possible.”

“Yes, she is right,” he said but took his time to conjure up his own memories. “We didn’t discuss it. I even came up with your name because your mother put me in charge of that, too. Of course, I took time to think about it and came up with some names that implied an open future. I asked her how about ‘Takumi’ with the first letter meaning ‘cultivating’ and the second letter meaning ‘future,’ and she agreed. Since there was no way for us to know at that time if we were having a boy or a girl, I came up with a unisex name.”

My mother said, “Boy or girl, I didn’t care. People said that you were having a boy if your face turned meaner during your pregnancy. Someone looked at me and said I must be having a boy, but I proved that it was just a superstition by giving birth to you. Of course, she could’ve been trying to tell me that I was being mean to her!”