Two Generations Tie the Knot

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.”

My grandfather was 10 years older than my grandmother. They were both born and raised on Shikoku Island. Right after finishing elementary school, at the age of 12 or 13, my grandfather moved to Kobe to work. This was common in those days. My grandmother stayed in her hometown and helped her uncle at his post office until she married my grandfather and moved to Kobe.

As I watched my grandparents, I perceived a pattern. Grandfather was always irritated with her, and grandmother would persistently ignore him, feigning ignorance whenever it behooved her. I finally asked her one day whether she married grandfather because she liked him. I don’t think the question pleased her, but she gave me a straightforward answer: “My dad told me to marry him, so I did. I had no say. My dad was very strict.”

On another occasion, I asked my grandfather how he met his future wife. “My father took me to her village to take a look at her from a distance. She still had baby fat and was quite cute. So I said yes,” he said. “But look at her now! She is skinny like a stick!”

As I grew older, I realized it was an open secret that my grandparents were not happy together. I heard that my dad had actually suggested that Grandma get a divorce, but she said “my parents chose him for me” and refused to go through with it. It didn’t make sense to anyone because my grandmother’s parents divorced although their marriage was arranged by their parents. So my grandparents stuck together in their sad example of an arranged marriage right up to the point when my grandfather passed away three years ago.

Against all odds in this dysfunctional family, my dad turned out to be a fine young man who found someone he wanted to marry and who was eager to share the future with him. My mom and dad were married in 1970. Their wedding was the sort where the bride and groom charged the guests a small fee to cover the costs — this was typical in those days. “We didn’t have money, but we had many friends,” my mom recalled via email. “The thought of asking our parents to pay for our wedding never even occurred to us. Our friends set up a wedding executive committee and met many times at a café to plan things out. The committee made invitations, put together a song book, and some of the members sang and played the accordion at the wedding. We were married in the Women’s Assembly Hall where my office was located. Your dad and I exchanged our wedding vows in front of our guests. We wrote our vows on a long sheet of paper and read it.”

An artist friend of my dad coordinated the decorations. They put up drawings on large white sheets that my mom still has today. “I rented a wedding dress for a very reasonable price thanks to a friend’s sister who owned a beauty salon,” Mom recalls. “But I gained some weight before the wedding, so my sister-in-law, who was a professional dressmaker, had to fix it for me. It was really, really tight on me, so I felt so much better when I changed into a kimono.”

The kimono and obi my mom wore were made for this occasion by my grandma, who was a professional kimono maker. “We served gorgeous dishes prepared by a chef who was a friend of our friends. I no longer remember what the menu was, but I remember I was amazed by the quality. I think we just paid the chef the cost of the ingredients. After the wedding, we gave a wooden pencil stand to each guest.” Each guest paid 2,000 yen. It sounds like very little now, but it paid for everything, and my parents still had a nice chunk left over to go on a modest honeymoon to a hot springs resort.

After answering all of my questions vie email, my mom wrote, “I really appreciate you interviewing me about this. It reminded me that our wedding was celebrated and supported by so many people.”

*According to the website All About Japan, a wedding guest is expected to give a minimum of 30,000 yen, or approximately $273 at the current exchange rate. The amount only gets bigger if you are a close friend or associate of the couple.