A Working Woman during the Showa Era

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.

After she married my grandfather and moved to Kobe in her early 20s, her work experiences at a post office her uncle operated in her hometown led to a full-time job as treasurer of a local post office. It was probably a good move for her to get to know the people in the new neighborhood, but it took a while for my grandfather to allow her to work outside of the house. I later heard that my grandfather gave only a small portion of his income to her to support his family, so she had to work to feed their two children, my father and his younger sister. My grandfather was a good driver and worked as a driver in the army during the war and then as a full-time taxi driver when the end of the US Occupation of Japan caused him to lose his job as a school-bus driver for an American school. After my grandmother started working, he got mad if she came home from work later than he did or made close friends whom he didn’t know. “One day, I came home late because I had to take over the review of the ledger when one of the girls made a mistake somewhere and missed three yen. ‘Where the hell have you been!?’ Grandpa yelled at me when I came home. I started crying.” It seemed that she annoyed him to no end by not being witty and not being able to cook well.

Nevertheless, she seemed to have protected herself by not being concerned with his temper. She never really changed the way she did or didn’t do house chores. The only thing that she didn’t forget to do for him every morning was to serve him a glass of fresh vegetable juice that she made in a small blender. She continued to work even after her children started their own families. “Grandma, how much longer are you going to work?” I used to ask her because she looked quite old to my child’s eyes. “Not until I become eligible for a full pension,” she would reply. I remember crossing the Hanshin line train tracks and walking over to the post office with grandfather to visit her after we stopped by a bookstore to pick up a new book. She wore a light-blue jacket, which was the uniform of the post office, and stood up with a big smile behind the counter when we called her, “Oba-chan!”(Grandma!). She still weeps when she tells her favorite story of seeing me on Saturdays after school. “I still remember the first time you came to see us by yourself on a train. ‘Grandma! I came by myself today!’ You looked so proud.” My parents became fed up with her repeating the same story over and over, but now we understand that it was the happiest time in her life.

My grandmother didn’t cook well but loved taking me with her to gather some gingko nuts and yomogi, or Japanese sage. She used to hike a lot, which probably reminded her of her childhood in the mountainous countryside where her family still operates a tea farm. I remember that my grandmother woke up around 5am and did a headstand against the wall before taking off to hike up Hokura-san, which is part of the Rokko Mountains that border almost the entire northern edge of Kobe. I hiked with her if I could get up, but come to think of it, she may not have been looking for company; it was probably another weekly ritual to rejuvenate her and let her escape from her unhappy marriage. Meanwhile, my grandfather buried himself in books on Japanese history.