Following last week’s introduction to the Tonkatsu’s, here is a closer look into the stories that live within the household. A Japanese-Canadian family of mushroom growers in a small rural town, the members’ voices clashed in dissonance and disconnect. Through the eyes of Muriel, here is how she makes of her family.
Impressions of her mother Keiko, preferred to be known as Kay:
“Mom never told any stories. No compound sentences for that woman, she thrived on subject verb object. But I guess I can’t complain. She made my life easy and easy to assimilate if your grandmother is skinny enough to be stuffed in a closet. Not that she ever did, and not that Obāchan would ever allow it. But in Mom’s mind, the closet door never opened. Too bad, I say.” (Goto 103-4)
Impressions of her father Shinji, masked under the name of Sam:
“What is there to say about a voiceless man? All that is unsaid. My father’s space inside my thoughts is dim and unformed. He could coax mushrooms to grow in the dust-strewn prairie and convince badgers to eat from his hands, but he never sat beside me to fill my ears with nonsense. He lived on his skin surface and I can’t even remember what he smelled like.” (Goto 91)
Muriel grew up with an ache, longing for something she could not quite pinpoint:
“I was always hungry for words, even when I was very little. Dad, the man without an opinion, and Mom hiding behind an adopted language. It was no wonder I was so confused, language a strange companion. I never knew what I should do. If I should tie it up then ignore it, or if I should mould and shape. Manipulate language like everyone else around me. I never understood the words she said, but I watched and learned. And I begin my understanding now. Obāchan took another route, something more harmonious. Showed me that words take form and live and breathe among us. Language a living beast.” (Goto 147)
Here is her impression of grandmother Naoe, affectionately:
“Obāchan’s bed of tales was a good place to dream in. Her words sometimes notes of music instead of symbols to decipher. Lay my head in her bony lap and swallow sound. There are worse places to be when you are thirteen.” (Goto 49)
The alienated language and culture flourished in grandma’s storytelling that always began with Mukāshi, mukāshi, ōmukashi… in the fashion of Japanese folktales, transporting her audience to a faroff time and place. Muriel, through grandma’s stories and the gift of a name, developed the identity as Murasaki, after Murasaki Shikibu, author of The Tale of Genji and the first woman writer to have published her work of fiction in the late tenth century Japan.
One winter night, grandma Naoe left her residence for twenty-odd years. “Obāchan, whose voice was constant as the prairie wind, who hadn’t stopped muttering, singing, humming, yelling for as long as I could ever remember. Who never stopped voicing her very existence” vanished, without a trace, without a word (138).
Grandma Naoe’s absence created a void, a deafening silence amplified by her daughter Keiko’s muteness in shock. Murasaki stepped in to fill he silence and established a new connection with grandma Naoe by reciprocating the storytelling she had for a long time been an audience.
“Murasaki: Obāchan, I don’t know what to say anymore. I don’t know what to ask. Does it even matter? Naoe: I can’t give you any answers, child. I’m just beginning to find answers of my own. But listen. Why don’t I talk sometimes and you just move your lips and it will look like you’re the one who’s talking. Murasaki: That’s a great idea, Obāchan. Thanks. Naoe: Not at all. You can do the same for me, sometimes. Murasaki: Sure, I could surely do that.” (Goto 187)
Since then, the two storytellers weaved their narratives – a mixture of fact and fiction, past and future, revised lore, and interchangeable identities. Murasaki found an audience, her lover known as “you” throughout the novel to tell her stories. At times, “you” would jump in to question the credibility of Murasaki’s tales, told with flair and increasing confidence. The telling of tales began as such:
“‘Will you tell me a true story?’ you ask, with unconscious longing. ‘A lot of people ask that. Have you ever noticed?’ I roll onto my side. Prop my elbow and rest my chin, my cheek, into the curve of my hand. ‘It’s like people want to hear a story, and then, after they’re done with it, they can stick the story back to where it came from. You know?’ ‘Not really?’ you say, and slide a little lower, so that you head is nestled beneath my chin. Your face in my neck. ‘But will you still tell me?’ ‘Sure, but bear with my language, won’t you? My Japanese isn’t as good as my English, and you might not get everything I say. But that doesn’t mean the story’s not there to understand. Wakatte kureru kashira? Can you listen before you hear?’ ‘Trust me,’ you say. I pause. Take a deep breath, then spiral into sound. ‘Here’s a true story.’ Mukāshi, mukāshi, ōmukashi…” (Goto 12)
How does a story take shape? Where does a story lead? What does a good story serve? Both Naoe and Murasaki use stories within stories to experiment as they went. In order to be heard, Naoe had to leave her well worn chair to create space; in order to fill the void, Murasaki had to breathe life into the language suppressed, unspoken. The two storytellers sometimes diverged, sometimes merged into one.
The following quote seems a good place to linger awhile – not a beginning, nor an end, but the storytellers’ journeys in progress:
Two women take up two different roads, two different journeys at different times. They are not travelling with a specific destination in mind but the women are walking toward the same place. Whether they meet or not is not relevant. This is not a mathematical equation. (Goto 291)