An Unwelcome Discovery

My husband has many insightful sayings. One of them is, “Don’t confuse the art with the artist.” In other words, if you love Woody Allen’s movies, or musician Phillip Glass’s Koyannisquatsi, or Picasso’s paintings and sculptures, don’t look too closely at the artist’s personal life. You might not like what you see. In fact, such people’s foibles can attract unusually passionate outrage. We want to believe that the guy who played the hero in our favorite movie really is a hero in real life. But of course these are real people – in fact, artists and performers may be even more ‘real’ than average. It is a truism that the artistic temperament can be difficult, and that geniuses often suffer from depression or even madness. 

I should not be surprised, then, to find that Akiko was not the nurturing mother I had imagined. Yosano and Hiroshi’s sixth daughter Uchiko wrote an essay about her relationship with her parents entitled, “My Parents and Me (Ryōshin to Watakushi)”. It is a sad tale. 

As a toddler, Uchiko was sent to live with a family in the countryside outside Tokyo. Putting up children for adoption was not uncommon in those days in Japan, particularly for large families (Uchiko was born in 1911). Akiko had 11 children who lived to adulthood—a large family, even for the time.  It must have posed a significant financial burden. Uchiko was not the only one to be sent away; her sisters Ellen and Sahoko were also raised in foster homes. 

Uchiko was cherished by her adoptive family, even after her adoptive mother gave birth to children of her own. Her adoptive father went to great lengths to find medicines for her when she was ill, Uchiko remembers. She was a sickly child (she had a twin sister who died during childbirth), and he worried that she would catch cold walking home from school. When it rained, he would pick her up from school, carrying her on his back all the way home.  After her adoptive father’s untimely death at 35, Uchiko was sent back to her birth home. She found a much less happy situation there. 

Her birth parents, Akiko and Hiroshi, were busy with their professional lives, and spared little time for their children. If Uchiko encountered her mother in a hallway at home, she writes, Akiko would pass her by without much more than a glance. One might have thought that Akiko and Hiroshi would be more sympathetic, given that they both were themselves temporarily farmed out to foster families as children. Akiko’s father had been so disappointed at the birth of a daughter that he sent her to live with an aunt for her first three years, until a son was born and she was allowed to come home. 

Uchiko remembers a sharp divide between those siblings who were raised outside of the family  home and those who were brought up by Akiko and Hiroshi.  For various reasons, several returned home, where they were treated as outsiders. Uchiko felt always unwelcome, but the baby of the family, Fujiko, was coddled. Indeed, Akiko’s welcoming words for Uchiko, when she moved back home as a grade schooler, were that she must not teach Fujiko to talk like a hick. 

Akiko and Hiroshi, who co-founded the first co-educational school in Japan, are highly regarded as early supporters of women’s education. Uchiko remembers that her father on his deathbed supported her plans to go to college. However, citing financial reasons, Akiko would not allow it. Uchiko remembers bitterly that her mother sent her off (without so much as asking her opinion) to become a math teacher. 

Until now, I have idealized Akiko as a pioneering writer and supporter of women’s rights. Finding that she was not (at least, not according to one account) a nurturing mother as well, is a let-down. Certainly, people are complicated.  I might even go so far as to say that if we idealize our heroes, we do a disservice to ourselves. Part of why I admire Akiko is because she managed to raise so many children while supporting her family with her writing, and being an advocate for women’s rights.  When I think of how I struggled with a career and one son, I am amazed at her accomplishment. Perhaps I should give myself more credit. Uchiko remembers three live-in servants. Akiko never darkened the door of the kitchen, nor did any housework, she writes.

Akiko and Hiroshi’s storied love for each other is also nuanced. Uchiko writes that her parents were careful to present a loving façade to the public, even though their relationship was strained in later years. Their reputation was built on their passionate love poetry, after all; they must have felt pressure to hide any tension between them.  After Hiroshi’s death, however, Uchiko notes that Akiko frequently visited Hiroshi’s grave.  Anyone who has been married a long time can understand such complex feelings. 

I have a more accurate, more realistic understanding of Akiko now.  This is unwelcome news, but it rings true.