July 21, 2001

He was moody most times when we visited him, seldom thanking us for the small gifts we brought him, and brusque to those who looked after him. "Hey, be careful!" he would bark when his nephew loaded him into the van or put him in bed. Conversational topics were generally hard to come by with Shotaro, and when someone tried to say something encouraging, such as, "well, anyway, it's nice that you have a computer to use," he would shoot the idea down. "Hurts my eyes. Too uncomfortable for my hands." He seemed to dislike anyone holding any notion that his life was in any way pleasant.

No one ever took serious offense at any of this. First of all, a man who has lost all feeling below his neck is entitled to certain degree of testiness. But more importantly, despite his manner, Shotaro was an unfailingly generous and kind-hearted man.

One of the first times I met him, not long after I married Kazuko, he suddenly announced that he was going to buy me an electric razor. My brother-in-law Etsuo drove us to the electronics outlet store where Shotaro rolled up and down the aisles until he found the model he had in mind, a $400 German product. "I have one just like this," he told me. I believe the gift was his his way of granting me approval, and welcoming me into the family. On another occasion he treated a group of us to sushi, and monitored our plates to make sure no one was holding back. "Eat more!" he ordered. "Have another beer!"

When he died, the workers at the crematorium had to break up his bones with hammers to make them fit in the reliquary. His big bones were a reminder of what a vigorously physical man he had been before that day in 1992 when he fell from a scaffolding. He had been a hardworking carpenter who enjoyed gourmet food, alcohol, pachinko, and fishing.

Shotaro died on a Monday, but we didn't hear about it in Seattle until Thursday. The family had been busy with the funeral and other events: the cremation, arranging for the services of a Buddhist priest, and receiving visitors from the neighborhood. In Shotaro's village, for three days after a death has ocurred, neighbors always bring the same food items: tempura, vegetable stew, and potato salad. No one seems to remember when or why this practice originated, but it does have its advantages. When someone dies, you always know what to do.

We, on the other hand, had no comforting ritual. What do you do when someone far away dies? Kazuko sent me out to buy white chrysanthemums on the night we heard about the death. The floral section of the gigantic all-night supermarket by our house didn't have chrysanthemums, but there was a bouquet of various other white flowers. Kazuko put the flowers on a dresser in our living room, and next to them a gift for Shotaro that had been wrapped but never sent.

In Kazuko's family, honoring the dead is done unselfconsciously, and is integrated into everyday life. It is customary to ring the bell and say a silent prayer in front of the Buddhist altar in the living room where Grandpa Gunpachi and his wife Tomi are enshrined, and to light some incense. But sometimes people give the bell a friendly bonk while passing by, just to say, "Hey, Grandpa."

I once went along for a ride to the family grave site, an occasion that surprised me with its cheerfulness and informality. While some family members lit incense and said a quick prayer, others chatted loudly while children helped themselves to the snacks left on the grave. "Okay, you can have one," they were told, "but leave some for Grandma!"

The flowers and unopened present on Kazuko's dresser are an improvised variation of these observances. Like its counterparts in Japan, it is a place in close connection with the living, not roped off in some stiffly sacred space. The gift sits on the dresser, covered most days with a phone bill or some other piece of debris from the current of our life here in Seattle. The flowers, the gift, and Shotaro himself, continue to be part of that current.