Reminiscence: A Memoir

These vignettes of a family history are excerpts from tape recorded reminiscences of Mrs. Aiko Yamagata, a resident of Zushi, a city on Japan's Miura peninsula thirty five miles south of Tokyo. The photographs and tape recordings were made by her granddaughter, Mihoko, during Mrs. Yamagata's recovery from a prolonged illness. Mrs. Yamagata is the matriarch of a family of women. Her daughter Akiko and her three granddaughters, Mihoko, Hiromi, and Chiemi, once lived together in a spacious house on Sakurayama (Cherry Blossom Hill) in a quiet, suburban neighborhood. Fifteen years ago Mihoko immigrated to the United States. Last year Chiemi was married and now lives with her husband in Tokyo.

Mrs. Yamagata's illness was a time of profound crisis for the Yamagata family. Obaasama (grandmother) is a matriarch in a culture which holds the ideal of familial piety as central to existence of the society itself. An individual's obligations to the hierarchy of family authority are of far greater importance than personal ambition or desire. Obaasama is not simply the object of her family's reverent devotion; she is the overseer of their property and the architect of their destiny.

Obaasama's responsibilities were suddenly thrust upon her in March, 1945 when her husband Admiral Seigo Yamagata committed seppuku (ritual suicide) after his sea plane was forced to land on an estuary in China. He and his staff were enroute from Amboina, as island near New Guinea, to Tokyo when an American naval pilot, Paul F. Stevens, attacked their plane. Stevens had learned from intelligence reports that an admiral was aboard the sea plane. What Stevens did not know was that Admiral Yamagata's destination was a meeting with Emperor Hirohito in order to receive an appointment to the position of Undersecretary of the Navy. A formal portrait of Ojiisama (grandfather) in his dress uniform is the central icon in the traditional tatami room of the Yamagata home.

For the Yamagatas the financial setbacks and trauma of Japan's early post war years slowly diminished. Because of Obaasama's financial acumen the family began to prosper. Akiko was married and three daughters were born. The Yamagata family became deeply involved in religious and philanthropic work. The house on Sakurayama has undergone continual expansion to accomodate the family's ever-increasing social, religious, and political activities.

The tender and poignant photographs of this portfolio are more than a loving tribute of a devoted granddaughter to her grandmother. They are indeed the visible manifestations of an artist's interior journey to the matrix of her own cultural and familial identity.

John Upton
January 1986