Author's note: This story was submitted to the 2023 Little Tokyo short story competition and no reply was received and no thanks either... and that's okay. Because some things in life are worth more than praise.
When I think of little Tokyo, the first thing that comes to mind is Ojisan's Kenji's early life there. The way my paternal grandfather met my grandmother is also the story of our family. My grandfather was an elevator technician who focused on his work a little too much and as a result got married later on in life. He met my grandmother a full decade after the internments in a time when very few women of Japanese decent were present in the United States. He didn't rely on the usual method of the time for finding a wife either - sending a younger picture of himself over to Japan to gain the interest of a woman. Instead, he came to rely on a combination of fate and fortune.
He told me the story one day on a day-trip to Little Tokyo. It was to be our last trip there together and towards the end of the day, Grandpa had turned to me and said:
"Young Kenji, remember something for me when I'm gone: We never know what's going to happen or for that matter what could have been. So don't get too tied up in the past or the future. Cherish the moments you have, and most importantly always keep moving ahead."
It was full moon and the sky was turning from pale orange to lilac and then to violet very quickly in the James Irvine Japanese Garden. I remember both of us standing there, grandfather and grandson, looking forward into the dusk, some steps beside an unlit lantern. I remembered his exact words and wrote them down as soon as I got back to my aunt and uncle.
*
I was 15 then. He was 93. We had started off that morning in 1st street, at that impressive building they used to call the Nishi Hongwanji Temple. It was the first true monument to a flourishing Japanese community in Los Angeles, and I didn't know much about it at the time.
"I like it, but it's not very Japanese, Grandpa" I said, staring up at the grand old building.
Ojichan laughed good-naturedly. He always laughed when I spoke my mind a little too much.
"Yes, well at the time....maybe you'll find this interesting... if you want to go into architecture like you say, everything was done in Egyptian style. It was the fashion of the architecture back then."
Then we sat in silence on those steps that lead into the temple. It was peaceful. A dove cooed some way off, on an adjacent roof, and the morning air felt crisp and promising. I stared up into the clear blueness of the sky.
Grandpa Kenji had closed his eyes, taken off his hat and held it in his hands, his head bowed down, and nodding ever so slightly. It seemed he was letting old memories wash over him.
When I recounted to my father that sudden lapse into silence, the first thing he said put me to shame for having spoken my mind about the great monument: "Oh that is where those buses came to take him and his parents off as internees, With his label hanging from his coat."
Before the disruptions of WWII, Grandad had known Sobo through Tatsuya, her younger brother whom he would often visit at their family home. But there was always a sense of emotional distance between Sobo and Ojisan. A distances that sprung from an unspoken mutual affection.
In time, Ojisan had begun to grow close to the Kumura family, and he would pray exactly one prayer with them before their family kamidana. The circumstances surrounding that prayer were none too propitious. What brought it about was that Tatsuya, Obasan's brother had died.
Grieved and shaken as both of them were, it would soon be compounded by another more terrible, more drawn-out tragedy: The Hamasakis' and Kumuras', Grandad and Sobo's respective families were forced into internment camps in two separate states.
The families were not to see each other again for a very long time. Twelve years in fact. And as it turned out, after that nearly two-and-a-half year period, Yuriko Kumura had understandably married another man. It was a wonder she hadn't married sooner. She had a soft, playful, insightful way about her that reminded everyone of a rabbit and brought everyone joy. Her laughing eyes and kind nature never hardened throughout her life, despite all of the many hardships she would face.
All of this explained why granddad had to sit down a bit longer than usual during that day, just to take everything in, or to meditate, or to pay his dues to the times from which he came. At that time - it was 1993 - there was no official Tanabata festival in little Tokyo just yet. But later that afternoon, after we visited Mr Nguyen, his open demeanor meant that he spoke to many people in shops, wishing them a happy Tanabata; and to all the young Japanese children he said: "Have you written your Tanabata wishes?"
After a while on those steps, he came out from his reverie and said:
"What shapes do you see in those clouds, the ones just above us, young Kenji?"
"Isn't it an ox?" I said with a smile, looking back at him for reassurance.
"Yes, yes, exactly. And what else do you see? There's another animal just there, to the right'
It took me a while longer, but eventually I saw the smaller figure with long ears and the definite outline of a snout and also the circle of a long pair of hindlegs coming to a swirl that formed the creature's feet in mid-jump.
"Oh, I see it now! It's a rabbit, isn't it?"
"Yes, good" he laughed. "You're too good!"
That was a game we'd played since my childhood, but even at 15 I enjoyed it.
Just then a truck came tearing up 1st avenue, and the daydreaming was over.
"Well, let's go and get something to eat, shall we?" said Ojichan, putting his hat back on his bald head.
"Great idea!" I said "I'm starving, aren't you, Ojichan?"
"Yes, yes" he smiled "Yes, I am."
So we left the temple and walked out from the center of Little Tokyo, turning off at the first street to our left and then our right, where we found a brightly lit restaurant that struck both of us as a good place to have our breakfast. There were a few excitable teenagers running past us and one or two old Japanese women with their shopping bags in hand.
We walked in, sat down and both ordered miso soup, which it turned out was very similar to the way we always had it for breakfast in my parents' home in New York. It had fresh katsuobushi which always brought out the finer nuances of the miso paste, the konbu and the tofu. Sobo was at home with my parents, recovering from a cold, but I immediately thought that she would have enjoyed it too.
"Granddad" I said, thinking of my Sobo now, "will you show me the place where you met Obasan now that we're here? "
Grandad glanced up from his bowl of miso with a look of sudden profoundness. He had promised to tell me the exact story, but only when we came back to Little Tokyo.
"So you were thinking of your obachan too! She would have enjoyed this miso, don't you think? It was around this time of year, too that we met. Around the same time as the Tanabata festival. But I'll tell you what: Let me take you to that place when we're finished. It's not far from here."
"Alright," I said with obvious glee, and I finished my bowl of miso more quickly than usual.
*
The place was a good distance off from the neat quadrant of Little Tokyo, but close enough to walk, and despite his great age, grandad almost outpaced me at times. The shop as it turned out, was still within a part of the original Nihonmachi or Japanese Town.
"This is the place!" he said, after the few last twists and turns. We were both quite out of breath.
I looked up at a wooden store-front with its Vietnamese lanterns and ancient-looking windows, clearly additions to a newer building. Grandfather led the way in. When my eyes had had a chance to adjust to the dimness, I saw the old counter with a young lady behind it. My grandfather greeted her in Japanese and asked her where Mr. Nguyen might be. It turned out that he would only be coming in later, in about an hour.
I would look around in the meantime. It was an antique store whose owner's love of Asian artifacts infused the place with a sense of real wonder. On show, on the many delicate wooden shelves and inside cupboards with glass cases, stood vases on pedestals, intricately carved jade figurines, and delicate lacquered boxes. Some of these items were Vietnamese, and some Chinese, while to my surprise, only the odd few Japanese kimonos or delicate silk fans were scattered here and there.
But then, from the back of the shop, beside two closed fusuma panels, my grandfather called me.
"This is where I saw her again. Everything's still the same,"
I joined him and when he walked with a sudden sense of gravity over to a kamidana inside, I knew that he was talking about the shrine. He was always a very reverent man. He knelt down before the kamidana, and I followed him and did the same.
We both looked up at the antique shrine before us and we bowed twice together. Within the kamidana, stood two delicate candles on either side of the beautifully carved wooden honden. Grandfather took up a brush, swept the housing, put down the brush and from his jacket pocket produced a box of matches to light the candles. When he had lit the candles, he took two branches which were prepared on a pedestal beside him and placed them inside the vases which lay on either side of honden in front of the candles. The honden housed Yuriko's family's patron Goddess, Amaterasu, but its doors remained closed.
I saw the rice straw rope above the honden too, and the neatly cut segments of paper suspended from it with ancient Japanese script. Then I noticed the two jade animals that had become illuminated by the candle-light. Could they be a rabbit and an ox? Yes! They were vaguely delineated but I was quite certain that they were.
We both prayed our prayers, bowed deeply twice again and then slowly stood up. Grandfather had never told me the full story before that point - not the one involving the kamidana. As a matter of fact neither I nor anyone besides Obaasan had known about that part of the thing. Not even my mother and father. I suppose that this is what makes the incident inside that Vietnamese shop so sacred to me. It took me many years to figure out that this was Obisan's intention.
*
At length, Mr Nguyen arrived inside the doors of his shop. He was an elderly man who took great pains to move anywhere. He said little at first. Just a simple greeting. Then he gestured,"please. Come upstairs." And somehow, despite his great age he managed up the stairs which led to his office. We both followed him and sat down inside the neat little room.
Once seated, even despite his rheumatic frame, he was very quick-witted and easy to speak with. He was excited to know about my life; as excited if I were his own grandson in fact, and he also asked me about my interest in basketball and architecture very specific detail. During that time - we sat for about three hours in his upstairs office drinking green tea which the young lady brought to us, though it felt more like a few minutes. We talked about a great many things. We discussed the whole quaint story of how Grandad and Mr Nguyen had met, and how Sobo and Ojichan had met soon after that, which is to follow.
**
For his part, after his time in the internment camp, Grandfather had immediately set out for work in New York with the resilience of an ox and would only make a few visits to Little Tokyo in the decade that followed, mostly on account of his parents and two brothers who still lived in the city.
It came about in short order that my Grandfather became the most successful member of the family by sheer dint of hard work and his foresight in moving to an international city. He had in mind the of his parents and his one remaining paternal grandmother. He sped his way up the corporate ladder from a lowly elevator technician, to well-off businessman in his mid-forties. Soon after he opened his business, he moved his parents to New York with him.
During the last of those 10 years since her internment camp days had ended, my grandmother had suffered the death of her first husband. The Hamazaki and Kimura families didn't keep in touch, but one day, on one of his visit to a friend in Los Angeles from the internment days, grandad had decided muster up the courage to see what had become of his home in little Tokyo.
When he got there, he stood by a new building, a warehouse which bore no resemblance to his original family home in whose place it stood. Then, almost without thinking he traced his steps down familiar roads to where the Kumura's old home once sat. It was a building of half its original size, and it brought tears to grandads eyes to see how the dimensions had so changed. In place of the old home there now stood a tall, narrow Vietnamese shop.
He decided to enter in order to stand once more on the property where he had spent those sacred days of his youth, but then he realized - his eyes growing wide with disbelief - that one feature hadn't been taken with the rubble: The old Vietnamese antique dealer had salvaged the Kumura's kamidana, and had mounted it exactly where it had once stood to honor the family.
As Obisan was to learn from Mr Nguyen that day, he had not only salvaged it from the rubble but had taken great pains to restore its cedarwood frame, also piecing together the kami and vases that lay within using gold paste, rather than more modern methods. Patiently, he had waited for a family member to claim the beautiful shrine. Eventually, Sobo had come in and told him it had been her family's. And then it stayed there, because they both agreed that that was where it belonged.
In fact, said Mr Nguyen to Obichan, Yuriko Kamura is to arrive this same week to give remembrance to her husband who has lately passed away. Thus began their reunion, first as compassionate friends who understood each other's suffering, then two years later man and wife.
***
My mother had only ever told me the joyful part of the story of how Obisan and Ojichan had met: the part where Amaterasu came out of hiding after the storm as she did in the ancient story. Obichan and Ojichan had decided to build a joyful future together and that difficult decision brought the sun into our lives again. But one thing remained undone.
When I first began work in the architectural firm in New York where I now hang my hat during the day, there was a short period of time when I'd arrive home with what my wife called a "distant" expression.
"Do I look stressed?" I asked apologetically. "I don't want to trouble you and the kids."
"No, it's not that exactly. It's more serene. When you're stressed, your eyes strain, like this:" She mimicked my expression.
I laughed, with a relieved sense of joy. Then all of a suddenly realized what it might be.
I revisited my diary and read again what Ojisan had told me all those years ago in the James Irvine Gardens. Then I decided I would go back to the family shrine in Los Angeles with my son, where we would enlist the prayers of a monk to open the honden after all those many decades that it had remained shut.
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