KAZUKO

About the Book

Mother is ninety-six or ninety-seven, we’re not sure and there’s no one around to set us straight. The reality of her age seems to have slipped into the dustbin of time. She now resides at the Active Life Shukugawa, a well-run nursing home outside of Ashiya, Japan. I fl y from Newark three or four times a year taking turns with my three brothers visiting. She’s well cared for, is lively, and as reported by the staff, is the center of the home’s social life. She sings a lot. Unhappily she is confi ned to a wheelchair but this in no way puts a pall on her good spirits. When I was last there she studied me carefully as I entered her room and said, “You know, you look just like my daughter.” After a pause she reconsidered and added, “Please, I hope you’ll not be offended, but my daughter is prettier.” Memory for most of us is more like Mother’s than we care to acknowledge. Most believe in the facts of our memory; what we conjure out of our past is trustworthy. It is not. In truth memory has no conscience, is devoid of chronology, and its lapses and confusions are not necessarily a condition of advanced age. Early childhood memories are without context. Flashing on them is like flipping through an old photo album, the snapshots pasted in pellmell. Tested against others’ memories, it’s Rashomon. In recounting the tale of my early life in Japan, I will allow memory’s caprice. I could not do otherwise.

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