WOMAN ON THE OTHER SHORE
by Mitsuyo Kakuta
translated from the Japanese by Wayne P. Lammers
Tokyo: Kodansha International, 2007.

"At some point as we grow older, it suddenly becomes harder to make friends. It’s hard for a woman who works outside the home to make friends with a woman whose whole life is her children, and it’s hard for a woman who’s settled into domesticity to listen to the “relationship” woes of a woman who’s still single. It was so much easier back in high school. We could just rush off together after classes, grab a sweet snack somewhere, and talk endlessly about the things we wanted to do someday. But I can’t help feeling it’s now, as adults, that we really need friends like we had back then—friends we can trust with our whole being."

—the author

From Chapter 1

When am I ever going to stop being the same old me?

With a start, Sayoko Tamura realized she’d been absentmindedly turning the same question over and over in her mind, and a crooked smile came to her lips. The very fact that she was thinking such thoughts meant one thing hadn’t changed since she was a little girl. She’d spent practically her entire childhood wondering what it would be like if she were somebody else. What if I were everybody’s sweetheart Yoko? What if I were super-whiz Nitta?

Sitting on a park bench under a canopy of tree branches, she turned her gaze toward her three-year-old daughter playing in the sandbox. There were many children Akari’s age at the park, and they had all found at least one or two other kids to play with. But as usual Akari was shoveling all by herself off in the corner. When she got to be a little older, would she be asking herself the same question: What if I were somebody else?

With a sigh, Sayoko pulled her cell phone from the hip pocket of her jeans. The log showed no missed calls, so she dialed her home phone to check for messages there. Nothing. The call she was expecting had not yet come.

Akari had been born three years ago in February. About six months later, Sayoko followed the advice of the parenting magazines she read and began taking her daughter on outings to the park closest to home—at the suggested hour, and dressed according to form. She got to know other mothers with children Akari’s age, and even arranged to meet with them to go for their babies’ periodic checkups and vaccinations together. But as time passed, Sayoko began to notice a certain cliquishness among some of the young mothers who came to the park. She saw that they were following the lead of one woman in particular, and although they were careful not to be too open about it, avoiding any obvious snubs, they were in effect ostracizing one of the other mothers. Being over thirty herself, Sayoko was noticeably more advanced in age than most of the women, so she could accept that they might think she didn’t fit in. It didn’t mean they thought she was a bad person. They would naturally assume that someone as much older as she was would have different perspectives and be harder to open up to. It was an entirely understandable response, really.

Even so, once she realized what was going on, Sayoko found it depressing to go to the park, and she gave up the daily outings for a while. But then it wasn’t long before she started feeling guilty about keeping her daughter cooped up at home all the time. She worried that without the park and its opportunities for meeting other children, her little girl might never develop the social skills she needed.

And so Sayoko and Akari had spent the last two years slowly making the rounds of every park within walking distance of their condominium. Once they’d been going to Park A long enough for Sayoko to identify the social dynamics of the mothers who gathered there, they moved on to Park B. Fortunately, there was no shortage of parks large and small within range of their building.

Sayoko learned that people who wandered from park to park this way were known as “park hoppers.” But it’s not like we’re hopping around by choice, she muttered as if making excuses to someone as she left the house with Akari in search of each new park. We’re just trying to find a park where we can feel at home.

This particular park, about a twenty-minute walk from their building, was the largest they’d found in their travels, and it drew a more mixed crowd than the communities of young mothers Sayoko had found so characteristic of the smaller parks. Here she saw fathers walking their babies, or older folks playing with their grandchildren, and even the mothers were much more varied in age and dress. Not only that, but, as a matter of courtesy, all the grownups ignored each other; nobody ever tried to talk to anyone unless it was absolutely necessary. Deciding she preferred it that way, Sayoko had been bringing her daughter here for nearly six months now.

Of course, even if the grownups kept to themselves, the little ones usually made friends. While their parents buried their noses in books or fiddled with cameras nearby, the children thrown together in the midst of all the play equipment gradually gravitated toward one another and began playing with kids they’d never seen before. Now and again tears would flow in a dispute over a toy, but even then the grownups tried hard not to get involved. It seemed to be an unwritten rule at this park.

Digging in the sand with her plastic shovel, Akari paused to watch two girls her age playing house in the middle of the large sandbox. One of them wore a red T-shirt, the other a sunflower-print dress, and they were giggling and chattering over a set of colorful plastic dishes, their voices ringing crisply into the air. A little boy tottered up from the far side of the sandbox and eyed them as if wanting to be included. At first they just stared back, but then the girl in the sunflower print picked up a fork and handed it to him, affecting what must have been the mannerisms of her own mother.

While pretending not to watch, Sayoko kept a surreptitious eye on the threesome in the middle of the sandbox and on Akari shoveling all by herself in one corner. Every so often she saw her daughter cast a glance toward the others, then quickly go back to her digging.

Sayoko often marveled at how much the daughter took after the mother. No matter how badly the girl wanted to join a game, she was too shy to simply walk up and ask if she could play, so she waited timidly nearby, hoping to be invited. Of course, children seldom noticed such things, and by the time Akari cast her next sidelong glance the others might have run off to play somewhere else. As Sayoko watched Akari’s eyes dart back and forth, she invariably recognized in them the movements of her own eyes. This was exactly how she’d looked at the mothers in all those other parks, where she’d found it so hard to fit in. And each time she realized this, it gave her a deep sense of failure as a mother. If only she were a more self-confident and outgoing parent who could strike up easy conversations with whomever she met, pretending not to notice the walls that cliques tried to erect, then surely Akari would be growing into a more self-confident and outgoing child as well.

Sayoko had considered going back to work before this. She’d thought about it during the first two years of her marriage, before Akari was born, as well as in the three years since. Instead of fretting all the time about which park to go to, maybe what she needed was to find herself a job and put Akari in nursery school. Her daughter was bound to make more friends there than she made as a “park hopper.” She would probably learn to be more sociable. Yet Sayoko had continued to hesitate. What kind of mother chooses to work when her child’s at such a precious age? The poor girl, being torn away from her mom like that! She made excuses for her inaction by repeating the refrains she’d heard from other stay-at-home mothers at the park. But the real reason for dragging her feet lay elsewhere. When she saw cliques forming among the young women at the parks, it reminded her all too well of the office politics she’d had her fill of before she got married.

After college, Sayoko had taken a job with a film distributor, a company known for giving new hires a great deal of freedom and responsibility from day one. She enjoyed the work itself, and she also liked the easygoing company culture in which subordinates weren’t expected to be so formal with their superiors. But as the years went by, tensions that had been indiscernible at first rose to the surface. Certain members of the permanent female staff were caught in an endless cycle of petty charges and counter-charges with the contract workers—about who was supposed to make sure coffee and iced tea were available; about what time workers could leave at the end of the day; about the dress code; about personalizing the ladies’ room. If you tried to stay out of the fray, whether by being nice to everyone or ignoring everyone, you could soon find yourself being picked on by both sides. It required a tremendous effort to maintain the right distance from the opposing parties, and in fact Sayoko expended huge amounts of energy attempting to do exactly that. Fortunately, just when she was becoming completely fed up with the toll this was taking, her boyfriend Shuji Tamura conveniently popped the question. She quickly said yes, and almost as quickly submitted her resignation to the company. Shuji was obviously none too happy about the latter—he had assumed Sayoko would continue working even after she got married—but she pretended not to notice.

It was about a month ago that Sayoko had finally broached the subject with her husband.

“I’ve been thinking I’d like to go back to work.”

“Sure, why not?” he replied absently, not even bothering to ask what might have prompted her decision. Sayoko realized he must think she wasn’t serious, she was just sounding out a momentary whim.

But Sayoko was dead serious. She bought recruitment magazines and scanned the job listings, looking for anything that said No experience necessary. Homemakers welcome. She’d gone to a number of interviews and been turned down every time, for whatever reason. For each appointment, she had to leave Akari with her mother-in-law, who invariably had a snide remark or two to offer. But Sayoko refused to let the repeated jabs get to her; if anything, she became more determined than ever as she searched the ads and sent in applications.

Now she glanced at the display one last time before shoving the phone back into her hip pocket. She leaned her head back and looked up at the sky. Beyond the leaves swaying gently overhead stretched a flawless expanse of cerulean blue.

The woman she’d interviewed with two days before had told her she’d get back to her today. Despite her perfect string of rejections so far, Sayoko hoped this time might be different. In fact, she was secretly counting on it. Not only was the woman Sayoko’s own age, but they’d gone to the same school. Since it was a megaversity with a huge student body, it wasn’t actually all that unusual to run into fellow alumni, but this woman behaved as if she’d found a long lost friend.

“Can you believe it?” she beamed, sounding very much like she was still a student. “Just think how many times we must’ve walked right past each other! Under the ginkgo trees coming in from the gate, you know, or in one of the dining halls.”

The children who’d been playing house in the middle of the sandbox were now playing store, calling out to the shopkeeper with a bit of a nasal twang.

“I’d like just half of that cabbage.”

“Could you clean this fish, please?”

Sayoko saw her daughter keeping a close watch on the action out of the corner of her eye. All of a sudden Akari was looking her way, a plea in her eyes—obviously hoping Mom might step in. Sayoko hastily averted her eyes. It tore at her heart, but she wanted Akari to learn to make friends on her own.

Several minutes later, the girl rose slowly to her feet, sand clinging to her skirt. With an expression of grim determination, she stepped toward the children playing store. The three seemed to be busy dividing things up and deciding what would be what in their game.

“Okay, so we’ll use these for money,” one of them said. “But not those. Those aren’t money.”

When Akari reached the spot where they were playing, she held out her shovel and sand-filled bucket as if to get their attention. But whether because they didn’t notice or were deliberately ignoring her, none of them even glanced up. She lingered there for a while, but when it sank in that they weren’t going to ask her to join them, she abruptly threw down the shovel and bucket. As the bucket tumbled toward the ground, sand spewed onto the little boy’s head. He burst into tears.

“Oh dear,” Sayoko said, rushing to the boy’s side and brushing the sand from his hair. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

Akari watched from a few steps away. She was on the verge of tears herself.

A young woman in a hat approached with a smile. “That’s all right. He’ll be fine,” she said, then turned to her boy. “Settle down, now, Shin. Stop being such a crybaby. You’re frightening your friends.”

His two playmates gave each other looks and turned to go.

“Come over here, Akari. You need to apologize,” Sayoko said sharply. “What got into you anyway—throwing your bucket down like that?”

She regretted the tone of her voice even before the words were out of her mouth. Why did she keep letting this happen? She knew it wasn’t fair to Akari, but somehow she couldn’t help herself. It so exasperated her to see her daughter having trouble making friends that an unintended harshness crept into her voice.

“Don’t be upset, sweetie,” she said more gently. “Let’s just tell your new friend we’re sorry, okay?” She turned toward the boy and his mother, but they were already halfway across the sandbox heading in the other direction.

“Well, maybe it’s time to stop by the supermarket and get on home. Mommy just remembered she forgot to do the laundry.”

Gathering up the bucket and shovel, Sayoko took Akari’s hand and started back toward the bench.

At the supermarket, Akari rode in the front of the cart as Sayoko wheeled up and down the nearly empty aisles. Ground beef was marked down, so she decided to make hamburger steaks for dinner. Checking prices as she went, she added spinach, carrots, and eggs to the cart, then remembered she was out of fabric softener and headed for the laundry aisle.

“Do we have Mil Mil, Mommy?” Akari leaned back to ask about her favorite yogurt drink. “Did you buy Mil Mil?”

“Yes, dear,” Sayoko said absently as she checked prices on several brands of softener. She selected the least expensive refill pack she could find, even as her gaze lingered on a name-brand product that cost three times as much.

A month ago, when she’d finally made up her mind to go back to work, the push had come from an utterly trivial thing: a blouse on a rack in a department store. While shopping in Kichijoji, she’d lifted the tag on a top that caught her eye, and found it marked ¥15,800. As she stood contemplating the tag, she realized she had no idea whether that was high or low. Of course, it was a lot more than she paid for Shuji’s dress shirts, and it would certainly blow a big hole in their monthly budget. But how did it stand in the typical thirty-five-year-old woman’s wardrobe? What did women her age expect to pay for a well-made blouse these days?

It stunned her to realize she didn’t have the first idea. And as she thought about this, everything seemed to fall together: her park hopping, to escape the young-mother politics she wanted no part of; her exasperation at Akari for following her own unfortunate example and playing by herself; and her inability to name the going price for a woman’s blouse. Didn’t they all have a common thread? If she started working again, she would soon learn the price of clothes, she would no longer have to worry about outings to the park, and she would have fewer occasions to snap at Akari. Sayoko became convinced that going back to work would solve everything.

“There. We’re done shopping, and now we just need to hurry home so Mommy can start the laundry,” Sayoko said in a sing-song voice as she picked up the grocery bag in one hand and took Akari’s in the other. If she didn’t hear about that job by the end of the day, she decided, she would buy another recruitment magazine tomorrow.

Swinging their arms in a wide arc between them, Sayoko and Akari started on their homeward trek.

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