Japanese Americans'
Shikata ga nai

 

Kusamochi is a food that is very familiar to Japanese people. Since it is something that is so familiar to me, I have never thought about it deeply. As winter ends and the cold weather eases, the showcases of Japanese sweets shops become crowded with this cake. Kusamochi is also a seasonal word for spring.

 

This food has a long history, dating back to the 6th century when it was an offering during spring rituals in China. The “kusa” in kusamochi generally refers to mugwort, but it is said that in ancient times Hahakogusa was also used. In any case, they were probably hoping for its efficacy as a medicinal herb.

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I have many memories of mugwort. My earliest memory is when my grandparents took me to the embankment to pick mugwort when I was not even in elementary school. The mugwort they picked was taken home and used as an ingredient for Yomogimochi. My mother continued this as a habit in our household until recently.

 

It was early summer of 2023, when the pandemic of the new coronavirus was coming to an end. I often went to the rice fields near my workplace to pick mugwort. It was a fun way to take a walk after lunch. When I put the mugwort I had picked in a plastic bag and left it in my car, the smell of mugwort filled the car.

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I liked this smell.

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A year earlier, I had been suffering from shingles. It was April. I noticed a red bump forming around my stomach, and it started to rub against my underwear, causing me to feel pain. I thought, “That's strange,” and when I showed it to my wife, she said, “It's not just eczema.” I rushed to see a specialist, received treatment, and ended up continuing to take medication for a while.

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I was in my late fifties. I had heard that I was old enough to get shingles, and I had been busy with work the previous month and was tired. So I thought that was the main cause of this disease. However, that didn't seem to be the only reason, as I had also heard rumors that the three doses of the coronavirus vaccine that I had received were related to the onset of my illness.

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Anyway, it took me half a year to recover from my illness and get back to normal. That made me start thinking about my body again. That's what made me want to pick mugwort myself. The collected mugwort was washed, dried, and the stems were removed. I was thinking of making moxa for moxibustion.

 

I have a “pen pal” friend in Salt Lake City, USA, with whom I have been exchanging emails for many years. Her name is Lily Havey, who is of Japanese descent.

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She has painful memories of being interned in a concentration camp during her childhood. The 10 camps where 120,000 Japanese Americans were interned during World War II were all built in vast wilderness. Although I knew bits and pieces of its history, the story she told me directly stuck with me.

 

それにしても、なんと荒涼とした景色だろう。頭上には満天の星。光り輝く月が、地平線までこんもり続くヤマヨモギを照らしている。今にも大地が動き出し、世界の果てへと滑り落ちていきそうだ。葉擦れの音が草の間をくるくると走り抜ける。

 

暖を求めてか、コヨーテがバラックのそばをうろつき始める。どれも忍び足だ。昼間、蜃気楼のように遠くにコヨーテの姿を見かけることがあった。子どもが二匹、母親の後ろを跳ねながらついていくのを見たこともある。親子はそのまま茂みへと姿を消した。夜になると、ためらいがちな遠吠えが始まる。一匹が吠える。長い沈黙。やがてどこか遠くから、応えるような遠吠えが夜のしじまを縫って聞こえてくる。

 

コロラド南東端に位置するこの砂漠には、あらゆる方角から吹雪がやってきた。東のカンザスから吹きつける雪は、グレートプレーンズの砂やほこりを含んでいて、重たく薄い黄褐色をしていた。吹雪が去ると、神様が大きなブラシをペンキに浸して一面に振りまいたかのように、バラックも砂漠も一段と黒ずんだ色に染まった。そんな時は空まで恐ろしげな茶色に変わった。

　

『ガサガサ・ガール、キャンプへ行く 日系人少女の見た強制収容所』リリー・ナカイ・ユリコ・ヘイビー著／高作自子訳より

 

Lily has compiled her childhood experiences into her autobiography. This is a quotation from her book about the scenery near the camp.

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The four years she spent in a camp in such a land cast a dark shadow on her young heart. Her parents had taught her that Japanese people are a patient people who value discipline. All second-generation Japanese Americans were like that. That's why they felt so ashamed to express their frustrations about their difficult days. However, continuing to endure it eventually became a traumatic experience for her.

 

A wild grass called sagebrush grows in the American soil. I was surprised to learn this while continuing to interact with Lily. This is because I always thought that mugwort was a unique plant distributed in Japan and East Asia.

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Knowing that I had a strong interest in it, Lily sent me what appeared to be a photograph of the specimen. But no matter how much I looked at it, I couldn't imagine what the Colorado desert, thick with sagebrush, was like.

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When Lily was being transferred from Los Angeles, where she lived, to the Amache camp in Colorado, she encountered a minor incident on her train. That happened in 1942. The train continued to run, and it was on its second day that it crossed the state border. The location was Arizona. The train suddenly came to a halt, and two dark-skinned women suddenly sauntered onto the train. The Japanese “passengers” were surprised by this incident. All eyes were on the two. The two women had sunburned, wrinkled faces and black braids hanging down to their waists, but Lily thought they looked like ghosts. People around her shouted, but one of the women smiled, showing her gaping teeth, and said, “We are Navajo.” Then she took out a brown, swollen square object from the basket hanging in her arm and began handing it out to everyone. It was a type of bread called “friedbread.” For a moment, Lily wondered if it was poisonous, but when she took a bite, she remembers the delicious fat that slowly spread into her mouth. The two passed out the bread in the car. Eventually, when they finished handing out the items, they landed on the vast desert again and waved their hands in the air as a farewell to the train as it started to move.

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These two Navajo women heard rumors somewhere that Japanese Americans were being deported, and they volunteered to stop the train in order to offer bread to the people, who were probably feeling desperate. They came aboard.

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This “incident” was deeply engraved in Lily's mind as a memory. The Navajo people were kind to Japanese Americans who were forced to leave the land where they lived as enemy aliens during the war and were sent to internment camps. They were also forced by the country to live in a desolate land. The Navajo Nation is a self-governing territory of Native American tribes that straddles Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico.

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By the way, a Japanese woman living in Arizona once sent me dried wildflowers that Native Americans use for smudging. That was a long time ago. She said it was made by drying wildflowers collected from a field near her home. I didn't realize it at the time, but it was sagebrush. She married a Navajo man and lived there.

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At that time, I did not understand what the meaning of the act of smudging involved in their religious rituals was. However, now that I've started thinking about making my own moxa for moxibustion, I feel like I can understand it somehow. I have been helped by moxibustion treatment many times in my 60 years of life.

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Sagebrush is known as sagebrush in America, but its scientific name is Artemisia tridentata. On the other hand, the scientific name of Japanese mugwort is Artemisia indica. It is a wildflower of the same genus Artemisia. Both are plants that have been associated with human life for over 1,000 years.

 

When Lily was a child, one of the words her mother often used to say to her was “Shikata ga nai.” She was often heard in the camp. When a Japanese person writes this, they will probably say “仕方がない” or “しかたがない.” However, the word "Shikata ga nai" used by Japanese Americans has a slightly different meaning in American society.

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They lived as Japanese immigrants or American citizens and were interned in concentration camps during the war because of unfounded discrimination. They were neither Japanese spies nor rioters, but residents with the right to live freely in this country. When they say “Shikata ga nai”, there is a sense of resignation to the unreasonableness that surrounds them. There was also a feeling of relief. And they also had desire to survive.

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As generations pass, the status of Nikkei people has improved, but at the same time they feel the need to rediscover where their roots lie. That's why Lily is still in good health even though she's over 90 years old, and she chides me when I'm feeling down due to a cold. And she is volunteering to talk about her experiences in front of children.

 

“It's a job where we talk about our identity.”

 

She writes this in an email addressed to me. I sometimes think that Lily is more Japanese than we are.