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MY MARRIAGE IS UNUSUAL on two counts. First, we are a racially mixed couple. My husband is Japanese. Born in England, I’m an invisible WASP immigrant. The second trait that sets us apart has crept up on us gradually: we have been married for a very long time, 27 years and counting. Now, this second peccadillo is threatening to overtake the first one in novelty value.
We met in Kathmandu in 1975. That’s as precise as we can get. Neither one of us can remember an initial meeting. “How romantic,” people exclaim. We’re constantly asked to recount how we first met, as if we’re still in the first blush of romance. I wonder how many other long-married couples get such treatment? (None.) Since it’s asked so often, it would be nice if we could get the story right and come up with an accurate recollection of that first meeting.
I say, in a cake shop. I had amoebic dysentery, and was able to eat to my heart’s content without putting on a pound. I was on my sixth piece of pie when I grabbed his attention. He’d never seen anything like my gastronomic capacity. (I finally got myself treated when an American doctor, a fellow traveller, told me that if I didn’t, I was going to end up with a bag instead of intestines.) I didn’t look sick. Matsuki says I looked like a Paris fashion model, a really gluttonous one.
He remembers our first meeting being at Eiji Tajima’s going-home party at the Oriental Lodge, appropriately enough. When I say Matsuki is Japanese, I mean direct from Japan, with minimal English, when we met. I was attracted to the lovely blue-black shine on Matsuki’s hair and those teensy-weensy, streamlined eyes, so sophisticated, so inscrutable. Good aesthetics go a long way when you’re young. What else have you got to go on? You haven’t done anything.
I WAS ABLE TO EAT TO MY HEART’S CONTENT WITHOUT PUTTING ON A POUND. I WAS ON MY SIXTH PIECE OF PIE WHEN I GRABBED HIS ATTENTION.
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I suppose there are many others out there with just the vaguest recollections of 1975. It was a good time to be young, the final good year, the end of an era. There was such optimism in the air for world brotherhood and for cleaning up the environment (we had the EPA!), ideals and progressive yearnings that seem naïve in these miserable, wicked times. Not that there haven’t been good times or good years since, but the world’s a different place now. When I gave birth to three mixed-race babies, not once would I have thought the world would turn back the clock on race relations. Anyway, Matsuki and I must have just kept bumping into each other all over town, and eventually grew on each other, like limpets. And it’s been rather limpet-like ever since. We’ve been together for donkey’s years, but you’d never know it from the response we get when people first meet us. There seems to be something of the illicit about us, as if we’re living in sin. Pupils widen. It’s a bit like being married to a professional salsa dancer, or a juggler: we’re a novelty act.
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I can’t say that we’ve ever encountered outright racism, all these years. Even the most appalling of redneckish types seems willing to make an exception, if engaged in conversation. Older, White, middle-class suburbanites who bump into Matsuki at a cocktail party invariably say, “My cousin/brother/friend is married to a Japanese girl.” And that’s the end of it.
I think it’s only natural for people to notice us. We all look at anything that’s a bit different. Years ago I was in a park with a friend, watching my children play. “Everyone’s looking at you and your daughter, because she doesn’t look like your daughter,” my friend said, in obvious discomfort. Meanwhile, I expected people to look because my daughter was so lovely!
Over the years, my female friends, many of them divorced, have asked me if it’s more difficult being married to a Japanese man, what with all those cultural differences to deal with. It’s something I wouldn’t know. Married to Matsuki forever, I haven’t been able to do much comparison shopping. But my friends who remarry seem to choose clones of their first husbands, showing an extreme lack of imagination.
It is, after all, personality that counts. You’ve got to have the same philosophy about life, the same outlook. You’ve got to click, and that “clicking” is irrespective of race or culture.
If our cultural differences make our marriage more challenging than others, it makes marriage more interesting as well. I’ve always liked anthropology, sociology, distant lands. Who needs university courses when there’s a cornucopia of unusual information sitting across the breakfast table from you? It’s stimulating. Even now. (What a pedant!) And Matsuki is the same nice person he always was. But sometimes, it’s just difficult being married, to anyone.
I think it’s only natural for people to notice us. We all look at anything that’s a bit different. Years ago I was in a park with a friend, watching my children play. “Everyone’s looking at you and your daughter, because she doesn’t look like your daughter,” my friend said, in obvious discomfort. Meanwhile, I expected people to look because my daughter was so lovely!
Over the years, my female friends, many of them divorced, have asked me if it’s more difficult being married to a Japanese man, what with all those cultural differences to deal with. It’s something I wouldn’t know. Married to Matsuki forever, I haven’t been able to do much comparison shopping. But my friends who remarry seem to choose clones of their first husbands, showing an extreme lack of imagination.
It is, after all, personality that counts. You’ve got to have the same philosophy about life, the same outlook. You’ve got to click, and that “clicking” is irrespective of race or culture.
If our cultural differences make our marriage more challenging than others, it makes marriage more interesting as well. I’ve always liked anthropology, sociology, distant lands. Who needs university courses when there’s a cornucopia of unusual information sitting across the breakfast table from you? It’s stimulating. Even now. (What a pedant!) And Matsuki is the same nice person he always was. But sometimes, it’s just difficult being married, to anyone.
THERE SEEMS TO BE SOMETHING OF THE ILLICIT ABOUT US, AS IF WE’RE LIVING IN SIN. PUPILS WIDEN. IT’S A BIT LIKE BEING MARRIED TO A PROFESSIONAL SALSA DANCER, OR A JUGGLER: WE’RE A NOVELTY ACT.
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Gerald Durrell, brother of Lawrence and author of My Family and Other Animals, was a very handsome, dashing sort of man. A stunner. Women everywhere were after him. When he finally married a rather plain girl, his wife got fed up with being asked everywhere she went, “What’s it like being married to such a fabulous man?” She said, “A husband, no matter how handsome, still has to be lived with.” Exactly. The infinite wisdom of that quote has stayed with me all these years. And this marriage of ours, in spite of whichever exotic or titillating front we may present to the world at large, is like all marriages: a tantric wheel of dark nights of the soul and Aprils in Paris. I suppose we’re living proof that although east is east and west is west … the twain can meet.
By Jane Masutani in Ricepaper Magazine
Jane Masutani lives with her husband on Denman Island, one of the Gulf Islands of BC, where she writes a column for two local newspapers. She tries to save the local forest, make apple butter from her old apple-trees and stop Charlie, the pony, from climbing up onto the deck.