Brother who had only a blue frame.
Recently, with my vitamin B6 sufficiency and my blood having escaped pernicious anemia, I began to have lucid dreams again.
I dreamed that I was having nightmares in the middle of the night and was in a setting where I was still at my parents' house. I called my brother with an SOS (in a setting where he was still alive) and he came to me...and to my surprise, he was just a thin blue frame...and I looked at that frame and said, "Huh? Oh, well, my brother is already dead... What? Is this a dream?" I understood.
I realized that he had already become a frame = he had already been reincarnated somewhere.
I understood that.
But I also realized that if his big sister was in a pinch, he would come to rescue me, if I called him.
My younger brother was unreliable when he was a boy...
My younger brother was a slower growing child compared to me, who was in charge of the household as the eldest daughter of a single mother with her 3 children. Boys, in general, would be...
He wet the bed until the third grade, but became popular in middle school as an athlete, and came home with 14 pieces of chocolate for Valentine's Day.
When I was in the third grade in Junior high, at age 15, in some night crawler snuck into our house in the middle of the night, and he touched my stomach.
What a surprise! He was a classmate of my younger brother.... At the time, I was sleeping at the bottom of the bunk bed and my brother was sleeping on top, so when I noticed the night crawler's hand patting my stomach, I jumped up and, of course, woke my brother up.
However, my brother's response at the time was, to say the least, disappointment....
He didn't even notice that his big sister was being molested. He was just wondered "why did they wake me up...?" I said to my brother, "Catch this guy so he doesn't get away!" and I went to call my mother in a big hurry...
The guy was later caught for molestation and underwear theft(which was not just mine, all the neighbor's).
At that time, I really felt that my brother was just a kid.
Later, I would relive this feeling while climbing. Climber at young age is just a kid.
The Only Partner Who Shared My Mother's Collapse
When I entered junior high school, my mother, buoyed by the bubble economy, made a series of purchases that seemed inappropriate for a single-mother household.
A laser disk player and a word processor was maybe OK, but a few other things, but a snakeskin bag cost 160,000 yen($1600) and a high-end coat 150,000 yen($1500).
My shoes were leather loafers, a year earlier than other children started wearing loafers.
My mother came from a local wealthy family, they even have my grand grand fathers statue, so she was always like that, spending money when she had to.
By the time I entered high school, we had no money for food.
My mother became addicted to credit card debt and gambling.
My mother hid the bicycle spinning family finances, and no one could really see what's happening. From my younger brothers and sisters, still a kid, all parent looks like a god, ...also perhaps my mom were embarrassed to show up miserable status...real status...though, I was a rather precocious child, and by the time I was 12, I was already more intelligent than a normal adult. I had finished to read the Marxian economics around that time... so she could not deceive me. I knew immediately on a hunch that my mother was on a path of multiple debts from which there was no turning back. After all, she would come home crying in the middle of the night.
At the time, I waited for my mother's late return studying English until past midnight. I thought that the only way out for me was to study. As a child in junior high school, I could not support myself by getting a wage. So, I studied as a prayer. Academics is the only hope to me.
My younger brother and sister were sleeping peacefully, in contrast to me who was up late into the night waiting for my mother to return. I knew my mom needed my mental support.
I was aware, without anyone telling me, that I could not expect my mother to finance my college education. However, I was in a top high school at the time, and the percentage of students who went on to higher education was 100%. What was I supposed to do?
I was struck with despair. Not feeling like a despair, but real despair.
My mother had no special ability to earn big money, but she was a proud woman. She was always saying things like, "We will not be on the government checks!" She was always saying something like that.
In fact, at the time, people were not very understanding of single-mother families and were very critical of them, and social support was considered as a shame.
But, you know, it is the children who are being victimized.... For example, my mother did not want her children to receive dental care, because of the cost. But usually, family of low income will not need to pay medical fee in Japan. We did not use the merit just because of her pride.
What I sacrificed in childhood was my dental health. Time to live innocently as a child. What I gained instead, resilience, my academic success, and the ability to forge my own path.
If my mother had received proper single parent welfare as a single-mother household, her children's medical expenses would have been free. But she did not.... he pride can not allow that.
In this regard, my grandmother was no different, and she is ashamed to carry on the rights that are given to her as a citizen of Japan.
Government taking care of you was a shame, was the reason.
But...the both of them seemed to think that they could rely on her children as a right. Especially on me. What I was told was, " It's a family tie".
But the term "a family tie", to me, is talking about me contributing to the household, one way or the other, and neither my younger brother nor younger sister are required to contribute. Because they are younger than me. However, the age difference is something that will never change.
It is so constructively similar to how the term "self-responsibility" used in climbing community in Japan, it seems to apply only to me, but not for the other fellow especially young men... They usually show up without even knowing how to rappel. I never asked my climber mate how to rappel, I knew it before I go to any crag.
It meant that as long as I stayed in my house, "forever," I would not be able to have time for myself under the beautiful name of "family tie", and a life I live myself would be treated as a selfish act, and only a life that prioritized my family would be allowed. You know it's Asian good daughter tradition. Self sacrifice. No doubt that Amy Tan was my favorite novel back then.
This is the same thing that happened in the climbing world. I only give and my partner does not give me back. I belay him, he does not belay me.
It is natural to love one's family, but forcing self-sacrifice is not their rights.
Everyone is allowed to live their life first and foremost.
In the end, my mom was too proud to ask a financial help to the government, so her children are the ones who suffer. Her ego was too big and love could not overcome the shame.
The dental care I was unable to receive when I was in teen, was paid for with my own money after I went to college and became a working student with a full-time job. At that time, I felt very satisfied. I wanted to take care of my teeth properly. That was a minimum of human rights.
The same tooth, later, became the first implant in my 20's, due to various circumstances.... a small problem grow big... At the time, I was headhunted by a Germany venture company and was selling German dental turbines, so I got the implant from one of the best doctors in the industry. It cost quite a bit, but I felt like I paid just about the full amount I could afford.
It was a guilt pay back to myself. I was so proud that I have enough money to take care of my own health with such a high quality treatment. But sales was a big boring job so I soon quit, but the implants stayed.
...and so on, because my mother was too proud of everything. That seemed like my family illness.
Sad thing was that my mother was not as good as she wished, she olny says pretty things but never be able to actually responsible.
In the end, I, the eldest daughter, ran the household as a housewife for 10 years from the ages of 8 to 18. I also had to maintain top grades in school.
This was out of pride of my mother, who did not want to be looked down upon because of a single-mother family. My life was a series of entrance exams, for kindergarten, elementary school, and junior high school, of course high school and university. I was the only such child in my class. There were only two kids in my grade school who had entrance exam in Junior high. The result? Of course, I passed.
In elementary and junior high school, I was class president, student council, and captain of the athletic team. I was forced to live up to my mother's expectations, and the school teachers took advantage of poor me as a convenient student with no complaints from the PTA.
In the midst of all this, my younger brother had to continue to fulfill my mother's expectations in his way, not academically, but by swimming.
My brother's life revolved around swimming competitions, and so did my family's. We fed him and made him swim, and at competitions, the whole family was there to cheer him on. Thanks to this, my brother was a medalist since he was in elementary school, 5th and 6th grade. However, the family also has a hard time being swept up in the competitions.
In our house, things was like this. Child was my mother's report card, my mother's way of proving herself to the world.
My brother's grades were so low that there was no high school for him to go to, but in reality, I think it was because my mother was so intent on making him a good swimmer that he was so exhausted that he didn't have the time nor energy to study.
My mother was a very demanding person. It was hard for anyone to meet those demands. My brother was one of the victim. So do I.
She wanted me to be good academically, she wanted my brother to be a good swimmer, and she wanted my sister to be charming.
I think that my mother was trying to use her children to revenge the world that made her unhappy, but the need for approval was something she should have fulfilled by herself not by her kids.
My younger brother was the only person with whom I shared such a cramped childhood, my only buddy, you could say.
As soon as he entered high school, he started working part-time and started paying for his own food, just as I had done in my first year of high school. His first part-time job was working as a "road man" (a kind of manual work). He came home exhausted.
It was because his mother's purse was so empty that he had no choice but to do so....
In Japanese high school, school lunches are not served. So we had to bring money for lunch, but my mother had no such money. In the end, I had to realize that she meant that I had to earn the money for my lunch by myself. My first job was bakery in a early morning.
I was 18 years old, and without consulting anyone, I decided to go on Osaka University of foreign study in Osaka. A faraway from home.
In the name of this higher education, my mother received an interest-free loan of 500,000 yen from the bank. I only received 170,000 yen. The rest, from the entrance fee, travel expenses to the entrance examination, fees for mock examinations, and funds to prepare for my new life, were all financed by myself. The remaining 330,000 yen probably went to my family' food expenses.
Studying for entrance exams as a high school student and raising funds to go to college on my own
In short, I was extremely busy. I would come home around 2 a.m. when everyone else was asleep, and leave for my part-time job at 6 a.m. I deliberately avoided running into my family.
This was because once they came home in the evening and my mother asked me to cook dinner, which I did, but instead of eating with my family, I wanted to study in my room. My mother had poured the dinner over my head. Accusing me of selfish. If I had not been home, such things would not have happened.
In other words, if I met my family, I would be required to do domestic work, would not be able to study nor work part-time to gain a wage. The people who helped me were my friends in the high school. They sheltered me during the night.
I slept four hours or so, but the school's policy was that I could sleep during classes that were not needed for college exams, so I could sleep in the art club room during math, chemistry, and other classes that I didn't need. Therefore, I spent more time in the art club as a nap room than I did drawing.
And so, when I left home in the name of furthering my education, I was finally able to leave my role...a good Asian daughter who take care of my family.
It had been a really long and painful childhood. I really felt relieved that my childhood was over. I felt like, "Well, I was able to endure this, so I can endure anything else that comes my way".
When I went on to higher education, people around me felt sorry for me because I was a working student. At my college co-op job, everyone gave me things like bowls and towels as gifts. Compared to my childhood, however, being a college student seemed like a piece of cake....
In college, you are not expected to play any role other than being yourself. All I had to do was to take care of myself! I was finally in a position where I could enjoy freedom...
Until then, even if I wanted to go running, I had no time to go running. Now I can use my time on myself!
In college, I had to work full time, attend college classes at night, and pay my own tuition and living expenses...a much harder lifestyle than most students...but still, it was heaven. Because where I came was even worse.
I was youngest in the student dormitory.
At the time, my workmates at the university Library were people who had witnessed me being free and live my life and helped me in many ways. It was a cradle, and it was the reason that I was able to graduate from college. I did not get that position by luck, but get that by leaving my résumé , asking them that I wanted to work there if there is any any openings.
Life in night school is hard, and people fall behind.
However, in my case, as mentioned above, my childhood was difficult in the first place, and since I had done the "mission impossible" in high school, so from my point of view, my college life was a piece of cake. I had a stable income, albeit a low monthly salary. I was working full time during the day, and my academic work was at night 6 pm to 9pm, including general education courses that I had no interest in, I could just get a C in credit so I was able to let go of the general class that don't need and forcus on my main major, English. I was all A or A plus in English as my major.
On my days off, I enjoyed going to Sannomiya in Kobe to visit vintage clothing stores and buy imported foods that I had longed to buy. I was a big reader of westnern literature like "Anne of green gables".
In my second year of college, I started to take a ballet class, which I had longed to do as a child, and in my third year, some of my seniors introduced me to a job opportunity abroad.
I took a leave and went to the United States. It was after my first trip abroad that I found a job, so I had only 20,000 yen in my wallet, but I had already developed a tolerance for a life of low income, so I didn't think anything of it. Well, I thought, I will never starve in a developed country.
I went to the U.S. with such a tight budget however, the happiest time of my life was the two years I spent in San Francisco.
I lived happily as a hippie in a poor Hispanic neighborhood called Mission district with people who were also on the edge of life. I was also in a millionaire residence such as Moraga, since my BF's father was AT&T executive.
When I came back to Japan, the bubble economy had burst, the employment ice age had set in, my seniors were refused in job interview by 40 companies, and my classmates went back to the home with disappointment. I had good grades in college, and most people told me to go on to graduate school, but I did not think it was a wise choice to further increase the approximately 4 million yen in scholarship debt I was already carrying.
Without this debt, I would not have had to return to Japan, but unless I graduated from college, I would have to pay it back at once, and without a job and a deposit in the U.S., my uncle, who had been my guarantor in Japan, would have to pay the debt. I can not do that.
So, I took the responsibility rather than my dream of immigrating to the US.
Living in the U.S. was a dream I could not take due to lack of money.
At the time, I had to come back from the U.S. because of this debt, so I was willing to pay it back in Japan and quickly return to the U.S.
Sadly, it took me 20 years to pay it back. So, my life was restarted when this repayment was completed at age 38 when I started climbing in Yamanashi.
In the end, after returning to Japan, I worked as a student interpreter and held three part-time jobs during my senior years of college.
Around this time, my boyfriend David came to Japan, but it was tough. David could not speak Japanese. I knew that continuing to work at the library would not help me find a job during the recession, so I took a risk and was in the process of creating credit with human resource company by working as a short-term temporary worker. Temp jobs were just starting to emerge then, unlike today, the system was structured so that only the experienced people could get in.
Because it was a short-term job and the income was not stable, I had to take in shady part-time jobs such as dating clubs. David became lonely and an alcoholic because of my unexpectedly busy schedule.
Finally, he had an attack of trigeminal neuralgia, and he had to grab a cab from Toyonaka to Kansai Airport and jump on the earliest flight of the day to go back home.
At the time, my refrigerator was in the second hand by a neighborhood electrician. The furniture was picked up from the road in Maruyama-cho.
After accumulating experience at the secretariat of an international conference, as a student interpreter, and as an IT system installer, I cleared the two-year minimum work experience requirement for the temporary staffing business, which was still open only to professionals at the time, and I joined Panasonic. I had always wanted to be a programmer, having taught myself the Basic language at the age of 14.
The Robotics Division was my first job, and was stable and on top of that, I accomplished quite a bit. I bult the software bug database from scratch in MS Access. At that time, few people understood SQL. I am really grateful to the Robotics Division.
During that time, from the age of 18, to 24... I was so busy. I had final come to relax when I turned 25, my second year in the Robotics Division. This is because night school takes 5 years to graduate instead of normal 4 years, and I went to the US for 2 years along the way, so I was in college for a total of 7 years. It took me this long till my finance stabled.
I did not attend the graduation ceremony. Even before graduation, I was already working as an member of society. I mean, I had been working since I was in high school. The event to celebrate my becoming an adult was a bit bland, and I felt like I had already become an adult a long time ago. It was like, "I've been an adult for a long time now. Why celebrate now?"
Since I was older than most students at the time of graduation, I was not hired as a new graduate. At that time, there was no such thing as a "second new graduate," and if you missed the age of 22, you would not get a second chance.
However, my University has a history as a national university that originally produced diplomats, many of the student part-timers worked at a prestigious news paper and such, and it was standard practice to sliding up from part-time jobs, so my employment in robot labo was similar. Before graduating from university, I entered the company as a temporary worker, but two years later, following my engineer mentor, I had a contract with a research institute, not a division, and was working as a self-employed software engineer. At that time, my annual income was about 8 million yen at one point. Which is triple of what people earns.
It was like my hard work finally made sense. In the development team, it was rare to go home in the light of day. Looking back on it now, it was black labor, but I was young, everyone around me was like that, and the phrase "Project X" by Miyuki Nakajima was running through my head like a drug, and we were all really motivated. We're going to make an amazing robot! We will change the world! I mean it.
In fact, college life and high school life were more difficult for me, so I didn't think of the hard work of the software industry as a problem.
Then came the news of my brother's death....
Just when I thought I could finally take a break and relax....
I had not seen my brother for 8 years... Those 8 years were the most turbulent period of my life. Fight or fleight? time. I really had no time to breathe until then.
I didn't have a penny to spare, and of course, I never went back to my home town. I was safe in Osaka, I lived in a small apartment without a bath for 30,000 yen a month. My face was stern and scary, and I was like a different person than I am now.
My younger brother who died at that time... I saw him for the first time in eight years, but he was already cold. He looked like a man I did not know at all. It was not the face of the young brother I knew as a child, but that of an adult man....
What kind of life did my brother lead for the eight years before his death?
I do not know.
So it is not surprising that I have great regret over my brother's death.
But did I do something wrong? No, I did only what anyone would have done in such a situation.
Such a tough childhood...working from high school, how many people can perform better than me? I can honestly say that there are very few people who could have done as well as I did in an environment where I was given, no time, no money, or worse, even no loving parent.
Children cannot realize that their parent's demands are out of the ordinary.
They are unable to realize it.
So they have no choice but to keep on trying, as demanded.
I once passed out on a front door when I was 14 years old. It was overwork. I realized then that no one would help me when I was extremely overworked. This was when I was still obedient to my mother, obedient to my school teachers, obedient to what they told me to do, continuing to fulfill my roles, and living in 15-minute increments.
In other words, from that time on, I had sacrificed my health to do what I am expected to do.
Climbing is no different, and if you carelessly go along with a wrong partner, it could cost you your life.
In college, many of my classmates in the evening classes never graduated in the first place, and many of them dropped out and returned to their parents' homes. Those who attended college while working in government job generally chose to give up their college degrees.
Some of them dropped off due to depression, and some of my classmates committed suicide. The only person who found a better job than I did was one who went on to work for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
So I made my best effort and my effort paid off....
Going to college was not what I wanted, I was forced to do so by adults, but I finished. The price was a good health.
I also fulfilled my childhood dream of becoming an English speaker. The price was a life of poverty. It was a cheap price. The time was so enjoyable that my atopic dermatitis improved. Poverty did not bother me. I left Japan not being able to speak at all, but when I returned to Japan, I took the TOEIC score for the second time was an almost perfect score of 925 (the perfect score at that time was 950).
I also fulfilled my dream of becoming a programmer. The price for this was IT black labor. This, too, did not bothered me too much. It was a time of recession I was just grateful to have a job in the first place.
At the age of 27, I received an annual income of 8 million yen, anyone would feel as proud as me if you were in my shoes....
But still, on a sudden death of my brother,
I didn't see him for 8 years...
It is true that the bereavement was unexpected and it occurred in a way that left me a big regret.
I sacrificed time with my family. I am not sure if it should be called a sacrifice. I am not sure. My family functioned as the greatest burden of all for my life, if I were with them, I was not as successful I were then.
I don't remember a single dish my mother cooked for me, but I do remember the fudgy pancake I made with my brother when I was a little girl and we both were hungry. We just dissolved flour in water and pan baked it. That was the way we learned how to survive.
Could I have come to reunite with my brother in those 8 years before he passed away?
Non...
Unfortunately, that was impossible, no matter how strong I was.
Who, if not God, could have predicted my brother's sudden death at the age of 24?
It was not my fault as a child that I had an unhappy relationship with my family. Rather, it was the karma of my parents, who were only able to give me such a childhood.
My father is still alive and well, but he chose to live his own life instead of rising his children. This is simply irresponsible.
In such case of like single mother, usually grand parents would assist in traditional family sytem of Asia, but in my case my grand mother didn't, I think, she was also helpless because the relationship between my mother and grandmother was very bad.
In fact, my grandmother seems like she tried once. She took care of my sister as a baby. And my mother? She was working an irregular and unstable job. My grandmother could not help my mother without self-sacrifice, so in the end, they broke up. Kids always pay the price. I was the one who suffered the most, my young brother followed.
After much consideration, there was no way to help us as a kid, including government, such as social work, to save my brother and me at an early age.
Both my brother and I had to save ourselves. I, with my schoolwork and my brother, with his swimming.
In such cases, the earlier one becomes aware of the situation, the better.
I was able to realize that the boat I was on was a mud boat, when I was in elementary school. My younger brother didn't become aware until he was well into high school. My younger sister didn't realize it until she was in her 20's and was driven to suicide.
I wanted to save my brother and sister.
Once I was on the lifeboat, I wanted to get back to my brother and then my sister on board. But I could not get back to my brother before his death.
So, in climbing, I would project my brother onto younger men, and I would do them a kindness that they didn't deserve. They took advantage of that.
I have a tremendous amount of guilt feeling inside me.
But to say least, it's beyond me to get him on a life boat.
But my sadness of loosing him before we became reunite is still there, un-erasable.
Those who take advantage of my kindness in the climbing, a shame on you. You should thank to my brother. My regret over my brother's death led me to act of over kindness in climbing.
No, the opposite... It was this sadness kept me from giving up on climbing in Fukuoka, which was already no fun, no life-enhancing.
I thought that there must be something I could do to help those stupid climbers. Such as going to crag without knowing how to rapple... I was still fooling my rational judgment. Because my love to my family is so big.
If my brother had not died suddenly at a young age, I would not have thought that I should go follow the "hakua slub" multi pitch in Hiei, that was the worst failed climb in my climbing history. I felt sorry to the guy who does not have a partner... I felt sorry that he only have irregular day-off... I felt sorry for him...was the reason I climbed with him.
I also would not have been guiding a man who had not even prepared a topo to Ogawayama.
All the other inappropriate actions I took, happened because I loved my brother so much.
My brother and I grew up looking exactly alike.
I was often mistaken for a boy. But when we grew up, my brother was a different person. He was 6 feet tall and had an athletic physique with a super inverted triangle. He no longer looked anything like me.
Perhaps if he had become a climber, he would have been a good climber. He was not very smart, though.
My brother was two years younger than I. He died at the young age of 24.
I now know how deeply I loved my brother, after all the unpleasant climbing incidents.
I came to know how deeply I loved my brother.
This was what had to learn in my climbing. Now I am done.
