Jikka in Japan

"Jikka" is an important place in Japanese life. Your jikka is the place where your parents (and possibly grandparents) live. The Kanji forming this word mean: "real/true" and "home." It doesn't exactly mean "home town," because if your parents move then the jikka moves with them. Or if you lose your parents, then you don't have a jikka. There are other words, though, for your birth place or the place where you grew up. I read recently that the Japanese live their lives looking back, in a sense, at the people who they "owe" for their present life (mainly their parents and grandparents). This is in contrast to Americans, for example, who usually look forward and, in some cases, don't want to owe anything to anyone. Anyway, Japanese look to their jikka as a source, and with a kind of loving "obligation." When they are scattered from their homes (as many are in Tokyo), there are a number of times when you naturally return to your jikka: New Year's Day, the Spring school break, and "Obon" in August. Women also commonly return to their jikka when giving birth. Usually they go without their husbands for about three months, which covers both the waiting for birth and recovery periods.

Anyway, we returned to my wife's jikka this past weekend, because my sister-in-law had a baby girl. (Breaking with custom, she "returned" to her husband's jikka to have the baby.) We hopped in the car on Saturday and drove about three hours to Kanagawa (on the other side of Tokyo).

My wife's jikka is in an old fishing town in Kanagawa. At first impression, it's not much to see. The buildings are sort of drab and brownish/grayish. The one park is a forlorn little patch of dirt with a slide that's perpetually sticky (only a parent will understand this). It's a beach town without the fun. My wife's mother's side of the family was in the fishing business for generations. They did pretty well and used to own a section of the beach plus some of the hills overlooking the ocean. But over time the fishing families disappeared one by one. Some retired, and some moved to the next town up the road where they have a small harbor. At one point, the family sold the land surrounding their house to the current neighbors. Then, almost 30 years ago, my wife's grandmother sold the last of their "tangerine mountains" to pay for her son-in-law to study abroad. My wife still gets sad mentioning that. When I first came to Japan with my wife, about six years ago, I took a walk down the beach and found an old woman painstakingly folding and putting away reams of fine nets with thick, agile fingers. Her husband was a few hundred meters off shore in the boat fishing some more. Every morning they had a routine -- he fished and she handled the gear. It was amazing and tiring to see. When we came back again two years later, I found out they had finally retired. That was the last fishing family in town.

The pictures above are: 1) some sport fishermen on the beach (people fish there all the time, but this time they were actually catching something), 2) an early art experiment by my daughter using her legs as a canvas (standing on the doorstep of the family home), 3) a bucket with some fish (Saba, a kind of mackeral), and 4) my daughters, Mari and Maika, on the beach.

My next post will have baby pictures of my new niece!

Posted by jw at May 18, 2004 02:02 PM