Memoir of My Brother
My brother, Tadakazu Matsuoka, was born in 1940 (a dragon year in terms of the Oriental zodiac), just two years before the World War II, and died of chronic kidney disease at the age of 18 and a half in 1959, when I was 16 years old.
His name, Tada-kazu, consists of two Chinese characters: one is Tada or Chu 忠 meaning faith, a character in his grandfather’s name Chu-hichi 忠七, and the other is Kazu or Ichi一meaning one, a character in his father’s name, Ken-ichi健一. I don’t know who named him, but I imagine my father and grandfather were so happy to see the baby that each of them gave him one of the characters from their names. Tadakazu was born as the first son to Shimizu-ya Shop of soybean paste and soy sauce brewer in Ogaki City, Gifu Prefecture. He was supposed to be the fourth generation brewer.
My earliest memory with him was probably when I was a boy of four of five years old. I was doing sumo with my brother in a tatami room in our house. He boasted that he was strong in sumo among his friends. During our bout, he threw me and I felt a sharp pain in my arm. The next moment I was not able to move my arm. It just hung from my shoulder. I think I began to cry. My brother rushed to our father in the shop (The front part of our house was the shop and the back part was the residence). My father scolded my brother and immediately put me on the rear seat of his bicycle and rode me to Somiya Orthopedic Clinic for about ten minutes. Dr. Somiya instantly fixed my arm like magic. I was able to move my arm as freely as before. When I returned home, I saw my brother’s relieved face.
When I entered elementary school, he was the fourth grader. One day when I was bullied by my classmate during lunch time, I ran along a long corridor, climbed a staircase, and reached my brother’s classroom. Sobbing, I looked for my brother at the classroom doorway. One of my brother’s friends noticed me and said, “What’s the matter, Hiroshi?” I told him I had been bullied. He then got angry and said he would avenge me. He followed me to my classroom hurriedly and standing at the doorway said in a loud angry voice into the classroom, “Who has bullied Hiroshi?” That day when I came back home, my brother told me not to visit his classroom for help. He said he was ashamed to hear that I was standing in front of his classroom. I had thought he would stand by me as my big brother, but it was a mistake.
When I was a second grader and he was a fifth grader, a mock post office within the school started. You can send a letter or a post card to your friend in the school through the school post office system. The mail was delivered by a post office pupil to the pupil in the addressed classroom. Immediately after the system was inaugurated, a postcard was delivered to me. It was from my brother. It read, “Don’t ask our parents for too much New Year’s money.” I was embarrassed and felt ashamed. I thought someone else had read the post card. The content could have been interpreted that our family was poor or that my brother was too good to our parents. However, I did not protest him.
The most regrettable thing happened when I was a third grader and he was a sixth grader. On my way home from school one of my friends told me there was a ghost house near the school and suggested that we should go there. I followed him with some of my friends. When we reached it, I saw an ordinary house. It did not look like a ghost house. Someone said, “Let’s throw stones at the house.” The boys began to throw stones. I also picked up a stone and threw it. Fortunately or unfortunately, it hit the frame of the latticed front door and bounced back. I picked up another stone and stood for a while looking at other boys throwing stones. I threw the stone and it again bounced back. While I was picking up another stone, some boy screamed, “Someone is coming. Let’s get out of here!” We ran and ran. The next morning during the morning assembly at school, Mr. Koyasu, who was in charge of students’ manners, said, “Who threw stones at a house near the school? Raise your hands.” Some of the boys including me raised our hands. After the assembly, Mr. Koyasu took us to the principal’s room. He ordered us to stand at attention there. There were six or seven boys. We had to stand all day, during which time several teachers visited the room and scolded us. In the end we wrote an apology letter. We wrote what we did to the house (which was not a ghost house but a newly built one). One of the boys wrote, “I broke a sliding door.” Another wrote, “I broke three windows.” Although I did not break anything, I wrote, “I broke two windows.” I don’t know why I lied. I thought I had to make up some bad behavior to be in balance with the other boys. My mother was summoned. She and I were scolded by teachers. When I returned to my home, my brother scolded me also. He said, “Shame on you. Do you know how shameful I felt to know that you were one of the gang.” He was the student body president. Some teachers must have told him about me. I should have told him and my mother and father that I did not break any windows, but I did not probably because I actually threw stones at the house. Or probably it was too late now that I made a written apology whether it was a lie or not.
Apart from these shameful memories, I enjoyed being with my brother. During the summer vacations in my elementary school days, my brother often took me to the school swimming pool. We swam a lot together. After swimming we left the school and on our way home we used to stop at a gushing well by the roadside and wash our swimming fundoshi loin cloth. (Ogaki City was nicknamed Water City because of the affluent spring water.) When we returned home, we ate boiled corn my mother prepared for us. That was a happy time for both of us.
My brother also took me to my mother’s parents’ home during summer vacations. It took about an hour and a half to reach it. First we walked to Ogaki Station for about 10 minutes. We took a train to Komano Station on Kintetu Yoro Line for about 45 minutes. From the station we walked along a long countryside road surrounded by mountains for about 25 minutes and arrived at the destination. We usually stayed there for three or four days. During which time, my brother took me to neighboring rivers, mountains, and ponds, sometimes visiting friends sometime went to a barbar shop. Our uncle sometimes took us to festivals and horse races. My brother and I slept on the same futon. We helped our grandparents by cleaning chicken houses or feeding grass or collecting eggs or picking persimmon fruits or sweet chestnuts or figs. Sometimes we collected insect pests in the vegetable fields. I was lucky to have had a big brother. He took initiative in everything and all I had to do was to just follow him or imitate him.
One summer day when we were elementary school boys, my brother and I had a scientific experiment during the train ride to Komano Station (the nearest railway station from our mother’s parents’ home). We were sitting on a bench seat side by side. Before I knew it, I found my brother repeatedly throwing up and catching a ball in the train. He tilted his head every time he tossed and caught the ball. He looked puzzled. He then let me do the same action again and again looking at my hand and the ball simultaneously. He was making sure that I did not move my hand sideways even an inch the moment I caught it. I wondered what he was doing. He said, “I don’t understand why the ball drops in your hand. You see, while the ball is in the air, the train is moving fast. So it must fall on somewhere behind instead of your hand, but it doesn’t. Isn’t it strange?” I understood what he was wondering about. My brother took the ball from me and threw it as high as possible, almost touching the ceiling of the train so that the ball had plenty of time to stay in the air. But try as he might, the ball dropped exactly in his hand. The passengers sitting opposite us were curiously looking at us. Some of them might have thought that we were just playing with the ball, but obviously they must have heard our puzzled conversation. However, no passengers dared to interrupt us to ask what we were doing. Maybe they did not have confidence to explain the physical phenomenon easily enough for us to understand.
Now as an adult who has studied physics in high school, I hope I can explain the phenomenon in an understandable way for the scientific-minded boys. I would stand up from my seat, approach the brothers, and say to them, “Hi, boys, I know what you are puzzled about. You want to know why the ball doesn’t fall behind, don’t you? Let me explain. First, you must recognize that while you are holding the ball in your hand, it is moving as fast as the train. Therefore, when you throw it up in the air, it moves not only upward but also forward in the direction the train travels. Suppose a man is standing on the rice field looking at the train. When you throw up the ball, he does not see it go up and come down vertically. Instead, he sees it forming an arc in the train.” I hope my explanation would satisfy the boys. I think I should draw a picture of how the ball moves in the train.
In our childhood, my brother and I played a lot together: card games, sugoroku or snakes and ladders, shogi or Japanese chess, sumo wrestling, top spinning, kite flying, and toy pistols. The most amusing of all was playing with chopstick pistols. All we needed to make one was three pairs of chopsticks and rubber bands. Snap a pair of chopsticks and put a trigger or an-inch-long chopstick between the two chopsticks and bind them with a rubber band. Attach the handle with rubber bands by fixing two 2-inch-long chopsticks in a triangle. That is all, and you can play chopstick pistols. You stretch a rubber band from the gunpoint to the trigger. When you pull the trigger, the band is released and jumps two or three meters forward. Stand a matchbox two meters away from you. Aim at it and pull the trigger. If you are a good shot, you can knock the matchbox down. The winner of the gun-shooting game can collect all the rubber bands that have missed to hit the matchbox and lay around it.
When my brother and I were elementary school boys, we enjoyed playing a battle picture card game. It was popular among boys.
The game was played by two boys. On the count of three, you show to your opponent a card you have chosen from a bunch of your cards. If your card is stronger than your opponent’s, you can win his card.
The strongest card had a picture of a military man labeled General. The second strongest card was a Lieutenant General followed by a Major General and then a Brigadier General. The weakest was a buck private. Other cards included pictures of warships, tanks, guns, submarines, battle planes, and other military related pictures. Usually about 20 cards were played in one game. There was no strict rule about which card was stronger among armaments cards (a submarine vs a tank). The boys made judgment based on the impression of each picture.
One day, my brother and I were playing the game. During the game I was unlucky because almost every card I played was weaker than my brother’s. I watched my pile of cards decreasing quickly. I was desperate. My hand was sweaty. After playing about 15 cards, on the count of three, my brother showed a warship card and I showed a battle plane card. I somehow thought a battle plane was stronger than a warship, but my brother insisted that a warship was stronger. I did not consent to his opinion. I said almost crying, “A battle plane bombs a warship and it will sink. So a battle plane is stronger.” But my brother pointed a small plane drawn at the upper right corner of the warship. The warship was firing cannons in all directions and the plane was falling headlong emitting black smoke from the tail.
He said, “Look at this fighter. It was shot and falling. So the warship is stronger.”
“No, other fighters are still flying and they will drop bombs on the warship.”
“Other fighters will be shot down soon.”
“No, they won’t.”
“They will.”
And I began to cry so loudly that my father rushed into the room, scolded us, and took away all our cards. My brother looked at my tearful face with resentment.
When my brother was a junior high school thirdーyear student (15 years old), he got kidney disease. I do not know why he got the disease, but for one thing, I guess he wrecked his health because of the constant stress caused by his post as the student body treasurer. I often heard him complaining that the income and expenses did not balance. I saw my father sometimes help him count innumerous number of coins at home. Another reason is that my father ran a miso soybean paste and soy sauce shop. So, it sounds unlikely but my brother was probably accustomed to eating salty food and damaged his kidney.
He attended only the morning classes at school and came back home to lie in bed. Gradually his disease became worse and finally he stopped going to school. He had to stay in bed all day long for two years and a half before he resumed school.
During those years, he regularly went to the hospital, took medicine, and ate food that was low in salt and protein. I guess what he ate day after day was tasteless because salt is indispensable for seasoning food. I felt sorry for him that he could not eat eggs, meat, or my favorite fried saltーspiced spinach.
He read various books in bed. I often went to a library to borrow books for him. I remember he read all the 16 volumes of Shinーheikeーmonogatari (The Heike Clan Story) written by Eiji Yoshikawa. I once tried to read the volumes in my university days, but the story was so complicated and difficult with a lot of historical facts and characters that I gave up. I admire him for his excellent reading ability. He once wanted me to make a bookーreadingーstand which would hold a book so that he could read it lying on his back. I said I would make one, but I failed to do so to my regret.
As the proverb goes “A drowning man will catch at a straw,” my parents did everything and anything to cure his disease. One day they asked a geomancer to see him. My father said to me after he went back,
“I was surprised to see him making diagnoses. He used a pendulumーlike tool. He held a coneーshaped weight suspended by a thread. He held the end of the thread with his fingers and moved the tool very slowly all over Tadakazu’s body from top to toe. Believe it or not, when the weight was just above his kidneys, it began to swing. It did not do so over any other part of his body, though.”
When I heard this, I instantaneously thought he was a fraud because you can swing the weight if you move the thread to and fro secretly.
“According to his divination,” my father continued, “Tadakazu has gotten a kidney disease because his bed room is sandwiched between two bathrooms. The geomancer suggested that I remove one of the bathrooms. Moreover, strange to say, he recommended decocting a fox’s tongue.”
I guess my parents bought one at a very high price. As for the bathrooms, my father removed one of them. I thought it was nonsense to do so because my brother and I were using the same room. It was strange that only my brother had gotten a kidney disease.
I am not accusing my parents. I might have done the same.
After an absence of two and a half years from school, my brother resumed junior high school in April, when the new school year started. He had to repeat the ninth grade again because of the number of the days he had missed. Since my brother was three years older than I was, he and I became ninth graders at the same time.
On the previous day before school started, he said,
“I feel shy to join the students who are three years younger than I, but if I get through the first day in one way or another, I think I can manage the rest of the school year.”
There were five homeroom classes in the 9th grade, from Class A to Class E. My homeroom was Class E while his was Class A. I think the ninth grade teachers separated us as much as possible because they thought we would be embarrassed if our classrooms were too close.
Since his kidney disease was not yet fully recovered, he attended only the morning classes. He once said to me, “One of my classmates said, ‘I envy you. I want to go home like you after attending only morning classes.’” I understand his feelings when he heard such inconsiderate words. He might have bit his lips in frustration.
He had to refrain from attending the physical education class. He just stood at the corner of the playground where his classmates were happily playing sports. A friend of mine told me that my brother, grabbed a volleyball, and said to the PE teacher, “Let me toss the ball at least once.” The teacher said, “No, you must not.” He had to say so because he knew it was not good for his health.
A year passed. My brother and I entered senior high school the following April. His health seemed to have recovered pretty well. He did not have to return home after morning classes. He and I belonged to the English Speaking Club. The ESC consisted of about 15 tenth graders and two twelfth graders. My brother was elected captain of the club.
One day after school, in May or June, he announced to the ESC members that he had decided that the club would perform “The Merchant of Venice” for the school festival in October. Starting on that day, I am afraid that his hard work gradually ruined his health. My parents did not stop him from doing his job as the captain. Now I wonder whether the doctor had told my parents that my brother had only a limited time before his death. They might have decided to let him do what he wanted to do if he had to die soon.
The members started writing the cast’s dialogue. We bought wooden poles and veneer boards and other necessary things for the stage sets. I was in charge of stage properties. Among other things, I made Shylock’s knife and the IOU document which he read in the court.
My brother took the part of Shylock, but he had difficulty in deciding the part of Portia because the two girls he had chosen refused to do the role. But a third girl accepted the role. (She now lives within a 15 minutes drive from my house in Nagoya.) When the members did not cooperate with him, he got angry. The ESC adviserーteacher did not help with the preparation much. Making costumes for the cast was also hard work.
After a lot of practice, however, the play was performed in the school auditorium. At the end of the play when Shylock disappeared from the court defeated in spirit, a loud applause was heard. It was a big success.
I am afraid he dedicated all his energy and all his spirit to the play. Soon after the play he became sick again and often absented himself from school.
In February the next year, he was hospitalized in Nagoya. (Our house was in Ogaki in Gifu Prefecture.)
One day my sister and I visited the hospital and saw him lying in bed. When we were leaving his room, I remember his last words, “Why not eat something delicious?” Since his diet had been strictly limited for years, I think he wanted to eat delicious food as much as possible. He wanted us to do this for him.
He passed away in 1959, more than 50 years ago, at the age of 18 and a half.
I still remember the sound of his voice.
I still remember the cry of my mother.
