Mori Keaki published this essay book the month before her retirement as Top Star of Snow Troupe. It is mainly a memoir of her personal journey in Takarazuka, as well as her early life. Her writing/formatting style is kind of unique, and I tried to reproduce or reflect it as much as possible.
It’s a really lovely book, that ended up making me cry many times. I hope you enjoy it!
For a table of contents with links to all the chapters, go here.
I have to be like Dad!
The upbringing at my house was very hands-off, but in a good way, I think.
Being ordered ‘Do this!!’ was a thing that basically didn’t happen at all.
‘Could you do this? It would be better that way. You see, that’s because…’
They would explain kindly and clearly.
And then.
If I said, ‘I understand’, and nodded…
“Alright, if you do it, or not, is up to ‘Little Miko’ now.”
We weren’t unsupervised, but they would never fuss at us over every little thing.
It felt more like they were watching over us.
Children are actually surprisingly perceptive about this kind of thing, right!?
“Miko. There’s an old saying that ‘The ripened rice bows its head.’ The more rice grows on it, the more it bows… Do you understand!? You see, no matter what kind of living thing, nothing can become its full self without the help of others. There’s always something helping raise it. Of course there’s us, since we are your parents. But there are also so many other people besides your Papa and Mama who love you and want you to do your best, and keep helping you. Therefore, if you always keep those feelings of gratitude, you will naturally be humble.”
And in my small heart.
I felt, ‘So that’s how it is…’
And then one morning.
We were doing radio exercises in the garden,
And my father cheerfully called out ‘Good morning!!’.
I had never seen the person walking by our house before, so I asked my dad ‘Who was that?’
And he said ‘Since he’s walking around here, he must be someone from the neighborhood…’
So I thought ‘I see~’ and starting from the next day, if there was someone passing by our house in the morning, I would greet them cheerfully.
Another time, my father said,
‘Also, if you see policemen like Papa, you ought to say ‘thank you’ to them. And also, if you see someone and you think ‘they look like they’re having a really hard time’, don’t you think it would be good if you said something to them, and gave them even just a little bit of help? Even if it’s someone you’ve never spoken to before. Say hello, and smile at them, and try to help them out a bit. That wouldn’t be too unpleasant, would it? If you were in that situation, would you not like that sort of thing?’
Like that…
Since it was easy to understand, I would start doing those things of my own accord.
Therefore, even though I was a child, I developed a strong sense of responsibility!
Definitely…
And so, I thought:
‘Papa is amazing!! I have to be like Papa!!’
I would be so fired up!!
And, since I was so determined, if I happened to go against my father’s wishes…
Even if it was just a little accident.
My feelings of guilt would be so terrible!!
This story I’m going to tell you happened when I was in my fifth year of elementary school.
I was having fun playing with a ball one day (this wasn’t allowed inside my house!),
When I broke my father’s falcon statue that he had been given by the police department to commemorate his 20 years of service!!
I didn’t mean to!! Of course I would but I just felt ‘Ah!?’
I was petrified. I went completely white.
Even if I hadn’t meant to, I had still broken something really important to my father, something he’d been given by the police department…!! I had done something I couldn’t take back…
What to do, what to do, what to do…
It was such a bad situation…
I was so full of remorse that I went into the closet.
It wasn’t that I wanted to escape from my father’s scolding…
“No… If I had wanted to run away, I would have gone to one of my friend’s houses…”
Young Miko put herself in jail…
However, in this situation, my mother wasn’t really able to have the level of sympathy she should have for her own daughter, maybe…
Even though I was already feeling so much guilt, she said ‘I don’t know what will happen… Ah, Papa is going to be so angry with you!’ and laid even more pressure on me.
I waited in the closet for my father to come home, with tears rolling down my cheeks.
“He’s definitely going to yell at me tonight…… Maybe he’ll even shake his fist at me……”
But, since I had done something wrong, there was nothing to do but apologize… Right!
How long did I wait like that…
In a child’s perception, it felt like half a day.
But definitely, in real life, it was only about an hour.
And then,
I could tell my father had come home…
I hurriedly scrubbed the tears off my cheeks…
I was waiting. For him to yell ‘Come out of there!!’ in a really scary voice…
But then, my dad said:
“Little Miko, it’s okay. You can come out.”
In his usual kind, kind voice!!
“I understand… Don’t worry about it…”
He said…
Through the door of the closet.
And then, when I dejectedly came out of the closet.
“Everything that has a physical shape has to break someday… You see, Little Miko, even if that statue is broken, it doesn’t change anything about your Papa’s 20 years working for the police department.”
My father was so warm and big-hearted that the young me felt even more,
“I did something really bad!”
So those feelings all welled up even more and I started crying even more than before.
“Papa~! I’m so sorry~!!”
Actually, to my young self, feeling like
‘I have to pay even more attention to what’s going on around me!’
And not being able to stop crying for a while, is still a very clear and good memory for me.
……And,
I thought a lot about what my area of responsibility was.
That sort of thing.
Or what it was to have a capacity to ‘acknowledge’ or ‘forgive’…
That sort of thing.
“Leave aside the physical. What is actually real…?”
I learned this from my father…
An example of the episodes that became these teaching opportunities,
Was the Case of the Broken Falcon Statue.