All of the articles in our Fresh Ink series highlight the English-language debuts of never-before-translated works of prominent Japanese writers. 

Saho Terao is a musician and writer who floats between the real and the ethereal. While her music is dreamy and beautiful, swelling like a symphony between Terao’s breathy, high-pitched voice, her writing is as practical as it gets: mostly nonfiction that explores Japan’s complicated colonial history, including works on Palau, Saipan, folk history in Nagano and Kochi prefectures, and Japanese World War II repatriates. 

This charming essay comes from her 2021 collection “Tenshi Nikki” (“Angel Diaries”), which contains over 40 brief but elegant pieces on motherhood, travel, history, and current events. 

Love A Long Way, A Long Time

Translated by Eric Margolis

In my neighborhood, there is an older man with a rice field. His family has owned the land since the Edo Period and I sometimes see him out there, working the field. 

One day, I happened to glimpse a cat in the field, using it as his supersized, personal toilet. When I have my daughter with me in the back seat of my bike and we spot an animal, I always pull over to take a look, so we paused there on the side of the rice field until the cat eventually whisked away. 

The man strode over towards us. “That cat’s always digging up my saplings! Rotten creature!” he said, clicking his tongue.

I had a simple love of cats, so I didn’t respond. But the man went on.

“Someone’s even feeding it. Some woman, here on business, calling it a sweet lil thing. I dunno if she’s lonely because her husband left her or what. That would never happen to a mother like you, all proper and put together. Everyone divorces at the drop of a hat nowadays.”

I could only chuckle awkwardly—I had just fled here to my hometown after a divorce myself. At the same time, I thought to myself that I could absolutely not get along with this guy. How could he know so easily if someone was “proper and put together”? And how on earth had he mistaken me—who’s had three daughters out of wedlock, with different men to boot, who had just gone through and out the other end of a peculiar marriage and was now struggling to get by—as a “proper and put together” woman?

I continued biking down the narrow road, past the rice field and the mansion of the local loan company CEO, on to my regular supermarket. On my way to check out, I glanced at the lines at the register, and joined one of the longer lines. When I’m in a shorter checkout line and for some reason it ends up taking more time than a longer one, I feel extremely irritated about my time being wasted, like I’ve been deliberately screwed over. If I know from the start that I’ll have to wait a bit, it soothes my brain and the time passes with ease. The attendant is Yamazaki, one of my favorites. She’s always working so hard, with that baby face of hers. Probably a few years younger than me. I like the misty sound of her gentle, high-pitched voice. Then there’s Daikuma, a big burly bear of a man. I remember one time when I was buying a pineapple in his line. 

“Shall I take off the top?” he asked. I nodded, and he grabbed the enormous pineapple with one bare hand, thorns and all, and twisted the spiny leaves at the top, snapping them clean off. 

Oh my god! I didn’t let out a shout or anything, but my hand naturally went straight to my heart. I went home and shared the story with my daughters, which led to a lot of laughter and excitement. I’ve always had a soft spot for Daikuma—and seen him more or less as an actual bear—ever since. 

The one register I never line up at is wherever a particular Mrs. “H” is. I used to get in line there without much thought, until one particular incident. At the time, there was a tiny old lady in front of me at the register, paying for her groceries. She had a hunchback, making it difficult for her to reach the slot for inserting coins at the self-pay kiosk. So she started to line up her change on the service counter instead. It wouldn’t have been a big deal for Mrs. H to just pick up the coins off the counter and put them into the kiosk slot, but instead, Mrs. H just barked at her. “Place the coins into the kiosk, please!”

The slot was literally above the poor lady’s head. Not to mention she was just putting the coins by the register to count out the right amount of change. And it was so difficult for her to even reach up there! Ever since then, I’ve considered Mrs. H as someone who lacks basic empathy and consideration and refused to line up at her register. 

How to succeed in life? It’s not an easy question to answer, especially considering every person has different personalities and different circumstances. I could just say, do what you want, but that doesn’t always solve your problems, either. Whenever I hear the “life hacks” spouted by celebrities and “successful” people, part of me can see why they’re useful tricks, but I can’t fully bring myself to trust them, either. Successful people are different from those who couldn’t succeed—in that they had some lucky circumstances that allowed them to build up a flourishing career. I remember a few years ago, there was a celebrity boasting about how he and his wife got so far because of their academic accomplishments and hard work. But the fact that he couldn’t see the oh-so-obvious point that most people wouldn’t have gotten as far as them no matter how hard they worked due to sheer chance was driving me nuts. Maybe the question of how to succeed in life isn’t as important as we think, as all-consuming as it seems.  

The more essential question is: how should we go through life? How we handle our relationships with relatives, partners, coworkers. Our bucket lists, how we spend our money. How do we go through life when, frankly, life never goes the way we want it to? What to prioritize, and what to hold dear? Some people are able to just single-mindedly charge forward into their dreams, but most of us have to strike some sort of compromise among all the different things that pass through our every single day.

Sometimes, late at night, my kids will remember that they need a notebook or something for class the next day. At times like these, I’m extremely thankful my local supermarket is open 24/7. I hop on my bike after dinner and roll into the parking lot. 

As I climb down from the seat, through the window, I can see Mrs. H at the register. For a while I watch her working hard. Doing her best. 

Seeing this didn’t necessarily erase my judgment of her as lacking empathy and consideration, but I did realize that I had no reason to hate or resent her. The fact that she’s so serious about her job is hardly a bad thing. Apparently, I stick labels on people, all from just a single moment. I need to keep in mind that doing so not only pushes others away but also that it might be pushing me into moments worthy of judgment or resentment. I can’t forget how multifaceted all of us are. I need to start tearing off those labels. How should we go through life? I think tearing off the labels is one answer to that question.

One more answer: Love a long way, a long time. All the way to Mrs. H and the old man who hates cats.