Friday, August 29, 2014
Hidemi’s Rambling No.524
In the middle of August every year, Japan has the Bon Festival. It’s
believed that spirits of ancestors return to each family during the
festival. If I had stayed in my hometown of Kyoto and gotten married
there, I would have been the 63rd successor of the family. I suppose my
ancestor had acquired land around where the house I grew up in stood,
long before Kyoto once became the capital city of Japan 1200 years ago.
The family has farmed and lived on the same spot generation after
generation since then. To sustain the family succession, some of my
ancestors may have given up what they wanted to do, some may have been
forced into arranged marriages for the tie between families, some may
have had troubles over their shares of an inheritance, and some may have
been distressed for the pressures of succeeding the family. I imagine
quite a few ancestors of mine had a terrible life. The family line is
finally to come to an end by me, but I doubt my ancestors feel sad about
it. The times have changed and the farming business in the urbanized
Kyoto isn’t sustainable. Without farming, to preserve land isn’t
meaningful. My mother used to say repeatedly to me that our ancestors
would punish me bitterly if I left home and lived the way I wanted to
live instead of succeeding the family. That hasn’t been the case so far.
Since I left Kyoto, I’ve been better off. To me, it seems my mother
whom my ancestors kept punishing relentlessly. A fortuneteller came to
the door of my parents’ house once. She told my mother that all the
spirits of our female ancestors, who suffered unhappy lives because they
sacrificed themselves for the family succession, had possessed me. My
mother interpreted it as the proof of her theory that they would punish
me and lead me to an unhappy life. I don’t know if it was because of
those spirits or my own will, I got to leave home, break the family
succession and live my life. Now it depends on me whether I will have a
happy life or not…