Scribd Ch1 Black Nisei

Black Nisei by Yumi Wilson Chapter 1 Red-light Roppongi

They were dressed as everything from Catholic schoolgirls and Japanese anime characters, to whores, angelic virgins and demonesses, teetering on three-inch stilettos under the saffron-colored streetlights of Roppongi, a neighborhood bursting with noisy cabs, the smoky smell of grilled chicken on skewers, and huge throngs of fast-moving people. Neon signs – yellow, purple and pink – flashed around them, as impeccably pressed suits spoke to pimple-faced boys and overweight tourists from brightly lit archways. Some of these suited men were Japanese; they were the club owners, the pimps, or even Yakuza soldiers. But the other men, laughing and gesturing wildly with their arms, looked out of place in the Japan I could remember from my childhood. Their skin was dark, even darker than mine. Their hair was curly, even curlier than mine. And their lips were full, even fuller than mine. A few steps ahead, a smooth, round face and a close Afro cut glided toward my group. “What are you folks doing tonight?” the man asked in a velvety voice, his lithe body sidling toward mine. My cheeks, already hot from the warm September air, flushed. My eyes darted toward the pavement. The man inched closer to me and held out a flyer. I couldn’t help but grab it – he reminded me of my father. “Come on in,” the silky-faced man crooned, pointing to a musty-looking bar along Roppongi’s busiest street. “You won’t be disappointed.” I peered into the doorway, making out the faint shapes of scantily clad women.

Black Nisei by Yumi Wilson

Black Nisei by Yumi Wilson My chest tightened as I thought about what my father had told me just a few months earlier, while I shared a rare weekend with him at his double-trailer home in the small town of West Union, Ohio. I met your mother when I was just a private … I didn’t think your momma would want me. She was so beautiful. Most beautiful girl in the room … I shook my head and took a deep breath of the warm fall air swirling around me, refusing to allow my father’s gentle voice to sway and comfort me, the way it often had when I was a little girl. My father’s story couldn’t possibly be true, except for the part of her being beautiful. I crumpled up the flyer in my hand, darting past the sweet-faced man and the sweaty girls inside the bar. “Hey,” I said in a whiny voice to a woman who reminded me of a flower child from the ‘60s with her bone-straight brown hair and flowing skirt. “Why’d we come here?’ Mary Kate, a 20-something graduate student who spoke fluent Japanese, shrugged her shoulders. “Something different I guess.” I stared blankly at Mary Kate, wondering why she wasn’t just as bothered by the sight of nearly naked women and ogling men as I was. The rest of our group, made up mostly of students given a prestigious grant to study projects ranging from the nonproliferation of war, robotics and physics, also didn’t seem to care. We had come to Roppongi for dinner that night after another day of being told what Fulbright recipients were expected to do while studying and researching in Japan. I was one of only two journalists in the group; the other was a copy editor from the New York Times, in Japan to learn about language acquisition among Japanese people. I had been given a threemonth, all-expenses paid trip after telling the foundation that I wanted to study in Japan

Black Nisei by Yumi Wilson

Black Nisei by Yumi Wilson to learn something equally academic, to gather oral histories of women who had married American soldiers after WWII. But the truth was that my project had little academic or even journalistic merit. I had no intention of interviewing other women who went through struggles similar to my mother, whose decision to marry an American soldier cost her the love and affection of her mother and family in Hokkaido. I had no intention of conducting a survey about Japanese attitudes about military occupation or intervention. All I wanted to do with my grant money and time in Japan was to find anyone who knew my mother, and could tell me definitively what she had done in the years before she met my father in Tokyo. I needed to know this, not to help educate the world about the consequences of war, or the hardships of women from impoverished families, but simply to confirm what I already knew, or thought I knew. “Don’t you think it’s strange that we’re eating in a red-light district,” I whispered to Mary Kate, certain she would feel the same way. “I don’t know,” she answered. “It doesn’t really bother me.” “Well, I can’t stand it,” I said, slowing my pace to build some distance build between Mary Kate and the others in my group. “If I had known we were going to come to a place like this, I would have stayed in my hotel room.” Mary Kate caught up with the others in the group and didn’t look back. Incensed by her silence, I stopped trying to keep up with the group. I took a closer look at the surroundings and people around me, and noticed two long-legged women in front of me. Their shiny heels were so high I couldn’t imagine how they could walk without falling. I started to giggle, imagining them crashing to the ground, stretching their perfectly painted

Black Nisei by Yumi Wilson

Black Nisei by Yumi Wilson nails out to protect their flawless skin. I skipped to catch up with these women, to get in front of them, to see their faces. Their make-up, just as I thought, was heavy, overdone. Their thick, fake eye lashes, glued to their eyelids, reminded me of how my mother wore fake lashes almost every single time she went out, even if it was just to play BINGO. Unaware of my gaze the two women darted up to a dark-skinned man in a wellpressed suit. “Hey ladies,” the man bellowed. “What’s going on?” His southern accent hinted that he was from the States. Their arms encircled him. The man returned their affection, plunking his rough hands around their hipless bottoms. The girls broke into high-pitched laughter, their arms tightening around the man’s waist. His hands took hold of them, pulled them closer. I felt a sudden urge to run up to the trio, to wiggle my body deep into the circle, to look up into their faces, to touch them. But I turned away.

Black Nisei by Yumi Wilson