Lonely, Courageous, Free, Single

My Ladies' English Conversation Class and Dinner Club asked today why I haven't gotten married yet.

This is my beginners' class, the ones with mad cooking skills and limited English ability. We get together twice a month, where they provide fabulous Japanese home-cooked meals, they chat in Japanese for about forty minutes, then we work on English skills for another forty-five and they spend the last twenty minutes of class comparing notes and distributing cooking orders for the next class.

Our English isn't improving, but my experience with Japanese cuisine is broadening daily and I get some curious insights into Japanese culture.

For instance, of our six under-fifty-looking-but-over-sixty-really students, one is widowed and the other five are still married to their first husbands (I think).

My acquaintances seem neatly split between those who enjoy being married, those who don't mind it, and those who are living their lives much more fully now that their husbands are dead.

Take for example, Ikeuchi-san who moved to Kochi from Kansai (Osaka/Kyoto/Kobe) area and told me when she first got here, "I cried every day. I missed home so much." But when I ask if she is happy, she says, "Oh, yes. We do everything together. I am very happy."

Making the statement for opposing counsel is one of my Japanese teachers who taught us all that the common word for wife "Oku-san" means "Mrs. Inside" (my colloquial interpretation).

"I am sotto-sama," she smiles broadly. Queen Outside. She spends the whole day driving from one end of the prefecture to the other, volunteering to guide foreign tour groups, participating in local committees, and studying to become a professional expositor of geographic anomaly at Muroto Geopark. When I asked her why she got married, she murmured obliquely, "saaa, you know, it's what you're supposed to do." Marriage is the only respectable option for young educated women of good family.

Many of the difficulties that confront married couples in Japan are tied to work. Because the Japanese mentality is closely linked to the community and the insulated world of loyalty to the company, work often becomes more important than family life. While I often see fathers or mothers running around with their kids in their free time, I very rarely see the whole family out together (at least around here). But as far as perspectives from women go, I rate a happy marriage on how much time the couple seems to spend in each other's company, without the kids.

And a happy widowhood is even easier to figure out.

Every time I walk into Matsumura-sensei's house, I get the feeling that this lady loves living alone. She can run around without dressing up, she can drink beer at dinner, she can have her friends over whenever she wants, and she can travel the world. During our conversation, she laughed and said, "yes, many of my neighbors are sympathetic and worry about me, but I am so happy by myself."

And Miko-san is a prime example of that lady from Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest: you know, the widow whose hair turned gold from grief. For the last ten years, that lady has been carrying on a joyful, active existence, doing two hundred sit-ups a day and building her own karaoke room into the front of her house. She spends her days looking up new song lyrics and grooving to the enka-oldies.

On the other hand, Arisawa-san continues to put small offerings of every gift she receives in front of the shrine built to her late husband. (This is not something I have observed in Miko-san's or Matsumura-sensei's homes...)

For a different perspective, at a recent faculty wedding party, I asked a male teacher if he was happily married (because he asked when I was getting married - I never start this shit). He was taken aback and thought about it, but in the end said, albeit shakily, "Yes. Yes, I am."

It still seems odd to me that regardless of personal experience or present contentment, the inclination in the mind of every one (Japanese or Western and women in particular) is it is better to be married.

When I explained that I enjoyed living abroad, I didn't know where I might go next, and I would rather wait for the right man than hurry into a relationship with the wrong one, Matsumura-sensei encouraged me, "Well, I think you are very brave. And you are so happy here, it's better that you haven't married."

"Oh, yes!" the rest of the class chimed in. "So happy here, and you're learning so much, and you have so much freedom! You must enjoy your life!"

They then proceeded to make a list of every single man they knew in the immediate area.