10:51 AM
In the early
autumn of 1974, after returning from the Soviet Union, I went to Hokkaido,
where I had been several times before. No sooner had the plane left Honshu than
Hokkaido came into sight. Rain clouds began to gather, soon concealing the view
outside. Flying over cloud-covered Hakodate, the fond memory of this town’s
somewhat exotic landscape came back to me. I have many friends there. Their
faces and those of their families crossed my mind one after another. Among them
were some supporting traditional, large families, newly married couples, and
women who had suffered great misfortunes but succeeded in pulling their
families back from the brink of disaster. The life patterns of human beings are
as different as their faces. I pondered, as I rode in the plane, the lives of
my Hakodate friends and the love, hatred, suffering and joys they experienced.
Then, I remembered the bitter life of a family who had to leave Hakodate and go
south across the Tsugaru Straits. I had never met them personally, for they
were the ones the TV drama, “Kita no kazoku” was based on, a series broadcast
ending in the spring of 1974. Even though it was a TV play, it was a very
moving, true- to life story. Apparently, many women watched each episode with
rapt attention.
The story is
about a women who, caught up in the repercussions of her husband’s disappearance,
leaves with the three children for a new life in Kanazawa. There she lives with
her own family, an extended family in which three generations live under one
roof. The plot is told against a background of conflict between the grandmother
and grandchildren. Eventually the oldest son graduates from school and goes to
work, the entire family moves to the port city of Yokohama, where we witness
the oldest son and his wife starting their own nuclear family.
The aging
parents then move on to Uwajima with the
daughter. The second son moves to kanazawa to take over the family business ,
at the grandmother’s wish. But life in the south was not a secure one for the northern
family. After the death of the father, the daughter leaves and goes north, back
across the Tsugaru Straits to Hakodate. That’s the story as I remember it.
The author
was probably posing the question of what a true family should be. An ordinary
family through their meandering travels breaks up to go their separate ways.
The drama ended, simply hinting at the kind of family that will probably emerge
in the future. I was thinking hard about what kind of family is best for the
future, when an announcement that we were going to land interrupted my thoughts.
The family is a kind of organism. If
we think of society as one human body, then each family is a group of cells. Some
families move around in the body while others stay fixed in a certain place.
Each family group has to live as part of the entire body or else it will not
survive. If, on the other hand, each of the cells does not work with the vigor
of the life, then we cannot expect society to move forward. The family is like
a group of cells which is created
through the efforts of each of its members. The family is the basic unit
which decides where society moves. Love is the blood coursing through the unit
holding all members together. The family is the only organism by which love can
be transacted between husband and wife, parent and child, brother and sister.
The love between husband and wife provides the basis for all families and from
this the nuclear family is born. When they have children, love will be a
reality between parent and child.
In the large family the bonds of love
between grandmother and grandfather weave their vertical thread through
Three generations.
That love then spreads horizontally among brothers and sisters. These vertical
and horizontal ties of
Love are what
give dynamism to family life. The parents bear the responsibility for
increasing solidarity with each other
and for
skillfully handling the vertical and horizontal arteries running through the
family.cont…………….
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