Something Like an Autobiography Read Free Page A

attend a memorial service for my grandfather. I had been one year old at the time.
    The dimly lit place where I sat in a tub lodged between two boards was the room that served as both kitchen and bath in the house where my father was born. My mother had been about to give me a bath, but first she put me in the tub of hot water and went into the next room to take off her kimono. Suddenly she heard me start wailing at the top of my lungs. She rushed back and found me spilled out of the tub on the floor crying. The painfully bright, shiny thing over head, my mother explained, was probably a hanging oil lamp of the type still used when I was a baby.
    This incident with the washtub is my very first memory of myself. Naturally, I do not recall being born. However, my oldest sister, now deceased, used to say, “You were a strange baby.” Apparently I emerged from my mother’s womb without uttering a sound, but with my hands firmly clasped together. When at last they were able to pry my hands apart, I had bruises on both palms.
    I think this story may be a lie. It was probably made up to tease me because I was the youngest child. After all, if I really had been born such a grasping person, by now I would be a millionaire and surely would be riding around in nothing less than a Rolls-Royce.
    After the washtub incident of my first year, I can now recall only a few other events from my babyhood, in a form resembling out-of-focus bits of film footage. All of them are things seen from my infant’s vantage point on my nurse’s shoulders.
    One of them is something seen through a wire net. People dressed in white flail at a ball with a stick, run after it as it dances and flies through the air, and pick it up and throw it around. Later I understood that this was the view from behind the net of the baseball field at the gymnastics school where my father was a teacher. So I must say that my liking for baseball today is deep-rooted; apparently I’ve been watching it since babyhood.
    Another memory from babyhood, also a sight viewed from my nurse’s back, comes to mind: a fire seen from a great distance. Between us and the fire stretches an expanse of dark water. My home was in the Ōmori district of Tokyo, so this was probably the Ōmori shore of Tokyo Bay, and since the fire appeared very far away, it must have taken place somewhere near Haneda (now the site of one of Tokyo’s international airports). I was frightened by this distant fire and cried. Even now I have a strong dislike of fires, and especially when I see the night sky reddened with flames I am overcome by fear.
    One last memory of babyhood remains. In this case, too, I am on my nurse’s back, and from time to time we enter a small, dark room. Years later I would occasionally recall this frequent occurrence and wonder what it was. Then one day all at once, like Sherlock Holmes solving a mystery, I understood: my nurse, with me still on her back, was going to the toilet. What an insult!
    Many years later my nurse came to see me. She looked up at this person who had reached nearly six feet and more than 150 pounds and just said, “My dear, how you’ve grown,” as she clasped me around the knees and broke into tears. I had been ready to reproach her for the indignities she had caused me to suffer in the past, but suddenly I was moved by this figure of an old woman I no longer recognized, and all I could do was stare vacantly down at her.
    For some reason, my recollections of the years between the time I learned to walk and my entrance into nursery school are less distinct than those of my babyhood. There is only one scene I recall, but I remember it in vivid colors.
    The location is a streetcar crossing. On the other side of the tracks and closed railway crossing gate are my father, mother and siblings. I stand alone on this side. Between my side and my family’s a white dog scampers back and forth across the tracks, wagging his tail. Then, after he has repeated this