Point of Departure 3: A (Mostly Detached) Memoir of a Person
Point of Departure 3: A (Mostly Detached) Memoir of a Person
Point of Departure 3: Autobiographers become memoirists when they include stories about individuals who once figured meaningfully in their lives. Share your memories of a person who, while not central to your life, was nevertheless important to you. Indicate what your relationship to this person was, but always stay focused on telling their story, not your own.
______________________________________________________________
In A Daughter of the Samurai, Sugimoto relates the career of her samurai father’s friend, Mr. Toda, a man she much admired:
Such a one was Mr. Toda, a friend and neighbour, who often came to shoot on our archery grounds with my father, or to take horseback rides with him in the mountains. I liked Mr. Toda very much, and could not understand why Grandmother seemed to feel that his ideas were too progressive and informal.
One day when he and Father were having a game of archery, they stopped to argue about some business plan. I was near by, trying to ride on the back of my father’s big white dog, Shiro. After I had had a more severe tumble than usual, Mr. Toda picked me up and stood me very near the grassy bank against which was placed the large round target with its broad rings of black and white. The arrow struck the target.
“Best done!” he shouted. “You will make a great warrior, Little Mistress! You are your father’s son, after all!”
My father laughed as he told the story that night. I felt very proud, but Mother looked thoughtful and Grandmother shook her head sadly.
“Your honourable father trains you in so boy-like a manner,” she said turning to me, “that I fear fate must search long for your unfound husband. No genteel family wants an ungentle bride.”
And so, even in our pleasant family, there was a continual hidden battle between the old and the new.
Mr. Toda was a man of independent thought, and after several vain attempts to adjust himself to new conditions and at the same time retain his dignity, he decided to throw dignity aside and engage in some business that would bring material results. This was just at the beginning of the talk about the strength-giving properties of foreign food. Since Mr. Toda owned a good-sized estate which at that time nobody would accept even as a gift, he converted it into a grass farm and sent to a far-away coast for some cattle. Then, with a few experienced men as assistants, he once more ventured into the business world; this time as a dairy man and a butcher.
The aristocratic family of Mr. Toda did not approve at all of this new occupation; for in the old days, only eta (the outcast class) ever handled bodies from which life had gone. For a while almost everyone looked upon him with a sort of curious horror, but gradually faith in meat as a strengthening food gained ground, and the families who used it on their tables grew steadily in number. So the business prospered.
The simpler part of his work—the selling of milk—was also