Sukiyaki

Sukiyaki

The Past:  In order to understand the confusion I’ve been laboring under in getting this post ready, readers need some ancient history – i.e., Williamstown, fall, 1965.  The college was busily dismantling the august fraternity system.  Some houses were sold to the college, which turned them into “social units,” essentially buildings that functioned as eating, sleeping, and entertaining club-like entities – sort of fraternities without the exclusion, hazing, and mumbo-jumbo.  My fraternity, the reactionary Phi Gamma Delta, was sold to the town, and even today it serves as the Williamstown municipal building.  Most appropriately, the town jail — with its bars on the doors — is in the basement, within spitting distance of the old Phi Gam bar.

So for my senior year the remaining Fijis were moved lock and stock right across the street into a big and brand-new facility, the Greylock Quad, which comprised four units and a dining hall.  The Phi Gams were placed into the biggest unit, Gladden House.  This was not an easy transition.  There were 85 of us, drawn from two former fraternities (the other was Theta Delta Chi), another retired social unit (Jackson House), with a few other odds and sods tossed in.  Although the dining building, Greylock Hall, was broken into several dining areas, none was singled out for particular units.

In Gladden House the rooms were divided into entries, each rising into floors of several singles and a four-man suite, with very little horizontal movement throughout the upper floors.  The consequence of this architecture and social composition was that – other than my old fraternity brothers – I interacted with very few residents of  Gladden House.

That was senior year.

* * *

The Present:  Those who have read the previous several blog posts know that for the past three months I’ve been working with my class list-serve to put out daily postings from various classmates.  Now I’m on vacation from that job, while Joe Bessey, my co-secretary, has taken it over.  However, like all other classmates I’m allowed to post things, and here’s one I wrote early in July, after another member had contributed several haiku:

“Thanks to Ted Washburn for bringing up haiku.  I loved them when I was at Williams, and there was one of which I was particularly fond:

The cry of the cicada

Does not indicate how long

It has to live.

“I know this doesn’t have the requisite number of syllables, but it  does have the required 5-7-5 in Japanese:

Yagate shinu

Ku-shiki wa miasu,

Semi no ko-ye.

“I learned this Japanese from an exchange student I met as a senior.  I’m very sorry I can’t remember his name, but when he wandered into our suite one day, we talked a lot and he taught me Basho’s words in their original tongue.

“In 1963 there was a popular song in Japanese, “Sukiyaki,” which I really liked, but of course couldn’t sing, because I had no idea what the words were.  My new Japanese friend sat down with me and translated some of it into English.  Then I rewrote his translation so that it fit into the song.  I still remember it:

Lift your face to the sky—

Let’s walk just you and I—

Don’t breathe a word, no, and don’t shed a tear –

Words seemed so right,

That summer night,

That lonely summer night last year.

Our fortune sails on the sky, high above,

Our fortune flies on the sky, oh my love,

(repeat the first stanza)

“Today I found the song on YouTube, with Japanese lyrics and translation.  Not too different from the ones that exchange student worked out with me.  It was sung by a Japanese singer named Kyu Sakamoto, and it became the biggest- selling world-wide recording in history. Thirteen million copies.  If you don’t remember the tune, Google “sukiyaki song,” and try fitting our translation to that lovely melody.

“So here it is, a gift Williams gave me, and it has stayed with me for 55 years!”

And then – through the class blog, of course – came the identity of my fellow translator.

In fact, he had two possible identities:  The first choice came from Con O’Leary:  “Perhaps the exchange student John Gould met in his senior year was Koichi Haraguchi.  He spent two years at Williams to better prepare himself for his work.  He was a graduate of Tokyo University and was a member of the Japanese diplomatic corps.”  He died in 2009.

The second possibility came from Dan Robbins: “My recollection is that our Japanese mate during senior year was Michio Araki, who I believe went on to become a published professor of religion in Japan and died in 2008.”  Other classmates agreed with Dan; Michio was the guy.

A bit of research revealed that Koichi lived all the way at the other end of campus, in Berkshire House.  It did seem unlikely that he had wandered into our suite.  Not the case with Michio, however; for he lived in Greylock, just as I did:

Here is a section of the composite of Washington Gladden House in 1966.  The first head on the top left is mine; the last on the top right is Michio.

 

Michio and I didn’t meet again that year. I don’t really understand why, but it pains me today that this is so.  For a memory to remain so clearly that I can recall the words we shared – and I never wrote them down until composing this posting – is astonishing, especially since I’ve reached the stage where I have difficulty coming up with the name of the movie I watched on Netflix two nights ago.

One other Japanese word I know is “sayonara,” or good-bye.  Today the spirit of “Sukiyaki” – the actual title of which is “Ue o Muite Arukou” (“I Look Up as I Walk”) – seems quite near.  Sayonara, Michio.  I regret that you won’t have the chance to read this, and to know that more than a half century later you are remembered with pleasure and gratitude.