The concept of sitting

I like to sit on the floor to work and write. If I was allowed to sprawl out on the floor in my office then I would but I don’t, instead I sit on a swivel chair with my legs tucked under. I like my centre of gravity being low to the ground and being able to stretch – maybe to even touch my toes.

This might be a Japanese tendency which I’ve inherited. In the not-so-distant past, every household sat on the tatami mat floor to eat their meals and watch TV. My Obaachan grew up getting up and down off the floor, she would work at her sewing machine with her legs tucked under her. 

My aunt bought her a new navy-blue armchair for the sitting room lately. It was a nice gesture because Obaachan who is ninety snoozes on her hard dining room chair every night watching television. This new armchair gave her something to feel embraced in, however, like grandmother like granddaughter; Obaachan one night toppled over the armchair and banged her head on the side of the kerosene stove, which upon impact turned itself off immediately. The boiling kettle atop the stove did not fall but teetered.

Obaachan didn’t tell her daughter (my aunt) who had bought her the armchair about what happened until a week later, feeling ashamed and silly for causing a near emergency. Her head had swollen but nothing had cracked nor bled. She now tells me she can’t go to the hairdressers anymore in case they ask questions regarding the bruise on her head.

When I found out about her accident a month later, I was mortified. She could have badly burned her face and died. Then what? 

I asked her, ‘Oh my goodness how did you fall off the chair?’

She said, ‘It was my fault for having sat in it.’

I was confused as this conversation (like all conversations with my grandmother) was happening in Japanese. 

‘I don’t understand, of course you sat in it. It’s a chair.’

‘Yes, but you’re not supposed to sit on chairs, are you? You’re meant to perch on them with your bottom.’

‘What?’

‘I tucked my legs under: I sat on it. That was the problem.’

‘Oh.’

And I realised to sit in Japanese probably does mean something different than to sit in England. All this time I’ve been sitting in London, I’ve just been perching on chairs! No wonder it felt uncomfortable. It makes me wonder if this verb “to sit” contains within it a generational difference as well as a cultural one. 

If I asked Japanese passers-by on the street what their idea of sitting means – does it have to involve a chair? Or the ground? Or can you arguably sit on both – like I had imagined it all these years; even though in my body I knew I preferred sitting on the floor; had I expanded the idea of sitting to encompass all furnishings and elements of the world one could sit on, like a tree stump or a toadstool in the case where you’re a tiny fairy?

A way of calling Love

So, I called Obaachan because every weekend I call my Japanese grandmother. Apart from the past three weekends, because one weekend I had a sore throat and, on the others, I’d been doing flat viewings and/or parties. I called her on Sunday and caught up with her news. She’s been trying to snack less and thinks it’s working because her face looks thinner. I think she just cut her hair, framing her face differently, but I didn’t say that – got to be encouraging. Mid-way through our conversation, she told me that my aunt’s husband, Toshiya, had gone back to his family home to visit his old mother.

‘Oh, that’s good’, I said. Toshiya had been saying recently that he should visit his old mum. His father passed away a year ago.

My aunt Mariko said, ‘You should go.’ Of course, he should: what a good idea. So, Toshiya got the car ready for the weekend and headed up North. His hometown was a five-hour drive away towards the Snow Country; icy temperatures mean you have to put snow-chains around the tyres. My aunt refuses to drive up there anymore, because one time she skidded and almost hit a telegraph pole.

His family were all there to greet him. He went inside and sat around the kotatsu, a warmed-up low table, with his brothers and their wives and their children, and the sickly looking cat and his nephews. Food was dished-up and everybody ate and drank and did what families do. In the adjacent room (traditional Japanese rooms are tatami; divided by partitions you choose to leave open or slide shut, depending on what you’re using the room for) was his mum sleeping in a futon. When Toshiya arrived, she was tucked up in her futon next door with the door wide open, and she greeted him from there.

 ‘Mother. Are you sleeping already?’ She didn’t stir but told him she was glad he had come and that she was tired, and only wanted to sleep. He didn’t want to disturb her so, kept on with the rest of the family. He presented the standard gifts you bring home from the city, like nicely packaged cookies with almonds and vanilla essence; and them being country folk, brought out the homebrew saké and freshly grown delicacies, you could never purchase in a store in Tokyo.

The next day Toshiya had to make his way home, as it was only a weekend trip and the drive was a long one. His mother was again laid out in her futon, and she didn’t get up all day. Toshiya went into her room and kneeled beside her soft cotton mattress. It was layered over with heavy blankets and shawls, like a cocoon. His mother’s wrinkled face peeked out from the pillow, and when she opened her eyes, she smiled a warm, toothy smile. He asked her if she was feeling well.

‘You haven’t got up the whole time I’ve been here Ma. Is anything wrong?’

‘I’m fit and fine, I tell you. Only I’m tired these days.’ Toshiya didn’t speak and looked patiently down at his mother, who blinked twice. ‘I’m so pleased you came. Travelling all this way. You must take some apples.’ He turned the engine on to heat up the car before he left. Family who were still there on the Sunday came out to see him, bowing until they were out of sight in his rear car view mirror. Toshiya made his way, across small country roads that cut through long stretches of paddy fields.

I ask, ‘Is Toshiya’s mum OK? Is she really ill?’ Obaachan continues. When Toshiya got home, Mariko asked him how his mother had been, and he told her that she hadn’t got out of bed the whole time he was there, and so, Mariko had asked the same question as me.

She was clearly worried, ‘What if there’s something wrong with her heart?’

Toshiya didn’t know. In five days time he got a phone call. It rang after work hours, but not too late, a considerate time to be receiving a phone call out of the blue. On the other end of the line was his old mum.

She said, ‘I want to apologise. You made your way up here and I was asleep the whole time. The truth is, when I heard you were coming, I went out early to the fields to pick the best vegetables and pulled my back. Then you arrived.’ Toshiya, held the phone receiver tightly against his ear and bowed many incremental nods, listening carefully.

‘Wait! Why didn’t she tell Toshiya that when he was there beside her?’ My question hangs in the long-distance fuzz between me and Obaachan.

‘Mmh. I only heard this from Mariko. Probably, she didn’t want him to feel guilty.’

‘But… he went all the way up there. Five hours there and back in the snow!’

‘Mmh.’ Obaachan agrees with me slightly. To her this seems plausible, simple, yet to me it’s inexplicable. I think of all that time and opportunity wasted, when they could have had a proper conversation. And now we’ll never know what they didn’t say to each other, truly.