Michiko and her dog

I looked more closely. Oh my God! Her jade-white legs protruded from the kimono. She spread her body a bit to let the dog in between her legs. The dog stuck out his tongue and licked that very private place. Soon her eyebrows began to flutter as her body rose and fell. She was completely lost in the moment.

One day, Amataka was playing soccer on campus when he sprained his ankle and had to be taken to the university hospital emergency room. The university notified his grandfather and asked him to come to the hospital.

By the time his friend Miura reached me with the news, it was already quite late at night. I quickly called his grandfather's house, but there was no answer. I was so worried that I checked the phone book, found their address and immediately made my way there by subway.

I reached the house in the dark of night without a streetlamp to light my way. I called for Amataka at the door, but I heard nothing. Then I investigated the building from the outside, finding only one window on the first floor emanating a dusky light. I looked in through the ivy-covered window and was a middle-aged woman sprawled on the sofa with her eyes closed. A romantic melody wafted from the room and she was dressed in an elegant kimono. A little dog was curled up below her stomach licking something. I looked more closely. Oh my God! Her jade white legs protruded from the kimono and she spread her body a bit to let the dog in between her legs. The dog stuck out his tongue and licked that very private place. Soon her eyebrows began to flutter as her body rose and fell. She was completely lost in the moment.

I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

I walked over to the front door - still no answer. Perhaps Amataka and his grandfather were still at the hospital. I should probably go by Tokyo University hospital to check.

I was in a state of shock. From my first experience in the shower house - those women had no compunction about walking bare breasted in front of strange men; then there was that night in Kefeng's apartment and the sounds of lovemaking that bounced off the walls; there was Amataka's experience in the strip joint; then there was my classmate Kyoko who told me one day that she had been sexually active since her junior year in college. From that point onward, she had never been without a boyfriend. She had slept with at least twenty men (and she was proud of this). In class, male students were always arguing over who had been first to read an exposé, which included nude photos of course, written by some famous actress. Then they'd move on to critique her body. According to several of my classmates, there was a place next to the coffee shop where men could go for blowjobs. And then there was that frightening experience I had just had last Wednesday that I hadn't told anybody about - one day after class, my English professor, Eizawa (he was Amataka's professor as well) told me he needed to talk to me. He took me to a lovers' motel and as soon as we had passed through the door, he let down his fly, grabbed my hand and wanted me to touch his…I was so frightened that I had all I could do to escape. And now, the final and most disgusting straw - Amataka's step-grandmother Michiko was being serviced by a Pekinese dog! What was it about Japan that had turned it into the pornographic center of the world?

In the late 1980s, her neighbor China was living somewhere else in time. In many small towns and even in most large cities, women still protected their bodies like fine jade. Like kept animals, they had no idea what pleasure lovemaking could provide. All they knew was that their men reached for that part of them each night in the darkness and after planting a few seeds, rolled off and fell asleep. They were nothing more than silent plots of land. Without ever having known true sexual pleasure, many of them became mothers. If their husbands traveled far from home, or if unfortunately they died, these women would live out their widowed days chastely. To them, their bodies were not their own. Their bodies belonged to something more valuable than life itself - virginity. Virgins were respected. Most homes didn't even have bathtubs, so people couldn't bathe often. A whole family might use one basin of water to wash their bottoms and their feet. They were nowhere as lucky as Japanese women, who could bathe daily in unisex bath houses and moan passionately during lovemaking, almost too anxious to be pissed on by men!

Surrounded by all of this pollution, I came to learn much more about myself. Perhaps I was rebelling against feudal ideology. I didn't really think much about virginity. I believed that love was more important than any of that. What would the point of life be without love? But I also despised the so-called lower class Japanese ideal of "pure" love. Japan's obsession with sex had corroded her spirit. How could such a superficial form of desire possibly lead to greater heights?

The thought of Michiko and her dog made me shudder. And the disaster that had just befell my old friend Sheng Yanzi in Paris left me speechless. One evening after I had been in Tokyo for about six months, Amataka had just accompanied me back to my dormitory when Sheng Yanzi called from Paris.

"Chunjie, I…" She was crying so hard that she couldn't continue.

Upon hearing Yanzi's voice, I threw my backpack to the ground and sat immediately down on the bed. "Yanzi, don't cry. Tell me what's happened." I knew that she was to give birth any day and I was afraid that something had happened to the baby.

She stopped for a moment, then cried, "Chunjie, what a disaster. What am I going to do? I gave birth to a baby boy the day before yesterday, but he was all Chinese. He obviously wasn't Arthur's child. The baby looks just like the old man. What the hell is happening?!"

"How could that be?" I asked. I couldn't think of anything else to say.

How do such things happen? Here was Sheng Yanzi living in sunny Paris and faced with one of life's darkest moments.

Two or three months later I gave her a call because I had been thinking of her.

She told me that her husband had accepted the situation, but the child was sent away to be taken care of by a Filipino family. "Actually, this is best. Now I'm free," she said. She went on to tell me, with some excitement about a club she and Arthur had recently joined, a "Sharing Partners Club". They gathered once a month. At first she was a bit uncomfortable with the idea, but now she looks forward to their monthly get-together.

"It's so sexy, Chunjie. We line up as couples. Most are white, but there are also some blacks and Japanese. All of them are well educated and quite well-off. More than half are professors and their spouses. Once a couple has chosen another couple, all must agree or nothing can happen. Last time, Arthur took a liking to a middle-aged Japanese woman in a kimono, but I just couldn't stomach the Japanese man with the beady eyes. So nothing came of that attraction. Finally we ended up switching partners with an American couple working in Paris. We all drove outside of the city and spent the night in separate motel rooms; I with her husband, she with mine. The next morning we returned to our partners and everyone said a polite goodbye."

"That's wild. Aren't you afraid that your husband will fall for someone else?" I asked curiously. It was hard for me to envision such a strange situation.

"I'm not worried about it. We're all grownups and we know how to follow the rules. Anyway, switching partners every once in a while takes the boredom out of marriage and lets in a breath of fresh air. Chunjie, next time why don't you bring a Japanese boyfriend to Paris and we'll switch. What do you think? They say Japanese men love sex. I wouldn't mind experiencing a bit of that. Make sure you pick a handsome one though, one that looks like an actor from Kurasawa's first film, Sugata Sanshiro - Miura Tomokazu or Tamura Masakazu, for example. Or he should at least look like Takakura Ken." Yanzi went on incessantly.

"Yanzi, what are you talking about?! You're crazy." I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

The next day, I told Amataka about our conversation, then jokingly said, "Why don't we go to Paris some day and try out that club? You can have your fill of other women. And my old classmate is quite a catch. They didn't call her ‘Black Peony' for nothing. When she walks she looks like a willow tree swaying in the wind. I haven't met a man yet who could resist her."

"I'm not interested. If any man tries to touch you, I'll have to kill him." Amataka said sternly.

Not bad, little kid. Looks like we share the same values.

In the blink of an eye, my time at Tokyo University was almost up. Because my Chinese, Japanese and English skills were quite good and my grades were excellent, I had been offered a position in the international division of the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun. I rushed home that same day to share the news with Amataka, but when I reached his apartment, he wasn't there, nor was the door locked. I figured he had probably gone around the corner to the grocery store, so I entered the apartment and sat down on the tatami. I noticed an opened letter that had been thrown to the side. I only glanced at the tiny, tightly written characters. The words "Chinese woman" jumped out at me. A moment ago I wasn't interested, but now I just had to read it:

Amataka:

I'm writing this letter after discussing it with your father.

We've heard that you've been dating a Chinese woman for almost two years now. You've even said that after you graduate you plan to marry her. Upon checking with the university authorities, we discovered that she's at least five years older than you and beyond that, she's also divorced. How could you have been seduced so easily? Have you lost your mind? We're very disappointed and want you to know that we expect you to break it off. The sooner the better. The Chishima family will not allow you to marry a Chinese woman. I hope you'll think this over carefully. I've already employed a private detective to report back to me on your daily activities. If you continue with this relationship, beginning next semester we will no longer be able to support you financially and will be forced to cut all ties with you.

Your summer break will begin next month. We hope you'll return to Los Angeles to help with the business. This is the busiest season of the year.

I hope you do what's right. You were always such a good boy.

Mother

Oddly enough, after reading the letter I was quite calm - after all, a dead pig isn't afraid of boiling water. I had been through it all before. All because of that bloodless piece of white cloth, I had been sworn at and even smacked across the face. Now the mother of my boyfriend was ready to come at me with a sword. All I could do was hide.

I sighed and looked inward. For the first time I saw my crimes before me: I was five years older than him. Oh well, next time I'll have to find someone my own age or perhaps a few years older. I was divorced. Sure it was regrettable, but again, who really cared? How was he going to find an unmarried virgin? Virgins had no value in Japan. And my final crime: I was a Chinese woman. Coming from a Japanese bitch, it was like sand being thrown in my eyes, too hard to take. "The Chishima family". A burst of anger gushed forth, who gives a shit about "the Chishima family"? Ask anyone. They're nothing.

To be honest, I wasn't longing to marry Amataka. My love for him was somewhere between the love I might feel for a lover and for a son. Or perhaps we simply shared that melancholy that only wanderers knew. Maybe because I was so far away from home, I cared for him deeply and wanted to comfort him. In my eyes, Amataka wasn't Japanese, nor was he American. Who was he? Where had he come from? These questions left me wanting to love him more. It felt as if he was a son of nature. Does that make sense? He was created from the ocean and the sky and carried with him the deep blue of both. His purity was innate, a part of his very being. But I knew there was more out there for me. We were simply travelers on the same road. It was clear to me that this was not forever. I couldn't be forever.

I didn't wait for Amataka to return.

I got up from the tatami and took a look around this room that had become so familiar to me. Then I walked out and closed the door behind me. Tears fell from my eyes and my lips trembled a bit, as if they were saying goodbye…

Along the way I told myself that I had done what I was meant to do. My boy was now a man. Eventually, as his grandfather expected, he would grow in the samurai tradition, step by step, into a Japanese man.