When My Son Was Japanese

If there’s such a thing as reincarnation, then I’m fairly certain in one of his past lives my son was a Samurai warrior. Indications of this showed early in his childhood. When most toddlers were breaking vases, he was able to tell the difference between the Japanese and Chinese china and knickknacks we had scattered around the house. This impressed me no end, so I would take him to shops and museums to test his identification skills, and he was always on the mark. He also had an unerring talent for differentiating between people of Japanese and Chinese heritage. The problem was, not only could he identify Japanese artifacts and individuals, he believed he was really was Japanese and made up his own version of the language. That was fine until he would escape my grip and chase after Japanese children, frightening them with his bowing and unintelligible attempts at conversation. Taking him to the mall was a nightmare of chases and apologies to irritated parents. Once he got old enough to enter kindergarten, he stopped chasing random Asian children, but he was still certain about his ancestry. At the first parent-teacher meeting, his teacher asked me about his other family. “Other family?” “Yes, his Japanese father and brothers.” “What Japanese father and brothers?” “The ones who live on hill behind you.” “What?” “Your son told me he has a second family that lives over the hill behind you and they are Japanese. He described the entire family in great detail.” “I’m sorry. He made that up. There is no Japanese family, behind the hill or anywhere else.” “Really? He even drew pictures of them. See? My goodness, your son certainly has an active imagination!” Tell me something I don’t know. Going to Japanese restaurants with him was always a treat. One time, when the waitress was shoving wasabi into my mouth against my will, I was forced to take my eyes off him for a second. This gave him time to shove his chopsticks up his nostrils (probably trying to emulate a mustache) and loudly address the waitress in Japanese gibberish. My mouth was too full of sashimi and wasabi to properly beg forgiveness. The real problem arose around first grade when he discovered there was such a thing as Korea. That threw him for a loop. He could not distinguish the language or the artifacts. This made him determined to find an answer. His solution was to slip from my grasp as we walked down a street, run up to strangers who looked Asian and demand an answer to his question, “Are you Japanese, Chinese, Korean, or what!?” This left me babbling in embarrassment, “He’s not trying to be rude. He’s learning about Asian cultures. We’re really interested (even though it totally looks like I’m raising him to be a racist).” None of the strangers answered him, not one of them. They’d just give me a dirty look and walk on, leaving my son even more determined to get to the root of the issue. Perhaps the worst time was when we showed up for Little League try-outs. Sure enough, the coach was of Korean ancestry. We found this out because once again, my son walked up and loudly gave his speech. “Are you Japanese, Chinese, Korean, or what?” This time he got an answer. “Korean.” Then I got the customary disgusted look. The upshot was that my son was finally satisfied in his quest for knowledge. He’d found the missing link. From that point on, aside from all the other reasons he gave me to have a heart attack, identifying Asian nationalities was no longer on the list. Part of the reason was that I enrolled him in a private school that housed students from around the world, Japan in particular. It was there he learned how to mimic both Japanese men and women, using their different language variations and mannerisms, and to eat Japanese food in proper fashion. This was brought home to me in three ways. The first was when I’d drive him to or from school and he’d go on a running argument between a Japanese woman, complete with high pitched tittering and hand over the mouth, and a Japanese man, full of stern and abrupt basso denunciation. This was so outrageously funny I’d have to pull over before I hit another car. The second was when I took him to a Japanese restaurant and he picked up his bowl of rice and started shoveling food into his mouth with his chopsticks. I was horrified when the waitress came over, watched him shovel, asked him something in Japanese, and he nodded and grunted without looking at her … I mean he literally grunted some reply in Japanese … and kept on shoveling. Rather than being offended, the waitress melted like a lovesick pigeon and kept standing next to him, refilling his bowl herself, beaming every time he grunted at her. All this Japanese-in-training came in very handy when he enrolled in sound engineering school and he and a group of friends made their first demo. Using existing WWII footage, they cobbled something together that resembled a cross between Mars Attacks and Godzilla. Naturally, my son voiced the senior Japanese general, sounding just like Takashi Shimura from the Seven Samurai, warning about the consequences of a bad decision involving a red button. Before the screen erupts in total destruction of the world as we know it, you can hear him screaming in perfect Japanenglish, “Don’t push-a the button!” That seemed to be the end of his Japanese incarnation. Now he vacillates between Bosnian, Persian, Arabic, German, Scottish, Israeli, or any other culture that takes his fancy. He’s still hysterically funny, only now your clue as to who he’s mimicking is the restaurant he just went to for dinner.