Reflections of Keiko Fukuda

We finally rented a practice space at the Sokoji Zen Temple in Japantown. Then, a lot of second and third generation Japanese girls came to practice Judo. Because we practiced at a temple, the Buddhist mortuary tablets fell down on the floor if we practice a throwing technique too many times. We practiced very carefully. After two years, we moved to 1622 Castro Street. I start training with bows saying “bow to our teacher” and “bow to the front (meaning to Sehan Kano and my grandfather),” and we end it with another bow saying “thank you very much” after a short meditation sitting upright in Seiza style. The orders are all in Japanese. I teach technical terms of Judo, like the category of Waza in Japanese, of course. I appreciate that students from any country follow this way once I teach it. It is true that some Dojos don’t care about manners. But, my Dojo is different. No cross-legged sitting at all. The house where I was born was near Nihonbashi in Tokyo. My address was 2 Nakabashi Izumi, Kyobashi, Tokyo. I had five siblings; two elder sisters, an elder brother, and a younger sister. However, the second sister died when she was 15 or 16 years old. My brother was physically weak and often got sick, so he and his old care taker went to a place where the air was clean; for example, Atami along the coast in Shizuoka. As a result, he couldn’t learn Jiujitsu and Judo. I was left with a farming family and raised by them until I turned five or six years old. I lived with the family in Someya, which is far from Nihonbashi. When I talk about this, Shelley says that Japanese at that time had a different approach to raising their children. I understand that my parents left me with the family because they hoped for me to be healthy, unlike my brother. At that time, there were ways for farm families to make money by raising other families’ children. My mother visited and brought clothes for me in spring and autumn. I also sometimes visited my house, but I wasn’t attached to her because I felt she didn’t seem like my real mother. I hardly remember what my life in the farming family was like now. I might drink goat milk and play free from all cares in the country. I returned to my house one year before I entered an elementary school. I remember very well when I lived through the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923. It was when I was 10 years old. What I was most surprised by was that houses were destroyed as if they were built out of sand. Because traditional houses were enclosed with mud walls, sand fell from all directions like rain whenever the ground shook. I was very, very frightened.