HOW MY PARENTS LEARNED TO EAT

Friedman, Ina R. How My Parents Learned to Eat. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1984.
Reviewed by Marianne Maruyama Halpin

Far from being a story of table manners or learning how to eat, this 1980's story is the quiet affirmation of mutual respect for customs and traditional harmony and the personal sensitivity it takes to break cultural rules gently. The main characters' marriage is seen as intercultural. The reader comes to understand that although the traditional custom of marrying within one's own culture gets put aside, the importance of following the rules is maintained. Here's how the story works:

Friedman's text and Allen Say's illustrations are perfectly paired. This is not always the case in picture books but Allen Say, is a master painter and illustrator who began his career in Tokyo and has a long list of award-winning books he has written and illustrated. The authenticity of these illustrations, (Say himself has a mixed heritage family) as in all great picture books, moves the story to greater understanding.

The beginning of the book is also the end. It's a circular story. In Japanese, the circular character 'wa' is harmony. The reader would understand the story better if she knew the Japanese character on the title page is 'harmony.' But that is a cultural clue one comes to know only after learning the language or having a cultural guide. The story is about developing mutual understanding and respect.

The narrator is a young girl. On the first page, she says, "In our house, some days we eat with chopsticks and some days we eat with knives and forks. For me, it's natural." She is dressed in kimono and is eating fish and rice with chopsticks.

The story she tells is of her parents' courtship. She describes their meeting (he, in American sailor's uniform, she, in Japanese student's uniform) in Yokohama and their self-consciousness. They don't know enough about each others' customs.

Later, the young man takes time to go to a traditional Japanese restaurant. He asks to be taught to use chopsticks. This may seem overly simple, but in Japan, knowing the rules is of utmost importance. Asking to be shown the rules is a delicate matter requiring sincerity and grace. Humility comes when one realizes that grace is almost impossible. The young man drops his food. All he can manage is to drink his soup. He spends all his time learning. Since he has no time to call the young woman, she worries he has forgotten her.

In the morning he calls to invite her to dinner. After saying yes, she realizes she doesn't know the rules of eating. She goes to see her uncle who has traveled to England. She asks him to teach her the rules. He acknowledges that the rules are unusual, but that he will teach her. First, she must take a note to her teacher at school to get special permission to leave for lunch. In this historical fiction, the uncle is wearing very traditional Japanese clothing and has a mustache. If the reader understands the cultural clues, she knows this is a sophisticated gentleman, respectful of custom. Furthermore, his house is indicative of wealth. The Japanese garden and the fact that he has traveled and eaten with English people suggest his international status. If you didn't recognize all that you would miss part of the story. The fact that there is a television antenna in the neighborhood at that time suggests that the uncle lives in a modern area. There is no television visible in the room in which he sees his niece. A shibui uncle, indeed!

If you know the rules, you understand more but you have to take time to find out what they are and how to use them wisely. Of course, Uncle, now in suit and tie, takes the young woman to a formal English restaurant. Soup is not sipped from the bowl Japanese style. The spoon makes the young woman's hand tremble. She spills some onto the white tablecloth. Uncle is encouraging. They are served mashed potatoes and peas. In Japan, peas come in thin, non-rolling pods. Rice is the preferred starch rather than potatoes. Uncle teaches her to balance the potatoes and peas on the overturned fork. If this is what he remembers from Britain, it is certainly not American, but they don't make this subtle distinction. The rule is accepted. They order even more for practice.

At seven, the young man comes to see the young lady. He says, "Why didn't you wear your kimono?" We're going to a Japanese restaurant." She turns the tables on him and says directly that they'll go to a western restaurant tonight and a Japanese restaurant tomorrow, when she'll wear her kimono. She also overturns any preconceptions that she might be overly deferential. He marvels at the clever way she eats potatoes and peas. They decide to marry and agree to teach each other to eat with chopsticks and forks.

On the last page, their daughter, the family storyteller, is in the same kitchen, but this time in American dress with western utensils and American food. If you know what you're looking at, you can see the soy sauce and a can of seaweed on the counter, waiting for another time.

This enduring story of the '80's is perfectly tuned to a mixed heritage, bicultural child's perception of her parent's story, undoubtedly told to her by her parents. She has no question of cultural identity here. She is at home with both cultures. She knows the reverence for elders, the respect for knowing the rules, the need for harmony. She knows that harmonious balance needs sensitivity. She has this harmony in her daily life.

Incidentally, one of the most famous history plays in Japanese literature is about a young lord who goes to a famous teacher to learn the rules of etiquette he will need before traveling to see the emperor. Because the teacher is in the employ of the rival clan, he wrongly teaches the young lord that it is permissible to enter the Imperial presence while wearing his sword. When the education is over and the young lord brings his sword into the Imperial Palace, he is in such breach of etiquette that he must commit ritual seppuku (suicide) to show his respect for the rules and his loyalty to the way of life. The Kabuki play, Chushingura, or 47 Ronin, as it is known here, is perhaps the most widely known outside of Japan of all Japanese stories. --mmh

N.B.--How My Parents Learned to Eat is one of the earliest mixed heritage picture books in the US that is not about the so-called 'tragic fate of mixed race children.' Parents' courtship is not only a common family story in the oral tradition, but a genre in picture books with mixed heritage themes. (See Little, Mimi Otey. Yoshiko and the Foreigner, Farrar Straus & Giroux, New York, 1996.)

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