gaman
a fast food restaurant with cigarette opportunity. the smoking room is inside the electric-smoking room. smoking inception. in the middle of 5 square meters an ashtray holding a little pool of water. it gives a faint hiss as a woman tips her cancer stick on the pool’s stainless steel edge. her eyes are fixed on her telephone screen, looking through a pair of black narrow glasses resting on the tip of her nose. smoke rises almost linearly upward where it gets sucked into the air conditioner’s vent over our heads. the man next to me fumbles in his pants for a lighter. i strike mine and reach over. he bows a little and lights up. a “thank you” escapes his lips. the woman changes to the electric-smoking room. the sliding door closes silently behind her. the length of ash of the man’s cigarette makes me nervous. hiss makes the ash pool. traveling? he asks. we both have finished the tobacco portion. he suggests we sit together before i can answer properly. we sit down at a small round table outside the smoking inception. i explain what i do and that i am waiting for a friend to finish work. he is a businessman, working in the hotel business. about the same age as my father, pretty tall, thick frameless glasses. the talk begins with harmless topics, small talk. i lived in the same area as he is living. the yakuza is still present, chinese people buy up houses, they have a strong mafia too. recently there has been a murder case on the news. family related, of course. there aren’t many killings but most of the cases are family related. same in germany. a troublesome construct - family.
a german friend living in japan for over twenty years told me people get big eyes when he explains the concept “patchwork family.” i assume, the bigger the reaction, the bigger the family trouble. many people live in rigid relationships they hate. raising kids with separated parents who have new relationships, peacefully communicating, must sound like heaven to them. the businessman gets up to get more coffee for both of us. i thank him but he doesn’t want to accept that.
its nothing!
he feels like a father, he says. funny, i just left my father in naha, okinawa today. i took an early flight to tokyo. he is taking a later plane back to germany after spending a week of sunburn with me. it should be around now, the plane taking off. i feel like business class, the coffee arrives.
do you have a family?
yes, with three kids. do you have a girlfriend?
no, i don’t.
my older daughter married last year. know this: before marriage everything is dandy, but from marriage onwards it’s gaman.
gaman?
you don’t like something in the shared life, you don’t say anything but you gaman. not always, but the critique should be well timed. i estimate myself to be 90% gaman. laughing the family feeling is supposed to be comfortable - you know - peaceful. you have to keep it this way.
gaman. i think this peacekeeping translates to everyday life here, to the people of japan - as if they were a big family. you don’t want to cause meiwaku, bother someone, make trouble for others. saying "thank you" and "sorry" - taking a step back - is a constant effort to conserve peace among the big family. a big troublesome patchwork, getting patchier until it becomes questionable, if there was anything to be patched up in the first place - something "whole".
kunde