Day 25 of 30-Day Writing Challenge
When I was coming of age, it was the social norm in Japan that a woman should become a good housewife, rather than pursue her career. Corporations preferred to hire female graduates from two-year junior college rather than from four-year college. They viewed those women not as their major workforce but as future wives of their loyal male employees.
If a couple working in the same company got married, the wife would quit – that was an unwritten rule. In return the company would pay the male employee family allowance once he got married. (Equal Pay? What is that?)
Ikebana and tea ceremony were two major things a future housewife was supposed to practice before getting married.
I was a rebellious, ambitious girl. I defied being treated as the second-class citizen. I chose a four-year college. Kyoto University, one of the most difficult to get into. I studied law, just because it was a male-dominant major. I was determined to start my career on the same level as my male colleagues, not as an “office lady.”
When I was in college, my mother casually said, “why don’t you learn ikebana and tea ceremony? Kyoto is the birthplace of both, so there should be good teachers there.”
“Hell no!” was my answer.
Forty years later. The 11th image on my phone is a photo of a flower arrangement, hanging on the alcove post in a tearoom. Now my life in Seattle revolves around ikebana and tea ceremony.
Mother, I know. It’s a mystery to me, too.