LITMIR.BIZ

      ONE DAY ON the beach, some young princesses asked me to join them in an intriguing game called jindori (land grabbing). First you draw a largish area on the sand, where the winner of the traditional janken ( scissors-paper-stone) choice-deciding fist-toss, semicircles a portion – with stationary thumb and moving forefinger – to start a ‘battle encampment’. When the whole area is filled, the player with the largest campsite wins. It was a popular game with Japanese children in those days. On arriving home I was surprised to find my mother furious. She had been watching us from a distance. ‘How dare you teach that disgusting game to princesses,’ she said. It was the ‘scissors-paper-stone’ part she objected to. She thought that it was only used at geisha parties my father had told her about, where the loser has to take off an item of clothing!

      The Dowager Princess Kitashirakawa and her daughters lived in a large, beautiful estate – complete with a handsome thatched-roof gate – next door to Wakako’s maternal grandfather Takahashi’s villa, both located just along the road from us. The Kitashirakawas became lifelong friends too. Before the war our friendship only took place on the beach, but after the war, we saw them often, because royals who were not immediate members of the Imperial Family had to become more or less the same as commoners. The older sister, Princess Sawa, who was married to a high-ranking chamberlain, regularly came to my house for the rest of her life as a member of my bridge foursome, which included Wakako Okubo too.

      Not long ago, I asked Princess Sawa if her younger sister had spoken to me that day years ago when we were children, because they had perhaps heard about me from Wakako’s unmarried aunt, Miss Okubo, who happened to be their lady-in-waiting. But she said ‘Oh no! She just liked your looks and wanted to be friends with you!’ I had been playing alone on the sand in front of our house that day when the Kitashirakawas came by. They stopped, and the younger Princess Taé asked me what my name was. I told her, and then asked her name. ‘Taé’ she said. To me it sounded like tai (bream) so I asked her why she was called ‘bream’, and she replied that it was because she looked like one! She had a great sense of humour. Taé-sama very sadly died of a heart attack not long after we met again. She had married a Tokugawa of the former shogun’s family. Their father, Prince Kitashirakawa had lived in Paris with his bride as a young man. He had an honorary position at the Japanese Embassy. Later, very sadly, he lost his life in Paris in a motor car accident, while driving. There is a monument marking the place, and the surviving widowed dowager princess walked with a bad limp. Princess Fusako Kitashirakawa was the daughter of the Meiji Emperor, and as an Emperor’s widowed daughter she held the position of Chief High Priestess of Shinto’s supreme shrine, in Ise. Established 2,000 years ago, it is rebuilt every twenty years.

      One Christmas not so long ago, my mother wanted to learn the phrase Japanese people habitually use when they give someone a gift. My mother was not a linguist, and did not speak Japanese, but she was good at memorizing, so she said just write it down and let me memorize it. But I forgot to tell her what it meant, which was remiss of me. The Japanese are always very humble in referring to anything concerning themselves, and when they give a gift they call it a worthless, insignificant and trifling thing, whereas we imply it is ‘something nice we think you will like’. My mother was successful all that Christmas long in giving ‘insignificant, worthless gifts’ to her Japanese friends. And then much later, in the following spring, the Dowager Princess and her elder daughter Sawa-sama came for tea, and she handed Mother a gift, saying, ‘This belonged to my father’. My mother knew her father was Emperor Meiji, and in her excitement, all she could think of saying was that phrase I had taught her, but before she got to the ‘trifling and worthless’ part, I managed to knock a priceless Crown Derby cup we had off the tea-table and cause an effective distraction!

      ‘Trifling’ reminds me of my own new special recipe for Trifle, which my dear friend Carmen Blacker thought was delicious, and suggested it be called ‘Kitashirakawa Surprise’. It came about because I had been asked to appear on a TV programme which featured artists, writers, musicians, etc., who were invited to make their favourite dish. I decided to do a Trifle, because I thought it was probably easy. But I am not much of a cook and did not realize how difficult custard could be. Bird’s Custard was unavailable in Japan, and try as I might, mine always curdled. But it was alright at the studio, because it is apparently the custom for a professional to make the same thing, to show at the end in case there is time-consuming cooking involved – or if one’s own is not up to scratch! Next day, who should appear at the door but the Kitashirakawas – mother and daughter – wanting me to show them how to make that dessert which looked so good and so easy. I was baffled! In desperation, I explained the general idea and then got them to stay in the drawing room with my mother while I tried to sort something out in the kitchen with what I could find in the fridge. The result was superb. Far better, I still think, than regular English Trifle! My base is an immensely popular Japanese sponge cake called kasutera, from pao de Castella (Castile bread) which was brought to Japan by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century. On it I dribble ume-shu (Japanese plum wine), then cover it with cut-up strawberries and kiwi-fruit, and top it with yoghurt – tasty and much healthier than custard!

      In the old pre-war days we were almost the only foreigners in Hayama. Most of the Westerners on The Bluff in Yokohama spent their summers in Karuizawa and Nojiri, mountain resorts which were then mainly foreign enclaves too. So my summer friends were all Japanese. They were mostly members of the royalty and aristocracy. Right opposite our house was the villa of Baron Takuma Dan, the head of Mitsui, who had recently been murdered by extremists for promoting friendship with England. His daughter Mrs Ogura, with three lovely daughters, had a house in Baron Dan’s enormous garden. Next door to them was the villa of Count Kentaro Kaneko, who wrote Japan’s pre-war Constitution. Diagonally across the road from us was the summer villa of the Kajima Corporation, one of Japan’s leading construction companies. The director’s niece Nanako was one of my friends, too. Their extensive houses and gardens, all among the hills on the opposite side of the road, were wonderful settings for our games of hide and seek. I introduced that Western version called ‘ sardines’, in which the seekers get in with the hider and the last seeker loses. It became very popular, and it was once when all we children crowded into a Japanese futon closet at the Ogura’s that I first noticed the Baron’s cute little grandson Ikuma, two years younger than I was, who became one of Japan’s leading composers.

      We all had great fun together, but only in the afternoons, for Japanese children are busy doing homework all morning, even in the summer holidays. That is why there is virtually no illiteracy in Japan. So, in the early part of the day, my companions were the ocean and its fascinating denizens. The sea was a wonderful friend. It was always there for me, and it put its arms around me and hugged me whenever I went into it. And it talked to me. Watery words of friendship and love.

      And in addition to my friend the sea, there were several families of imaginary people who I imagined living in nice houses in the crevices of the rock in front of our house. I would sometimes invite an imaginary family into our house, and I still remember how real they were to me, and how I once had to stop my mother from sitting down on top of ‘ somebody’. ‘O Mother,’ I cried, ‘That’s Mrs Aroosla sitting there!’ The other day I came across a note my darling mother had made of the names of my imaginary friends, and there was a whole family of Arooslas!

      One

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