THREE TEA CUPS 'DAKE' (only)
Three tea cups sit beside a kettle full of cold ‘mugi-cha’ (roasted barley tea), the delicious defacto drink of Japan’s poor. Also on the blanket a ‘bento’ box neatly tied in a ‘furoshiki’, holding several ‘kibi-dango’, rice balls flavoured with a few drops of soy-sauce and covered with salty nori-seaweed. The baby is nearby watching what appears to be a idyllic scene of harvest time.
However all existing family members are in the field working full-out harvesting the rice in a race against time. A typhoon is approaching Japan from out of the China Sea. It has already hit Taiwan but that is a world away from this tiny field. Their wind-break bamboo thicket is blowing over almost double as the winds begin to pick up. The rice sheaths can be seen bowing in a direction parallel to the bamboo’s sway. If this small family doesn’t cut the rice stalks and lay them in bundles against the ground before this day is done, then in the darkness of night the fierce winds will snap the rice kernels off the flapping stalks and the crop will be lost.
All families in the area are facing the same emergency. The usual practice of neighbours coming together and harvesting each family’s field in turn in a leisurely celebration full of laughter and dancing and good food is out of the question now. Every family is on its own.
And the three tea cups tell a story. It is 1950 and there are only 3 adults in this field. The baby’s grandfather was likely lost in the government’s war in some far-off jungle or, caught in China in ’45, is among the 600 thousand Japanese prisoners of war still being held captive in 1950 by the Russians. Grandmother, who usually watches the baby at the house, has come to the field to help. The ‘akanbo’ is tucked in the classic rice-straw basket, so tightly bound inside that it cannot escape and crawl away toward the nearby stream. Yet the baby can see everything that is happening and therefore is part of the family drama on this hard day.
But this small family knows of hard work. And they will surely save much of this field, for there is something new in the air. These three are actually working for themselves. The papers called it ‘land reform’. For the first time they own--actually own!-- these fields on which their family has been slaves and serfs for countless hundreds of years. Times are hard. But the baby is healthy. Life goes on. And the typhoon will bring needed rains for the winter crop. What will be will be and life is good.
This motif of the baby safely tucked into the rice-basket is dear to the hearts of the Japanese.
A antique doll, sculpted face with inset glass eyes, at present safely tucked into my gallery, obviously enjoying it.
