Hokkaido Highway Blues

And— poof.“ He made the tiniest of sound effects. “But now she don’t care. Big noise— boom —just like thunder. You see the crack on the wall, over there? My wife make that.”
    By now we were all in stitches, especially Mrs. Nakamura, who enjoyed his fart gestures immensely. When Yoshi translated the above, she laughed herself into tears and then leaned across and swatted her husband on the arm.
    “Da-mé, ” she said. “Stop it.”
    But he continued, lamenting with Chaplinesque expressions the fate of men married to Japanese women. He changed his face from pathos to stone face as he switched from husband to wife, like a one-man vaudeville act. “Now I am old man. I am tired. When I say to my wife, ‘I am thirsty, please a little saké, please, please,’ she just look, like this”—he pulled a haughty face—“and she say, ‘So? Cup is over there, saké is in kitchen.’ ‘‘ He heaved a noble sigh and sadly shook his head. “Oh, Mr. Will, don’t marry a Japanese woman, they are like cats. They hide their claws.”
    Then he delved back into the photo albums. “You are going to Sado Island?” he asked. “Yes? Sado is good place. I went to Sado with my terrible wife last year,” and he opened another album. “See, we are here. In the round boat like a washing tub.”
    Sado Island is famous for a legend of a young woman who crossed the sea from the mainland in a large, barrellike tub to visit her exiled lover. (I don’t remember how the story ends, probably in tragedy.)
    Among the tour photos were pictures of serious Japanese men in short-sleeve shirts, buttoned right up to the top, with cameras hung like albatrosses around their necks. There was only one woman in the group, Mrs. Nakamura, and there was only one person smiling—grinning, really—and that was Mr. Nakamura. The two of them stood out as clearly as real people in a wax museum.
    I looked at the photographs. “Why didn’t the other men bring their wives?”
    “Who knows?” said Mr. Nak. “Maybe they don’t like their wives. Maybe their wives don’t like them. It is old custom. Japanese men don’t travel with their wives so much. But not me. How can I go to Sado without my terrible wife?”
    “She doesn’t seem very terrible,“ I said.
    “Ha! We have company, so she is hiding her claws!” and again the house rocked with laughter, and Mrs. Nakamura leaned over and swatted her errant husband.
    One of the biggest sources of humor in Japan is the discrepancy between the public and the private person. Everyday life requires small, daily acts of hypocrisy, and these are a source of endless amusement.
    A typical example—a comic haiku cited by Jack Seward in The Japanese (the translation is my own):
     
    as she gathers her loved one’s funeral ashes
    she weeps and weeps—
    and searches for gold teeth
     
    I tried to recite it to the Nakamuras, but it came out wrong, and they thought I was relating some sad personal story. They became very quiet. When Japanese tell it, it always gets a big laugh (it must be my delivery).
    Fortunately, Mr. Nak soon had the room full of laughter again. You had to stay on top of the conversation when Mr. Nak was around, lest it veer out from under you like a runaway horse. His wife insisted that he show me his calligraphy; he had once been a prefectural champion.
    He got down a big stack of his work and then instantly changed his mind, not from false modesty, but from sudden inspiration.
    “Every day I die,” he said. ‘And every morning I am reborn. Every day is a lifetime. When I go to sleep I thank my god, thank you for this day.”
    He translated this into Japanese and his wife nodded thoughtfully and everyone paused out of respect, and then we were off again.
    “You like fish? I went fishing yesterday, do you see my sunburn?” He showed me his forearms, as dark brown as polished leather. “I caught twelve baby fish: one, two, three, like that. Now when the mother comes home, she ask, ‘Where are my babies? Why somebody take them away?’ Sad, maybe.”
    He used the same forlorn face for the mama fish as he used for the henpecked husband earlier. It was highly entertaining. I had never met anybody quite like Mr. Nakamura. He was breathless in his excitement, as though he had a lifetime of small quips and everyday wisdom to share, as though he had only this one night to impart it, as though time were running out and he was picking up the pace.
    “Guam,” he said. “My wife