ThePoliticalViolin

My college friend Nakamura lives in Sasebo, a small city in southern Japan with a U.S. Navy base. This fall, at his daughter's elementary school sports day, every adult on that field cried. Including the principal. Next door to Nakamura lives an American Navy family. The father is Brandon. A chief petty officer from Alabama. Big, loud, kind. His ship is based in Sasebo. Last spring, the ship left for a seven-month deployment. Brandon left behind his wife, Amber, and their eight-year-old son, Jackson. Jackson goes to the local Japanese elementary school. He's the only American kid there. On Jackson's bedroom wall, there was a paper chain. One link for every day until his father came home. Every night before bed, he cut one off. Nakamura's own father died when he was six. He told me once that at every school sports day, there was an empty spot next to him. Everyone else had a dad. He had a space. So when Brandon's ship left, Nakamura quietly took the spot. He doesn't really speak English. He didn't need to. He taught Jackson to ride a bike in the parking lot. He played catch with him every Sunday. He checked his math homework, which was in Japanese, which Jackson's mom couldn't read. When Jackson had a bad day, Nakamura took him for ice cream and they sat there, not talking, two guys eating ice cream. In Japan, every school sports day has a parent-child three-legged race. Jackson was supposed to run it with his dad. So Nakamura said he would run it with him instead. On the day, Jackson's paper chain still had 47 links left. At the starting line, Nakamura knelt down and tied his ankle to Jackson's with a white cloth. Jackson was trying hard not to look sad. All the other kids had their dads. The teacher raised the starting pistol. Then somebody near the school gate started to clap. A man was walking across the field. White Navy uniform. Sea bag over his shoulder. Brandon. His ship had come back 47 days early. He had told exactly three people. His wife. The principal. And Nakamura. Nakamura didn't say anything. He just knelt down, untied the cloth from his own ankle, and held it out to Brandon. Jackson turned around. He froze. For a long second, he didn't move at all. Then, very quietly: "Daddy?" And he ran. He was still half-tied to nothing, the white cloth flapping from his ankle. Brandon dropped the sea bag and went down on his knees on the dirt, and Jackson hit him so hard they both almost fell over. Neither of them said a word. Brandon just held him, with his hand on the back of Jackson's head, rocking a little. His shoulders were shaking. Nakamura says the whole field went silent. Four hundred Japanese parents, kids, teachers. Then he heard it. People crying. Grandmothers. Fathers with video cameras. The principal, into a microphone that was still on. Then they ran the race. Brandon and Jackson, tied together at the ankle. They fell down twice. They came in dead last. Every single person on that field stood up and cheered like it was the Olympics. Afterward, Brandon found Nakamura by the bleachers. They can't talk to each other. Not really. So Brandon reached into his pocket and pulled out a coin. A challenge coin from his ship. In the U.S. military, it's what you give someone when "thank you" isn't big enough. He put it in Nakamura's hand and shook it. He held on for a long time. Nakamura bowed. All the way down. Brandon stood up straight and saluted him. Nakamura keeps that coin in his wallet now. I asked him once why he did all of it. Eight months of bikes and homework and ice cream for somebody else's kid. He looked almost embarrassed. "I wasn't his father," he said. "I was just keeping the spot warm until his father came home." That day, I think that field had two heroes on it. One came home from the sea. The other one had been there the whole time.

My older brother Masa was the most Japanese man I have ever known. He's an accountant. He irons his socks. He once apologized to a vending machine for pressing the wrong button. In 2016, his company sent him to Houston, Texas, for two years. He came back a different man. First, he greets the clerk at our local convenience store like a long-lost cousin. "Howdy! How y'all doin' today?" Every morning. For three years. The clerk, a quiet college student, has started answering, "Fine, and you?" He bought a pickup truck. In Tokyo. It does not fit in his parking space. It does not fit in any parking space in this city. He keeps it at a farm forty minutes away and visits it on weekends, like a horse. He wears cowboy boots to the office. At home, he takes them off at the door like a proper Japanese person. Then he puts on cowboy slippers. I did not know cowboy slippers existed. He had them shipped from Texas. Last spring, he smoked a brisket on his apartment balcony for fourteen hours. The fire department came twice. The second time, they stayed for lunch. He tells his boss "Bless your heart." He doesn't know what it means. His boss thinks it's a compliment. It is not a compliment. Nobody has told either of them. At his daughter's school sports day, he showed up with a cooler, a folding chair, and a giant foam finger. He started tailgating in the school parking lot. At 7 a.m. With a portable grill. The other dads stared at him. Then one of them walked over and asked if he could have a sausage. Now the PTA has a tailgate committee. And every November, he insists on Thanksgiving. A full one. But Japanese ovens are tiny. A turkey will not fit. So he cut a turkey into seven pieces and cooked it in the little fish grill under the stove, one piece at a time, for six hours. He invited the whole building. Twenty-three people in a three-room apartment. Most of them had never heard of Thanksgiving. He made everyone go around the table and say what they were thankful for. The old man from 2F said "this turkey" and cried a little. For a long time, I thought my brother had just lost his mind in Texas. Then, one night, I asked him why. In August 2017, Hurricane Harvey hit Houston. The water came up so fast that Masa, his wife, and his daughter ended up trapped on the second floor of their apartment. No power. No phone. The water still rising. He told me he sat in the dark holding his daughter and thought, "We're going to die in a country where nobody knows our names." At 3 a.m., he heard a boat motor. It was the man from across the street. Dwayne. A pipefitter. They had spoken maybe four times. Dwayne had a fishing boat, a flashlight, and his teenage son. He took them out through a window. Then he took them to his own house on higher ground. For ten days, Masa's family slept in Dwayne's living room. Dwayne's wife cooked for them. Dwayne's son gave his bedroom to Masa's daughter. When it was over, Masa tried to pay him. He had an envelope with all the cash he had. Dwayne pushed it back across the kitchen table. "Neighbors don't send bills," he said. Masa bowed. All the way down. And he made Dwayne a promise. "I will be a good neighbor." Dwayne laughed and shook his hand. "That's all I ask, partner." That was the deal. Dwayne never said which country. So now there is a Texan in Tokyo. He wears cowboy slippers. He smokes brisket against the law. His truck lives on a farm. And he is the best neighbor on our whole street.

My friend Shota builds banjos by hand in a tiny shop in Tokyo. He learned from an old man in the mountains of Virginia who had never taken an apprentice in his life. The first thing that old man ever said to him was "Go home." This is how it started. Most people don't know this, but Japan has a lot of bluegrass fans. Real ones. Banjos, fiddles, the whole thing. Shota fell in love with it at fifteen. In 2012, at 22, he flew to Virginia. He drove into a hollow in the Blue Ridge Mountains, looking for a man named Clyde. Clyde was 74. He had been making banjos by hand for fifty years. No website. No phone listing. People found him by asking around. Shota stood in the doorway of the workshop and asked, in very bad English, if he could learn. Clyde looked at him for a long time. "Go home." Shota didn't go home. He slept in his rental car at the bottom of Clyde's driveway. Every morning at six, he walked up and swept the workshop floor. Clyde didn't stop him. Clyde didn't talk to him either. For three months, Shota was not allowed to touch a single piece of wood. But every morning, there was a hot biscuit wrapped in a paper towel sitting on the hood of his car. He assumed it was Clyde's wife, Mae. One day he thanked her. Mae looked over her shoulder and lowered her voice. "Honey, Clyde makes those. Don't you ever tell him I told you." In the fourth month, Clyde handed him a block of maple and a knife. Carve a neck. Shota carved it for two weeks. He was proud of it. Clyde looked at it for maybe five seconds. Then he opened the wood stove and threw it in. "Again." That was the lesson. That was the whole lesson. "Again." Shota carved forty necks. Clyde burned forty necks. The forty-first, Clyde turned over in his hands for a long time. Then he walked across the shop and set it on the shelf above his workbench. He didn't say anything. Shota told me that was the first time he cried in America. Clyde had one son. A good man, an accountant in Charlotte. They loved each other. He just never wanted the wood. Clyde had made his peace with it. When he was gone, the craft would go with him. Three generations, done. One night, a couple of years in, Shota finally asked him. Why did you let me stay? Clyde took a long time to answer. "1971. Bean Blossom, Indiana. Big bluegrass festival. A band of Japanese kids got up on that stage. Couldn't hardly speak English. Played like their lives depended on it." He shrugged. "And you came back every morning. Didn't matter where you came from. You came back." Shota stayed seven years. In the seventh year, he built his first banjo alone. Every piece. Clyde sat on his stool and played it for a very long time. Old songs. Slow ones. Then he handed it back and said one word. "Good." In seven years, Shota heard Clyde say that word one time. By 2019, Clyde's hands had gotten bad. He couldn't hold the tools anymore. One evening, he dragged an old wooden tool chest out from under the workbench and pushed it across the floor to Shota. Inside the lid, carved into the wood, were names. 1911. AMOS. 1946. WENDELL. 1972. CLYDE. His grandfather. His father. Himself. Then Clyde picked up a carving knife. His hands were shaking so badly it took him almost an hour. Underneath his own name, he carved one more. 2019. SHOTA. Shota said he couldn't breathe. He just sat on the workshop floor holding that lid. Clyde died the next spring. He was 82. Shota came home to Tokyo and opened his little shop. Every banjo he has ever built, inside the rim, where nobody will see it, he writes one small word. Clyde. This year, he got an order from Charlotte, North Carolina. A seventeen-year-old boy. He'd heard about a guy in Tokyo who builds banjos the old Virginia way. The boy's last name was the same as Clyde's. It was his grandson. Next summer, that boy is flying to Tokyo. To learn. Clyde thought the craft would die with him. It just went the long way around.

Last week, on a train in Tokyo, I watched two grandmothers go to war. With candy. A tiny Japanese grandma sat across from an American family. Their little boy, maybe six, was tired and about to cry. She opened her purse and handed him a candy. His American grandmother saw this. She opened her own purse, pulled out a Werther's Original, leaned across the aisle, and handed it to the Japanese grandma. The Japanese grandma accepted it. Bowed. Then went back into her purse and handed the boy two more candies. The American grandma went back into hers. Peppermint. For the Japanese grandma. And a Werther's for the boy's sister, who hadn't even asked. This went on for four stops. By the time they got off, that kid had six pieces of candy in his pockets. Nobody had said one word in a common language. The two grandmas looked at each other, and both of them burst out laughing so hard the whole train car started smiling. In Japan, grandmothers in Osaka are famous for this. They always carry candy. They give it to strangers on the street. It has its own cute name: "ame-chan." Little Mr. Candy. I had no idea American grandmas did the exact same thing. And now I have questions. Serious questions. Why is it always Werther's? Is there a law? Do you get a lifetime supply when your first grandchild is born? Is the Kleenex really kept up the sleeve? All of them? Why the sleeve? Is there always a little coin purse that goes "click"? My own grandmother carried three things in her purse. Always. Candy. Tissues. And a thousand yen, folded very, very small, "for emergencies." Every time I left her house, she pushed it into my pocket when my mother wasn't looking. Every time. Even when I was 35 and had a job. When she died, my mother opened her purse. Candy. Tissues. And an envelope with my name on it. "For emergencies." So please, America. I need to know. What did your grandma always carry? Werther's? Butterscotch? Peppermints that were a little bit stuck together? What was in grandpa's shirt pocket? A pocketknife? A comb? A roll of Life Savers? What was in the glove box of his truck? A map from 1988? Tell me everything. The more specific, the better.

In 2009, a three-year-old girl in Japan was dying. Her name is Rin. Her heart was failing. She needed a new one. But at that time, Japanese law didn't allow organ donation from children under fifteen. For a little girl like Rin, a heart in Japan was almost impossible. The only way was to cross the ocean. So her whole town started raising money. Bake sales. Donation boxes in every shop. Old men standing outside the train station with buckets in the winter. In four months, they raised enough. Rin's parents flew her to a children's hospital in America. And they waited. That same fall, in a small town in Wisconsin, there was a six-year-old boy named Noah. Noah loved dinosaurs. He could name forty of them. And he was the kind of kid who shared everything. His crayons. His snacks. His last Oreo. His mother, Jenny, said his teacher once wrote on his report card: "Noah gives away too much." One Saturday in October, Noah was riding his bike, and there was an accident. He didn't wake up. In a hospital hallway, at three in the morning, a doctor gently asked Jenny if she would think about organ donation. She was 34. She had been awake for two days. Her husband couldn't speak. She signed the papers. Later, she said she only thought one thing. "Noah always shared. He would want to share this too." Donors are kept anonymous. Families aren't told each other's names. But Jenny asked the transplant coordinator to pass along one message to whoever received his heart. "His name was Noah. He loved dinosaurs." Two weeks later, a little girl from Japan woke up in an American hospital with a six-year-old boy's heart beating in her chest. Every year after that, an envelope arrived at Jenny's house in Wisconsin. From Japan. No return address, just the coordinator's office. Inside was always the same thing. A drawing of a dinosaur. At four, it was a scribble. At ten, it had scales. At fifteen, it was so good Jenny framed it. Seventeen dinosaurs. Jenny kept every one. Rin is twenty now. Last summer, after years of letters, she flew to Wisconsin to meet Jenny. Jenny opened the front door. She didn't say hello. She just held Rin for a very long time. Then she asked if she could listen. She had brought a stethoscope. She put the ear tips in, very slowly, with her hands shaking. Rin unbuttoned the top of her shirt. Jenny pressed the stethoscope over Rin's heart. And for the first time in seventeen years, she heard her son's heart. She closed her eyes. "Hi, baby," she whispered. Rin cried. Jenny cried. Noah's father, who had stayed in the kitchen because he wasn't sure he could do it, came out and put his arms around both of them. Rin is studying to be a nurse now. Back in Japan, she gives talks at schools and town halls about organ donation. Japan changed its law in 2010, but there are still very few donors. So she tells people about a little boy in Wisconsin who gave away too much. She wears a tiny dinosaur pin on her collar. After every talk, young people line up to register as donors. Last year alone, more than three thousand of them. Jenny says she doesn't think of that October night as the end anymore. "The worst day of my life," she said, "was the first day of hers." Noah was six. He's still sharing.

My wife has taught high school in Tokyo for twenty years. Every year, a few of her students spend a year living with a family in America. When they come home, she asks each of them one question. "What do you miss?" She expects hamburgers. She almost never gets hamburgers. And these aren't old stories. Most of these kids came home in the last two years. "Every time I left the house, my host mom said, 'Text me when you get there.' In Japan, nobody needs to know where I am. In Ohio, somebody always did." (Mina, 17, Ohio) "If you walk toward a door, an American will hold it open. Even if you are very far away. So you have to run. I ran to so many doors." (Itsuki, 16, Georgia) "My host brother screamed on the floor of a grocery store. A stranger walked by and said to my host mom, 'You're doing great, Mama.' She almost cried. I didn't know strangers were allowed to say that." (Aoi, 17, Texas) "We went away for the weekend and left our trash can at the curb. When we got back, it was by the garage. Nobody said who. My host dad said if it had been there one more day, the neighbor would have knocked." (Haruto, 16, Minnesota) "A car got stuck in the snow in front of our house. Four men came out of four houses. Nobody called them. They pushed, the car drove away, and they went back inside without saying their names." (Ren, 17, Michigan) "Every American has jumper cables. Maybe half of them know which clip goes where. The other half help anyway." (Shin, 16, Montana) "In July, my host family put a cooler on the porch. Cold water, snacks, and a sign: 'For our delivery drivers. Thank you!' I asked if they knew the drivers. They said no." (Nanami, 16, Arizona) "Downtown, there are banners on the lampposts. Photos of soldiers from the town. Some old, some very young. My host grandpa walked me down the street and told me every name." (Yuna, 16, Iowa) "I got a C-plus on my first test. My host dad said, 'I'm proud of you,' and put it on the fridge. In Japan, nobody is proud of a C-plus." (Takeru, 17, Pennsylvania) Then the quietest girl in the class raised her hand. Sora. Seventeen. Missouri. "Nobody asks me 'home safe?' anymore," she said. She was wrong. In September, there was a typhoon warning for Tokyo. At 2 a.m., Sora's phone lit up. It was her host mom. In Missouri. Watching the weather in a country she had never been to. "Saw the storm. You home safe?" Sora told my wife she cried for a long time. Then she typed the answer she had typed a hundred times, from football games and friends' driveways. "Home safe." Her host mom wrote back one line. "Good. That's all I needed." My wife has asked that question for twenty years. Not one kid has ever said they missed how big America is. They miss how America says goodbye. And how it checks that you got home. So, America. You think you've lost something. You haven't. It's on a porch in Arizona. It's pushing a car in Michigan. It's awake at 2 a.m. in Missouri, watching our weather. You don't remember doing any of it. A kid in Tokyo will never forget.