and a small cloth banner hanging outside modestly announced the establishment as a bathhouse.
While an exchange student I had gone to a sento with a small group of American women—we all wanted to baptize ourselves into the Japanese world. We spent most of our visit laughing nervously at the man who took money and could see into the women’s bath. At this sento a woman took my ¥500. I left my shoes outside in a wooden slot and put on a pair of pink plastic slippers. The changing area was only the size of a family room in an American home, and had a smooth wooden floor. There were several chairs in the center of the room, with well-worn, sunken cushions. On the walls were several wooden shelves with old wicker baskets for clothing. I took one of the baskets and stripped.
Through a sliding glass door I could see a few women in the white-tiled bathing room. The steamy room echoed the sound of women’s voices and the soft rush of running water. I walked into the bathing room carrying my towel cloth discreetly in front of myself. The warm moisture of the room embraced me.
I sat down on a blue plastic stool in front of a pair of spigots and grabbed a yellow bathing bucket. Cold and hot water gushed out of the spigots and filled the bucket in seconds. I poured bucket after bucket on my head, drenching myself and letting the water spray all over. Every splash was a release.
As I soaped my body and washed my hair at the spigot, I listened to the echoing chatter. Other than a few prepubescent girls with their mothers, the women were wrinkly and saggy. These women, I imagined, were probably regulars and had likely been coming to the sento since they were young, when the public bath was their only bath.
I felt soothed by the warmth of the room and comforted by the community of women. After I was all clean, I walked to the soaking pools in the back of the room. Three deep, tiled pools held water of varying temperatures: hot, extra hot, and superextra hot.
I slid into the hot pool without stirring up the water and sat still until my body adjusted to the cooler water at the bottom of the tub. The heat swallowed me completely. Leaning my sweating head back against the wall, I felt my muscles release my bones. My head felt light and I let go of every worry: the frustration of being treated like a child, the language, the uniforms, Ms. Uno’s boss. Everything was still, and I felt no impulse to rebel. For a moment I was at peace in my body.
I got out of the tub and went back to the cold-water spigot, filling the bucket with icy water. As I doused my steaming body my skin shrieked. My head tingled and every pore was in shock. I kept pouring the cold water until my skin felt numb. The coldness became heat, and I felt totally refreshed. When I got into the extra-hot soaking pool I didn’t even feel the heat of the water. I repeated this cycle several times.
When I returned to the spigots for the last time I noticed a middle-aged woman with a young girl, maybe her daughter. They were talking while the young girl washed the woman’s back. The woman smiled at me and said in Japanese, “You didn’t get your back very clean, did you? You’re supposed to bring a friend to wash it.”
I smiled back and said, “Today I’m alone.” She pulled her stool behind me and said, “Well, I’ll wash it for you.”
She soaped my washcloth and started to rub my neck. I bent my head down to my chest and held my arms folded together. Her strong movements made my shoulders shake. I let go of my arms and let my body feel everything.
“It’s a good feeling, isn’t it?” she said. “Oh, you’ll certainly sleep well tonight.”
I could feel the washcloth sliding up and down my back. Each vertebra of my spine felt like it had been loosened. The tension from my body was released, and I crouched over with my arms hanging to the floor. The woman filled a bucket and poured warm water over my shoulders. A rush went through my entire body. She poured again.
2
Office Ladies
FIVE HIGH-PITCHED, cheerful voices rang out simultaneously, “Hishoshitsu de gozaimasu. Hello, this is the executive secretariat.” Each secretary had a phone on her desk, and when the red light flickered and the bell rang, every available hand immediately reached for a receiver. They were like television gameshow contestants racing to push the buzzer first.
At first I assumed that the secretaries were competing with one another; then I realized that no one kept track of who answered telephone calls. It was a group responsibility. The group made sure that the phone didn’t ring more than once.
This new team was unlike any group I had ever experienced. For one thing, in matching uniforms, all ten of them looked alike. Each one was under five feet tall and weighed less than a hundred pounds. They had straight, shoulder-length dark hair and fair complexions; coral-colored lipstick painted their interminable smiles.
The executive secretaries looked like more studious versions of the Welcome Ladies. They too were in their twenties and greeted me with smiles even though their polite introductions were interrupted by self-conscious giggling.
From the beginning they treated me with gentle uncertainty, as though at any moment I might explode into unintelligible, blithering English. Although I was one of the youngest, and clearly the most inexperienced, I felt as though my native language threatened them—that if I spoke in English they would feel obligated to converse with me. I made an effort to speak only Japanese.
The only English speaker in the group was a man who was the president’s personal assistant.
“My name is Tsutomu Umeno, but you can call me Tom,” he said with a cheeky grin when we met. The women tittered with approval. His voice was hearty and friendly. Tom looked to be in his early thirties and wore an elegant white suit coat, gold cuff links, and an expensive watch. When I commented on his English skills he told me he had spent a year at Stanford and later had worked in the Philippines.
Tom explained that he was the only male secretary in the group, but unlike the female secretaries, it was his job to attend the president wherever he went, whether it was the Tokyo Auto Show or a factory in Brazil. Tom acted as translator, public-relations man, and gofer.
He pulled out a Cross pen and drew an organizational chart of the “executive secretariat,” as he called it, on a piece of notebook paper. There were eleven women, including me, and five men. In addition to the manager of the department, two of the men were responsible directly to the entire executive board of directors for special projects. The other man was the assistant manager, Mr. Higuchi, whom I already knew was responsible for the daily activities of the secretariat.
Before coming to Japan I had been told by Mr. Yoshida that the executive office was a special group within Honda. It had its own floor in the headquarters, unlike any sales or administration department. Our group was directly responsible to the thirty-seven men who made up the Board of Directors of Honda Motor Company.
During the first weeks of work I tried to get to know my colleagues by joining them for lunch. The women usually split into small groups according to age. One of my first lunches was with the youngest group, women in their early twenties.
I placed my tray next to my colleague Ms. Kodama. Two other women from our office sat across the beige Formica table in the company cafeteria. Several women from other departments wearing the same blue polyester uniforms were seated next to them with trays or box lunches from home. Over five hundred employees filled the room.
“Oh, you’re having fish today?” Ms. Kodama exclaimed within hearing of everyone at the table. “Are you sure fish is all right?” she asked with a concerned smile.
I assured
