Searching for my samurai mother

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1:20Mike and his guests offer their perspective on how policy changes could affect what you do with your portfolio. Download the latest episode and follow at schwab.com slash Washington Wise or wherever you listen. My mother is magical. Akemi had a magical aura around her. She was very beautiful, like really beautiful, quite aloof, like not really knowable in some ways. Maybe that was actually part of her beauty thing where you're like, well, you can't be real. So you're just distanced from them. Yeah, I just found her like magical and distant. I like wearing kimono and also kimono. Oh, now it's April.

2:09I can wear this pattern of kimono and think about the season and cherry blossom is beautiful now. So I can't wear cherry blossom kimono because my kimono cannot win the beautiful natural cherry blossom flower. So wearing kimono is wonderful. think about nature, beauty. Akemi Tanaka, speaking there on BBC Radio London, moved from Japan to England in 1995, making a name for herself as a Japanese language and cultural lecturer. As a descendant of the Tanaka samurai family, she was committed to keeping her ancestral traditions alive and had recently written a book called... The Power of Chowa. Chowa literally means harmony, but I wrote about searching for the balance in your life.

2:57She was on a roll and had briefly mentioned to her daughter her plans to write a second book. And then when she was wanting to start the project she was diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus and it was really late stage. So, you know, sadly, like, after the diagnosis she died in about, you know, four or five months. So she never got to do that. I'm sorry.

3:25Five years after her death, on my 36th birthday, I got an email from her literary agent being like, Rumi, did you know what your mother's next book was going to be about? So I said, yeah, it was going to be about samurai culture. And this literary agent was like, do you want to pitch anything like that to us? Because we're looking for something. And I was like, is this real? I don't get what's happening. And so I replied, I've been like yeah I'm really interested I'm a writer and I was just you know sending things off to magazines often being rejected writing loads of short stories they didn't really get anywhere and then within like three months I had a pitch and a proposal and it was being sent around to publishers and it was my mother's idea it felt like fated that I was called up to do something that I would love to do at that time and it really felt like Akemi's doing because Akemi is magical?

4:22This is the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Eloise Stevens, and in this episode of Heart and Soul, I follow one of my oldest friends, Rimika Tanaka, as an extraordinary opportunity sets her off on a path she would never otherwise have taken. In her book, Akemi wanted to focus on samurai women and how samurai beliefs could teach us how to live a fuller life today. But having grown up in the UK for most of her life, How does Rimi even begin to write this book? And can it bring her closer to her mother?

4:57Even though the samurai class was abolished in 1869, a stereotype prevails, all long swords and impressive armour. So who were they really? Samurai were the military elite, and they practised lots of traditional Japanese arts that still exist today. So apart from the sword fighting and the martial arts, samurai also did tea ceremony and ikebana flower arrangement. A core belief guides this intensive training designed to develop rigor, self-belief and an inner calm. Bumbu Lyodo is letteredness and martiality. It's the idea that you have to be balanced in your achievements. So you have to be good at academia as well as good at athletics.

5:44You can't be a meathead and you can't just be a geek. You have to be a mixture of the two. And so Rimi sits down to delve deeper into the samurai. How did you feel when you first started writing the book? Really lost. I think I just wanted the book to be good. That's all I cared about. That would be enough to please Akemi. And thinking about her mother, of course, is Rimi's first step towards understanding samurai beliefs. My mum's dad's family, so my old Ji-chan side, is related to the Musashi warriors, going all the way back to Otadokan, who's a 15th century samurai lord.

6:23She practised a lot of traditional Japanese arts, like Sado, the tea ceremony. She even did fan dancing. And when she practised the traditional Japanese arts, because they're so tied up with samurai culture, she would have been taught in a similar way to martial artists get taught to be disciplined.

6:45But beyond that, Remy can't really pin down what her mother might have believed. I just really don't think I got to know my mother while she was alive, probably because she held a lot back from me, didn't talk about how she felt ever. The two of them didn't spend a lot of time together either. As a child, Rumi felt her mother wasn't around very much. My mother got divorced from my biological father when I was born. So then she was a single mum. You know, she didn't have any money, so she would have had to have a job. When you came back home from the hospital, did you go straight to Obachan and Oji-chan's house?

7:21Your grandparents? I imagine so. I don't really know. No one's ever told me about these times because they're so awful, I think. Really? Especially in Japan, where, like, shame culture is huge. Do you think there was a lot of shame on Akimi? Yeah, I think so. I think if someone divorces you, it's always the woman's fault. I can tell Rimi is resisting dwelling on these times, but maybe it's because she was quite content. While her mother went to work as an English language teacher in a school nearby, Rimi spent long happy days with her grandparents, until the age of about five. I was meant to go to elementary school in Japan, and I didn't turn up.

7:58then the head teacher called Oba-chan on the phone and the head teacher said your granddaughter's not here do you know where they are and Oba-chan was like I have no idea do you know where they are and he goes well I heard that they might have just left but I don't really know and so Oba-chan had to hear from the head teacher that her daughter had eloped with an Englishman and left to England with me she just completely was so angry I think and then severed ties completely with Akemi for about 12 years. Wow.

8:32Rimi Akemi and her new English husband flew to his parents' home in the remote islands of Orkney in Scotland. It just felt like a really big piece of natural sea. There's no trees, there's just sea. Very windy. And Granny and Grantia, who are my English grandparents, they were there and they're really nice. Do you remember your mum at this time? Well, actually, no, because they left me there. My mum and my dad took me to Alkney, then left to Japan, I think. And I was just left there with granny and grandcha. They went back to Japan? Yeah, or somewhere else, because I actually don't know where they went.

9:09Now, I'm very excited about meeting my next guest, Akimi Tanaka. Welcome. Thank you very much for inviting me, Jo. Over the next few years, Akemi travelled a lot, building a career as a Japanese lecturer. and trying to make money for the household. Meanwhile in Orkney... Everyone spoke English and not a word of Japanese and everything was different from the food, to the TV shows, to the sounds, to the clothes. It sounds like a lot for a young child to take on board. So I just probably repressed my own emotions because I was like, well, this is it now. I have no idea what to really say. This is just the shock.

9:47And then you get used to it. But by the time you get used to having not really feeling your emotions, you just don't really feel them that much.

9:58At the age of about eight, Rimi moved to Sussex in the UK with her mum and her mum's husband and went to a Christian school. I think I took on quite a lot of Christian values which were completely alien to Akemi growing up in Japan and living there because Japan is not a Christian country. And I think maybe that's one of the biggest differences, honestly. The one time Rimi did feel closest to her mother though was when Akemi hosted tea ceremonies for her. The tea ceremony is not about just making tea and drinking tea, but it's about creating the connection between host and guest through the stillness and mindfulness and sharing the time together.

10:43Ultimately, it's about creating inner peace. So what is inner peace to you? It's not having many thoughts, I think, but more being aware of what's happening around my body. That's a great answer. Wanting to understand more about what her mother believed, Rimi visits Rei Seto Okoblom, a Japanese tea practitioner, in her London studio. A lot of tea masters and tea practitioners talk about Ichigo Ichie. It's translated as one time, one meeting. But the real meaning is this particular woman doesn't come back in the same way again. So you might see these people over and over again, but in this situation and in this place, it would never have happened again.

11:36So you want to cherish the moment and treat each other with respect and sincerity. But these interactions between Rimi and her mother were, according to the art form, The summarized have to leave their support behind, otherwise they cannot come into the tea house. So there's no social distinct, and they only share the peaceful time and the bowl of tea. And you are expected to know the pattern of the conversation. For example, when you have the sip of the tea, the guest is supposed to say this is very delicious, thank you and then after the session the guests are supposed to make a compliment oh this is great tea bowl when you're doing the tea ceremony it's like a play people have to perform properly otherwise the whole performance is this a little bit off hey, thank you thank you Enjoying tea in this way was almost like a microcosm of their relationship.

12:46We were never hanging out in a way that would create a sense of understanding between us through words. Sometimes I don't think we understood each other at all. Like the language we used, the way we felt, the expressions, they were just very different from each other. So that's why I felt like I never really got to know her.

13:12Language is the principal lens through which Rimi understands the world. But as the project progresses, she realises it is not really serving her. I reached this point in all of my research and going to libraries and watching films and things where I was like, I don't think I'm really getting it because the samurai didn't have a codified belief system. So there's not like a text or anything concrete that I can go to to understand what samurai believed in. I was really focusing a lot on like letteredness, like gaining knowledge through books. And then I really kind of realised, well, I have to actually go do the practices, some of them at least, to understand what the samurai might have believed.

13:51So we're on our way to take part in a samurai practice. Where are we going? Going to see John Mackie Evans, who's a sword specialist and martial artist. He was actually a student of my mother's, a Japanese language student. This sword martial art is called batodo and is descended from the samurai's own sword practice. Batodo literally means to draw and cut in order to function as a warrior in a life-threatening situation or to cope with this principle that as a samurai you're prepared to give up your life for your lord. Yeah well you can do all the help you can get with coping with that. And it is believed that this training was based on esoteric Buddhism and a practice called Shugendo.

14:38Shugendo literally means the path of training and testing. You know you can't on the battlefield sit down, focus on your breathing and then get yourself all integrated. There isn't an opportunity to do that so they have like a kind of incantations and mantras and hand positions and you do these things in a very simple way which brings everything together and allows you to enter that situation. Most of the syllabus, the practical stuff that they do, comes from Vajrayana Buddhism, which is the tantric tradition in India. So it's to do with the mandala, the mudra and the mantra. So you have like a visual thing or a physical thing so let's say in our case it's your own body you have the voice work the way the voice connects to the energy and then you have these intricate ways where you put the hands together to connect the energy together in the body so you're bringing all of those things together and that requires a lot of training with the set you forgot the set we don't do full-on sparring because we're using live blades the main practice is the form which is a solo form and in let's say two steps in one inhale one exhale then there is that moment where you bring everything into that absolute decisive moment where you have to overcome both the fear of dying and the fear of killing which is actually stronger in human beings and then you have to become composed again and that gives you over time a tool.

16:25Which in turn develops an indomitable quality. Decisiveness. That's the role of a sword. Cutting through material illusion. That's a really good metaphor if not actually just real. Even though she was not a swordswoman, John believed that Akemi had that ability to be very decisive and influence her own fate. I mean she makes an instantly vivid kind of impression. In Japan, one might say she was full of ki. Ki or chi, everything has it. It's like a life force or an energy. And it sort of gets exchanged all the time between things and people and rivers or water. The masters of ki and energy, they can attract and then they can just sever, you know.

17:15I think she had a bit of that. She was very clear what she wanted. If somebody's not going to cooperate, she's not going to waste her time. It's funny because I wouldn't have described Akemi's magical aura as key, but actually it probably is that, isn't it? I think so. A lot of it is, yes. Cut like a knife, I would say.

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18:20Most transfers arrive in under 20 seconds. Join millions saving billions on hidden fees. Be smart. Get wise. Download the Wise app today. T's and C's apply. This is the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Eloise Stevens and I'm following my friend Rimuka Tanaka on a spiritual journey to discover her samurai ancestry and find out more about her Japanese mother. Talking to John, I don't think I had really connected how important cutting was as a metaphor for living in a way that's quite samurai, which is also the way Akemi lived. And it's not just about decisiveness. I think it's being very sure of yourself, like committing to an action.

19:11Because the way that John talked about it, You know, he's placing a lot of importance on the act because he is imagining that it is a life or death situation. And I think if you place that much gravitas behind your actions as well, you have to be very determined and absolute when you're doing these things. And I think mentally that's a very strong type of training. This extreme mental discipline is earned by focusing intently on the body. Where are my hands? How is my upper body positioned? do the breathing. Which is known as embodied knowledge. It is the idea that the body has its own intelligence, gained through muscle memory and physical interaction with the world.

19:53Akemi is likely to have honed this by practicing tea ceremony, which may have had a wider influence on the way she lived. If she thought about something and said, I want to do this, she would just do it. If she was out of her depth, it didn't seem to make her doubt or afraid. She was just doing them already so by doing them she became an expert in them and that's why I think she lived quite an embodied life. Though Remy thinks she will never live like this samurai practices have brought her into our body in other ways. What I realized is like I'd always placed a lot more importance on what I thought about and what I read and what I said and not very much about how I lived my life or did things.

20:32That's probably why my emotions weren't as deep I think they were always a little bit turned down and so by doing practices like mindful movement or dance or martial arts being quiet and doing stuff with your body actually allows you to feel emotions more loudly than than the way I was living beforehand it's good it's good it's doing really well thanks no no it's fine I hadn't really trusted the sword there was a point also in the where you're having to hold the sword blade towards yourself when you walk so as to protect everyone else but yourself and the samurai obviously have to do this very extreme training to prepare to be killed and to kill what did you make of that when i was researching the book i realized that self-sacrifice was the ultimate form of duty samurai were always based upon serving duty to a lord so I guess seeing it acted out in the idea of like you would sacrifice yourself for another if that was what was asked of you I think is a very samurai thing.

21:45Rimi thinks her mother felt a similar sort of sacrificial duty.

21:52As Rimi got further and further into writing the book she realized that the project was not just a means for her to fulfill her dream. Its resonance was much more profound.

22:07When Akemi died, what was weird for me is that instead of feeling an absence of her, I just felt like she was present all the time now because she had become one of the ancestors. And it actually made me feel like I had a duty to continue her good work, but not in like a legacy building way, more in a way that like so her and the ancestors would be proud of what I was doing in the realm of the living. We're in the famous botanical gardens at Kew, on the outskirts of London, in a heatwave. It's so hot and blustery. We're here to pay respects to Akemi, Rimi's ancestor, by visiting her memorial tree.

22:52Okay, I'm going to start the compass and I'm going to lead you to the tree which is actually over that way. Nice and what kind of tree is it? I think it's a yamazakura which is a cherry blossom tree that grows on the mountain sides. Okay beautiful. The compass says this way. Okay let's go that way. I think it's this oh yeah oh my goodness I found it there you go Akemi Tanika Pennington there it is the tree yeah it's summertime so it's just the leaves are all green I think it blossoms in around May and what kind of flowers will it have pink like bright pink kind of like cloudy pink as well like cloud white.

23:42Stunning. Just like many people in Japan today, the samurai practiced ancestor worship. It had always been a part of Rimi's life, but it was only when her mother set her on the path of writing her book that she fully realized just how present the ancestors can be. The thing about believing in ancestors is that it's as much about the descendants as it is about the ancestors, because acts that happen now affect the feelings of the ancestors who are somewhere else, right? So people are acting responsibly in the past and in the future and in the present. It should all be, like, connected. When I studied anthropology, I heard a really good analogy from the Maori of New Zealand where they also do ancestor worship.

24:29they said that we as individuals it is like we're walking backwards into the unknown whereas the ancestors are facing forwards looking at us and what's behind us because we don't know what's going to happen in the future and yet we're blindly walking into it right but when you have ancestors the ancestors can tell you what's ahead of you because they're already looking forwards and i like this spiritual way of viewing things because you know if you believe in like a backing of people you can also act more boldly and feel like your decisions aren't just like a one person thing it's more of like a a group thing yeah so you said that you felt a chemist spirit is everywhere and is guiding you how do you feel that she has led you to this moment your book now is coming out into the world in a few months time nothing about this has been expected and yet everything feels completely right and I feel like that is such an Akemi way for things to happen I couldn't have planned it any better it just has happened this way and in some ways like you've just got to like trust in yourself but also trust in everything around you just working in some mysterious magical way that only Akemi seems to have an overview of that I just don't why do you think she wanted you to learn about samurai culture i don't have a way to really express my japanese-ness and i was fine with that you know i didn't mind that but it's a bit sad as well to be cut off from a place where you were born and i have my oba-chan who's 92 and i always think after oba-chan dies like what will be my link to japan like i'll just be severed i'll have to go back sometimes to look after the grave but you know there's going to be nothing for me.

26:18Akemi's also gone. But now that I've written this book and she's paved the way for me to write a book and hopefully people will like it and then they'll ask me questions about samurai in Japan it's opened doors for me to actually continue my relationship with Japan in a way that's after her life and you know to have a purpose like that is just so amazing. Yeah. I guess that her presence was enough to really shine and teach me something about a way to live. And I think maybe she knew that you might not do that unless it coincided with your interest, which was writing. Yeah, she probably did know that.

26:59Yeah, I mean, I'm glad it wasn't like a music album or something. I could do nothing. Starting from scratch. Yeah.

27:08What would you say to Akemi now, standing here, learning all that you have in the writing of this book? I don't know how you did it. Like, lived so fearlessly.

27:30I also don't know how you raised a child on your own.