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The Japanese said I no longer had a son
Independent, The (London), Jul 10, 1996
It is a commonplace that, for all the confusions of identity they may suffer in later life, the children of mixed marriages in Japan are often strikingly beautiful, inheriting and improving upon the best features of both parents. So it is with Graham Hajime Takezawa Thomas. His father, Brian Thomas, hands over the few out-of-date photographs he has of his son. They show a shy, grave-looking little boy with brown eyes and honey skin. His black hair is cut short in a neat parting, making him look self- possessed and grown-up. He is handsome, with none of the doll-like cuteness of most pure-blood Japanese children, although he could pass for one of them.
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When he gets older, he may look at his mother Mikako, and wonder where he gets his high brows and sharp features. What will she tell him? Graham Hajime, now six and a half, has not seen his father since he was three. Since 1993 the two have been separated by a legal abyss which Brian Thomas and Japanese law seem unable to bridge.
Brian Thomas is a chubby, 51-year-old, good-humoured Welshman who had never thought of living in Japan until 11 years ago when he met Mikako Takezawa on the platform of Finchley station. He was working as a sound recordist at the time, and had one unsuccessful marriage behind him; she was 31, a former actress with a Japanese theatre company, doing an English course in London. Within a few months they had moved in together in East Finchley, the next year they were engaged, and in August 1987 they married at Islington Register Office.
"The first few months were blissful, really blissful," says Brian. "My wife's parents would ring up regularly and even though they spoke no English and I spoke no Japanese we had a wonderful rapport and I felt a lot of affection for them." At the beginning of 1988, six months into their marriage, Brian and Mikako left London for Japan. "I felt no apprehension about it really," he says. "We'd always agreed that we wanted a bilingual education for our child, for our children." The Takezawa parents promised them a house, recently left by Mikako's dead grandmother.
Brian discovered, to his surprise, that he had married into a wealthy family. The father, Hajime senior, owned a household gas company and a chain of petrol stations; Brian and Mikako's new home in Saitama Prefecture, a commuter area a train ride from Tokyo, was a real mansion with Italian tiles and oak doors with brass handles. The in-laws lived comfortably in an adjacent house in the same grounds, which was decorated in every room with old Mrs Takezawa's collection of dolls.
The Takezawas had their unhappiness, as Brian realised when he got to know them better. His wife, Mikako, then in her mid-30s, was the third child. Her elder brother was in the process of splitting up with his wife; her elder sister had lost a baby early in her marriage and never conceived again. The loss seemed to Brian to have affected her deeply. Like her mother she surrounded herself with dolls.
So there was great joy when, at the beginning of 1989, Mikako became pregnant. Brian spent the next nine months "on an emotional roller-coaster, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry". Apart from having a pregnant wife to worry about, he was working as an English teacher, waking up early and travelling 50 kilometres into Tokyo every day. Then his parents-in- law announced that their own house was being renovated, and they would have to move in with Brian and Mikako: the cosy two suddenly became an extended family of four.
Brian wanted to be present at the birth but in Japanese hospitals this is still almost unheard-of. The birth, in any case, was complicated, a Caesarean delivery which left Mikako weak and with a fever. When she came home, her mother nursed her. Even after her recovery, it was Mrs Takezawa who chose the baby's clothes and, when Brian suggested to his wife one day that soon they should have another baby, the message was relayed back that her mother had vetoed the idea. Mikako, it had been decided, was still "too weak".
It always seemed to require a great deal of effort to spend time alone with his son. At the last minute, one of the family would announce that they were coming along too, although Brian often found himself silently excluded from other family gatherings. Mikako, her sister, and her parents would take Graham for weekends at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo to which Brian was not invited.
In retrospect, other incidents, unremarkable at the time, have acquired a peculiar significance. Like the conversation, very early on in their marriage, when Mikako talked about having a boy and a girl. "She said how nice it would be if we could have one of each, because then the girl could go and live with her sister Mariko and be brought up by her. Well, I reacted very strongly: you don't split up siblings, it's not natural, there's no way I would ever separate a brother and sister like that." Mikako also began to speak of having Graham adopted by her parents - "for inheritance reasons, she said, although I didn't like the idea at all".
