Reasons to Leave

The Wagamama Bride by Liane Grunberg Wakabayashi

This is my year of reading memoirs —plus quite a few Japan detective stories! In my teetering and towering stack of Japan memoirs, there is one that is especially dear to my heart called The Wagamama Bride, by Liane Grunberg Wakabayashi.

“A Jewish Family Saga Made in Japan,” says the subtitle-which floats above an adorable drawing of a tiny brunette in a wedding dress, standing next to her Japanese husband, who is wearing a fantastic outfit that looks part hakama and part tuxedo.

Oh, to marry in Japan.

A long time ago, I took a trip to Nepal with two female friends whom I met in Tokyo. One of my friend’s knew an American woman who was married to a Japanese business man. They lived in Kathmandu in a beautiful large home. To we three, it seemed like such a romantic and exciting world. But the American woman cautioned us. We all had Japanese boyfriends that we were serious about. And during dinner the lady cautioned us to be very cautious about international marriage.

“You are not just marrying the man, you know…”

When we remained silent, she continued: “It’s not even just marrying his whole family either— but you will be marrying Japanese culture too—since it will always come down to doing things the Japanese way.”

I probably said something like, “Good! I love the Japanese way,”

But she then said, “Now, you are all young so you are open to the world. But the strange thing is that as we grow older, we kind of grow back to our own culture… My husband has become less open and more Japanese and I have become much more American.”

Being so young, I don’t think any of us had any clue as to what that meant.

Reading Wakabayashi’s book, though, this conversation came back to me. After years married to a fun and quirky Japanese man (who coincidentally reminded me so much of my ex-husband)— a man who made her laugh, was her guide in Tokyo, and father of her children— as the years passed, she more and more yearned for “home.” In this case, her heart’s home was not her childhood home in New York or her mom in Florida but rather for Judaism.

Interestingly, she was not raised in a religious family per se, but this yearning just grew stronger as she became involved in a Chabad House in Tokyo. Maybe because there were not a zillion options, she went along with what was available to her in Japan—attuning herself to a religious style that she didn’t go out of her way to choose.

The book was very beautiful. There were no bad people—her husband and in-laws were warm and adored her. She slowly found her heart opening to a different way of life. Part of this conversion story could be attributed to the power of the Sabbath, of which she writes about beautifully.

And another fascinating part of her story was that her husband was also a spiritual seeker. A natural healer when they met, he was deeply interested in Daoism and Chinese medicine. The book was never a clash of civilizations though, as both of them worked tirelessly to keep the family together.

In the end, as unexpected as the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement was to her, even more surprising was her later leap to move to Israel.

Jerusalem was for her— as it has since the beginning of time for people— love at first sight. She finally found her heart’s content just outside the walls in a neighborhood near the Montefiore Windmill. I also fell in love with a neighborhood closeby, Mishkenot Sha'ananim. We stayed at the MISHKENOT SHA’ANANIM CULTURAL CENTER & GUEST HOUSE, which was quite something. Like Wakabayashi, I fell quite in love with the neighborhood and have fantasized about buying a place of my own there someday… From Tokyo to Jerusalem? It makes sense…

This was a book of warm and loving human beings who were all just trying to find their paths to an authentic life.