The Man Who Cut the Grass

An author I've been meaning to read again is Yamamoto Michiko, recently I've been thinking about the Betty-san - Stories that I read sometime ago, most of those stories were set in Australia, where Yamamoto lived for some years, there are not many clues as to where the setting of The Man Who Cut the Grass is situated, it could be Japan, but neither city or town are named. Yamamoto's stories give a voice to women who appear to find themselves designated to the peripheries of society. The narrative is from Mayo, a housewife, who looking out the window notices in adjacent land to her house the arrival of a man who is clearing the growth of an area of pampas grass, unusually he is using a sickle instead of a machine, she goes out and asks if she could have some of the pieces of grass where the flower heads remain in bud, these are her favourite, the man doesn't appear to communicate with her directly which arouses her curiosity, in a series of observations of his movements and appearance she tries to create a clearer picture of him and his behaviour, later he calls on her house asking for water so he can sharpen his sickle.

 

Through Mayo's observations Yamamoto's narrative becomes suggestive although non-judgemental leaving it up to the reader to conclude or judge the motives of her characters, and in The Man Who Cut the Grass there are some linking motifs, the first of these is white tennis shoes which the grass cutter is wearing, these provoke in Mayo a memory from her childhood, of when police officers called at her mother's house wanting to use it so they can observe a neighbouring house which they suspect is being used to print counterfeit money, after the police leave Mayo surreptitiously observes the house in her own surveillance, she remembers that the previous owner of the house was also arrested, an illustrative diversion in the narrative which adds another layer in these memories. Mayo sees strange lights in the building, perhaps candle or torch light, and sees a man whose identity the police check, the police later discover that the man in the building had hung himself the night Mayo was watching the building and that they had made a mistake and that he was clean, he was in debt and left behind a wife and children, Mayo as a child obviously finds this fact hard to digest and imagines that in actual fact he was a counterfeiter and that he had sent the money to his wife and children and destroyed the evidence. 

 

The narrative returns to the grass cutter and Mayo's observation of him, she remains unsure of him and his motives, so in turn we remain wary of him and his intentions, Mayo seems to be in fear of him returning to her house to ask for water again, another aspect that links her memory and that of the cutter is that of the empty lot he is clearing which mirrors the one in her memory as sometime after the man had hung himself his house was pulled down and the lot remained empty for six months before a three story apartment building was constructed, not only this but the grass cutter's movements remind Mayo of the man, abruptly Mayo's narrative seems to break down into everyday conversation with her husband who seems to be only listening to her distractedly. The Man Who Cut the Grass is a story that operates on many different narrative frontiers and deftly portrays the differring dimensions between surface and depth, and dispenses with the barriers between what constitutes as the recognized and with what we disregard as being inconsequential. The title of the story sounds like that it could resemble being taken from a proverb, maybe in the same sense as in the saying; 'cut the mustard' someone who makes the grade, which allows another dimension to the comparative depth of Mayo's observations between the two men, which to some degrees balances with that of her and by turns our own predicament.

 

The Man Who Cut the Grass/Kusa o Karu Otoko translated by Elizabeth Hanson is one of the stories from This Kind of Woman.           

 

Betty san - Stories by Yamamoto Michiko

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Translated by Geraldine Harcourt, with cover photography by Martin Richardson and published by Kodansha, Betty-san-Stories, collected four short stories/novellas by Yamamoto Michiko, all published originally in Japan in 1972, the stories draw on the authors experiences of living in Australia in the early seventies. The collection includes the story Betei-san no Niwa/Betty's Garden which won Yamamoto the Akutagawa Prize in 1972, the story is told by Betty-San, married to Mike, moves to Australia where Mike works in local government. Betty who changed her name from her Japanese one of Yuuko when she married, was also baptised at the same time. Determined at first to adapt to her new country, she soon begins to think of her parents, which in turn makes her contemplate her home country, her surroundings begin to appear increasingly alien to her, and she finds herself out of step, Mike has grown colder towards her and at times overbearing. Every now and then Japanese fishermen visit the local harbour, and she takes them rice balls that she made for them, making the most of this small connection with home, and for a while she can talk in her mother tongue again, occasionally she holds barbecue's for the sailors in her garden, these garden parties act as Betty's haven. Once she is asked to help translate for a Japanese woman who is held in quarantine at the local customs office, looking forward to talking with the woman, Betty readily agrees, but when they meet the woman asks sardonically, 'Are you really Japanese?', after the woman leaves Betty breaks down and sobs. She recalls the times she lived in Darwin and Alice Springs, 'I was so permanently awed by my surroundings, that I lost sight of the way people are meant to live', she observes about herself.

When she first moved to her area, she was the only Japanese in her neighbourhood, but after three or four years, another Japanese woman appears called Haruko, who returns to Japan at least once a year. Betty has three sons, Jerry, John and Bobby, Jerry who works at the post office volunteers to save up his wage so that she can visit Japan, when the children were younger Betty-san would go out for walks, and Mike would usually come out in the car to pick her up, often she would walk down on the beach, she realizes she has forgotten the sense of security found in walking in a crowd, with no friends she would sit in the kitchen staring distractedly at the sky for hours on end. The differences within the family are strained when she takes in a young sailor who was stabbed during a fight on one of the Japanese fishing boats, none of the rest of her family speak Japanese, and there are times when Betty and the sailor are talking in Japanese, which proves to unsettle the rest of the family. The character of Betty-san is well conceived, and the nuances of the difficulties of the cross cultural experience within the family setting is observed in exacting prose, and also that of Betty's quiet sense of loneliness is brilliantly conveyed.

The very brief story Father Goose/Rojin no Kamo is included as is Powers/Maho, which won the Shincho Prize, a story that shares a common framework to the title story, although the husband and wife are both Japanese, Ryosuke and Asako, they also have young Yuri, they came to Australia for Ryosuke's job. Asako seems to be fascinated, possibly attracted to their neighbours young son, Sean,the community where they live is made up of families from other nationalities, and another family that features prominently is a neighbouring Italian family, at the centre of this story is an accident involving the son of the Italian family. This story too looks at the ambiguities within multi culture emigrant communities. Chair in the Rain/Ame no Isu, the last story, in which Japanese couple Nakako and Ryuji make the move out of Japan, Nakako leaving behind the security of her job in advertising, plans to start a family, this plan though before we know it soon drifts away into the distant past. The couple rent what used to be the Portuguese consul's house, and for a while after they've moved in they receive random phone calls from people requiring information on passports and visa's etc, one caller seems to stand out from the rest, a man simply asking for a woman called Louise. Nakako buys a cat to try and cure her loneliness, but the cat ends up forming an unlikely alliance with Ryuji. There are a few uses of symbolism among these stories,as when Ryuji confesses to Nakako that he's actually infertile, the plans of starting a family disappear, which add to Nakako's growing sense of desperation and solitude, before this, Ryuji goes to great lengths planning to mate the cat with a colleague's cat, the animal's desperate cries at night seem to be another sign of Nakako's failed attempt at making things better for herself, as this heightens her antagonism. Also at the end of Betty's Garden, as Betty and her sons drive home from dropping off Mike, who is about to take a business trip with a young secretary, her fears that he maybe embarking on an affair are heightened when they see a burning buffalo at the side of the desert highway.