[Reminiscence] Living in Kansai

The Town of Sakai

Sakai, where we moved due to my father's job transfer, is a somewhat unique town even within Osaka Prefecture.

Historically, it flourished as a trading port during the Muromachi period. Because Kyoto was devastated by war, the Shogun once established a base there, and it even served political functions. Until Toyotomi Hideyoshi unified the country and built a massive commercial city in Osaka (Osaka was written as 'Ozaka' until the Edo period), Sakai attracted major merchants and thrived as a highly independent commercial city. Tea masters like Sen no Rikyu were also merchants from Sakai. Furthermore, there were many workshops for iron products, leather goods, and woodwork since ancient times, and manufacturing industries for swords, armor, helmets, and firearms also prospered.

Because Hideyoshi forced the Sakai merchants to relocate to Osaka, Sakai's momentum as a commercial city declined along with the development of Osaka, but it survived as a town of craftsmen.

After the Meiji era, as urbanization in Osaka progressed, merchants began to separate their shops from their homes and built residences in the suburbs. Sakai also became a high-class residential town lined with the mansions of wealthy merchants.

Tea Ceremony and Kouta

Once we settled in Sakai, my mother began attending a tea ceremony class. I don't know if it was because the tea ceremony flourished there during the Muromachi period, but there were many classes teaching tea ceremony in the neighborhood. My mother, who grew up in a rural village in Tohoku during the war, didn't have any hobbies, but perhaps she decided that as a housewife's accomplishment, she should at least master the tea ceremony.

Then, my father and mother began learning Kouta together. Kouta is a popular song from the Edo period sung to the accompaniment of the shamisen. Although they were called popular songs, there were no concerts, so geisha would sing them at high-class restaurants, and sometimes customers would sing along to the geisha's shamisen.

Among the retired geisha, there were those who opened classes to teach Kouta, Nagauta, and the shamisen as a livelihood.

The Kouta class my parents attended was run by such a former geisha. My father, who spent his youth during the war, had no experience with geisha entertainment, and my mother was also unrelated to that world, but it seems they started this as an accomplishment for adults as well.

The Legend of the Feather Mantle and Western-style Architecture

Within Sakai, Hamadera, where my family lived, was another unique area.

Our house was right on the west side of Hamadera-koen Station on the Nankai Main Line, and if you walked a little and crossed a large national highway, there was Hamadera Park, which featured vast lawns and pine forests. The park faced Osaka Bay, and a beautiful white sandy beach stretched from north to south.

That area has long been a scenic spot known for the legend of the celestial maiden's feather mantle, and the next station on the Nankai Main Line was Hagoromo (Feather Mantle).

The station building of Hamadera-koen is a somewhat tasteful Western-style building, similar to the station building in Den-en-chofu, Tokyo. I learned this quite a while later, but it was designed by Kingo Tatsuno, who also designed Tokyo Station.

The reason such a major architect designed it was because there was a large project during the Meiji era to develop the entire Hamadera Park area as a residential district of Western-style architecture.

By the time I lived there, that Western-style residential area was gone, and it had become a park with nothing but pine forests, but it is said that at the time, cutting-edge Western-style buildings stood in rows, and electricity, water, and gas were installed.

Beaches and unique inns

In the 1950s, Hamadera Park was a popular resort bustling with beachgoers in the summer, and the narrow area between the station and the park was lined with restaurants and inns. The second floors of these inns had large drying decks where many yukata were hung out to dry. These yukata were hung out all year round, not just in the summer. According to what my parents told me after I became an adult, the inns in Hamadera were not just for vacationers, but also served as places for couples to stay for dates. In an era before love hotels existed, traditional Japanese-style inns seemed to fulfill that role, and even in the 1970s, when I went to university and started living in Tokyo, such inns still remained on the outskirts of areas like Shibuya, Harajuku, and Shinjuku.

Come to think of it, Yushima in Bunkyo Ward, where I lived during my Tokyo days, was also a unique area where teahouses gathered around Yushima Tenjin Shrine during the Edo period. Teahouses were generally places where one would call for geisha to enjoy food, drink, singing, dancing, and games, but the teahouses in Yushima were famous for being restaurants and brothels where young boys called 'kage-ma' would entertain guests instead of female geisha.

A Christian kindergarten

To the north of Hamadera-koen Station, there was an underpass that went beneath the Nankai Main Line. On the east side, after passing through that underpass, there was a residential area lined with large mansions, and on the outskirts of that area was a kindergarten. The kindergarten was a Christian institution run by elderly foreign sisters.

The kindergarten in Yushima was run by a temple, but the grounds were clearly separated, and it didn't feel very Buddhist. Unlike daycare centers, kindergartens were educational institutions under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education, so displaying religious elements was prohibited. Perhaps because of that, the kindergarten in Hamadera, although it was officially named 'Hamadera Bible Kindergarten,' did not have Christian worship services or sing hymns.

Adjacent to the kindergarten was a large, old Western-style house where the elderly sisters who ran the school lived. Since they were not Catholic nuns, they were likely Protestant believers.

The teacher's yellow dress

The homeroom teacher at the Yushima kindergarten was an elderly woman who felt similar to my grandmother, but the homeroom teacher at the Hamadera kindergarten was a young, cheerful woman. I remember her wearing a yellow dress during a school performance event where students showcased songs and dances. It was a one-piece dress with a flared, swaying skirt, like something a young American woman would wear to a dance party.

The children were excited and, while making squealing noises, tried to crawl under her skirt. I remember that not only the boys but also the girls were frolicking and crawling under it together, so I don't think they were trying to look under the skirt out of sexual interest.

The teacher also laughed while holding down the hem of her skirt and catching the children and tossing them aside.