Showa, Men Had It Tough Too 24: A Mother Is Not Just Kind... ⑤

(Continuing directly from A Mother Is Not Just Kind... ④) As mentioned from
① through ④, Tsugio (my father) was always with his mother, Haru (my grandmother), when he was a young boy. Haru was not only kind to Tsugio, but she was also better than most at farm work and managing the household; she could read, write, and do arithmetic. Haru supported the household budget by peddling vegetables grown in the fields and homemade miso and soy sauce. Or rather, it would be fair to say that the household budget ran on the money Haru earned.

"Shoku mo imon na waga e i atto ni, okkan wa naigote, kishika me o koraete, zen o ba toi ke ikkyatta tto kai"

(Even though we have food in the house, why does Mom have to endure such hardship and go out to earn money?)
I don't know if he thought about it that clearly, but young Tsugio vaguely wondered about it. Since they were farmers, they shouldn't have had to worry about food. There were many families with more children and even smaller fields.

When Haru was about to shoulder her carrying pole as usual, with fresh vegetables in one basket and Tsugio in the other, Tsugio asked,

"Okkan, mata zen moroke itto?"

(Mom, are you going to get money again?)
"Yo, wai ga gakko i agareba, hon yara chomen yara idde ne. Kutsu mo kote yarannara yo."
(Yes, because when you start school, you'll need books and notebooks. And I have to buy you shoes, too.)
"Channa, zen o kuieranto?*"
(Doesn't Dad give you money?)
"Chan no ta, jida o ko zen jaddo*"
(Dad's money is for buying land.)

I see, so if the purpose is different, the source is different too.

Tsugio vaguely understood that there was a division of labor between his parents—or rather, between the husband and wife. He realized that men managed the big money, and women managed the small money. Of course, it was normal for the big money to include the small money, but in the case of Kichitaro and Haru, they were very different from almost every other family in that their sources were separate.

Such a family tradition—that "household matters are left to the woman (wife), or rather, the woman should manage them herself"—naturally took root in Tsugio's way of thinking.

* Kagoshima dialect.
This "channa" is originally "chan wa," but as I have mentioned often, in the Kagoshima dialect, which favors shortening, the "n" sound at the end of "chan" connects directly to the vowel "a" in "wa," changing it to "na." I feel that speakers with smaller vocabularies, such as people from the countryside or children, have a stronger tendency toward shortening (though, of course, impatient people do too).
Similarly, "chan no ta" is originally "chan no to wa." In this case, "to" is a quasi-nominal particle used in place of a person or thing.

《Reference》Kagoshima Dialect Online Dictionary > To