The Meiji Era Without Literacy—Yoshitaro 44: The Merit of a Supportive Wife

I am writing the story of Yoshitaro (my grandfather), who was born in a farming village in Kagoshima in 1880 and was the fifth of six children.

In the early Showa era, Yoshitaro, who had started a family in middle age through remarriage and had an only son, remained as work-oriented as ever. He managed almost all of his income himself and made it a habit to keep it hidden so that even his family would not know about it.

Yoshitaro always intended to buy more land once he had saved up a significant amount of money.
One could say that this behavior was a form of investment. Owning land (farmland or forests) and using it as capital to generate wealth was almost the same as a capitalist building a factory or a warehouse. From that perspective, Yoshitaro was indeed, as they say in the Kagoshima dialect, a tamashikitt—someone with a sharp mind for getting ahead in the world.

Thus, Yoshitaro devoted himself to his daily labor and the savings that resulted from it, but as mentioned in the previous section, while he managed the bulk of the money himself, he left the daily household management entirely to his wife, Haru (my grandmother).

That sounds like the typical husband of the Showa era (or earlier), but the amazing (?) thing about Yoshitaro was that he gave his wife almost no money at all. In the previous section, I stated that he managed his own banknotes. Since he would immediately exchange any accumulated small change into banknotes, Haru had to secretly secure money for household expenses or think of ways to earn it herself.

Haru would carry vegetables grown in excess in the garden, or extra miso and soy sauce she had made, on a shoulder pole to sell in town. This was, of course, while also handling daily farm work like rice cultivation. She said she used the money earned that way—not a large sum, of course, likely just pocket money by today's standards—to manage the daily household expenses.

I intend to write the details of this when I eventually write Haru's own story, but if Yoshitaro was a go-getter, it can be said that Haru was a go-getter who was just as capable.

Did Yoshitaro take such supportive efforts for granted, or was he simply relying on Haru?

Even though Haru had to go sell vegetables because he gave her almost no money for household expenses, whenever he had small expenses like tobacco money, Yoshitaro would habitually
beg
Haru, saying, "Hey, do you have any small change?"

This is a story I, Fumi (the author), heard from Miyoko (my mother), who later married into the family, just like the episode in the previous section. She would tell me with a laugh, "Grandpa held onto his own money tightly and would never, ever break a banknote."