 Yeah, Stink Tech. I'm Jay Fiedel, Fun Even in the Time of the COVID. This is Book World and we care about books and we care about authors and people who write them and give us the gifts of their thoughts and their prose. And we have today an old friend of ours who I know since you went to UH back in, I think it was the 14th century. Kumiko Makihara, welcome to the show Kumiko. Thanks for having me. Great to see you again today. Yeah, great to see you. So you're in New York now in your apartment enjoying the magic of zoom. And we're going to talk about your book that's just come out. It's called diary boy diary boy. Let's have a picture of diary boy and we can see what we're talking about. Okay, there's the book. And there's a young fellow on the cover of the book. And then there's some pictures of the young fellow. Let's see if we can identify him. When I say young, I mean a long time ago already. And there he is. Yeah, Taru, known to his friends and family as Taru. And this is when he was oh gee just a few years old and it was a long time ago. How old is Taru now, Kumiko. He's 21. Oh my goodness, he passed the age of majority. So you wrote this book and it suggests that you kept a diary all these years about his growing up and his adventures and your adventures with him. Is that what happened? You had the material already in the diary? Not quite. Actually, he's the one that kept a diary. Ah, okay, okay. It was one of the requirements of this very rigorous school that he went to. And this book is a memoir about the time that he went to this elementary school in Tokyo. It's a private, very demanding competitive school, grade one through six. And one of the many requirements was keeping a diary. And so I was fortunate to have this treasure trove of information of those years from his point of view. So I combined those with my own recollections, which were a lot of difficult memories. So it was six years in a very competitive environment. And my son is a very, is a lovely child, but very carefree and not interested in doing schoolwork. So much of the books about my frustrations trying to get him to fit into this very rigid culture of the school. Yeah, why do that? Why put him in that school? Did he complain to you that he do well or did he have trouble, you know, academically, socially, what have you. The challenges you talk about are very interesting in this context. So I put him in this. Originally, I was going to send him to the local public school, which is the school that I had gone to, which was a very good school. But at the time, about 15 years ago, all my friends and his piano teacher and everybody around me said, No, private schools are so much better now. Why don't you send him to private school? And this was also a school that was attached to a affiliated junior high and high school and the university. So they said, get him in now, get him in the good system now, and then he'll sail up to the top. So I thought, Well, what do I have to lose? It's very difficult to get into these schools, but I decided to apply. He didn't complain because those were the days when I was the whole world for him. Are you trying to say those were the days gone by and it's not like that anymore? Correct. But it was, you know, six years was very intense tumultuous with me trying to get him to fit into the system that in retrospect, in many ways, wasn't really the right system for him. And so the book has many themes, you know, part of it is education, parenting, family ties, Japanese culture, society's expectations. But very broadly, it's about struggle and what do you do when you face a struggle? How do you react to a struggle? I didn't intend it to be that way, but I ended up writing a lot about my personality and trying to analyze why I was so obsessed with him doing well. So the struggle is between you and Taro then. It's between me and Taro, but I think it's also between me and myself. Okay. Oh, now it becomes very interesting. So, you know, I was going to ask you, you know, what is special about this book? What is the, you know, the magnetism about it in your eyes anyway? Why would I want to look at this book? What's in it for me to learn about the struggles, the time some years ago, it must be 15 years ago, in Japan in a private school with a mom who cared a lot about how, you know, what is in there that makes this book universal? Well, let's start from the not so universal aspect is it's a book about parenting and education and Japanese culture. So anyone interested in Japan would first of all be a natural audience. Then if you're a parent and you're thinking about education, so there's a book about every type of education now, right? So do you want to be a helicopter parent? Do you want to just let them roam free? So it's a good analysis of education and the different ways in people educate their children. There's also an image that Japan has great schools and the kids are Japanese children do very well in international surveys of math and science. So there's probably some interested in how am I going to get my child to be like a super achieving young Japanese student. But on the broader universal aspect, as I mentioned, it really is about struggle and how do people respond to struggle and why. And I think the book is also a lot of people have commented to me about how honest I am. I didn't intend to be. It's really the only way I could write and I have nothing to hide about my flaws as a parent. So I think readers, a lot of readers who are also struggling with parenting will be reassured that they are not alone in their battles against their child. You know, I'm thinking from Tara's point of view, you know, how does this come off? Okay, 21. Now there's a book about something which some kids at 21 might think are very personal. How does he feel about his mom writing a book? How does he feel about revealing all this tumultuous activity in his youth? Not great. The older he gets, the more he doesn't like it. You know, when I showed, I was very open to him about it. Obviously I excerpted his diary, so there are a lot of his diary entries in there. I think that's also another appeal of the book, by the way, is that there's this contrast between an innocent child musings and a lot of the entries are very funny. And it's contrasted to me. I was very exacting tunnel vision mother furrowed brow trying to get through each day. A lot of yelling, I'm embarrassed to say. And that's contrasted with these little carefree, curious views from a child's point. Yeah. Why am I reminded of Tiger Mom? Yes. Well, I would describe myself at the time of the book more as a Tiger Mom wannabe. I wasn't able to see it as a Tiger Mom because my child would not take a bait. He would not jump through the hoops for me. So this is kind of a win-win in the sense that you get yours and he gets his and at 21 you can both look back and evaluate the whole thing and be enriched for it, no? I don't know. If you're talking about the standards of a Tiger Mother, it might be a lost loss. You might be a Japanese Tiger Mother then. Well, I just wasn't. I failed as a Tiger Mom. I wanted to be. About how he feels about it. So throughout the time I was writing it, I was telling him I'm writing this book. You want to look at it. He was not interested at all. He was interested in what share of the royalties he would get. He didn't understand that books usually don't make very much money. But at one point right before publication, which was about almost two years ago, he did take a, he did read some of it. And he said, well, you know, that's not the way I remember it. I had such a happy childhood. I have such fond memories. I love that school. I love all my friends. And he said, you make it sound like a nightmare. And I was, you know, I was glad that he had happy memories of his childhood, but I was quite taken aback. And I said, well, what about all the times that the teacher scolded you so severely? And he said, well, they could be nice sometimes. He said, I said, what about that we fought every day, every day we had to get it like that. It was exhausting. What do you think about that? I said, well, we had, you know, good teamwork. We got the homework done. You fed me a lot of good snacks to get me to do the work. I said, what about the long commute to school because before we moved close to the school, he had to take a train and a bus for about an hour and a half each way. And he said, Oh, those were some of the fondest memories I had, you know, I'd get together on the train with my friends and we'd play games. It was so much fun. So it was very interesting that I think it shows that children are very resilient. And also, it says that he has a very happy personality. Yeah, but it also shows that you look at the past through the lens of the present. And you, you may not see it the same way as you saw it when it was happening to you. This is all very, very interesting to compare what's in the diary and how he feels about that, you know, now. You know, the thing about it is he lived at home, right with you while he was in the school. So it's not just a question of him going to a dormitory somewhere or living, you know, with with others in a school in a school residence facility. He lived with you so you had contact with him. Am I right? Every day. And you can see this happening. You can see it unfolding. You can tibets with him about how things were going. So what the other thing is, you know, you went to a private school to coming. I went to public school in Japan, and then I went to a private school in the US junior high school in high school so that was older than when Todd was going to. Okay, and then you age at some point I remember that. So the question really is, you are fully bilingual. As a matter of fact, you're a journalist. That's what you do. That's what you have done for decades. And how about, he's he's he's also bilingual. Yes, so he went through this private elementary school through sixth grade and graduated and went on to the junior high school. Once you get into junior high school, the academics became even more demanding and I couldn't help him. I couldn't sit next to him and do the homework with him like I was doing an elementary school. I had to go online and research things in order to help him. And I couldn't force him to do the schoolwork any longer either. He really was not able to control him anymore. And I also wanted him to become bilingual. So that's when I took him out of the Japanese system and brought him over here. And he did end up going to boarding school. So now he is bilingual. He does, you know, he went from a totally Japanese environment when he until he went into junior high school. He didn't speak a word of English. Then I put him in a boarding school. He's surrounded by English 24 seven. You learn English very quickly. What's he doing now. Right now he's very frustrated to be living with me. One bedroom apartment. Circle full tourney. Right. So this book, you know, you, you, you, I've, I've read your writing Kumi and your writing has been not only, you know, in, in, was it, you wrote for Time magazine for a while. And you've been freelancing with various magazines and newspapers for your whole career life. And you're a journalist you not only do you write like a journalist, but you speak like a journalist, which is intended to be a big compliment. So my question is how would you describe your own prose. I think my prose is kind of stark. As I mentioned before, I've nothing to hide. I tell it like it is. I think it's because my journalism training started with wire service. I was a reporter for the AP in Tokyo. And, you know, the wire service has to have very plain concise language that any newspaper would like to use. So I think that's when I started writing very directly. I'm a real stickler for facts. I don't want any words repeated. That's why I write nonfiction. You know, a lot of when I was really struggling with this book, a lot of my friends said, Oh, just make it fiction. You can make it more dramatic. You know, I have all the respect for people who can write fiction. I just, I can't make up stuff. Oh, that's that's so interesting. I mean, that really, to me is very appealing because it, you know, it's it's personal, but it's a documentary. It's it's nonfiction. And that makes me all the more interested in in how you put it and and how he put it because it's really a collaborative work, isn't it? But can you pick a paragraph for me? Can you read some prose and we can all see, you know, the kind of style you have. I want to read a section that has a little bit of my writing and a little bit of his writing. So this is about a school event and then that's about one paragraph and then the next paragraph will be his diary entry about that event. Like many of the activities, the marathon encouraged competition. I'm talking about a running race called the marathon. A teacher called out the ranking of each runner crossing the finish line as mothers lined up by the goal and cheered and clapped. Sometimes the last child in followed by a teacher on a bicycle would be in tears. Each year, Taro and I agreed on a list of prizes and punishments for his performance. The rewards served to motivate and the fear of penalties added a layer of thrill to our contract. There were 26 children in his second grade class, so that year we drew up a list of 26 items. First place was a visit to Disneyland. I knew we'd never get this one, so I let it be extravagant. Third place was to the movies. Seventh place was ice cream and the fifth place I would make him a full hot breakfast as opposed to our usual yogurt and toast. From the midpoint, thirteenth place and down were punishments, beginning with a haircut done by me. Taro preferred the barber shop over my bowl cut. Nineteenth place required that he write an extra diary entry. Twenty first place was an hour of piano practice and for the last 26th place, eight pages of kanji writing. Kanji are the characters children have to learn to write. Taro always raced hard but came in among the slower half of the class in punishment territory. Here's the diary entry that describes that event from his point of view. January 31, 2007. Bang. The starting sound surprised me and I was late starting. I chased after everyone in a panic. It's hard to catch up. There are about 20 people ahead of me, so it's a big deal to go around them. Shoot, I was getting mad. At the West gate, I remembered the way the fast runner, Mizukami Goon, runs. He makes his posture a little bit low. Oh, I passed three people. It feels like not bad. Kyosuke, who is in front of me, knows I am behind him and increased his pace. Next, I remembered how my cousin told me how to run with big steps and tried that. I passed Kyosuke and I wasn't even tired. I did my final sprint from the elementary and junior high school sign. I was 21st. The punishment my mother and I agreed on is piano practice for one hour. The punishment for 22nd place is four pages of kanji, so I'm glad I didn't get that one. I think that shows how optimistic he is. Glad I didn't get the 22nd place punishment. It's an active negotiation you're talking about. And the sports reminds me of your athletic activities at UH. You were a big athlete then. I remember trips to the neighbor islands and swimming for miles at a time. Those are the days. So I wonder if this is the kind of book that appeals to both sides of the equation. We had a show not too long ago called Konichiwa, Hawaii. It was a woman who was a Japanese national who did the show in Japanese with Japanese guests. And then she would translate in little bits from time to time during the show. It was very interesting in the sense that you saw what she was doing from both sides. Could this book, would this book, do you ever contemplate this book might be translated? Would it be appealing to a Japanese reader as well? You know, when I was working on the contract with my publisher, I gave the publisher all the rights to the foreign translation except Japan. So I held on to Japan at the suggestion of another friend of mine who said you might want to have some control over how it's presented in your own country. So I kept it and I figured I thought at the time, you know, I'm never going to put this out in Japan because first of all, if it's translated, the best person to translate is probably me. Yes, I would say so, yeah. All the material is primary sources. It's my conversations with the school, the other mothers, all the diaries are in Japanese. But I thought, you know, I'd spent years working on this book. I thought I don't want to spend any more time on this subject. I really want to move on. And the other thing I thought is, and there was actually there are two more things that I thought of. One is I don't want to deal with any kind of backlash from the way, you know, the way I portrayed the other mothers or the school. I'm not 100% negative on the school. I would say there were some very good points about it. But I don't really want the school to complain about certain sections. I don't want the most of the names have been changed, but anyone who was there will know who I'm talking about. I don't want the complaints from them. Japan is a small tribal society in many ways. And I didn't want to deal with the backlash. But most of all, I thought it wouldn't really be of interest to Japanese because they all know all this stuff. You know, the book is written for someone who knows nothing about Japan. They're often referenced to because Japanese society is like this or that. And I just didn't think it would be appealing. However, I've been pleasantly surprised to have a wider audience than I expected to. I originally thought the book would be for mothers, parents, educators, people interested in Japan. But I have found that the audience is broader. And I think it's because I emphasize so much about the struggle and the soul searching and how alone and isolated I felt during much of this. And many Japanese who have read the book in English have come up to me and said, you know, you really should translate this because there are actually a lot of people who have the same kind of problems that you did in Japan. I, when I was going through it, I thought it was only me. I'm the only one that has a child that's disobedient. I'm the only one that can't get my kids to get an A in science. I'm the only one that can't sew his name properly on the school uniform. People have told me that there are a lot of people like that. So, you know, I might consider it, but I haven't. I haven't taken action. So you've had enough of it, but you know, maybe in the years to come, it'll become even more iconic as a retrospective, you know, it's still fairly current right now. The people you you were writing about even by innuendo, they're still alive. But in five or 10 years, you know, the circumstances may change, and it may get to be, it may get to have a historical connotation. But you do raise a question that I want to ask, and that is, you've had enough of this one. But, you know, you have been writing about everything in the world. You've lived in every continent, or at least nearly all, you are a global individual. There's no, there's no, there's no boundary for you, Kumi. And so the question is, what is your next one? Is it going to be journalistic, you know, a documentary of some sort, nonfiction, or are you going to go full tilt into fiction and throw off the chains of journalism? Fiction, throwing off the chains that's still too intimidating, too high a barrier. But I think I'm actually thinking of another memoir, but this time looking at my, looking back at my ancestors, as opposed to down to my child. So I can trace back definitely four generations in Japan. And there are a lot of interesting people in my family, big, big, some big business leaders, people who were at the forefront of the modernization of Japan. So having said that, I'm not a history buff. So I'm trying to find a very personal anecdotal material. I'm reading some letters now and then I'll have to do some digging around to see if I can find some kind of personal narrative aspect of all of this. You know, I think if you, gosh, I remember a meeting your parents one time, it was here. Your dad was a high up officer in a company that was known all around Japan and the world, as I recall. And we were sitting with him, you and me and my wife, and your dad and mom, and all of a sudden, a line formed, remember this, a line formed in this huge hotel dining room and there were hundreds of Japanese tourists who wanted his autograph. So when they found out, you know, who he was, they were lining up around the block to get his autograph. So I'm saying to myself, well, you know, this one, the one you talk about your own family and their history, not only in the immediate preceding generation, but in generations before that, the Japanese people would be very interested in hearing your story. That's the one you ought to consider for translation, because they'll be lining up around the block to see what happened in your family. Kumi, don't you think? Maybe I think, I think it was more like six or seven people. Thank you. I told you, when you look back at history through the lens of the president may not be accurate. Yeah. So where are you? Are you on Amazon or what? The book is on Amazon. It's on any major online retail. You can also go to any bookstore and the bookstores can order it very easily. The paperback is going to be out on September 1. So there'll be another option. A paperback. Yeah, so I mean, are you in all continents in English? Yes, you can get it anywhere. And there have been some foreign translations. I don't really know. I'm not up on everything because I sold everything except for Jeff. So you were talking before the show began about your website where there's some description of the book and it's makiharakumiko.com. So we, you know, we should say that people can go and look and find out more about you there. And I guess, I guess what I would like to ask you at the end here, we always do this on our shows. What is the takeaway? In other words, if I invest the time and money, go buy it on Amazon or elsewhere. And, you know, I want to know more about Yataro and I want to know more about you, Kumiko. And I read the book. What takeaway do you think you would like me to have? Some lesson that I could carry forward. Not just the details of the relationship, the challenges and, you know, the struggles and bringing up a kid. But what is the, can you tell me what the larger truth would be that you would want me to find among the paragraphs of this book? Well, as I said, the book is really about struggle and I think the way I got through that struggle was some advice that actually my mother gave me now. In my case, the struggle was my child was not behaving or growing up in the way I had envisioned and in the way that I thought was the correct way. I wanted to put him on the right line and get him to go in the way that I knew I was so convinced was the right way and he wouldn't do it. So all hell was breaking loose every day. But my mother at one point said, you know, you have to remember that he's not going to be that age forever. Each moment is changing. So just move back a little bit and look at the bigger picture. And I wish I hadn't, I didn't really do that. I wish I had done that because now that I look back, I really missed a lot of wonderful opportunities. There's one example where he was where I really thought about when I was writing the book. I was dragging him from one after school activity to another and saying, hurry, come on, you got to go there the sooner we get there, we'll be able to do. And he interrupted me. He was seven years old and he said, maybe we're going to have time to go for a walk outside. All he wanted to do was go for a walk with his mother. And I'm sure I just ignored it. But now I think I wish I had gone on a walk with him. I couldn't pay him to go on a walk with me now. It's difficult, you know, of course, their relative, their struggles and their struggles. But if you can try to treasure each moment, especially when it comes to parenting, try to enjoy each moment because it's all fleeting. Oh, that's so valuable. Thank you for saying that. That is a great lesson and a great takeaway. I do have one question more that I really must ask you. You're a journalist. You've been a journalist all of your adult life. You've been hither and yon writing stories about so many things. You probably have half a dozen of them lined up on the shelf behind you. I know you do. And so the question is, you know, what about journalism? What about being freelance? What about working for, you know, conventional media? What about the freedom of the press? We have issues about that in this country now. And the economics of keeping a newspaper open so as to print your stuff. How do you feel about that? What's your personal take on it? And what are your concerns about it? Well, it's changed so much from the days that I was a full-time journalist. I actually write only a few opinion columns here and there now, my little observation of events. But I, you know, when I was writing in the heyday of journalism where we had a big bureau in Tokyo for Time Magazine, we had a driver. I would fly first class to places. All of that has completely changed and it started changing while I was there. And now so much is driven by online and everybody's a journalist now. Everybody can film things and put their tweets out there. So it's definitely an ongoing shifting time for journalists. I think we've been fortunate to sort of revalue the importance of the press in the last few years. I think some newspapers, the readership is up. So it'll be interesting to see how things go forward now that everybody is a journalist. And some of them are completely inaccurate and unprofessional. So at this point in time, having written a book and understanding really more than most people about, you know, the coming up of your son, understanding him more than most people understand their children because of this experience, I'm sure. I mean, if everybody wrote a book like this, everybody would have a better understanding of the relationships in families, which is so critical. But now he's 21. Now the world is a world of COVID, a world of climate change, a world of a world of Black Lives Matter. I mean, there's so many trouble issues going on. Would you ever tell him, not that he would listen to you, but would you ever tell him to go into journalism? Listen, I would be happy. I would be happy whatever he did, as long as he can make a living, you know, not cause trouble for anybody else. My standards have changed quite a bit from the days when I wanted him to graduate first from elementary school. Thank you, Kumiko Machihara. A great discussion and a wonderful person. Thank you so much for coming on and talking about your book and your son and your family.