One of our closest family friends when I was growing up was the Dyo (pronounced "Jo") family. Ken, the father, ran a landscaping business with his brother; and the two families lived with the grandparents in a house built by the famous Pasadena architects the Greene brothers for their own residence.
Ken and his wife Mikko (Mitsuko) were sansei, third-generation. They were Scout leaders and PTA supporters, but they also carried on Japanese traditions for their three sons and daughter.
One of those was Hinamatsuri, Girls’ Day, celebrated on 3 March.
On Girls’ Day, the females of the family set out an elaborate multi-tiered platform of exquisite dolls representing the Imperial court. Emperor and Empress at the top, then court ladies, musicians and various layers of courtiers, furnishings, equipment, etc. There are also little dishes of food, and flowers.
A girl starts out getting one or two dolls and builds her collection as she grows; or it can be handed down from mother to daughter.
(This is from the Japan Foundation is not nearly as elaborate as the one I remember at the Dyos'. But it gives you an idea)
On the day, girls and women are invited over for tea and to admire the display. (No—you do not play with these dolls. They’re strictly for viewing pleasure.) You dress up in your best outfit, sing some songs, play some games and basically bond.
(BTW—if you’re wondering, Boys’ Day is 5 May. You hang out carp flags and do outdoor kinds of things with your posse.)
Somewhere in the bottom of a box there’s a photo of me dressed in a yukata (summer kimono), trying with no success whatsoever to look graceful in a situation where I was afraid I was going to break something or someone every time I moved. It was such an exotic environment, so completely different from anything I’d ever encounter in my own family, or even in the Dyos' everyday life.
(For one thing, it was a, you know, party. I don’t recall ever seeing a party in my family house until I was old enough to throw them.)
I was reminded of Mrs. Dyo recently because George Takei has been publicizing a musical he’s written and produced called Allegiance. It’s about the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
I don’t know Mr. Dyo’s history, but Mrs. Dyo (Mitsuko Fukui, then) and her family were rounded up early in 1942, spent time in Santa Anita racetrack before being sent to the Heart Mountain camp in Wyoming. They had maybe a day or two to close out their business (a funeral home), pack what they most valued in the world into one or two suitcases per person and assemble to be shipped off to prison for an indeterminate sentence.
You know—they were guilty of the crime of being of Japanese ancestry. Of visibly having that ancestry.
I remember overhearing Mrs. Dyo talking to my mother about Heart Mountain, and saying that the snow blew sideways, and it was colder than she could believe. I had no notion of what that even meant (since I’d never seen snow except the fake stuff on TV and photos of it somewhere not Los Angeles County), and I could not imagine how cold it could possibly be until I experienced a Korean winter. Much less going through it with only the few clothes you’d brought from LA and living in tar-paper covered barracks.
After the war, when the Fukuis returned to their home, it had been completely trashed by the intervening residents. They had to begin anew, literally.
So I’m guessing that Mrs. Dyo built up her Hinamatsuri collection over the years after the war. I had no idea what that might have represented to her at the time; I wish I could ask her about it now, but she died in 2007, aged 84. I hope Naomi, her daughter, carries on the tradition; I know it has to be a gigantic palaver to take the dolls and display out of storage, set them up (taking up at least as much room as a Christmas tree), do all the food stuff for a day, and then dismantle and store again. But I hope those beautiful, symbolic dolls are being appreciated.
One more memory—I occasionally used to baby sit for the Dyos of a Saturday. I’d spend the night and they took me to church (Methodist, if I recall) in Little Tokyo. With a completely straight face, Mrs. Dyo would introduce me thusly: “This is my daughter by my first marriage.”
Even in sixth grade I was taller than she was; and then there was the matter of the red hair. But she took such delight in that kind of thing. I think that was the first time I’d ever seen someone’s eyes actually twinkle.
Anyhow, today is Girls’ Day, and I’m grateful for knowing the Dyo family when I was growing up, for being introduced to exotic (to me) cultures, for receiving (even in a small way) that human connection to major historical events, and for being considered part of an alternate family.
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