Aobadai, Yokohama.
In 1968 when I was six, my family moved from Setagaya to Yokohama.
Back then, it was all mountains around us.
Our house stood in Sakuradai, about twenty-minute walk from Aobadai station for a child, climbing up the slope like a mountain.
There actually was a mountain behind our house, where racoon dogs, snakes and wild dogs roamed around. We were told to keep the windows closed to avoid snakes coming in, but it was fun exploring the mountain with my two elder brothers.
But it took two hours to get to our school, a trip involving multiple transfers, and that probably built up my strong legs and stamina. I think the habit of running to school and running back home is why I am still running all the time up until now.
When I practiced my violin in that house, I would open all the doors to create a large space and play loud. My mother would listen while doing her housework and shout her reactions -what a noisy household it was……! In addition, practicing meant repeating difficult passages hundreds and thousand times until my body memorized them. In baseball terms, it would be a thousand-swing drill……The difference is that an instrument practice makes noise. I feel so sorry and embarrassed now, thinking about our neighbours.
In the hot summers, our house still did not have air conditioning, so I would open all the windows, using fans, filling in a basin with ice water, and putting my feet in that basin and practice diligently. My apologies to our neighbours!
Moreover, right above me on the second floor of our house, my brother Akira practiced drumming. I watched in shock when a huge drum set was brought into our house wondering what kind of noise it would make. Akira just set up the drums happily in his room and from that day on, he started banging the drum with all his might!
There could be no other stories so disruptive to the neighbourhood, and I am so grateful for them to being so generous, enduring and watching over us, and cannot find the words to express my gratitude to them.
Thanks to them, my brother and I managed to become professional musicians.
So that is how I grew up there.
I have rooted in that land for nearly 40 years, and grew up there to become a violinist in Sakuradai.
But howcome we moved from that place? It makes my heart ache at times, when I remember my mother’s sad face from time to time. I moved away from Aobadai, bringing my mother with me. First reason was that my mother had become ill and she had to visit the hospital in Tokyo so often.
Also in the last years in Sakuradai, it was only my mother and I who lived there. The thought of something happening to her filled me with anxiety. All the close people she could reach out to lived in Tokyo. When I was away on concert tours, mother was left all alone. I did call her from time to time whilst being on the road for concerts to check if she was doing alright, and tried to return to Tokyo riding the last train or flight of the day. Leaving her alone so often was the decisive factor for moving from Sakuradai……But there was another true factor deep inside me……
Sakuradai was the place filled with so many happy memories of our family. What if I were left alone in that big house……I think that was the true feeling deep inside my heart. Living alone in that empty house would be unbearably lonely. I imagined my sadness, the intense memories soaked into the walls, the air, the floor, the land and everywhere.
I moved away from Sakuradai, dragging my reluctant mother with me to the centre of Tokyo, and started our life there, as though we were escaping from my imaginary sadness.
Yet, I couldn’t shake off the image of my mother’s sorrowful expression as we left Aobadai.
She looked so uncomfortable in the new city centre home.
I tried to pretend not to notice her face, uncomfortable with the new home, the new market, the new land and hoped that she would soon get used to them.
Her quiet words saying “I’ve become too old for moving” comes back to me sometimes which makes my heart ache. And then, she died of cancer.
My heart often returns to Aobadai.
In my dreams, in my imagination, on stages where I play music, in memories of my parents, and grandparents.
This year 2025, marks my 50th anniversary since my debut. And this autumn, an unexpected gift was given to me from the city of Yokohama.
Yokohama City Cultural Awad.
My hometown, Aobadai. Yokohama City, where everything about me was made.
Sakuradai, where I practiced hard to become a violinist.
All were there……sorrow, delight, regret, joy……
I will never forget how the familiar Yokohama breeze would embrace my weary body whenever I returned home from concert tours in Japan and abroad. It was always so nostalgic that it would bring tears to my eyes.
Thank you, Yokohama!