When I lived in Japan, about every month or two but sometimes twice a week I would visit my box. It was in the big Tokiwa department store that dominated the train-station end of the main street of Oita. To get to my box, I had to go in through the first array of glass doors, past the snow-stomping carpets (although it never snowed in Oita-shi while I was there and Japanese are probably more snow-shufflers anyway), through the second array of doors, past the white-gloved welcome-ladies, veer to the right toward the second batch of white-gloved this-way-to-the-second-floor ladies, up the escalators, and around to the right. I'd look for the column that was near the formal entertainment supplies, and down on the second shelf at waist level was my box.
It was a beautiful box in the way that Japanese things are supposed to be beautiful: simple and elegant and otherworldly. It had three sections and a lid, and the one time that I allowed myself to pick it up, I decided that someone had woven together strips of something flat, and then lacquered and buffed and lacquered and buffed, until only the hint of the weave was left. The color was a rich mahogany that seemed as deep as the ocean. I loved my box. Sometimes I'd take friends to look at it with me.
"Why don't you buy it?" they'd ask. The answer was that it was an impossible 40,000 yen and I was, well, a tightwad. I debated with myself for months, but the truth was that I didn't have another job lined up for when I got back to Texas, and I couldn't see myself spending hundreds of dollars on a pretty box when I was going to need that money for rent.
So I didn't buy it. In the last few days, I didn't even let myself look. When I went to Tokiwa, I bought chopsticks and fans as omiyage for friends back home, and furoshiki and weird-English t-shirts that defied comprehension for myself, but I stayed away from my box.
I packed everything I owned in two suitcases and was ready to leave the next day when Melissa (a.k.a. the other Melissa) came by for our last taste of pumpkin, eggplant and onion pizza. We talked about leaving Japan, saying goodbye to friends and the glories of pumpkin pizza, and eventually I mentioned the pangs I felt over moving far away from my box.
"But you have to get it. You have to!" she said. "You'll regret it forever if you don't buy it. You can get more money later, but you'll never be able to get that box again. Look, I'll loan you the money, just go get it."
I actually had pretty much my entire life's savings in my purse, so we ran to Tokiwa just half an hour before closing time. I rushed to the familiar floor and department, pointed to my box and said in atrocious Japanese that I wanted to buy it. There was much nodding and bowing, and my box was picked up and carried away.
A few minutes later they came back with a lovely wooden crate with important-looking kanji stamped on it. Wrapping in tissue paper commenced, but the other Melissa and I shared a look of mutual paranoia and agreed that visual confirmation was necessary. It took a long time for them to uncrate and unwrap it, but sure enough, they hadn't packed my box. It was another, similar box but not mine. Not nearly as ethereally gorgeous. Hands were waved, heads were shaken, and by sheer pantomime the clerks managed to get the idea of floor display and brand new box, even better across. Heads were shaken and hands were waved, and I conveyed my determination that only the One True Box would do. I was breaking the rules with the reckless abandon of an ignorant gaijin, but I didn't care and they could tell. My box was retrieved from wherever they had taken it, carefully swathed in tissue, placed in the little crate and rewrapped yet again.
By then the store had closed. The music had been turned off and the unnecessary lights were dimmed. Most of the employees had gone home, or out drinking, or wherever department store employees go at night. Only the white-gloved escalator ladies remained to guide us out of the store. There were more than usual, spaced so that at no point would we the errant gaijin customers be out of sight. As we approached each one, she would point the tips of her fingers at us (palms and fingers in a rigid, flat plane) and then with a fluid slide would pivot and point flat-handed toward the exit. They said nothing. They didn't smile. They just pushed the space in front of us toward the doors and the warm night air. I carried my bag through the Twilight Zone and back to my apartment.
That night I dreamed of my box being crushed in transit, the dark red lacquer cracked and splinters of bamboo revealed like bone. In point of fact, the trip broke the little outer crate, but my box made it to Texas without a scratch.
Today, it's in my bedroom, on top of the antique kitchen tansu that serves as my dresser. And the other Melissa was right. My box is one of the few treasures I own, and still one of the few things Im in love with.
Posted by M2
July 12, 2002
Comments
You were so right to get your box. It is something I have regretted since leaving Japan, the fact that I did not finally choose one of those lovely lacquered boxes to take home with me. The difference is, of course, that no one box ever spoke to me the way yours did to you. I used to admire them at Tokiwa too, and then in the luxurious department stores in Tokyo. Now every time I use stationery or fetch a stamp, I think, "This should be housed in one of those lovely boxes."
I suppose for me, a similar item would be my antique mirror stand in dark mahogany, which age has blackened even more. I had my eye on this piece for months at an antique store whose name escapes me now. I am sure I would have bought it but in the end I didn't have to. My students from Texas Instruments chipped in on it as a going away present for me. I cherish it and carefully choose items to place on its glossy wood where they will be doubly enhanced by the reflection from the beveled mirror, unscarred after its century of use. And I imagine the beauties who may have admired their reflections in that mirror.
Comment by: jbl. Posted July 27, 2002 09:27 AM.
I think I have your box too. It was my grandmothers, her brother brought it back from Japan. After my grandfather died, they were cleaning out the house and my aunt gave it to me because she knows I loved it so much. I have a great appreciation for things of the orient. Mine plays music but it doesn't work, i've spent all of tonight trying to fix it so I came online to try and find out how they work and I found this page.
Comment by: Ashley. Posted June 4, 2003 11:23 PM.
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