How to Be an American Housewife by Margaret Dilloway

Street. In the next driveway, Lorraine was getting out of her Mercedes. She was bigger than ever and moved slowly. Her hair was gray now. She waved. “How you doing, Miss Shoko?” she called. “Not working too hard, are you? Your roses look beautiful!”
    “Thank you.” I simply shut the car door and turned away. In the old days, I would have stayed out and chatted with her. Finally I had realized it wasn’t worth it. She was only a neighbor, not a friend. I no longer had the energy.
    “I was going to get you out.” Charlie tried to run around the car.
    “I fine.” I smiled.
    He paused and looked at me. “I’m sorry about Japan, Shoko.”
    I glanced at his eyes. He really was. “Maybe next life, huh, Charlie?”
    “There is no next life.” Charlie turned and went into the house.
    I followed, formulating a plan. I would have to call on my daughter.
    The only question was whether she would ignore the request.
    You must pay particular attention to raising daughters in the Japanese tradition. With American daughters, there are more ways to get into trouble, as she will want to be American. Teach her to resist this urge if you want to avoid the shame of having a daughter who runs with the fast American crowd.

    —from the chapter “American Family Habits,”
How to Be an American Housewife

Six
    W hen the Americans first took over Japan, my father said to me, “Shoko. You must learn English. Now we all have to be like Americans.”
    “No,” I said. “I will never be an American.”
    But he was right. He always was. Japan was going nowhere.
    Our village was tiny, with only fishermen and farmers. There was nothing for young people to do but get married and work in low-paying jobs. Most girls sat around at home, waiting to get married. I dreamed about going to college, though there was no money for it.
    I wanted to be a diplomat. I loved reading about different cultures, especially the European ones. I went to the library and found every book I could about France, England, Germany. I wanted to learn their languages, but my all-girls high school didn’t have such courses. They had grammar and math, of course, but they also had flower arranging and dance as requirements.
    Somehow, I thought I was smart enough to go to college and learn about the world there. My brother, Taro, told me that was nonsense.
    “I make all A’s. Do you think you’re smarter than me?” I asked him.
    “That’s not the point. You could be the smartest woman in the world, but you’re still a woman. A poor Japanese woman from a country that has lost a war. There is no way you could ever be a diplomat.” He was right, and I knew it but didn’t want to believe it. Taro, like me, spoke the truth, no matter how distasteful it sounded. “The best you could hope for is to go to college, pretend you’re high-class, and marry a diplomat.”
    This was not how things worked out. I told my mother I wanted to go to college, and she said no, that there was no point in it for girls. My mother wanted me to marry one of the boys from our shuku —our community. People of a shuku worked together, and usually married each other.
    Father disagreed with Mother. “She’s too good for those bakamonoshuku ,” he said, lifting his proud nose. “Too clever. She can do better.”
    Japan wasn’t democratic like America. Who you were descended from counted for more than what you made of yourself. Our father was descended from the bearers of the imperial seal. We might live among the commoners, we might have no more money or property than they did, but father always reminded us we were better than them. Father, while he thought the people of the shuku were honest and nice enough, didn’t want us to marry into them.
    I was secretly very happy when I heard Father’s decree. I had no desire to marry one of the village boys. A few of them were nice, but they had no prospects, nor did any of them seem concerned about this. They thought that they would keep on