Of course I have a lot of memories of my father. It’s only natural, considering that we lived under the same roof of our not exactly spacious home from the time I was born until I left home at eighteen. And, as is the case with most children and parents, I imagine, some of my memories of my father are happy, some not quite so much. But the memories that remain most vividly in my mind now fall into neither category; they involve more ordinary events.

This one, for instance:

When we were living in Shukugawa (part of Nishinomiya City, in Hyogo Prefecture), one day we went to the beach to get rid of a cat. Not a kitten but an older female cat. Why we needed to get rid of it I can’t recall. The house we lived in was a single-family home with a garden and plenty of room for a cat. Maybe it was a stray we’d taken in that was now pregnant, and my parents felt they couldn’t care for it anymore. My memory isn’t clear on this point. Getting rid of cats back then was a common occurrence, not something that anyone would criticize you for. The idea of neutering cats never crossed anyone’s mind. I was in one of the lower grades in elementary school at the time, I believe, so it was probably around 1955, or a little later. Near our home were the ruins of a bank building that had been bombed by American planes—one of a few still visible scars of the war.

My father and I set off that summer afternoon to leave the cat by the shore. He pedalled his bicycle, while I sat on the back holding a box with the cat inside. We rode along the Shukugawa River, arrived at the beach at Koroen, set the box down among some trees there, and, without a backward glance, headed home. The beach must have been about two kilometres from our house.

At home, we got off the bike—discussing how we felt sorry for the cat, but what could we do?—and when we opened the front door the cat we’d just abandoned was there, greeting us with a friendly meow, its tail standing tall. It had beaten us home. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how it had done that. We’d been on a bike, after all. My father was stumped as well. The two of us stood there for a while, at a total loss for words. Slowly, my father’s look of blank amazement changed to one of admiration and, finally, to an expression of relief. And the cat went back to being our pet.

We always had cats at home, and we liked them. I didn’t have any brothers or sisters, and cats and books were my best friends when I was growing up. I loved to sit on the veranda with a cat, sunning myself. So why did we have to take that cat to the beach and abandon it? Why didn’t I protest? These questions—along with that of how the cat beat us home—are still unanswered.

Another memory of my father is this:

Every morning, before breakfast, he would sit for a long time in front of the butsudan shrine in our home, intently reciting Buddhist sutras, with his eyes closed. It wasn’t a regular Buddhist shrine, exactly, but a small cylindrical glass case with a beautifully carved bodhisattva statue inside. Why did my father recite sutras every morning in front of that glass case, instead of in front of a standard butsudan? That’s one more on my list of unanswered questions.

At any rate, this was obviously an important ritual for him, one that marked the start of each day. As far as I know, he never failed to perform what he called his “duty,” and no one was allowed to interfere with it. There was an intense focus about the whole act. Simply labelling it “a daily habit” doesn’t do it justice.

Once, when I was a child, I asked him whom he was praying for. And he replied that it was for those who had died in the war. His fellow Japanese soldiers who’d died, as well as the Chinese who’d been their enemy. He didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t press him. I suspect that if I had he would have opened up more. But I didn’t. There must have been something in me that prevented me from pursuing the topic.

I should explain a little about my father’s background. His father, Benshiki Murakami, was born into a farming family in Aichi Prefecture. As was common with younger sons, my grandfather was sent to a nearby temple to train as a priest. He was a decent student, and after apprenticeships at various temples he was appointed head priest of the Anyoji Temple, in Kyoto. This temple has four or five hundred families in its parish, so it was quite a promotion for him.

I grew up in the Osaka-Kobe area, so I didn’t have many opportunities to visit my grandfather’s home, this Kyoto temple, and I have few memories of him. What I understand, though, is that he was a free, uninhibited sort of person, known for his love of drinking. As his name implies—the character ben in his first name means “eloquence”—he had a way with words; he was a capable priest, and was apparently popular. I do recall that he was charismatic, with a booming voice.

My grandfather had six sons (not a single daughter) and was a healthy, hearty man, but, sadly, when he was seventy, at eight-fifty on the morning of August 25, 1958, he was struck by a train while crossing the tracks of the Keishin Line, which connects Kyoto (Misasagi) and Otsu, and killed. It was an unattended railway crossing in Yamada-cho, Kitahanayama, Yamashina, in Higashiyama-ku. A large typhoon hit the Kinki region on this particular day; it was raining hard, my grandfather was carrying an umbrella, and he probably didn’t see the train coming around a curve. He was a bit hard of hearing as well.

“All right, back to answering e-mails and sighing.” Facebook

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Shopping Cartoon by Drew Panckeri

The night our family learned that my grandfather had died, I remember my father quickly preparing to go to Kyoto, and my mother crying, clinging to him, pleading, “Whatever you do, don’t agree to take over the temple.” I was only nine at the time, but this image is etched in my brain, like a memorable scene from a black-and-white movie. My father was expressionless, silently nodding. I think he’d already made up his mind. I could sense it.

My father was born on December 1, 1917, in Awata-guchi, Sakyo-ku, in Kyoto. When he was a boy, the peaceful Taisho democracy period was drawing to a close, to be followed by the gloomy Great Depression, then the swamp that was the Second Sino-Japanese War, and, finally, the tragedy of the Second World War. Then came the confusion and poverty of the early postwar period, when my father’s generation struggled to survive. As I mentioned, my father was one of six brothers. Three of them had been drafted and fought in the Second Sino-Japanese War and, miraculously, survived with no serious injuries. Almost all of the six sons were more or less qualified to be priests. They had that kind of education. My father, for instance, held a junior rank as a priest, roughly equivalent to that of a second lieutenant in the military. In the summer, during the busy obon season—the yearly festival to honor family ancestors—these six brothers would assemble in Kyoto and divide up the visits to the temple’s parishioners. At night, they’d get together and drink.