A wedding in Tokyo

by David Benjamin

“… [Kilmar] Abrego García and [Jennifer] Vasquez Sura — who had married through a glass partition at the ICE detention center… ”
― Washington Post, 19 Apr.

MADISON, Wis.—On our lavatory wall in Paris, there’s one of those “What’s wrong with this picture?” puzzles. There are, in the photo, about two dozen smiling Japanese people, well-dressed and smiling. But in the middle, the proverbial fly in the ointment, there’s this blondish gaijin, an alien interloper, in a tan suit. He seems to be attached to a woman beside him, who appears untroubled by his proximity. She’s small and lissom, in an elegant white jacquard jumpsuit, with a knowing gaze and a radiant smile. She seems to be happiest person in the picture.

Okay, she’s cool, but who’s this guy? Who let him into the party?

It all started years before, with a story too long to unravel here. But look carefully at the photo. One woman in the picture seems—even at this late date—to be uneasy with the presence of this gaijin in a sea of nihonjin. The woman, Ma Yoshida, told her daughter, “What? After scouring the neighborhood for moms with marriageable sons, after all the nice boys I tried to hook you up with, you pledge your troth to a divorced guy from America? Whose only job is writing? Are you nuts?”

The daughter, named Junko, simply replied that she loved him, meaning me. Pa Yoshida, who liked America and once sent his daughter there for a year, said to his wife, “Well, shoganai, sweetie. The girl’s gonna do what the girl’s gonna do.”

“Oy,” said the mother.

Of course, the scene in the photo was years in the making. I’d met Junko in Tokyo when I was working on a book about inventions. She was interpreter for one of my subject inventors. More than two years later, after sending several hundred letters across the Pacific, we were together in Tokyo, sharing forty-three square meters in a mansion in Ebisu. She kept working. I kept writing. We started to plan our wedding.

Well, two weddings.

Officially, we had to be hitched at the United States embassy. This spared us the bureaucratic snags and hoop-jumping that the Japanese government demands of foreigners plotting to abscond with one of its sloe-eyed honeys. To qualify for native nuptials, I would have had to do what James Bond did in You Only Live Twice, undergo eyelid surgery and turn myself into an artificial Japanese guy.

To spare my eyelids, we got in touch with the embassy and made an appointment for an American wedding, just after Labor Day (which is not a Japanese holiday). We also dropped into a toy store not far from our apartment and bought two dozen ring-toss games, twelve shaped like giraffes and twelve elephants. Most important was our visit to Mireille, a cozy French restaurant in Roppongi, the night-life hub of Tokyo, where we had dined so often that we were on a first-name basis with the maitre d’. Since our official wedding fell on a Thursday morning, we reserved the entire restaurant for two days hence, on a hopping Saturday night in Roppongi. We consulted with the chef on the menu and wine and, afterward, skipped hand-in-hand down the street toward our fate.

On our (first) wedding day, we arrived ahead of time at the embassy, as instructed, so that I had time to fill out the forms necessary to our marriage license. While I did this, Junko shmoozed and giggled with our witnesses, Hitomi (lovely and cerebral) and Marippe (flirtatious and bossy). I turned in the paperwork. We vamped in the waiting area while a nameless clerk transcribed my scrawl and rendered a document—with Junko’s first name spelled “Yunko”—that would render our union legal from Kealakekua to Kennebunkport.

Someone shouted my name. I looked up. A woman was motioning me toward a bank of bank-teller windows shielded in bulletproof plexiglass. We all trooped to the woman behind the barrier. She stepped aside, in favor of a man who introduced himself as an assistant consul. Junko and I stood beside each other, Hitomi and Marippe off to the side, mildly giddy with anticipation.

(When you get them together with Junko, they are among the cutest people in a country obsessed with cuteness.)

The assistant consul, whose name went right past me never to be recovered, skimmed the marriage certificate in a desultory manner. Languidly, he caught my eye, said, “Raise your right hand.”

I did so. He asked if all the information I had scrawled was the absolute God’s truth. I said, “You bet your bippy.”

He nodded. He did not say, “I now pronounce you man and wife.” He did not say, “You may now kiss the bride.” He handed the paper to the clerk. She slid it under the bulletproof window. The assistant cheezed it and went back to consuling.

The clerk said, “Good bye.”

“So, um,” I said to Junko, “we’re married?”

“I guess so.”

“Next!” said the clerk.

We weren’t quite done. We had to register our union with Japan, at the local precinct office. We dismissed Hitomi and Marippe. who hurried off to complete arragements for our second wedding. Junko and I hiked to the town hall of Chiyoda-ku. We turned over our slightly misspelled U.S. marriage certificate and waited about an hour while the house calligrapher created a beautiful scroll that—as we looked it over—made us feel married.

I finally kissed the bride.

Two nights later, Junko and I were stationed at the doorway of Mireille, with two dozen gift-wrapped boxes. In Japan, it’s customary for the newlyweds to give each wedding guest a gift. So, everyone who came that night to our nuptial feast received either a red giraffe or a green elephant with a handful of matching rings. In return, true to tradition, we got envelopes full of yen—although not enough to cover the cost of dinner.

I can’t remember a better party. We were surrounded by the family-and-friends repertory company of Junko’s life. I had been in and out of Japan long enough that these were my friends, too. I admired many of them, especially Kamura and Nakamura, Junko’s mentors at work—and I loved some of them. Mari-chan, the satirist, Waka, the fussbudget, Mariko, Junko’s sister. The bond that we shared was our boundless affection for Junko. I’ve never been in a company so thoroughly unified and serene in celebration of one beloved daughter, friend, colleague.

We drank champagne and ate profligately, starting with an entrée of shrimp and pastry, followed by filet of tai (sea bream) or a rosy disk of filet mignon, with those cheesy potatoes that only a French chef—or a Tokyo chef who’s studied in Paris—can create. Murakami, one of Junko’s bosses, had spent three years in Paris. So, when the dessert arrived, he slipped into an ecstatic trance. It was profiteroles, vanilla ice cream nested in puff pastry and bathed in warm, dark chocolate.

Since then, Junko and I mark our anniversary on either—or both—of those two days in September, the wham-bam oath-giving at the embassy and the sumptuous lingering gourmet feast, with giraffes and elephants, at Mireille.

It’s been a long time. We’ve lost a few in the photo, including Ma and Pa Yoshida, and Mariko. But they are all still—and all the more—our friends.

After all these years, it turns out that there’s nothing wrong with this picture.