Recently, on a casual visit to a bookstore in Hibiya, a book drew my attention immediately. It was a personal diary written by a female psychiatrist named Mieko Kamiya, who passed away half a century ago.
The diary started from 1939 when Mieko was living with her family on the east coast in the US. Her father was a high rank government officer that was assigned to New York at the time. Mieko herself also was sent to Columbia University on a scholarship. It shocked me a lot that the lifestyle of the upper class was very similar to modern days. Mieko was able to focus on her studies although war was approaching. Mieko even traveled to Paris as if it was not a big deal.
As a fun fact, Mieko and their family seemed to have already known the war between Japan and the US was unavoidable in the first place. Despite being invited to the Peace Call, she mentioned that she actually had given up and suggested she didn’t want to be among those pacifists anymore. In 1940, a year before the Pearl Harbor incident, Mieko and her family left the US ahead of schedule. I am not sure if it was common knowledge that war would break out or Mieko’s father had more information than ordinary people.
Apparently, Mieko wrote in her diary without considering that there would be readers other than herself. Her diary doesn’t have too much continuity, and they are all fragments of her life lacking a big picture. Even editors are not able to completely understand what happened. The language Mieko wrote in was not just Japanese, but mixed with English or French. It seems that she was writing in a way most convenient to herself without concerning others.
From Mieko’s diary, I learned a lot of things. Not only that the life of a pre-war noble lady was enjoyable but her habit of regularly writing in her diary makes me think. I have randomly picked some topics and written journals since I was in middle school, but they are not a diary. I always assume that readers will exist. No matter how personal the topic is, the content is self-censored. The “discussions” are restricted to some extent. Maybe I should start to write a private diary like Mieko to truly reflect on my life.
