Saturday, June 5, 2010

Count Kabayama's Granddaughter

     Funny thing about living abroad is that names don't ring a bell to the foreign ear. For example, to a New Yorker "Rockefeller" rings a bell (former governor Nelson, his missus Happy, Japan Society, etc). Serving on the board of a Tokyo ladies club founded in 1949 at the suggestion of Count Kabayama, the tip-off is the fellow board member who identifies herself as the Count's granddaughter. Despite her lineage she is homesick for Manhattan. "It was heaven to live there," she confided in the type of gravelly voice that betrays a former smoker. "In Japan wives are never included in business dinners but in New York it was just the opposite!  What fun we had socializing with American colleagues. And what fun I had filling the closet with bargains from Woodbury Common. I do remember thinking once: Not another dinner at Le Cirque! How spoiled I was."

     When the count's granddaughter extended an invitation for tea in Hiro-o at Paper Moon, with another shop on East 77th Street, the only answer is: Hai. (Many NY eateries have Tokyo outposts, enabling the former Manhattanite to satisfy her appetite for the Big Apple.) Portions and prices are American style. Although our gracious hostess gained two stubborn kilos this year, she suspended her diet for one afternoon of reminiscing about her family. The owners of the patisserie greeted her warmly, exchanging a few words about the sudden resignation of prime minister Hatoyama this week as well as his righthand man Ozawa. The count's granddaughter lamented today's lack of statesmen such as her grandfather. "Our leaders need to be decisive," she said, like a true New Yorker.

     Bites of cake alternated with bitesize tales of how John D. Rockefeller and Mr. Kabayama (as he became after 1945) co-founded International House in 1951, an active cultural center just a stone's throw from the Manor. Typical of Meiji era well-to-do nihonjin, all the Kabayamas studied in the US so it came as no surprise when in 1929 his younger daughter, Masako, made a love match with a Cambridge graduate by the name of Jiro Shirasu."My father moved us to the seaside resort of Oiso after the war, since Tokyo was completely burned to the ground," recounted the Count's granddaughter. "I was playing in the garden one day when a jeep pulled up and out stepped General MacArthur. He was the first American I ever met." Nihonjin know of Mr. Shirasu as the man who dared to talk back to MacArthur; at Cambridge he became an expert debater, which served him well with the Supreme Commander for Allied Powers (SCAP).  Digesting the story and the rich cake, the afternoon closed with a promise to meet for a second slice of Mille Crepe at Paper Moon on E 77th Street.

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