Wednesday, March 18, 2015 // The Statement
7B

Personal Statement: Undress the Doll

by Aiko Fukuchi, LSA Senior

U

ntil I was eleven years old, my family would take
trips to Japan each summer. I would help my
aunt pick plums from a tree in her backyard, and

she would tell me stories. But I don’t speak Japanese, so I
wouldn’t understand, and we would laugh because of this,
and she would continue telling me stories that I wouldn’t
understand.

We were such a great inconvenience to them, to my

father, coming home with his American wife and his Amer-
ican children, who looked a lot like them but didn’t know
how to interact and needed their translating father as their
voice in every setting.

At my grandfather’s house, my aunt would take me into a

side room where she would dress me in layers of fabric — in
a yellow kimono with beautiful patterns and sleeves that
almost touched the floor. She would fix and put up my long
hair with an elegant comb made of bamboo and tell me how
beautiful it all was. My father came in and translated for
her; he would tell me my actions should mirror the beauty
of how I was dressed. Sitting around a low table in the main
room of the house, we would light incense and candles in
my grandmother’s shrine and someone would tell the story
of how she had been stronger than many soldiers who cried
and crumbled at the pressure of herding families to shel-
ter during the fire bombings of WWII. Sometimes, my aunt
would tell stories of running through streets surrounded
by crumbling, flame-filled buildings with her mother, try-
ing to find somewhere to go. But grandfather didn’t seem to
like those stories, and, after a few years, they ceased to be
recognized or shared to my knowledge.

Shortly after the stories, a deliveryman usually arrived

with boxes of sushi strapped to his bike. We sat at the table
and ate together. There was a lot of talking; I didn’t under-
stand anything. My dad would translate every now and
then but had trouble carrying us through the quick flow of
conversation and would eventually give up. So I would sit
silently with my feet tucked perfectly under my legs, smil-
ing at someone every so often to appear engaged and atten-

tive. After a few hours, someone would comment on how
well-mannered I was. My grandfather would beam that
my beauty and perfect manners — my sweet silence — was
that of old, traditional, Japanese ways that had been lost
on today’s youth, but I had shown that these ways had not
been lost on me.

“How could a little girl raised in America be more Japa-

nese than all the little girls raised in Japan?”

Everyone would laugh. I hoped he knew I was only so

“perfect” because a language barrier restrained me from
participating any further.

As a child, to the relatives on my father’s side, I felt more

like a paper doll than a part of the family. My cousins and
aunts would gush over my snow white skin, paler than their
own, and they would touch it, and I would feel naked, and
my father would laugh and tell me that I am so loved, and I
would think, there is a difference between praise and love,
and I would tell him I didn’t feel accepted and he would tell
me that this makes sense because I’m not truly a part of this
world, of his world — I am only an American.

***

Twenty crushes, thirteen big lies, ten weeks of being

grounded, seven transitions to “new homes,” three cats,
two dogs, and one “first love” later, I was beginning my first
year of college.

By then, most people I met didn’t call me by my name.

I was more commonly addressed as “Asian Princess” and
“Asian Goddess” and more often than not, felt like I was
back in my grandfather’s house, folding my feet perfectly
under my legs. I was picked up and spun, the same way I
had been as a child. I was carried and talked to and talked
at. Boys would place me on their laps and have conversa-
tions with other boys about topics I knew too little about
to participate in. It felt the same. In my dreams, my aunt
would take off my American clothes to make me into the
Japanese doll she always wanted. Then men would unwrap
me, layer by layer, to get to the Japanese doll they always
wanted. My new nicknames found themselves a companion

when a boy, who was pledging for a fraternity, was given
the pledge name “Hiroshima” for having sex with me.

***

On the seventieth anniversary of Pearl Harbor, I’m

standing outside, smoking a cigarette when two boys walk
up to me. One asks me if I’ll feel Franklin Roosevelt spank-
ing my ancestors into internment camps when I close my
eyes tonight. The other asks me if spanking is what I’m
into. They tell me they wouldn’t be surprised to find out the
Asian princess is dirty in bed. We all laugh and they walk
away while I stand there in shock, wondering how this was
my reaction.

***

When you ask me where I’m from, you want to know

about my race or my ethnicity. You want to know about my
history. You believe by knowing this about me, you’ll know
so much about me. I imagine you don’t, but always won-
der if you pick up on my sudden shortened breathing pat-
terns due to the slight pinch of pain I feel when I tell you my
mother is white and my father is Japanese. If you inquire
further about family, trying to decide for yourself how Jap-
anese I really am — or how white I really am — eventually
you start to notice discomfort weave its way through my
body language as my eyes disengage from yours, and my
mind wanders somewhere else, because I don’t want to talk
about it.

I don’t want to talk about how the strongest ties I feel

to my Japanese heritage are through micro-aggressions
and the consistent sexual objectification of my body, orga-
nized through other’s perceptions of my race, experienced
in the country I was raised in. I don’t want to talk about
how almost every person I meet feels they have the ability
to judge “how Japanese I really am,” and that I don’t even
know what this means. What am I being judged on? What
is the criteria? No one will tell me and my Japanese father
will tell me if I was really Japanese I wouldn’t have to ask,
and the stinging tears that fall from my almond-shaped
eyes know that he’s right.

ILLUSTRATION BY MEGAN MULHOLLAND