MISAO’S MOTHER’S BRAIN

A Culturally Relativistic Maladdress

My friend Misao lives with her aging mother in a popular district of Tokyo, in a small wooden house located right next to a suburban railway line. About fifty times a day, the whole shack suddenly starts shaking as if there was a powerful earthquake, and for a few seconds, all one can hear is the deafening rattle of the train going by.

Misao’s mother had a car accident when she was in her fifties. “She lost a part of her brain,” Misao told me, tracing a large circle on her forehead with her index finger. “At first, the doctors said that she was not going to make it, but after a week in a coma, she woke up and started talking. The doctors could not find anything wrong, so they let her go home. When she left the hospital, one of the nurses gave my mother a jar containing the piece of her brain that the surgeon had taken out during the operation.”

“My mother was very happy about it,” Misao said. “She disposed of the jar and picked a special drawer in the kitchen to store the small piece of brain, that soon became all dried up. When visitors came to the house, she liked to take it out for them, like a prized possession. Actually, what she would do was to give them the piece of brain and say nothing, just stand there and smile, and it was usually up to me to explain to the guests what they were holding in their hands. People would try their best to hide their surprise, torn between immediately wanting to get rid of it, almost to throw it away in disgust, and the need to show proper respect for what was, after all, despite the incongruity of its current location, which in a way also explained itself, a very special body part of their host. Summoning their utmost self-control, they would bow quickly many times and, as soon as they deemed suitable, politely return it to her.”

“Once, an American friend visited me,” Misao said, “and just as he arrived, I had to go urgently to the bathroom. My mother went to the kitchen, took the piece of her brain out of its drawer and, returning to her guest, made him open his palm, where she deposited her offering. It was my friend’s first time in Japan, so he thought it was a kind of cookie or cake, given to him as a welcome, and that it would be impolite not to taste it—especially as my mother was standing there expectingly, looking at him with a broad smile. As I came back into the room, I saw my friend just about to put the piece of my mother’s brain in his mouth, and I immediately yelled for him to stop! But right then, a train went by.”