Junichi Saga is a physician with a general practice in Tsuchiura, on Lake Kasumigaura. Some 30 years ago he began taping his more elderly patients' reminiscences and from these he compiled the oral histories "Confession of a Yakuza" and "Memories of Silk and Straw." This new volume, "Memories of Wind and Waves," is his third.
He here transcribes the words of some 22 men and 11 women, the youngest born in 1938, who spent their lives working on or around Lake Kasumigaura and who now remember what it was like back then.
There was a lot of poverty. "People today can't even comprehend the level of poverty back then," says one informant. "My dad told me," said another, "that a day's work wouldn't buy three cups of rice." Yet another remembers that "commoners were all buried sitting up. To be buried in a reclining position you had to be a member of the samurai class, and townspeople didn't qualify. In the old days people weren't even equal after death."
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