"Why, I—don't—know," I replied slowly. "Aren't American men fond of their children?"
"Oh, yes," she answered quickly, "but Matsuo comes home early every evening to play with Hanano, and the other day he closed his store for the entire afternoon just to take her to the zoo."
My mind went back to my father—and Mr. Toda—and other fathers; and suddenly I saw Japanese men in a new light. "They have no chance!" I thought, a little bitterly. "An American man can show his feelings without shame, but convention chains a Japanese man. It pulls a mask over his face, closes his lips, and numbs his actions. However a husband many feel toward his wife, he cannot in public show her affection, or even respect; nor does she wish him to. It is not good form. The only time a man of dignity dares betray his heart is when he is with a little child—either his own or another's. Then he has the only outlet that etiquette allows; and even then he must guide his actions by rule. A father becomes his little son's comrade. He wrestles with him, races with him, and acts with him scenes of samurai daring, but he loves his little daughter with a great tenderness and accepts her gentle caresses with a heart hunger that is such pathos it is tragedy."
Matsuo was more demonstrative to me than would have been polite had we been living in Japan, but we both respected formality, and it was years before I realized how deep were his feelings for his family.
After that remark of Mother's and the thoughts that it aroused I delayed Hanano's bedtime, and she had many a romp with her father after the hour when children are supposed to be asleep. One moonlight evening I came down and found them running around the lawn, chasing each other and dodging this way and that, while Mother sat on the porch laughing and applauding. They were playing, "Shadow catch Shadow."
"I used to play that on moonlight nights when I was a little girl," I said.
"Why, is there a moon in Japan?" asked Hanano in great surprise.
"This very same one," her father replied. "Wherever you go, all your life, you will see it above you in the sky."
"Then it walks with me," said Hanano with satisfaction, "and when I go to Japan, God will be with me and can see my Japanese grandma."
Matsuo and I glanced at each other, a little puzzled. Hanano had always associated the Man in the Moon with the face of God, but I did not know until afterward that she had heard a lady who was calling on Mother that afternoon express regret that "beautiful Japan is a country without God."