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This is something I wrote in August 2018.

At the time, of course, I never imagined that someone from another country might one day read the chiduru blog.

I wasn’t trying to explain Japan.

I wasn’t trying to explain chiduru, either.

I was simply thinking about something I had heard in an old interview.

 

This is the interview I was watching when I first heard those words. The video is in Japanese, but I have explained the part that stayed with me below.

 

Japanese actor Kiyoshi Atsumi once talked about Superman.

When children saw Superman standing around during filming, they would apparently shout something like,

“Fly! Fly! Come on, fly!”

And Atsumi said something that stayed with me.

Superman shouldn’t be standing on two feet.

I liked that.

Children don’t want to see Superman simply standing there like an ordinary man.

Superman is supposed to fly.

Perhaps that is what it means to carry a role.

 

Kiyoshi Atsumi was one of Japan’s best-known actors.

For many years, he played Torajiro Kuruma — usually called “Tora-san” — in the long-running Japanese film series Otoko wa Tsurai yo (It’s Tough Being a Man).

When I was a child, I remember my parents taking me to see those films.

That was about all I remembered.

I thought they were simply comedies.

Many years later, I rented the films and watched them again.

They felt completely different.

Perhaps the films hadn’t changed.

I had.

 

I think this happens as we grow older.

Films are different.

Books are different.

Music, food, scenery, conversations…

Perhaps everything we experience through our senses changes a little as our own experiences accumulate.

Sometimes I understand something that I couldn’t understand when I was younger.

Sometimes I see my own life somewhere inside somebody else’s story.

And sometimes an old film suddenly feels new.

 

I eventually watched all of the Tora-san films.

And I began thinking about something else.

There seem to be fewer people like Tora-san today.

At least, that is how it feels to me.

I don’t mean that people should hide everything they feel.

And I don’t think the past was necessarily better than the present.

But there was a kind of beauty that I sometimes miss.

 

You could be struggling.

You could be hurting.

And still, you wouldn’t necessarily show all of it to everyone around you.

You might simply carry it quietly.

And despite carrying your own troubles, you could still think about someone else.

You could stay beside them.

You could be kind.

 

It is difficult for me to explain this well.

Perhaps it was a kind of pride.

Not pride in the sense of thinking yourself better than someone else.

Something quieter.

A way of saying:

This is how I have chosen to be.

 

Kiyoshi Atsumi himself protected the image of Tora-san throughout his life.

There have been stories about the difference between the public figure and the private man, and his family life was apparently not always simple.

But when he stepped outside his front door, he became Tora-san.

He protected that character until the end of his life.

There is something about that professionalism that I find beautiful.

 

And perhaps that is why his comment about Superman stayed with me.

Superman shouldn’t just stand there.

Superman should fly.

Not because somebody has paid him to fly.

Not because somebody is watching.

But because…

he is Superman.

 

I wrote the original version of this article in 2018.

Eight years have passed.

Reading it again now, I notice something I didn’t notice then.

I wasn’t writing about chiduru.

And yet, perhaps I was.

 

We often talk about hospitality at chiduru.

But hospitality is difficult to explain.

If we have to announce every kind thing we do, perhaps something has already been lost.

If we are kind only because a customer has paid us, that feels a little different too.

There are things we want to do simply because we believe,

“This is how we want chiduru to be.”

 

Of course, we don’t always get it right.

We are not Superman.

And we certainly aren’t Tora-san. 😅

We are just two people running a very small place in Kirishima.

Still…

When someone comes through our door, perhaps there is a role we have chosen for ourselves.

To notice.

To care.

To remember.

To make someone feel comfortable without making a show of it.

And sometimes, simply to stay beside someone.

 

Maybe that is one small part of what we mean by hospitality.

Not something impressive.

Not something that needs to be advertised loudly.

Just something we keep trying to do.

 

After all these years, I think I understand that old sentence a little better.

Superman shouldn’t stand on two feet.

And perhaps chiduru, too, should continue trying to be chiduru.

Even when nobody is watching.

 

That’s all for today. 😊