Kimiko wanted to marry a handsome man, and she staunchly defended this ambition. "If I have to look at him every day, I want my eyes to rest easy," she insisted. Most of her classmates, all of whom were much older than Kimiko, tittered. Foolishly I joined in.
We were doing the Ideal Mate adjective worksheet. All of the students had been given a sheet with a list of adjectives from which they had to rate the various personal attributes listed from 0 to 20 in terms of desirability in a mate. Kimiko had chosen 'handsome' over 'honest,' 'gentle,' and even 'intelligent.'
"Handsome is not so good," argued Junko, a petite sixty-year-old. "Handsome man means other women interested too much. If other women interested, handsome man is usually weak, even if also intelligent and gentle!"
Mariko agreed. "If husband is handsome, he will --" she paused, wrinkling up her forehead -- "How do you say uwaki in English?" I heard her whisper to Junko, the brightest in the class. "Affair," Junko hissed back, sotto voce. Mariko nodded. "Yes. He will affair!" she concluded triumphantly.
"All husband affair," said Mami, a jaded divorcee in her late forties. "Whether handsome or not so handsome."
A few of the quieter women nodded their agreement.
"But handsome husband affair more," appealed Junko. "Because more chance."
Kimiko sat in sullen silence. Out of the group of nine, she was the only one for whom 'handsome' had made the top three in the list. I had expected her to take our gentle ribbing good-naturedly, but she obviously did not.
'Kind' was Mariko's number one -- (and mine). 'Honest' was Mami's. Sumie, a jolly little woman whose husband had been abroad for over a decade, picked 'hard-working.'
Tomiko, another divorcee, surprised me. She had picked 'passionate' as her number one.
"Why is that so important to you?" I asked, imagining that her former husband must have been quite a cold fish.
"Because he will be gentle to helpless things," she said softly in Japanese.
Mami, her partner, and an avid dictionary reader, was faster than I was. Leaning down, she whispered something in Tomiko's ear.
Tomiko blanched. "Passionate not same as compassionate?
"No."
"Passionate no good for husband," Mami giggled. "Passionate too much sexy, all the time."
Tomiko grunted in disgust, crossing out passionate quite passionately.
Several weeks later, I used the same vocabulary game with a class of girls I taught at a local junior college for women. As I walked around the classroom, I noticed that one girl, Nobue, had folded her answer sheet neatly in half and drawn a line down the middle. In her careful, round copperplate, she was writing two separate lists of words. I stood behind her and watched, confused. On one list, 'handsome' was up at the top, followed by 'passionate,' 'amusing,' and 'carefree.' On the other, 'hard-working' was followed by 'domestic,' which in turn was followed by other worthy attributes.
"Why two lists?" I asked.
Nobue looked up at me with a perfectly straight face. She jabbed a finger at the first list. "Lover," she said simply, then pointed to the second. "This one for husband."
Kimiko could have learned one or two things from her.
