That time I grabbed Justice by the balls
how responsibility is maybe just a feeling I like to feel. and some links to tap on at the end with some weekly photos in between.
My little brother is in town. Little as in a 26 year old dude actually, he’s in town for a month after living in Canada for almost two years now. He’s moving to NYC (!!) soon so he’s back home temporarily. My brother doesn’t come up in my day-to-day conversation with friends, we are not entirely super close, and I actually don’t know a lot about his life nor does he know mine. Having a (little) brother who is 7 years younger than you comes with a job: mothering. I never disliked it though and I thought I was inherently good at taking care of people. I didn’t just take care of my brother or the house as the eldest daughter, but I did the same outside of the house as well. I was, and am a natural.
There’s a memory I distinctly remember when I was about ten or eleven years old. We were in the US, and I was ‘tutoring’ him on his daily math tasks or whatever my parents were throwing at him at age four or five. My brother was never a sit-down-quietly-study-type —that was me—he was impatient and refused to be a ‘good’ student. I came up with a clever idea to give him a reward every time he gets something right; a couple of M&M chocolates. He repeatedly didn’t get it right, and got frustrated and stood up from the table and threw all the M&Ms on the floor. The diligent teacher that I (thought) was, turned furious. However, I was a patient little girl too. I had him have his fit and picked up the M&Ms for him, and the rest — well I actually have no idea what happened after that.
There are a lot of photos of us together back then on the table across or next to each other, a scene where I’m attempting to tutor him something and he is putting several pencils in his nostrils for the camera. There’s a famous day in the Koiwai family that my obachan will always, without a doubt, tell strangers proudly how great of a big sister I was. It was my ojiichan’s funeral. My brother being so little, it was impossible for a baby to stay still for hours and hours and listen to a priest's chant. Mom would have to be by my dad’s side as the wife of the eldest son, so I will naturally pick up the pieces and carry my brother up and down the stairs to calm him down. I do distinctly remember taking care of him that day, and my obachan was completely surprised by how much of a ‘second mother’ I was to my brother. “It was just so remarkable to see her go up and down the stairs,” she told everyone. My brother was probably about 1 years old, and that will put me at just around 8. Indeed, I was always too responsible, too self-aware from a very young age.
At some point I took being responsible very seriously. There’s a moment in time that was the turning point of my responsible era. It was a true testament that I hated conflict, and all that I ever want in life is to be a part of something and for everyone to be happy. Whether I was forming my morals, ethics or trying to seek justice at this time of my life, I know for one thing that I was yearning for unity.
At junior high school, I was on the tennis team. It was one of the toughest sports teams in our school. We had no time to mingle with the boys outside of school, all that we did was play tennis. In 7th grade, which is chuugaku ichinen-sei in Japan, my grade’s team split into two because a couple of us (not myself) didn’t want to do the things we were “supposed to do.” Looking back, I think it was for a good cause though. We were resisting a tradition that we thought was bullshit, or what some of us thought. We were GenZ of our time. If you were in a sports team in Japan, there’s a lot of these weird “sports team rules” that we had to all practice and learn. It doesn't have anything to do with sportsmanship, and we’ve collectively over the years created new semantics of the term. Sportsmanship meant unreasonable conformity.
For instance, in the hallways, when we see our senpai’s (our seniors), we have to stop, bow three times in a row and say “konnichiwa” three times. (lol) It was a ruthless tradition that the seniors made for the young ones to fear them. We had rules not to have our skirts shorter than the older ones, (if you are caught, you’ll be called after school) first year students weren’t allowed to sit in the locker rooms, only the senior students and we had to change into our training clothes within a five minute window. If you took longer, you were no good. Some of my peers were not happy about this rule, they stopped saying hello in the hallways, they rolled their skirts up high like the seniors do, and they ultimately boycotted practice. They demanded from the coach that these rules are excessive and it doesn't have anything to do with playing tennis. I was in fact at the time a potential team captain candidate and I felt like I had to step up and say something about our behavior and what will be the middle ground to resolve this situation. Our coach suggested that since tensions were high between my grade and the year older ones, we should be in one classroom and talk about how to resolve this and how we can stop fighting: conflict resolutions. Some of us stood up and said our peace, and of course the girls who stirred up the whole thing in the first place, never spoke up. I felt the need to say something, and stood up as the spokesperson of the grade. I did this because I didn’t like the tension that we all hated each other at the time, but I also wanted to perform my diligence as the captain-to-be. After we all took out our frustration on each other, a lot of crying was involved (including myself), we went back to practice the next week with morale. A clean slate. We won’t attack each other because the girls had 1 cm shorter skirts and the younger ones will keep the greeting tradition in a reasonable matter. (Like bowing and greeting them once. lol) Fun fact; it’s now a well known fact that our grade was the biggest troublemaker throughout the team’s history.
This day was monumental to me because it was the first time in my adolescence that I knew I wanted to fix something. I wanted to amend something that wasn’t even my fault to begin with— all because conflict didn’t sit right with me. I was always a team player, and I felt responsible that if my grade was causing trouble, it was upon me to do something about it. When the conflict and boycotts were happening, I felt so responsible for the whole thing. It was my grade and my friends causing trouble but I wanted to take on the responsibility and be the bad guy. I felt like I was helping the situation, I was helping the teachers (the adults that I craved validation from a lot) and I liked the feeling.
There’s a thing called the ”eldest-daughter syndrome.” Apparently, it’s a thing on TikTok as well.
Often, the eldest feels the pressure to perform well in school or do right in everything (parents also often focus on the first born to be perfect as well) and gender plays a role in it too. Women tend to take on the invisible labor around the house and are the subject of listening to other family members or taking care of them if needed. The article I linked above suggests that the eldest daughter often feels and is more stressed because of the responsibilities or pressures that come along with the role. I don’t know if I’ve particularly been stressed out by being the eldest, but I can tell you that the pressure is something I still feel every once in a while. Having babies is one. I don’t ever want pressure to be the reason to have a kid, but since I’m the eldest, and now that I have a partner, it feels like the pressure of doing the traditional things in life is now up to me. My parents will not ask me about it, and I can only assume but I know that as parents, they want a grandchild before they are too old.
I wonder sometimes if it’s just all in my head and that being responsible for something is just how I want to feel: to feel in control. Did bringing people together during the incident at school felt good? It did, but did people think that I was too self-absorbed or overbearing. I should have just done what the rest of the girls were doing and be a rebel once in my life. Did I love the comment my obachan and mom made every time they referred to me as my brother’s ‘second mom?’ Absolutely, but I wonder If I should just act like my age and be more resistant to conformity. Alas, conformity made me and this is for another time.
Things I read and enjoyed
I read this profile on Lorne Michaels because I just listened to an episode of Armchair expert with Susan Morrison, who wrote the piece. While I mostly didn’t understand the Loren Michaels quotes lol, I liked that it includes a lot of him in it given how mysterious he is.
The recent
essay on memory and forgetting was such a great read. She mentioned Sarah Manguso’s book Ongoingness, which I was unfamiliar with. I looked into some of her writing and this one from the excerpt of the book is thought provoking. Like why do we document, and the need for it, and also not documenting the things that ‘matter’ ?This piece by Jia Tolentino was amazing. I love her writing a lot and it’s about how to comprehend what’s fake and real. Talks about AI and her children having access to it in a couple years, and words and images feels … opaque.
Fake images of real people, real images of fake people; fake stories about real things, real stories about fake things. Fake words creeping like kudzu into scientific papers and dating profiles and e-mails and text messages and news outlets and social feeds and job listings and job applications. Fake entities standing guard over chat boxes when we try to dispute a medical bill, waiting sphinxlike for us to crack the code that allows us to talk to a human. The words blur and the images blur and a permission structure is erected for us to detach from reality—first for a moment, then a day, a week, an election season, maybe a lifetime.
Will I do this next time I go out to eat? Absolutely. I’m a social experimentalist.
I was on the waitlist for the Venroy skirt for the longest time!!! and finally a restock alert! I got M before and it was too big, so I sized down to S. Can’t wait for this summer staple.
alright x thanks for reading and until next time xx