An Oldie But A Goodie

She explained that the temple had been in her family for over 500 hundred years. Her father was born in a temple and became a monk and her mother was the daughter of a monk. Their marriage was arranged and they had two daughters. The daughters, daughters of monks, were expected to have arranged marriages, too. That way, the family would retain responsibility for the temple.

One daughter studied in France, met an Italian man and moved to Switzerland. When the Italian man came to ask for the daughter’s hand in marriage, the father, it was explained to me, stayed in bed crying.

The next daughter met the monk to whom her own marriage was to be arranged. The daughter didn’t like the monk and so refused to marry. The father threw her out. They didn’t speak for a year.

Because the daughter refused to marry, the family adopted a young man, a son to take over responsibility for the family’s temple.

It’s an amazing story, isn’t it? What’s even more amazing is that this didn’t happen a hundred years ago in Japan. This happened two years ago in Japan.

Yesterday, David and I met the young woman who refused to marry. She is one of my favorite students. We met her father, the monk, and her mother. My student took us to a tiny soba shop where the soba is handmade and then she took us to her family’s temple to view the gardens. After, she served us matcha and wagashi in the family’s five hundred year old home. We sat on cushions on the tatami floor and a stone frog peered in the window at us, his head tilted in wonder at the scene.