Eggplants and Butterflies

Fifty years on…

Harold: Never thought I'd see this place again. Almost no change. Look - the house still stands. Akiya now, huh?
Hiroshi: No one wanted it. The younger people have left. The old ones stayed, but they are fewer every year.
Harold: Same names. Hando. Ikeda. I used to greet them every morning. Eggplants! I used to grow eggplants in this very garden.
Hiroshi: Hando’s grandson plants them every spring. He doesn’t know why—just knew eggplants always grew here.
Harold: This was my place, my rhythm. Wake up, water the garden, drink tea in the quiet. And the butterflies. They still look the same. Generations on.
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Voice-over
Hiroshi remarks that there are so few people now. Cities pull them away.

Black radishes

Over lunch in the park, Mieko and Reiko disagree about colors of vegetables.

...

Mieko: Doesn’t look right. It’s not normal.

Reiko: What’s normal for a radish?

Mieko: White. Should be white.

Reiko: Black’s the new fashion.

Mieko: Vegetables don’t have fashions.

Reiko: Why shouldn’t they? Vegetables are just as entitled to change their appearance as we are.

Mieko: I grew up eating white radishes, I won’t eat a black radish.

Reiko: Could this be racism?

__________

Voiceover

There are twin streaks of experimentalism and traditionalism in Japanese culture. Reiko seems to represent the “experimenter”, perhaps a person who is not afraid to “think outside the box” or question conventional wisdom. Mieko is maybe a traditionalist. Reiko extends the discussion on vegetables to gently tease Mieko about her views on race and ethnicity.

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