”Mid-August, you’re gonna be goin’ to a marriage meeting. And I’ll say this now, it ain’t a meeting you get to turn down,” Masayuki said.
Masayuki, his father, was a hairdresser who normally fired off one bad joke after another and never took anything seriously. Right now, though, he was giving off a strange tension that Sosuke had never felt from him before.
Sawamizu Sosuke could not make sense of a single word of it, so he turned to his mother Satomi, sitting beside his father.
”Mum, Dad, what are you even on about?” Sosuke asked.
Satomi was giving off the same heavy air as Masayuki.
”It’s exactly what your father said. You’re going to a marriage meeting after Obon1, and you’re going to marry the other party as fast as you can. This is decided,” Satomi told him.
”Hah?” he said.
Sosuke could not get his head around any of it, so Masayuki started explaining how they had gotten here.
Sawamizu Sosuke was twenty-one, a student at a bottom-tier university in Tokyo. Both his parents were hairdressers, and together they ran a small salon in Mitaka. His mother’s family were ordinary working people, but he had heard before that his father’s family carried the blood of one of the wealthiest houses in Japan.
He had never taken any of that seriously. If it were true, his brother Kensuke, four years older, would never have studied that hard and sat the civil service exam in college. He would have used the connections and walked straight into some good company. Instead, Kensuke had passed on his own and now worked at the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building.
His father’s story went back to the early Showa2 years. The Sawamizu family Sosuke was born into was a branch of a branch of the Iwashimizu family, an old house in northern Kyushu.
The Iwashimizu had been great landowners since the Edo3 period, with vast farmland and mountain forest, and their income had come mainly from farming and forestry.
Then the Meiji4 era arrived and Japan modernized fast, opening business chances in every field. The Iwashimizu spotted coal, which at the time was a product with a future, bought up the mines nearby, and got into the coal business.
Coal was a spectacular success, and they opened mine after mine until the Iwashimizu stood among the wealthiest houses in the country. After the war, though, oil replaced coal as the main energy source, and most of those mines closed.
Here too the Iwashimizu’s business sense held. Using the mountains they already owned, which yielded limestone in huge quantities, they started a cement company. Iwashimizu Cement rode the wave of rapid economic growth and pulled off a clean switch away from coal as the main business.
After that the family kept starting companies outside cement, and now, with the holding company Iwashimizu Holdings at the top, they owned more than twenty group firms.
Masayuki’s story went back further still, to when the Iwashimizu were coal kings. The eldest son, Shusaku, was at a gathering of relatives when he fell for Tae, a daughter of the Sawamizu family, who were distant relations. Shusaku begged the Sawamizu to let him have her.
But Tae was an only daughter, and without a husband coming into the house the family line would end. If he wanted her, then Shusaku would have to marry in. This was an age when the survival of the house mattered far more than it does now.
The head of the Iwashimizu at the time was furious at first that his eldest son would marry into another house. But he understood the Sawamizu’s position too. Once he saw that Shusaku could not be talked out of it, the two families talked it through and settled on this: Shusaku would marry into the Sawamizu as an adopted son-in-law7, and the Iwashimizu would be inherited by the second son, Yusaku.
With one condition attached. If the day ever came when the Iwashimizu had no heir, or had only a daughter, then the Sawamizu would always provide a son, adopted or married in.
Masayuki’s face was heavy in a way that had nothing to do with the pun-cracking father Sosuke knew.
”This is the story of your great-grandfather and great-grandmother. And the Iwashimizu have reached the point where they absolutely have to take in a husband for the daughter,” Masayuki said.
His mother Satomi cut in. “See, Kensuke got married recently, didn’t he? He and his wife want a few years just the two of them, but they’ve said they’re fine coming back to us eventually and living together. So Kensuke is the one who inherits the Sawamizu. Which means the one who goes out as an adopted son is you.”
”Don’t go decidin’ my life for me, man!” Sosuke shouted.
Sosuke was furious at his parents for planning out his future without a single word to him. Satomi tried to smooth it over.
”Now, now, don’t get so angry. Think about it properly. This isn’t a bad deal for you either. You’re already a third-year, aren’t you? And summer’s nearly over. Have you done anything about finding a job?” Satomi coaxed.
Masayuki’s face turned smug. “No way this one’s done anything like that. The kid’s lived his whole life by the seat of his pants.”
That made Sosuke angry, but he could not argue. His life so far had been exactly that, one thing after another with no plan behind any of it.
He had not studied for either the high school entrance exam or the university one. He had simply gone to whatever school his ability could reach at the time. Since starting university it had been nothing but hanging out and part-time work, and there was nothing he could point to and say he had studied it. He knew himself that a job he would be happy with was going to be hard to get at this rate.
Masayuki spoke as if he could see straight through all of that.
”Marry into the Iwashimizu and ya live in a huge house, eat good food every day, and end up an executive at a big company. You’d have a life ya can’t even picture right now. I’m tellin’ ya, this whole thing is a chance for you,” Masayuki said.
Sosuke did not know how to answer, so Satomi gave him a smile.
”At least look at the photo of the other party. She’s a real beauty,” Satomi said.
Then she pulled the marriage-meeting photograph out of the paper bag she had set beside her.
The woman in the photo was beautiful, just as his mother said. She wore a pale pink kimono with her hair pinned up, and her eyes were sharp and proud, the outer corners tilted up just slightly. Her nose was straight, her rather large mouth looked healthy, and she had the beauty of a man’s role in a Takarazuka5 troupe.
Something about her bothered him, though. He could not shake the wrongness of it.
”Her name is Iwashimizu Yukino. Born and raised in Tokyo, and the family home is a mansion in Shirokanedai. After graduating from a top private high school in the city she went to university in America to study business. After that she joined Iwashimizu Holdings, which her father Kosaku runs, and she’s now a senior managing director. Beauty and brains, that phrase might as well have been invented for her,” Satomi rattled off.
Listening to his mother, Sosuke worked out what the wrongness was.
”Mum, how old is she?” Sosuke asked.
Satomi did not answer him. She just laughed, ho ho ho.
”Who cares how old she is? Beautiful, smart, and rich. Isn’t that plenty?” Satomi said with a laugh.
”It ain’t plenty. She looks way older than me. How old is she?” he pressed.
Satomi went quiet. Masayuki, who had been giving off that heavy air all this time, suddenly burst out laughing, and in an instant he was the usual cheerful pun-cracking dad again.
”Well, I can’t exactly keep it from the kid. Yukino is thirty-seven this year,” Masayuki said.
”Thirty-seven?! That’s sixteen years older than me, man!” Sosuke yelped.
”Don’t say it like that. With women, that stretch from there into their forties is when they’re at their best, ya know,” Masayuki said.
”That’s your taste, Dad! I’m twenty-one!” Sosuke shot back.
The tension broke with the father and son going at it, and Satomi was laughing.
”Well, you do need to know the circumstances before the meeting. I’ll tell you everything we know,” Satomi said.
According to his mother, Yukino turned thirty-seven this month. She had married the first time at twenty-seven, to the third son of a former noble family. The marriage fell apart in three months and the husband left the Iwashimizu house.
The second marriage came when she was thirty-two, to the second son of a heavyweight politician, a sharp man. That one did not last six months either. Both divorces were put down to irreconcilable differences6.
”Twice divorced? And what does irreconcilable differences even mean? Is her personality that bad, yeah?” Sosuke asked.
”I don’t think it’s that, but I’ve heard she’s a little unusual,” Satomi admitted.
”Unusual, that’s not even…” he trailed off.
Masayuki cut in on Sosuke’s slumped shoulders, his voice strong.
”Now, here’s the important part. The Iwashimizu parents want Yukino to marry a third time. She’s an only daughter. If she don’t have a child, the house ends. As an old and distinguished family, they can’t let that happen. But twice divorced, and a good match is hard to find. So out comes the old promise between your great-grandfather and the Iwashimizu. You marry in, and you put a child in Yukino,” Masayuki said.
”That’s right. Yukino is thirty-seven. There’s an age limit on a woman having children. Plenty of people have them in their forties, of course, but her time is definitely getting shorter. That’s why the offer came to the Sawamizu, who can’t refuse a husband,” Satomi added.
Sosuke turned away and sulked. “…What am I, a stud horse…”
”Who cares. Do it a lot with a woman like that and make a kid. Might even work out that once the kid’s born ya get thrown out with a huge settlement and get to start your life over,” Masayuki said cheerfully.
”You! Don’t say stupid things to your son!” Satomi snapped.
Listening to his parents, Sosuke’s mood sank lower and lower.
Trivia:
1. The Iwashimizu family’s history shows a pattern of pragmatic adaptability, from coal to cement to a holding company, and this same pragmatism now extends to arranging a marriage to secure an heir, treating family members as strategic assets.
2. The old promise between the Sawamizu and Iwashimizu was made generations ago as a safeguard, and its activation now shows how the past can reach into the present to dictate the lives of people who had no say in the original agreement.
3. Sosuke’s father Masayuki switches from unusual seriousness back to his usual joking self the moment the age gap is revealed, suggesting the heavy air was partly an act to make Sosuke take the situation seriously before the tension broke.
Translation Notes:
1 ↩ A Japanese Buddhist holiday in mid-August honoring ancestral spirits. The timing places the marriage meeting shortly after this traditional period, grounding the story in real-world Japanese culture.
2 ↩ A period in Japanese history spanning from 1926 to 1989, during the reign of Emperor Showa. The reference establishes the historical depth of the family’s story and the era when the original promise was made.
3 ↩ A historical period in Japan from 1603 to 1868, characterized by peace and isolation. The reference grounds the Iwashimizu family’s status as landowners in a specific historical context.
4 ↩ A period of rapid modernization in Japan from 1868 to 1912. The reference explains how the Iwashimizu adapted to new business opportunities during Japan’s modernization.
5 ↩ An all-female musical theater troupe in Japan known for its elaborate performances, where women play both male and female roles. The comparison describes Yukino’s beauty as resembling the handsome, sharp features of an actor who plays male roles, emphasizing her striking and somewhat masculine attractiveness.
6 ↩ A legal term used in divorce proceedings indicating that the marriage cannot be repaired. The phrase is preserved as a standard legal term, but Sosuke’s confusion about its meaning highlights the vague and unsatisfying nature of the explanation.
7 ↩ A Japanese marriage custom where the husband is adopted into the wife’s family and takes her family name, especially when the wife’s family has no male heir. The term is preserved to maintain the cultural specificity of the arrangement, which is central to the plot.