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A determined rebel's last days
By: Mayo Issobe
The Asashi Shimbun, April 5, 2002
Old age affects everyone, even someone as exceptional as Shizue Kato. So we realize from a recently published book on one of the greatest women in modern Japanese history, ``Kato Shizue 104-sai no Jinsei'' (Shizue Kato's 104 years, Daiwa Shobo, 1,700 yen), co-authored by Kato (1897-2001) and her daughter, Taki.
Anyone expecting to read reminiscences by one of the nation's earliest women's rights advocates might be disappointed, however. The book includes only a few references to Kato's role in introducing birth control to prewar Japan and a lifetime of work for women's and social causes, such as her 28 years as a Diet member.
Instead, it has an undertone of sadness, since it describes how Kato dealt with old age and the realities of how she was cared for in her final years, when she could no longer lead an independent life.
After all, this is the sequel to the 1989 book ``Ai, Shigoto, Kosodate Subete ga Seikatsu'' (Love, work and child-rearing are all part of life), also co-authored by the mother and daughter, who made a name for herself as a show-business coordinator and is now a media commentator.
The earlier book was captivating because of Kato's diverse life. She came from a well-to-do family and at 17 married Baron Keikichi Ishimoto, who taught her the importance of women becoming independent and encouraged her to study abroad. Her pre-World War II days in New York introduced Kato to U.S. birth control advocate Margaret Sanger and set the course for her later activities. When the baron left for Manchuria during the war, however, she single-handedly brought up their two boys. After their divorce, she married labor leader and later Japan Socialist Party Diet member Kanju Kato (1892-1978), with whom she built a happy life, bearing daughter Taki at the age of 48. After the war, she became one of the first women lawmakers in Japan. She received the United Nations Population Award in 1988.
In contrast to those activities, the new book recounts how Kato came to need constant care after she broke her leg a second time in a fall at her home at the age of 100. She also underwent operations for a cataract at 99 and tongue cancer at 102 and suffered general deterioration from old age.
The book, with a cover featuring azaleas Kato painted in 1941, is surprisingly candid about the negative side of growing old.
Taki recounts her mother's sense of indignation at being left alone with a bedpan underneath her long after she had finished using it and being treated rudely by a hospital nurse. Kato later tells her daughter, ``I am tired of putting up futile resistance; there's no point in staying alive.''
The daughter also depicts the older Kato, who, having survived tongue cancer, insists on going to the toilet every few minutes. When a well-meaning head nurse asks if she is all right, Kato just screams.
Her forgetfulness, drowsiness and frustration at her own inarticulate speech gradually increase. Kato becomes angry at not being understood when she asks whether she is wearing a cardigan when she actually has one on. She requests stronger coffee when she has already drunk two cups while half asleep.
At one point, the elder Kato tells her daughter, ``Growing old means weakening of the body, irreparable sorrow ... and many more things to despair.''
Nevertheless, there are signs that Kato remained an exceptional person. Even when bedridden, she keeps up with current events and asks her caregivers first thing in the morning about the top news in that day's paper. At age 101, she converses freely in English, learned decades earlier, with Helen M. Hopper, an American scholar who wrote a biography of her in 1996. To mark the year 2000, she is interviewed by a magazine just before her 103rd birthday about her meeting with Gen. Douglas MacArthur, head of the Allied occupation of Japan.
Of course, in her final years Kato received exceptional care. Whereas most elderly people in this country are cared for at home by tired daughters and daughters-in-law, with perhaps help from visiting helpers under the nursing-care insurance system, or are institutionalized to quickly become bedridden, Kato had three personal caregivers taking turns reading to her and taking her out not only on walks and shopping but also to exhibitions and restaurants.
This was made possible in great part by her daughter, who decided not to be directly involved in daily care so as to maintain the independent mother-daughter relationship the two had built over the years, and continued to work to pay for the best care she could arrange.
The book's postscript by freelance writer Maki Takeda, who compiled Kato's writings and diaries kept by her caregivers, drives home an important message: ``While the majority of elderly people pass away silently without voicing their alienation and loneliness, Shizue Kato repeatedly showed that the ideal in nursing care should be what care recipients really want.''
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© 2002 Global Action on Aging
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