Sometimes, brotherly love turns to brotherly 'poison'

Brotherly love? Brotherly “poison,” says Spa (Aug 1). The evidence is anecdotal but telling.

“He never could keep his promises,” says “Masashi Hosaka” (all names in this story are pseudonyms) of his younger brother. “He was always flighty and irresponsible. Still,” he says, “I can’t hate him.” Why not, one wonders? He has reason enough.

“Brother, help me out, I have no money” – a familiar refrain that began sounding when the brothers were in their teens (they’re 51 and 47 now). What sense of duty prompted Masashi to answer the call? Whatever it was, answer it he did – again and again, pocket money at first, then sums in the millions of yen, ostensibly to get “Takashi” (as we’ll call the younger brother) started in business.

He used it instead, at age 29,  to get married. Two children followed, then divorce arising from Takashi’s chronic infidelities. The settlement required Takashi to pay his ex 3 million yen up front, and 100,000 a month thereafter towards child support.

“Brother, help!” No, brother had had it. Let Takashi mop up his own mess.

Takashi had a better idea. He split and went missing. Whereabouts unknown.

Masashi’s own marriage plans, he says, were blasted by Takashi. They were in their 20s at the time. Masashi brought his fiancée home to meet the family. Takashi was there, drunk and abusive.

The fiancée wanted no part of such a brother-in-law and fled. And that, says Masashi, was the end of his love life.

Takashi’s ex-wife, broke and desperate, took to making demands on Masashi and his parents. How they dealt with her is not explained. Coldly, we infer.

Eight years went by. Suddenly – whose voice should that be on the phone but Takashi’s. “Brother! I’m settled, I’m working, I remarried, there’s a baby on the way, there are expenses – help!”

 Spa artfully leaves us to guess Masashi’s response. Surely it’s obvious, is the reader’s first thought. The second: maybe not.

Here’s another anecdote:

Harumi Sasaki, 48, is the youngest of three sisters. Also, it seems, the brightest. She went to the best universities, got the best marks, landed the best of jobs with the best of corporation, and seemed on her way.

Ten years ago she was abruptly fired. There’d been problems. For all her intelligence –  because of it perhaps – she seemed unable to get along with people.

She took it in stride. Her credentials were impressive; she’d get a job.

But she didn’t. Or rather she did, but… the offer in question was from a multinational investment bank whose chairman, she alleged, was involved in shady undertakings. What undertakings? On what evidence? Never mind. She knew.

All the world’s a conspiracy. So it had become, at least, for Sasaki. She threw herself into conspiracy theory literature, frequented conspiracy theory websites, posted her own theories or fantasies or whatever they are – and then came COVID-19, which drove her into an anti-vaccine frenzy. Were we to meekly submit while the government and medical establishment sought to kill us with supposed immunity?

Her notoriety and the attendant bashing affected her sisters, who found themselves collateral damage. They want no part of it – but family is family, there’s no opting out of it.

Well, maybe there is. Harumi in fact seems to have. Where is she now? Whereabouts unknown.

Some people, it seems, are born lucky. What is luck anyway? Simply what happens to happen? Or what we make happen? It’s an old and open question. It forces itself upon us when we consider, as Spa invites us to, two brothers, for one of whom life is smooth sailing. For the other it’s one rocky shoal after another.

Tadamichi Kayagi at 45 is a consultant, comfortably off and happy – or would be without his dark cloud of an elder brother Masaichi, 48, who went off the rails.

The brothers were born at a bad time, the elder in particular. The generation that came of age in the 1990s, just as the economic bubble of the ’80s was bursting, faced upon graduation companies curtailing hiring and relying more and more on part-time staff. Masaichi, fresh out of college, found the corporate doors closed and, faute de mieux, took a part-time job in a restaurant. He seemed prepared to work his way up – then lost hold and withdrew into the condition known as hikikomori, becoming a recluse in his old bedroom in his parents’ – and Tadamichi’s – home.

It was a widespread phenomenon whose effects are still with us. “Virtual reality,” then new, made it possible to live almost entirely online. The “real world” vanished – not, however, quite altogether. The thinness of the online air is suggested by a habit Masaichi acquired of opening his bedroom window wide and ranting at all hours of the night at the neighborhood and the world, annoying the neighbors and mortifying his family.

His younger brother took him to task: “You’ve got to stop this.” “You,” Masaichi shot back, “have all the luck! What have I done to deserve this?”

Masaichi met a woman online, then met her offline, then became a father. He would marry the woman, he said, and bring his wife and child to the family home. He spoke not a word of what he would do to support his new family. He seemed to think it not his problem.

Tadamichi loaned him 3 million yen, “to get him back on his feet.” But no footing was found. Tadamichi, meanwhile, securely and profitably employed, also married. In Hawaii on his honeymoon, he is inundated with fraternal email and phone calls: “You’re in Hawaii and I’m stuck here!” Where’s justice in the world? There is none, clearly.

© Japan Today