Today, we hear from Becky Melby and Oku-san. Becky:

In 1924 my grandparents, Harold and Alice Foght, traveled to Japan. My grandfather, a professor, was there to study Japanese education and give lectures. My grandmother wanted to come along as “excess baggage” and to “cheer and encourage” her husband. It had to have been a heart-wrenching decision, as they left behind a three-year-old—my father.
My grandmother’s–Oku-san’s–determination to go everywhere her husband–Foto-san–visited, caused no small stir in a culture where a woman’s place was in the home. When she appeared at male-only gatherings in her fashionable American sleeveless dresses, she was immediately offered shawls. After realizing that bare arms were considered immodest, she sewed sleeves on all her garments. Another culture shock was the ricksha. My grandmother was not a tiny woman, and, besides feeling silly, was in great fear that rickety-looking vehicles would collapse under her “Western avoirdupois.” Another custom that surprised them was the furo, or common bath, attended by nesans eager to help one disrobe!
On many occasions, this prim and proper white woman ventured out bravely her own. In Tokyo, determined to see the flowers of Sheba Park, she passed women openly nursing babies and workers using the ditches as toilets, and then found that beautiful Sheba Park was crowded with huts of refugees from the recent earthquake. She soon found herself in Zogoji Temple where she reported being “quite overcome by the atmosphere” and would have bowed in reverence to her own God, but “true Anglo-Saxon reticence” stopped her.
Overall, Oku-san left an impression that may have paved the way for a bit of freedom for some of her Japanese sisters. In time, their male companions “confessed somewhat reluctantly to new light on the position of women in Japan.” They wrote the book Unfathomed Japan upon their return.

In my book Dream Chasers, my heroine April Douglas is very open about her fears, especially the two biggest–heights and storms. I have no idea what my grandmother’s fears were, but I have to believe that being the first white woman to set foot in many rural areas of Japan was a set-up for some anxiety attacks. The one thing both of these women have in common is their determination to put themselves in risky situations in order to experience life to the full.
Lyn– I am a third generation author. My father’s sister, Thelma Foght Jones, wrote a book about her family called Skinny Angel in honor of Grandma Foght who loved her homemade biscuits and always said that in heaven she’d be a “skinny angel.”
I also want to let you know your blog has started something! I’m reading, really savoring Unfathomed Japan as if I were sitting down to tea with my grandparents. My own mother never read it because she thought it was a dry old history book. So here I am, a grandmother myself, finding out that my father’s parents were witty, creative, funny, and wonderful writers! There just may be a historical fiction novel in this someday.
My middle name came from my grandmother and I now share it with our youngest grandchild, Lillyanne Alice, who was born on Christmas Eve. I can’t wait to tell her stories of her gutsy great-great-grandma.

Thanks for sharing that with us, Becky. It’s quite a heritage that you have from the strong women who have gone before you!