Yours is another thread I read on vacation and wanted to respond to. You wife sounds a lot like my mother, who is also Japanese and descendent from a noble family (they can trace ancestry back 400 years to a Japanese emperor). For my mom, this ancestry has been nothing but a curse, though you’d never know it by talking to her. She has always been wrapped up in her “Japanese pride” and carrying on the illusion she has in her mind. I think a lot of this is because she was essentially abandoned as a child. Coming from a wealthy pre WWII family, she was raised by a nanny and did not get much attention form her parent. As the youngest, she say her the oldest child, a boy, get all the attention and parade around like he was the next emperor. That set up one major complex in her!
I think part of the reason she married my dad and moved to the US was in rebellion to her parents and to set off on her own. She is very self driven and has a mind to carve her out destiny. One of her teaching to us is to “Be like a canal and not like a river” (meaning don’t follow the easy path like water, rather cut straight through to where you want to go).
Moving to the US has isolated her from feedback she would have had from her family over the years, so she has stayed stuck in the fantasy world of her childhood. She too loves the Japanese feudal romantic TV shows. Her life is a tragic story in many ways. The height of her life was when she was born, when her family was wealthy and had high status. Living in Hiroshima, they lost everything in the bomb (though everyone survived). She still lives well, but is alone, now that her second husband died of cancer a few years ago. So I see her life sort of along the lines of that movie “The Last Emperor.” She believes her destiny should have been to continue the royal heritage, rather than succumb to a normal, everyday, average lifestyle. Your wife seems to hold on to these fantasies too.
I am convinced this background created a narcissist in my mother. She was not like this when I was young. Anger and resentment over the years has set this condition into concrete. Could your wife be following the same path?
As to the question of what your wife wants from you, well, if it is anything like that which my mother always seemed to want in a husband, it is a compassionate caring husband, but also a very alpha male type ala the romantic, Japanese shogun or samurai idolizes in her fantasy. I think my mom really wants the caring and compassion, but since she never got this as a child, she was rationalized this a wanting a noble, stoic, dignified type of man, one not caving in to the weakness of emotion. How far are you from the image of a Japanese shogun or samurai?
My father is from a rural farming community in N. Carolina. He is the very opposite of what she idolizes. So she grew to despise him, seeing him as backward, and in ways like the peasant kids who used to torment her when she was sent to the country as an 8 year old to avoid the danger of air raids over Hiroshima. She really wanted, and still wants, a protector.
Japanese tend to be very caring and nurturing toward their children, but not in a huggy, touchy, feely, kissy way. I am guessing your wife’s family may have been like this too, and possibly less touchy and more stoic since they descend from samurai. So I am guessing your wife may suffer from abandonment issues, but was raised to rationalize her need for security as a sign of weakness, something that samurai are above. Does any of this ring a bell?
