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THE BUSH WARBLERS are announcing spring as I cross a small stone bridge into an old Japanese garden for my first interview. A stone lantern peeks out from behind a pine tree with a wrinkled bark. The branch of a babe tree is being pulled hither by an anchored rope to encourage growth in this direction. I press the doorbell and moments later hear a door slide open at the far side of the garden. A woman with golden white hair, grasping a prettily painted cane peers out. She tells me to wait while she comes around to the front door.

Once I'm invited inside, the Stone Bridge Lady opens the shoji paper-screened doors onto a cavernous twelve-tatami-mat room off the entrance. "I used to entertain people in this room but with my bad knee now, I canÆt sit on the floor anymore."

I peer into the elegant space: a large calligraphic scroll hangs in the alcove; fresh, white shoji doors suggest another room beyond, and oh, what's that hulking in the corner? A life-size statue with a menacing face, wearing armor: it's a samurai! A horned helmet sits atop the head, a sword hangs to his side, ready to butt and lance the first intruder. Leaning down from above is a framed photo of a dapper-looking man who must be her deceased husband.

"The house is seventy years old," she explains. "We built it after we married." Her voice echoes down the polished wooden-floored corridor as she leads me to the back of the fourteen-room house and ushers me into a room with a Western-style sofa. "I was born in Taisho 14 [1925], you know. I'm ninety-five. Not many of my classmates are still around. I'm one of four children, all girls. I'm the youngest and the only one left.

"In the Meiji period [1868-1912], my father was a fisherman. But then all the men had to go to war so they couldn't continue fishing. My father had to go too. Those of us born in the Taisho era [1912- 1926], we had a tough time. There were always wars going on. When I was in elementary school, we had the Chinese Incident— our war with China— then when I was in high school there was the Pacific War. Our top military man at that time was Tojo Hideki.

"It was just after the war, during the US Occupation, when I married Ryosaku. His father and mine were cousins. At that time, when women married, they always went to the bridegroom's house and lived there. The oldest son would live in the same house as his parents and the younger brothers would set up a new household somewhere else— this system is called honke-bunke. The word honke refers to the parents' house, the family heritage home. Since I married the first son, I moved here into the honke house. I also took care of his parents as they aged.

"But eventually we tore down the old place and built this one, so the garden is much older than the house. I grew up in a different neighborhood, in Okujo. My family home is vacant now because my sisters went to live with their husbands when they married. I pay someone to cut the weeds around that house, but no one lives there.

"My husband went to Iwakuni with the Marine Corps for some years. It wasn't until he came back that I married him. I was twenty-three years old and he was one year older than me. At that time, no one owned much of anything. My mother bought me a kimono to get married in. I don't know how she found it or how she paid for it but I remember it was black with a pattern of Japanese maple leaves. The sleeve length was somewhere in between the long ones that an unmarried woman wears and the shorter sleeves of a married woman. This kimono with mid-length sleeves is called chuburi. After that, my younger relatives all borrowed mine. Seems like everyone got married in that kimono! But people don't wear chuburi anymore. I have it somewhere in a drawer.

"We spent two or three days getting ready for the wedding. In those days all functions were carried out at home, so my wedding was here. In those days getting married to someone who lived on the island was normal. We often married our cousins, so we all have the same name: Harada, Amano, Nishihara, Nakatsuka, Yamakawa. Lots of them!

"Anyway, after we married, I couldn't get pregnant. My husband really, really wanted a child so he talked to his brother about adopting one of his sons. But by then the brother had moved to the mainland and his wife didn't care for Shiraishi Island, so in the end, she wouldn't let the child come here and live with us. Well, we're an island so the life is different here.

"So then we thought we could adopt one of my older sister's sons, but that didn't work out either. You know that samurai statue in the front room? That's the traditional ornament to display in the house on the annual Boy's Day celebration in May. We bought that because we thought we would be adopting my nephew." — Chavez, Amy. "The Stone Bridge Lady." The Widow, The Priest, and The Octopus Hunter. Tuttle Publishing, 2022, pg.27-9