"Massa is coming back!"

"Eh?! Shibata's?"

"That's right. My third son, Masahiro, is coming home!"

"How many years has it been?"

"Maybe 20 years or so?"

Masahiro left Presidente Prudente, where he was born and raised, around May 1990 when he was 19 years old.

When I was a child, I lived with my parents and two older brothers, and there were five of us in my family. After school, I would play ball with my friends in the field, fly kites, invite everyone over to my house to eat my grandmother's specialty, botamochi, and watch TV with my mother at night. Those were very happy days.

But when Masahiro was eight years old, he faced the first major turning point in his life: his mother died of an illness, and everything changed.

At that time, his father ran a laundry and was very busy from morning to night. His mother had a weak heart since she was a child, so all the housework was done by his mother's mother, Masahiro's grandmother. Therefore, his grandmother came to the house to help from morning to evening.

My mother had always been sick, but when she passed away a month after her attack, it was a huge shock to our family. We had no idea what the future held.

Grandma encouraged everyone by saying, "Akemi fought her illness until the end, and is now watching over you all from heaven! It would be so disheartening to see her sad face!"

As time passed, life slowly returned to normal: my father was busy with his work, my brothers helped out at the laundry after school, and my grandmother continued to take care of all the household chores.

Six months after her mother died, an acquaintance of her father approached her with a marriage proposal. The bride was a single mother with a 15-year-old son who worked as a hairdresser in São Paulo. She wanted to live in the countryside because city life was too hard.

Although her father had no intention of remarrying, her acquaintance did not give up so easily. She visited her father many times after that, and left him with the catchphrase, "She works hard and sings well."

In the end, the plan was agreed upon and the ceremony was held at the community hall. The Shibata family became a large family.

But Masahiro's new life with his stepmother and stepbrother was not going well. He was bullied almost daily by his three biological and stepbrothers, all of whom were much younger than him. He complained to his stepmother, but she did nothing.

It became a daily routine for Masahiro to rush to his grandmother's house in tears. After his father remarried, his grandmother no longer had to come to the Shibata residence, so she spent every day relaxing at home.

The bullying at home did not stop, and Masahiro became more and more depressed. He began to hang around town during the day instead of going to school.

When his father found out, he tried to get Masahiro to obey by hitting and kicking him, his stepmother yelled at him, and his brothers were indifferent.

In the end, Masahiro went to live with his grandmother. After that, he started going to school, studied hard, got along well with his friends, and grew up healthy.

When she graduated from high school and started studying for her entrance exams, her grandmother was diagnosed with stomach cancer and began chemotherapy. Masahiro tried his best to take care of her, but unfortunately, after five months, she passed away.

Masahiro reached a second turning point.

"Do your best in Sao Paulo. Grandma is rooting for you," were the last words his grandmother left for Masahiro. He took these words to heart and resolved to put them into practice.

So I started living alone in São Paulo.

About two years later, Masahiro heard that three of his coworkers were going to work in Japan, and he became interested. Although he wasn't able to go with them in time, he gathered information and began to prepare to go to Japan, and finally he went.

27 years have passed since then, and Masahiro is now returning home for the first time.

Continued >>

© 2017 Laura Honda-Hasegawa