It was the fall of 1964 when my father bought his first color television. Everyone in his family wanted to watch the first Tokyo Olympics and I was being excited about watching Artistic Gymnastics.
In those days, color TV was a rare and precious commodity in a port town on the western edge of the main island of Japan. My father told me he was proud to be the owner of a color TV in my hometown Shimonoseki. Thanks to Tokyo Summer Olympics, it soon became popular nationwide.
There was an indoor antenna mounted on the top of the TV.
It was called ‘bunny ears.’
You had to adjust not only the length and the direction but also the angle and the position of its dipole antenna to get good picture quality and it was considered a man’s job.
Every time you saw noise or ‘snowfall’ on the picture of the TV screen, you could nag freely at your father to make a good and quick adjustment to get satisfactory picture quality. His role was to remove noise from the screen as quickly as possible.
It must have been a nerve-wracking assignment for the head of a family. He had all the responsibility on his shoulders, just like a major television network that had exclusive rights to televise Olympic events.
When I first saw her, a Czechoslovakian gymnast, I was in the fourth grade. Her name was Vera Caslavska and I instantly knew I fell in love with her at first sight.
She was beautiful, voluptuous, and charismatic. Even as a small child, I could tell there was something noble about her. Something defiant about the way she carried herself. She was different.
First of all, she was a Caucasian woman. She was dressed in a vivid red leotard and had a big blond bouffant hairstyle and I had never seen the shape of a white woman’s body in such an explicit way. My mother’s Asian body looked two-dimensional compared to her curvy Goddess body. It was a mystery to me and it fascinated me.
I admired her serious facial expression during the competition and I was charmed by her smile as she stepped onto the podium to receive a gold medal. To a Japanese fourth-grader, the first Tokyo Olympics in 1964 became all about her.
She was 22 years old then. But the difference in our ages did not bother me. She was my idol. I adored her and asked my father to buy me every weekly magazine that featured special articles and photos on Olympic gymnastics.
I can see how a little girl became hooked on superheroines in Hollywood movies. Superheroines wear a tight leotard made out of spandex and they are not only strong-willed and strong-minded but possess superhuman strength and ability as well.
Above all, they can defy gravity, that is, they can go on living the way they like without worrying about the pressures and trivia of daily life.
Vera Caslavska gave me a taste of the possibilities and she felt like a scent of first love coming from a faraway country.
Ⓒ2021 by Yoko Kajihara All rights reserved.
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