米国人になるための花嫁学校

前回取り上げた予告編ですが、細かい内容に興味がある方はスクリプトを最後に載せましたので参照ください。

Yetの感覚って「yet=まだ」の図式で捉えていると難しいですよね。予告編では以下のようにありました。感覚的な話ですがbutよりも当たりが柔らかくなる感じです。

I’m not Japanese. I’m completely American.
And yet every morning you make miso soup.
Well, the food is a different story.

最後の締めでは流行りのgritが使われています。短い言葉ですので聞き取りには苦労しそうです。

The women who came over had a lot of grit and fortitude. I don't think I would have had the courage moving with a man that I didn't know, whose language I didn't speak, to a country that I really wasn't aware of without any backup. What these women represent is what is good about people, that they can forgive and they can go ahead and just start lives with people who used to be their former enemy.
（こちらに来た女性たちにはやり抜く力と屈しない精神力がありました。私にはそんな勇気はなかったと思います。知らない男性と移り住んだところが、話せない言語で、よく知らない国で、何の助けもないんですから。この女性たちが体現しているのは人間の良い面です。許して前に進み、かつて敵国だった人と生活を始めることができるのです）

さて1分12秒あたりに雑誌記事が出てきますが、The Saturday Evening Postという当時多くの家庭にあった週刊誌だそうです。下記の記事でどんな内容のことが日本で教えられていたのか紹介してくれていました。

2017/01/26, Society
The Curious Curriculum of the 1950s Red Cross 'Bride Schools'
Kristin Hunt

In the 1950s, Japanese women seeking a new life in America had to learn about more than just visa requirements. They also had to learn how to cook hamburgers, entertain neighbors, and confidently walk in high heels. Eyeliner application was, apparently, a vital skill.

These immigrants weren’t just any women. They were the war brides of American G.I.s, and some of them learned these lessons at the American Red Cross, which ran schools designed to prepare them for domestic life in the United States.

The American Red Cross Bride Schools sprang up in response to the wave of marriages between American soldiers and Japanese citizens following World War II. Thousands of G.I.s were stationed in Japan during the postwar Allied occupation, which led to several romances with local women. Although the statistics vary, scholars estimate somewhere between 30,000 and 50,000 such marriages took place through the 1950s.

花嫁学校に当たる英語はfinishing schoolなんですね。初めて知りました。

（オックスフォード）
finishing school
a private school where young women from rich families are taught how to behave in fashionable society

This superiority complex is evident in a 1952 Saturday Evening Post article reporting on the American Red Cross Bride Schools. The story is full of anecdotes about clueless Japanese students wearing too many slips under their dresses and slapping raw fish right on the stove. “They’ve been children in a nation’s defeat, have gone hungry, have cared for smaller brothers and sisters with the aid of a couple of old kimono sleeves in contrast to the dozens of diapers they’re now given for their own children,” the Post wrote. “Some are quick, some stupid, many average.”

In order to teach their pupils how to be Americans, the instructors had to emphasize the country’s gender roles. And as so many disappointed Rosie the Riveters learned after V.E. Day, America wanted its women back in the home. These Japanese war brides were destined to be housewives, just like their instructors. A typical class might include a tutorial on washing machines, or how to get crisp hospital corners when making the bed. Topics like U.S. history were covered. But cooking was perhaps the biggest part of the curriculum.

“I have a Japanese war bride mother and I grew up with a culinary repertoire of Sloppy Joes, pineapple upside-down cake, spaghetti, and tuna casserole,” says Elena Creef, a professor of women’s and gender studies at Wellesley College. “It’s kind of hysterical. How did my mother learn to master these really basic, slightly awful all-American dishes? Well, she was trained. I guess those lessons were taught very well.”

生活単語って実際に暮らしていないとナカナカ難しいですよね。ベットメーキングのあの角がhospital cornersと言うのも初めて知りました。こういうのは辞書の説明を読んでもイメージしづらいのでYoutubeの方が効果があります。



（オックスフォード）
sloppy joe
finely chopped meat served in a spicy tomato sauce inside a bun (= bread roll)

（ウィズダム）
sloppy joe
｟米｠スロッピージョー〘スパイスの利いた挽き肉とトマトソースをはさんだパン〙.



（オックスフォード）
hospital corners
a way of folding the sheets at the corners of a bed tightly and neatly, in a way that they are often folded in a hospital

（ジーニアス）
hospital corners
シーツの隅の三角折り＜病院で、たるみが出ないようにマットレスの下に折り込むこと＞

The Saturday Evening Postという雑誌名だけだとピンとこない人もいると思いますがあのNorman Rocwellによる表紙のイラストを見れば、「ああ、あれか」となるのではないでしょうか。

（ロングマン）
ˌSaturday ˌEvening ˈPost, The
a popular US family magazine that started in 1821 and continued until 1969. It contained news, short stories, humorous cartoons, and reviews. Pictures by Norman Rockwell often appeared on its cover.

（オックスフォード）
The Saturday Evening Post
a US magazine established in 1821 and published each week. It became one of America's most popular general magazines from the 1920s to the 1960s and was known especially for its covers painted by Norman Rockwell and its fiction by such writers as William Faulkner and F Scott Fitzgerald. It stopped being published in 1969 but began again in 1971 and is now published six times a year.

週刊から隔月刊になっているようですが、今でも発行されているとは驚きです。

（トランスクリプト）
The emperor is telling us “we lost the war”. We lost everything. It was a nightmare.

After Japan’s defeat in 1945, half a million American soldiers and 5,000 civilians came to Japan to work for the occupation.

The original order was that they’re not to fraternize with the local people. But this quickly became unworkable. Lots of romances developed.

American did look more attractive. They’re well-fed, happy-go-lucky. They had tremendous appeal to young girls.

By the late 1950s, tens of thousands of Japanese women and American men had married and moved to the United States.

I wasn’t in love with him. I don’t even knew him. I just took a chance. I want to get out.

They had to assimilate. So they were not encouraged to speak Japanese at home.

I think the most difficult thing for the girls to learn here has been walking on high heels.

In my in-laws, they don’t want call me Hiroko. They call me Susie.

We see pictures of you with your mother-in-law and sisters-in-law. Everyone seems to be happy and having a good time.
It’s supposed to look that way in the picture.

Three daughters lived in the shadow of a story they wanted to understand.

I never really saw her as a mother because compared to the other mothers that I knew she didn’t act at all like them. I think the biggest challenge she faced was that she was raising American kids.

How were you able to go over those hurdles? Is it just because you were tough and stubborn?
And also very proud.

I’m not Japanese. I’m completely American.
And yet every morning you make miso soup.
Well, the food is a different story.

The women who came over had a lot of grit and fortitude. I don't think I would have had the courage moving with a man that I didn't know, whose language I didn't speak, to a country that I really wasn't aware of without any backup. What these women represent is what is good about people, that they can forgive and they can go ahead and just start lives with people who used to be their former enemy.