カールのバッグ、狼の歯 A Puffy Snack and Wolf’s Teeth

Episode 1｜The Snack Bag

One morning, as I was getting ready for kindergarten, my mother was muttering something under her breath, an irritated look on her face. She shoved a single bag of Karl — one of those large, puffy corn snack bags — into my tiny kindergarten shoulder bag. It barely closed.

I didn’t understand what was happening. I just took the bag and went to kindergarten.

The moment I arrived, I felt it — something was wrong.

That day was a field trip. Every other child was wearing a smock, the special outfit for excursions. Every other child had a backpack. Every other child had a lunch.

I was in my regular clothes. I had a small shoulder bag. I had Karl.¹

In that moment, a flash: my mother at home, muttering under her breath, pressing the bag of Karl into my tiny bag like a puzzle piece.

The teacher came over and spoke to me. After that, I don’t remember anything.

Up until that moment, I can still replay it — a clear, vivid film in my mind.

Episode 2｜The Wolf’s Teeth

On the first day of Yamaha Music School, there was an orientation. The teacher was beautiful — young, with a bright smile and slightly prominent canine teeth. I didn’t know the word for it. So I leaned close to my mother and whispered, in the way children do when they want to share something secret and delightful:

“Mom, that teacher has teeth like a wolf. Isn’t that cute?”

My mother stood up.

In front of everyone, in a loud, clear voice, she turned to the teacher and said: “I’m so sorry — my daughter just said your teeth look like a wolf’s. I apologize.”

For a moment, I couldn’t understand what had just happened.

Even at four years old, I understood a basic principle: if you say nothing, if no one notices, you’re safe. There was no need to announce something that might cause trouble. You just stay quiet.

But this person — this adult who was supposed to know so much more about the world than me — had just stood up and declared it herself. Loudly. And then apologized for it.

Why would anyone do that?

My brain couldn’t process it. The betrayal hit first. Then something else, quieter: Is she alright?

I have no idea why this memory is so vivid when so much else from that age is gone. Which is probably why I’ve come to believe she had some kind of condition she was never diagnosed with.

¹ Karl: A beloved Japanese corn puff snack by Meiji, sold since 1968. Famous for its large, puffy yellow packaging — significantly bulkier than its contents. The bag was roughly the size of a small child’s backpack. Sales were discontinued in eastern Japan in 2017, but it remains available in western Japan.

For English readers: A brief cultural note

In Japan, there is a concept called seketai (世間体) — an intense, almost reflexive awareness of how one is perceived by others. When my mother stood up and loudly apologized to the music teacher, it was not malice. It was not an intent to harm. It was most likely a panic response: I must not be seen as the mother of a child who disrespects a teacher. In Japan’s patriarchal family structure, women are expected to be, at all times, the model wife and model mother. My mother was herself a victim of that system. But that same conditioning led her — unconsciously — to use her daughter as a tool for managing her social image. Harm without malice. This, I think, is the particular texture of the Japanese toxic parent problem. It does not announce itself. It does not leave obvious marks. It seeps.