WHO IS MY FATHER?

I rushed to the hospital by taxi. “Your father is in critical condition,” my uncle had told me on the phone. After a 40 minute taxi ride, I reached the hospital. I took the elevator to the fourth floor and walked fast to my father’s room. I opened the door and found him lying on the bed with an oxygen mask on his face, wheezing. He was hooked up to an intravenous drip. A drop of yellowish liquid fell in a vessel hung on the pole. By the side of the bed was my uncle, who looked at me, looking relieved, nodded, and looked at my father’s face. A nurse was looking at the faint electrocardiographic wave going up and down on the dark screen by the bedside. I said in a small voice, “Dad….” His eyes looked at me momentarily. I thought he had recognized me. It was around eight o’clock in the evening. The nurse left the room saying she would come back soon. My father was breathing under the oxygen mask constantly wheezing.
I said to my uncle, “Uncle Ishida, thank you for calling me.”
“That’s all right. I happened to come and see your father here today and found him in serious condition,” he said.sn
“You must be tired. I’ll watch him. So please go home,” I said.
“OK, then. I wish I could stay here longer, but I am an old man. I must go and take a rest,” he said, stood up, and began to walk to the door, but instead of opening the door, he kept standing for a second as if he had remembered something. He returned to me and said.
“Takao, I have something to talk to you.”
“Oh, what is it?”
“But, not now. I can’t talk it to you now. If your father dies, I’ll tell you.”
“After he dies?”
“Yes, after that,” he said decisively, turned around, and left the room. I wondered why he couldn’t tell it to me just then. Why after my father dies? Did he have some secret?
The nurse came back and looked at the electrocardiographic screen. The wave had become feeble. She told me to call her at the nurse station if anything went wrong with my father. I thought it would not be long before he died. I stayed awoke at his bedside all during the night.
My father died around five on the morning of the next day. He was 75. He had been suffering from chronic heart disease. That evening the wake was held, and my uncle was among the relatives. After the wake was over, I had a chance to talk to him. I asked what was it that he had wanted to say to me.
He said, “Ah, yes, I said something like that, but it doesn’t matter now. Forget it. It’s just a trifle.”
“But you looked very serious when you said that. I thought it was something very important. Please tell me.”
“No, no, no. It’s not important. And, ah, everybody looks serious when his brother is going to die, don’t they? So, forget it,” my uncle said, but his tone of voice betrayed and he sounded as if he were hiding something very important.
After the funeral the next day, when the relatives were leaving my house, my uncle came to me and said, “I’ve decided to tell it to you.”
“Good, what is it?”
“I’m your father.”
I was taken aback. He must be joking, I thought.
“What? What do you mean? You are my father?”
“Yes, I am your father,” he said looking in my eyes.
My uncle sometimes cracked jokes, but this was not one, I thought. He looked serious. His eyes seemed to prove it.
Instantly I faced a dilemma. My father used to say to me when I was a boy, “Don’t believe your uncle. He is a bad man. He drinks a lot, doesn’t have a regular job. His wife always complains about him to me.” When I did something bad, my father always said to me, “Don’t behave like your uncle. You don’t want to be like your uncle, do you? I despise him. Don’t imitate him. OK, Son?” While I was a boy, I don’t think he visited my father often. My uncle and I only met with each other on occasions like at relatives’ weddings and funerals. We never went on a trip or played together. As I was a child, I wondered why my father and my uncle avoided each other.
So if I followed my father’s advice, I shouldn’t believe my uncle’s words, but his face looked very serious.

PART 2

I said to him, “Really? You surprise me. Why are you….? How come, how come you are my father?”
I was totally confused. I could not stand on my feet steadily. I felt as if I were not myself. My father’s death had already hindered my mental balance, and what my uncle revealed had aggravated it further.
“Sorry to upset you, but believe me this is true. I am your father. I have always wanted to say this to you whenever I met you for the past, let me see, you are 40 years old, right, so for the past 40 years.”
“Do you mean my father adopted me from you when I was a baby? Am I an adopted child?” I said.
“No, you aren’t. You were born from your mother, but you know, the sperm was mine. Oh, don’t misunderstand me. Your mother and I didn’t have any sexual relationship. Actually, I gave my sperm to your father.”
My mother had died of cancer three years before.
“Why did you…. You mean my father asked you to give your sperm to him?”
“Yes, one day he came to my house and asked me for my sperm. Your parents had not had a baby for five years after their marriage, so I thought they decided to have a baby through artificial insemination.
“So, I gave mine to him. He then thanked me and hurried back home. Before leaving my house, he said he would mix his sperm with mine. After he left I wondered why he had said he would mix his with mine. Then I thought his sperm might be too weak or too few in number.”
(Later I found out that sperm in a test tube would be alive for two hours if kept at body temperature. Also, I learned that barren parents in 1950s conducted artificial insemination at home.)
I remembered that my father had said that he and my mother were very glad to have a baby after five years of marriage. My father married at the age of 28. He was 33 years old when my mother gave birth to me.
“So if he had mixed his sperm with yours. Then, the chance is 50-50. I may not be your son,” I said.
To accept what he said was to accept that my world had spun 180 degrees. The world I had lived in for 40 years would collapse with a thundering noise. What had I been, I thought. I would be nothing. My whole experience would turn into a daydream. My psychology resisted the news. I wanted my father to be my father. I felt irritated. Why keeping it secret for many years and all of a sudden reveal it to me? That’s too cruel, too harsh to bear.
“I understand you,” my uncle said. “You have been your father’s son for 40 years. And it is quite a shock to you. But try to put yourself into my shoes. I needed tremendous patience not to reveal the secret to you. But since your father died, I thought that would be a good chance and I thought if I had lost this chance I wouldn’t have another. I hope you’ll understand my feelings.”
My uncle paused for a moment and said, “O.K. Why am I so sure? Ever since you were born, I have been watching you up until now. What do you think is the big difference between your father and I? You see, he was active, talkative, and extroverted, and likes sports, while I like reading books, hate sports, and am introverted. I am good at mathematics but he was not. Do you understand now? I know you don’t like playing ball games, but you prefer reading books and writing essays. I know you were excellent in mathematics. Thanks to your ability in math, you were able to enter the department of technology of Nagoya University. Ah, I remember you won a prize in the All Japan High School Students Essay Contest. I still keep the newspaper article in my album with all your photographs. That was the time when I became confident that you were my son.”
I was just listening to him. His talk sounded convincing. What he said about my tastes was true. But at the same time I was thinking of the brothers and sisters who had different likings although they were born from the same parents. Maybe my uncle was telling self-satisfyingly, I thought.
He added, “But, Takao, to tell you the truth, I am not 100 percent sure.”
He seemed to have noticed my embarrassment and to have felt the necessity to console me. I understood his feelings. I did not respond to him. I did not argue. That was not something to argue. Suddenly I remembered my father’s favorite lines: don’t believe your uncle. He is a liar. So that’s why he said them again and again. He had foreseen what my uncle would say after his death or even during his lifetime. He had put a preemptive measure in me. But on second thought my father may have been telling the truth about my uncle’s bad behavior. I had sometimes heard about his disgraceful conducts, especially when he was drunk.

PART 3

Since then, I was not able to concentrate on my job as a high school teacher. I had had several incidents so far that had disturbed me, but my uncle’s disturbance was by far the greatest. While I was in class, I forgot about the problem and concentrated on teaching, but what I dreaded was lunch time and breaks between class. While I was marking examination papers in the teachers’ room or while I was attending meetings, I sometimes stopped what I was doing and, before I knew it, I would be wondering who on earth was my real father. You can guess what my absent-minded attitude to my wife and children was like at home. Sometimes I lost the track of conversation with my wife. While I was watching a television drama, I couldn’t help thinking of my fate when I saw a son and his father talking with each other on the screen.
My wife soon noticed my mental change and asked me what the matter was with me. First, I replied to her that there was nothing that worried me, but one day about ten days later after the funeral, she said she had heard me during my sleep. She said I was saying clearly, “Dad, dad….” She desperately wanted to know what it was that was troubling me.
I confessed. She was surprised. She complained to me why I hadn’t revealed it to her earlier. I told her that I had wanted to talk about it to her every day, but I couldn’t dare to do so, and had postponed it day after day till that day. I said to her,
“To tell you the truth, I feel I have lost something very important, something that has supported me all my life. I have lost my foundation I have stood on. For the past week, I felt I was not myself. I was someone else. I have lost my identity. I don’t know how I should put my feelings into words, but I think I am completely alienated from the world. It may sound like an exaggeration, but it’s true. I was not able to think reasonably. Probably that’s why I didn’t dare to tell it to you earlier. I know I should have.”
My wife said, “If you are worried about it so much, why don’t you have your DNA tested? They have begun to solve these matters by the tests in recent years
, I hear.”
“I know. I have thought of it, but I didn’t dare do that. I was afraid that my uncle was telling the truth. It’s incredible that he’s my father. I’m angry at him. I don’t want to dig a hole to discover something unnecessary, something crucial, something you can’t dispute. I want my father to be my father. I know I may sound childish. Why did my uncle…, why couldn’t he…?”
I was getting desperate.
She said, “I understand how you feel, but you see, worrying about it every day and every hour is not like you. It will eat your mind and body. It’s unhealthy. It’ll keep torturing you for the rest of your life. Which do you prefer to live in uncertainty or in certainty? You should face the fact. You are the same you whether your father is your uncle or not.”
She paused. “That’s right. I am the same myself whether my uncle is my father or not,” I thought. I thought I was behaving like a spoilt child. She didn’t like such me.
“All right, I understand now. You are right. I will have the DNA test as you say.”
Today it is easy to find DNA test companies on the Internet, but in 1992 it was not. I went to a library and searched for books about DNA tests. In the last page of one of the books, the companies that performed the tests were listed. There were only five companies. I picked DNA Solution Co. from among them. The company, founded in 1989, was a Japan branch of DNA Diagnostics Center in the USA. All I needed was my father’s DNA sample. It was easy to get it. When the undertakers cleaned my father’s corpse before the funeral, they had cut some of his hair at the front part of his head and given it to me. I had kept it in the Buddhist family altar.
I sent both my hair and my father’s to DNA Solution Co. It would take as long as two weeks before the result was sent to me because the company would send the samples to the DNA Diagnostics Center in the U.S. After I sent them, I did not worry about the problem as much as before. After all, my roots would be identified in two weeks. Either would be OK, I forced myself to believe.

PART 4


Two weeks later, the result of the DNA test was sent to me. Before I opened the envelope, I breathed deeply to calm down myself. The letter said:
DNA Solutions reports that the results of the parentage testing procedure carried out on the bodily samples of the donors specified above show that the alleged father is excluded as the biological father with 99.98% certainty.
99.98 percent! It is practically 100 percent. Then my father was not my biological father. My uncle was correct. He is my father. I felt as if I had been hit with a bat. I told my wife about the result. She said,
“I understand. You must be disappointed, but as I said before, you are what you are even if your uncle is your father. Nothing has changed with me. You should face the fact.”
It may be easy to say, “Face the fact,” but is difficult to practice it. I couldn’t change my mental channel like TV channels. I had been so much accustomed to fait accompli. My mind understood the fact, but my blood and flesh did not. They resisted confronting the fact.
I did not write to my uncle about the results of the test. It was not necessary to take the trouble because he firmly believed that he was my father. If he asked if I had had a DNA test, I would tell him, although we did not have chance to meet with each other so often because I lived in Nagoya and he lived in Kakunodate, Akita Prefecture.
One year passed. Hoji (a Buddhist service on the first anniversary of my father’s death) was held at a temple near my house. I expected to meet my uncle, but his son, Yasuo came to the ceremony on behalf of his father. He said his father had become feeble and it was difficult for him to travel all the way to Nagoya.
After the Hoji was over, all the relatives went to a Japanese restaurant to eat a Hoji dinner. First, sake and beer were served. As the host of the ceremony, I went around to each relative one by one to thank them for attending the Hoji with a bottle of beer in my hand. When I came to Yasuo, I momentarily wondered whether he knew the relation between him and me. So I just picked up an ordinary conversation topic. I said to him,
“How is your father? Is he very sick?” I said pouring beer in his glass.
“No, he isn’t,” he said after sipping the beer. “It’s just he has caused low back pain. He is all right except for that.”
“My father was two years older than he. So, he is now 72, isn’t he?”
“Yes. He is 72.”
Yasuo paused and drank the rest of beer and held the glass in front of me. I filled the glass again. It was strange for him to drink so much beer at such a fast pace because he was not a strong drinker. He easily got drunk. I thought he was trying to get drunk intentionally. Soon he became red. His eyes got glassy. Suddenly he sat up and erected his posture, and looked into my eyes seriously. His face was tense. He came closer to me and said in a small voice so that the other relatives, who were enjoying drinking and talking, would not hear him.
“I have long wanted to tell you something, something very important.”
I was surprised. So he had known the truth.
“Oh, I know what you are going to say,” I said. “Do you mean that we are…?”
“Yes, we are.”
“So your father told you about it after my father’s funeral, didn’t he?”
“No, he had told it to me long ago.”
“Long ago? What do you mean?”
“Well, when I was 13 years old, he told me about it. At first I thought he was joking. He said that only your parents and he knew the secret and that I should never tell it to anybody. He made me promise. I promised. But now since my father told you about it, and one year passed since your father died. I thought I didn’t have to keep it a secret.”
He looked relieved. He was three years younger than I. It was difficult to think of him as my younger brother. We didn’t often play together in our childhood. He was just my cousin and no more or less than that.
“To tell you the truth, last year I had a paternity test.”
“Oh, did you? I thought you would. And?”
He looked at me in the eye with full of curiosity.
“And, the report said that my father was not my biological father with a 99.98 percent certainty.”
Yasuo said, “That’s just what I expected. So, we are half brothers, right?”
“Yes, most probably,” I confirmed rather reluctantly.
“Most probably?”
He looked puzzled. Apparently he expected that I would say, “Yes, we are.”
A moment later, Yasuo said, “I understand how you feel.”
Deep in the bottom of my heart, I was saying to myself, “99.98 is not 100. The test showed that there was a 0.02% possibility that my father was my biological father.
Two months later, in October, my wife and I took a trip to the Tohoku district. We visited Chusonji Temple in Hiraizumi, the Oirase River, and Lake Towada. On our way home, we visited Kakunodate City, where my uncle lived. My uncle was happy to welcome us. His wife had already died. He was living with his son, Yasuo, his daughter-in-law and grandchildren.
At the dinner table, my uncle said with a beaming smile, “This is a special day. I have bought the very best sake in Japan for this day.” He put a bottle of sake wrapped in colorful paper on the table.
He continued, “This is Dewasakura Sake, the gold medal winner in the All Japan Sake Contest.”
He filled everyone’s cup, and declared, “Let’s toast the father-son bond!”
“Kanpai!” We emptied our cups.
My uncle said, “So, I heard you had a parental test.”
I said, “Yes, my wife strongly recommended that I should.”
“How wise!” he said looking at my wife.
“I wanted him to face the fact,” she said.
“So, I am glad that you’ve faced the fact,” he said. “You see, I told you that you were my son. I have always believed you are my son. This time, it has been proved. So, I am happy to have two biological sons.”
I and Yasuo glanced at each other.
My uncle said, “But you don’t have to call me ‘Dad’ if you don’t want to. I understand how you feel. It’s up to you.”
I wouldn’t.
Since I had arrived at his house, I had been wondering whether I should ask him to give me some of his hair or nail. I desperately wanted to have the parental test between my uncle and me even though there was little hope that my uncle was not my biological father. I just wanted to confirm the DNA test report. I thought, “But if I broach the subject to his happy face, it will surely offend him. I don’t want to rub him the wrong way. If I asked Yasuo for his hair, he would give me some anyway, but some time later, he might tell it to his father. This might also offend my uncle. Actually, I did not care whether it would offend him or not, but I didn’t want to ruin a 72-year-old man’s happy feelings.
Without any bodily samples of my uncle’s, my wife and I left his house. I still possessed the desire to confirm my relationship with my uncle.

PART 5

Three years passed and my uncle died. I went to Kakunodate to attend his funeral. During the wake, I asked my cousin, Yasuo, if he could give me some of my uncle’s hair.
Yasuo said in a silent irritated way, “Why? Do you still doubt he is your father?” He looked surprised at my abrupt and unexpected request.
“I don’t, but I just want to confirm the relationship. The DNA test will not change the relationship, I know, but I just want to have 100 percent confirmation. If you were in my shoes, you would do the same, I believe. It’s not a big deal, is it?”
Yasuo looked at me and kept silent for a moment. He apparently did not want to desecrate his father’s body by cutting his hair, but I knew he would consent to my request.
“All right. I’m sorry I was being selfish,” Yasuo said. “My uncle’s body is not mine alone, but it’s yours, too. I understand how you feel. Let me help you.”
He went to the next room and came back with a pair of scissors in his hand. He opened the coffin lid, looked in, and cut some of my uncle’s hair. He gave it to me. I thanked him.
After I came back home, I again sent both my hair and my uncle’s to DNA Solution Co. I was sure the company would report that my uncle was my biological father. Even if it cost a lot of money and trouble to have the sample tested, it would be worthwhile, I thought. It might be for my self-satisfaction, but deep in my heart I still thought that 99.98 percent was not 100 percent. I expected a different test result in this last-ditch bid. I said to myself, “What does 99.98 percent certainty mean? It means two out of 10,000 tests are incorrect. The report may have been incorrect. I need a 100 percent certainty. Otherwise, I will suffer from the uncertainty forever. I just want to know the truth.”
I had been gradually accustomed to the new relationship with my uncle. I had tried to believe it. I had accepted the new fact theoretically. Therefore, at least in my mind I was ready to face the second test report.
Along with this problem, I began to wonder why it was so important for a person to know who his or her father was. I could not explain why it was so grave a matter. It wouldn’t change your environment nor your life at all, but to know your root was a vital importance, I thought.
Two weeks later, DNA solution Co. sent the report. I mechanically opened the envelope and mechanically began to read the content. I had expected to read that my uncle was my biological father.
While I was reading the report with a calm objective mind, my eyes reached the conclusive sentence. It said:
…the paternity test showed a 0.00 % probability that Mr. Seiji Ishida is the father of Mr. Hiroki Shimizu.
What! My uncle is NOT my father? Is something wrong with this report? It can’t be. I continued to read the rest of the report. It said that each of the six different kinds of parental tests showed no match between the two samples. The report also said that they provided the client with accurate test results by testing each case twice.
Therefore, this report is accurate. So my uncle is not my biological father. It means neither my father nor my uncle is my biological father. Then who is my father? Who on earth is my father?

PART 6

I reviewed the two DNA test results. The possibility of my father being my biological father was 99.98 percent, and that of my uncle was 0.00 percent. That meant someone I didn’t know was my biological father. If the DNA Solution Co. did not make a mistake, and I didn’t think they had made one, who was my biological father? I did not know why, but I wanted to get the answer. It was not such a big problem as to hinder my daily life, but I could not resist my instinctive desire to identify my biological father. Otherwise, I was like a rootless plant.
I remembered the American film named “Roots,” which was on televivsion about 30 years ago. The protagonist, Kuta Kinte, triggered the boom that drove many Japanese people to run back to their ancestoral roots. What use was there in knowing their roots, I wondered, yet they went libraries, family temples, and civil registration offices to find their earliest ancestors. Even today many people are concerned with their roots. Then, what about me? Even they, who know their biological fathers, try to seek out their origins. Then it was all the more natural for me to do the same.
But how could I find my biological father? I thought about my birth. I was born in a hospital. I thought, “The doctor might have dealt with my father and uncle’s mixed sperm. He might have lost the sperm by mistake, and used his or someone else’s sperm. If I visit the hospital, I may get some information.”
I was born in 1965 and was 44 years old. I wondered whether the hospital was still in practice. It would be too much to expect the doctor who delivered me to be still alive. Even if he was alive, he would be old and wouldn’t remember anything about those times. And even if he remembered them, and even if he had made a mistake, he would not admit it. I knew it would prove fruitless, yet I wanted to confirm the fruitlessness. I had nothing to lose.
Nakagawa Hospital was in Y City in Mie Prefecture. It took about an hour train ride to get to the city. It was still in practice, but it had changed from a maternity clinic to a hospital for the aged. At the receptionist counter I inquired about the former hospital director, but she said he had already retired. I asked her whether I could meet him. She telephoned him and said I could meet him at his house at the back of the hospital.
I visited the house and met him. He was a round-faced old man, around 80, with gentle eyes. His voice was not feeble but firm. I told him my problem.
I said, “This may sound very rude, and I’m afraid you may be offended, but is there any possibility that you might have used your sperm?”
He said he had never used his or any other person’s sperm for his client. Watching his eyes and listening to the way he talked, I thought he was telling the truth.
“I remember, by the way,” Dr. Nakagawa said. “When I became a doctor, and began to work for Y City Municipal Hospital, that was 1960, the young interns I knew were offering their sperm for artificial insemination. You know, using the third person’s sperm is practiced today, but it is only when the husband is infertile. The hospitals that practice such treatments are limited to a very few hospitals such as Keio University Hospital. But, in case of oligospermia, that is, the husband’s sperm has small number of sperm cell, less than 50 million, the sperm is cultivated and condensed with a centrifugal machine.”
He paused and looked at me. I was rather bored with his lecture.
He said, “Well, well, I was getting off the track. So, back to the point, as I said before, I have never practiced artificial insemination involving an infertile husband. And I have never lost or damaged any sperm by mistake. So, I don’t understand the results of the DNA test company. Something is wrong. I’m sorry I haven’t been of any help to you. I’m afraid I have confused you.”
I thanked him. When I stood up to leave his house, I hesitatingly asked for his hair. I was afraid that would offend him, but he consented to my request right away, and gave his sample, saying, “My pleasure, if that will help you.” He looked 100 percent sure that his DNA would not match with mine.
I sent the samples to the company. Two weeks later the company reported that there was a 0.00 probability that the doctor was my biological father.
Part seven
Thus, I lost all the clues to find my biological father. I wondered, “Who am I? Who is my real father? Is it so important to know my biological father?” The same question tortured me again and again. My wife supported me saying, “As I said before, you are what you are. Why are you so much concerned about your biological father? It’s nonsense to wear your nerves on such a matter. I’m sorry you’ve lost all the clues, but is it so vital a problem? There are things you can change in this world, and things you can’t. You should give up and accept the fact. Why not live the present moment?”
I knew she was right, but if she were in my shoes, what would she say? What if her father was not her biological father and if she lost all the channels to reach her real father? Her opinion might change. She did not really understand my problem. No one would understand my unsettled feelings.
However, I knew I had to solve the problem by myself. It shouldn’t eat my mind. Gradually I tried to give up and live my life detached from the problem.
Months passed. And years passed. Gradually I adjusted myself to the “fatherless” situation.
Forty-three years passed and I was 87 years old. My eyesight and hearing ability became feeble but I was able to read headlines in the newspaper and understand most of what the television news said.
One day when I was reading a newspaper on June 5, 2009, a headline caught my eyes. It read: DNA test findings lead to lifer's release. I read the article with a magnifier. The article went:
A man sentenced to life for the 1990 murder of a 4-year-old girl was freed from Chiba Prison after 17 years behind bars as prosecutors opted not to challenge a recent DNA test that did not link him with the victim.
A further reading revealed that the prisoner Toshikazu Sugaya was convicted of murder based on the DNA test, but the accuracy of the DNA test in 1990 was not so advanced as today. 1.2 out of 1000 DNA tests in those days were incorrect. The accuracy of the DNA test today has astonishingly developed. Only one out of 1700,000,000,000 is incorrect.
Suddenly the news reminded me of my DNA test in 1961 when I was 40 years old. The result said that alleged father was excluded as the biological father with 99.98% certainty.　Now I understood the answer to my longstanding problem. The DNA test in 1961 was based on a primitive, inaccurate testing. I took out some of my father’s hair from the family Buddhist altar and sent the hair together with mine to the Japan DNA Center in Tokyo. In ten days, the result reached me. The letter said:

“The alleged father cannot be excluded as being the biological father of the child, and the probability of paternity is. > 99.999%.”

What has tortured me for more than 40 years has resolved, but what have I been doing these 40 years? I am 87 years old and a dying old man. What benefit has the technology of DNA testing brought to me? Nothing, but only an uneasy life.

THE END