a man who owns nothing

Today is the day Masao has to let go of another one of his belongings. He needs to send off Ayaka to Hie Shrine ¹ near Chiyoda City. Ayaka will marry a nice gentleman from France, and the wedding will be held in traditional Shinto style ². They met each other while Ayaka was studying abroad at PSL University of Paris, and they have been together ever since. Recently, inter-racial marriages have become more common in Japan. The groom has left France and moved to Tokyo for the past 3 years to prove himself worthy of having Ayaka as his wife. Ayaka is the closest to Masao since she is the youngest. Her two other older sisters were each at least 10 years older than her and have been married and have children.

Masao already knew this day would come - the day he had to give away his lovely daughter to someone else. But he couldn’t hold back his tears during the wedding ceremony. His eyes were soaking. He couldn’t sleep last night knowing he had to let go of his dearest daughter into somebody else’s keeping. But he had come prepared. After all the things he had faced in his life, he knew that a man like him was only there to assist the people he loved to reach happiness. He knew he was not allowed to own what he thought belonged to him. He had learnt too much from a few tragedies in his life.

Ten years ago, Masao was fired from the company he had been working at for more than 20 years. He had poured his blood and sweat into the company as if he owned it. His wife left him after a long marriage, lusting for someone who could provide attention and love. Masao believed that his devotion to work was a sacrifice to provide better living conditions for his family, but his wife could not understand his actions. He lost both his job and his wife - things he thought he truly owed. He was left to raise fifteen year old Ayaka on his own. Ayaka and Masao had always been close since the day she was born. Gradually, Ayaka became the one who healed Masao’s disappointments toward life.

Masao knew that Ayaka was just a child temporarily entrusted to him by God. He had no intention of keeping Ayaka by his side all his life. In this world, he knew that a man was never meant to own anything. Everything a man did was just an act of providing and protecting the people he loved. He made peace with himself by accepting that he didn’t truly own anything in this life. At the end of the wedding ceremony, Ayaka in her Shiromuku - a White Wedding Kimono ³, said in her speech - that Masao was the first man in her life, and always would be. That was the only thing Masao needed to hear, and for him, hearing that made him feel like the richest man in the world.