Nishio and Kashima

Nishio and Kashima are the narrator’s two Japanese nannies, but their relationship is shaped less by shared employment than by a deep imbalance of status and a dispute over how to understand the past. Nishio is young, gentle, and poor; Kashima is older, aristocratic, and embittered by the loss of the privilege she once possessed. Kashima treats her colleague as an inferior and a traitor, while Nishio performs the work and objects when Kashima turns historical grievance into hostility toward the family. Their antagonism becomes a defining tension inside the household and culminates in Nishio’s decision to leave.

Unequal Standing

Nishio and Kashima enter the household as the narrator’s first and second nannies. Because the narrator had become demanding of Nishio, the parents advertised for another caregiver; Kashima was the only applicant. The arrangement thus placed the two women together in a job created to assist Nishio, but it did not produce a partnership of equals.

The contrast between them is presented in terms of age, appearance, and social origin. Nishio is young, gentle, sweet, not pretty, and from a poor background. Kashima is around fifty, with a beauty described as aristocratic, and belongs to the old Japanese nobility. She had been a princess for nearly thirty years before the Americans abolished that order in 1945; she was then left without her title or money and survived by taking various kinds of work, including employment with the narrator’s family.

That history informs Kashima’s bearing, but it does not soften her conduct toward Nishio. Kashima behaves with perfect manners and an elegant appearance toward the employers, who address her with deference, yet she gives them little in return and does as little work as possible. When the narrator’s mother asks her to perform a task, Kashima’s sigh and look convey that she considers the request beneath her. Nishio, by contrast, is left to carry the work. The difference between Kashima’s commanding manner and Nishio’s labor is not incidental: it is the practical form their unequal relationship takes in the house.

History as a Source of Conflict

Kashima’s resentment extends beyond lost rank. She blames white people for her poverty and hates them without exception, treating the narrator’s family as representatives of the Americans who defeated Japan. She regards Nishio’s willingness to work for the family as a betrayal, combining contempt for Nishio’s humble origins with the charge that she is trafficking with the enemy.

Nishio rejects that collective accusation. When Kashima invokes the humiliation of 1945, Nishio answers that the people in this household were not responsible. She points out that the family’s parents were young children during the war, as she herself was. Kashima dismisses the distinction: their parents were enemies, she argues, and the family belongs to the same side. The disagreement is therefore about more than whether the employers are kind or deserving. Kashima makes inherited national guilt the measure of present relationships; Nishio insists on distinguishing the people before her from those who fought the war.

Their exchange also exposes the strain in Nishio’s position. She earns money from the very people Kashima condemns, yet she does not accept Kashima’s account of what that employment means. In a later quarrel, they dispute whether the family owes anything to Japan. Kashima invokes the destruction of the country in 1945; Nishio counters that Japan ultimately won and is now richer than the Americans. The argument shifts between the memory of defeat and the claim of recovery, but it does not reconcile them. For Kashima, the old injury remains a warrant for contempt; Nishio refuses to let it settle the character of the employers or the value of the present.

Treatment of Nishio and the Child

Kashima’s hostility falls most directly on Nishio. She treats the younger woman like a dog, orders her about, and insults her at slight cause. Nishio nevertheless maintains what the narrator describes as a misguided but unswerving obedience to Kashima. The imbalance is sustained not only by Kashima’s commands but by Nishio’s continued compliance, even as the older woman humiliates her.

Nishio’s resistance appears in what she says and in whom she tries to protect. During their argument about the family, she warns Kashima not to say such things in front of the child, indicating the narrator. Kashima dismisses the child as a baby, but Nishio insists that she understands. The warning reveals that Nishio is attentive to the child’s presence and knowledge, even while she remains caught in a conflict with Kashima that the child can overhear.

That concern becomes especially clear during the later dispute in the kitchen. The narrator is hiding under the table and recognizes Nishio’s slippers and Kashima’s geta. Kashima sits while Nishio heats water for tea; as usual, Kashima orders her around and says cruel things. Kashima tells Nishio that the employers despise her. Nishio denies it. The exchange puts the older woman’s resentment into a personal form: she does not merely condemn the family but tells Nishio that her work there makes her despised. The narrator’s concealed position turns the scene into something the adults do not know the child is witnessing.

Resignation and Consequence

The next day, Nishio tells the narrator’s father that she is leaving. She gives practical reasons: she has too much work, is tired, and needs more time at home to care for her ten-year-old twin daughters. Her explanation establishes that the employment weighs on her beyond the immediate argument and that her responsibilities at home also require her attention. The parents have to accept her decision.

The narrator responds by wrapping her arms around Nishio’s neck and pleading with her not to go. Nishio weeps but does not change her mind. The child also sees Kashima smiling quietly. The juxtaposition makes the departure personal and painful for the narrator while showing that the rupture has not been repaired between the two women. It does not establish that Kashima caused Nishio’s resignation: Nishio names her workload and her daughters as her reasons. But the smile, following Kashima’s repeated insults and the kitchen confrontation, links her departure to the hostile atmosphere in which the two nannies have been working.

After hearing what the narrator overheard under the table, the father becomes furious with Kashima and asks Nishio to speak with him privately. The scene ends with the narrator in her mother’s arms, sobbing and repeating her plea, rather than with a reported resolution between the adults. Nishio and Kashima’s relationship therefore remains marked by the unresolved collision of class, labor, and historical grievance. Its consequence is not only Nishio’s impending absence: the conflict also draws the child into an adult dispute, and her effort to protect Nishio gives her feelings a public voice.