A lolita daughter, an ordinary father, and roses: a Father's Day essay by Misako Aoki

source

In June 2021, Misako Aoki published an essay on the online flower delivery site Hana Cupid for Father's Day, in which she talks about her relationship with her father. I found this interesting and wanted to translate it. It's making public a facet of someone's life that we don't often get to hear about, but she's made a point of talking about other topics that aren't considered normal for a fashion model to discuss (age, dating, other employment, and more; see interviews I translated previously [1] [2]) so maybe it isn't all that strange, at least not for Misako. There's a lot of discourse online among people who wear lolita fashion and other alternative fashions about how to deal with and live with family members and their reactions, so I thought it might be interesting for others to read too.

The original Japanese is here (link) for anyone who is curious.

---

Hello, everyone. I am 37 years old and am a lolita fashion model and a nurse. At 37 years old it's pretty normal to be married and to have children, but I am not married and I have two careers, and am freely living my life.

With these qualifications, many people tend to think my father is an artist or designer, or a doctor. But the truth is that my father was an incredibly normal, ordinary office worker. It was not because of him that I got into lolita fashion or nursing. Rather, if I had gotten into lolita fashion because of him, wouldn't that be a strange and interesting story?

This writing is a letter of gratitude from me, the so-called "someone who walks an unusual path" to my "ordinary father" who walked an unexpected path through fatherhood.

source

Dad, if I'm being honest, our relationship is not such that we can "talk about anything". 365 days a year I am wearing fashion that makes me stand out, I'm appearing on TV and in magazines, and I'm still not married. I'm aware that this likely causes concern in our family, and I can't talk about it openly. You are you, and you probably don't ask very deep questions of me. From your perspective, my daily life dressed in lolita fashion is a world you have no connection to. So I thought, "oh well, that's just how it goes between fathers and daughters."

But one day, at breakfast, you suddenly said to me, "You're designing and modeling for lots of different brands lately. Keep it up." If we were in a comic book, there would have been a jumbo sized "!?!?!?!?" above my head in this scene. I remember it clearly to this day. I was surprised and thought 'he might have suddenly looked into what I've been working on recently' but then on top of that, you added: "There are a lot of incredibly complicated things about lolita brand names, but your old dad has learned their full official names." I was shocked. It took a little time for your lolita daughter to fully comprehend the situation.

(I asked Mom about it later, and it turns out he had been quietly checking my blog and social media every day. Thank you...!)

So because he and I lived with that sense of emotional distance between us, we didn't really talk about anything together in depth. However, I think we have both lived our lives caring about each other.

I know this because of an important custom: we send each other flowers.

I will never forget what happened when I passed my national nursing examination. My father congratulated me with a bouquet of roses. It came with a note that read: "As long as you have work, you'll also be able to do what you love. So live your life as you wish." I think of these words every time I see a rose. No doubt my father lived in a time when you would dedicate your whole life to a single job. So for me, his "live your life as you wish" helped me come to terms with my situation, gave me courage, and helped me find the resolve to keep pursuing both of my jobs: nursing and modeling.

I gave my father a bouquet of roses five years later. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs had just invited me to become a Kawaii Ambassador for Japan, and I quit my job at the university hospital where I had worked. Do you remember, Dad? You seemed really embarrassed, but you were definitely smiling. It's a bit late to confess this now, but the roses were to thank you for giving me the self confidence to choose my own path in life and for telling me that it's OK to have many marketable skills. Though I'll admit it does feel a little awkward to send each other roses like a romantic couple.

My father genuinely does not make comments to me about how I live my life or how I dress. He doesn't say things like "I wish you would get married," or "I'd love to see my grandchild's face," nothing like that. Surely his similarly aged friends get excited to talk about their grandchildren. To be honest, I sometimes feel a little sorry for myself, imagining him (with a lolita daughter) in the midst of these conversations.

Get married at a normal age. Dress like a normal person. These days I've gradually lost sight of what "normal" looks like, but even so, I'm very far removed from what that is. I have been able to live my life freely because I had a normal father who didn't demand normalcy from me, and because he sent me roses that gave me the courage and self confidence to live the life I chose.

I will be 38 years old this June. I want to keep living freely and wearing the lolita fashion I love so much. And then there is my father, always supporting me from an exquisite distance. And yet here I am, with this feeling like I haven't sent anything to him for Father's Day in the last few years. I've been busy with international work but even if I did do something, I likely just treated him to dinner or something. But this year I want to properly thank him, especially since the coronavirus has lightened my overseas  workload. I think I'll revive our tradition of sending flowers. I want to have a nice chat with him while looking at the roses I've brought him -- the roses that symbolize our bond.

This Father's Day I will send him roses with these feelings of gratitude: 'Dad, thank you for always quietly supporting your lolita daughter.'

source