Story #2: How We Met and Built a Life Together

" Getting married to Hatsuko was not easy "

After a year of prep, I entered Ehime University’s Department of Electrical Engineering in 1969, close to familiar Matsuyama Castle. My main interests were music and electronics, so I applied, thinking it was a similar field, only to find out on the entrance day that the university had just established a new Department of Electronics.

Undeterred, I joined the amateur radio club, where they also taught electronics—a perfect fit for my love of machines. At the orientation, I noticed one of the only two female students in engineering, a student from the electronics department I had wanted to join.

One day, after briefly returning to my dorm, I went to a nearby used bookstore to buy textbooks. There, I unexpectedly ran into the same woman I’d met earlier at the amateur radio club. We exchanged a few words, and, realizing we were after similar books, decided to go together to a nearby bookstore, “Haruya.” This was how I met Hatsuko Hashimoto, my future wife. She was from Tokushima, and as I guided her around Matsuyama, we quickly became close.

My student days with Hatsuko and friends flew by, and I eventually joined Saishiba Electric, a Toshiba-affiliated company in Himeji, Hyogo Prefecture. Meanwhile, Hatsuko stayed true to her goals and became a programmer at Takachiho Burroughs (now Nihon Unisys) in Tokyo.

Though I never officially proposed, by this time we had begun talking about a future together and marriage. With me in Himeji and Hatsuko in Tokyo, we were in a long-distance relationship. There were no cell phones, and although the Shinkansen had just been extended to Okayama, Tokyo still felt like a distant place for a young couple like us. It was a temporary farewell.

After two years of a long-distance relationship, Hatsuko and I decided to marry. However, getting married to Hatsuko was not easy.

Her family, which follows a matriarchal tradition, strongly opposed our union. As the eldest daughter, Hatsuko’s family name had been passed down for generations, and her husband traditionally adopted it. As the eldest son of the Ukigawa family, I couldn’t easily change my name. We knew her family, especially her grandmother, would oppose our marriage, but I was determined to marry Hatsuko. With support from her father, Akira, who understood our dilemma, we gained her family’s approval.

Thanks to Akira, Hatsuko and I married, and I’m grateful to her family for accepting me, even her grandmother, who initially opposed us. We held our wedding in Takamatsu, a neutral city, and later moved into a company apartment in Aboshi, Himeji. Though modest, it gave us stability, and I enjoyed my work in marine systems design. Things changed when Hatsuko secured a job as a computer programmer with a Toshiba agency.