There’s a trend these days on social media to acknowledge “the last time” someone does something. Often, it’s something to mark a milestone.

For example, the other day I saw a video of a mother telling her pre-adolescent son that she will always remember the first time she held him, but she can’t remember the last time. She asked her son, who was almost as tall as she, if she could hold him. That way, she would know it was the last time, and she would remember it.

Having it recorded would also assist in retaining that memory for posterity.

The son looks a little sheepish at first, but then he obliges.

He leaps into her arms and wraps his legs around her waist.

The mother is still strong. She cradles him in her arms and tucks her face against his slender neck. The boy begins to relax and sinks deeper into her embrace.

When she is ready to release him, he doesn’t want to let go.

It will be the last time she is able to hold him like that. He can sense it, too.

His next growth spurt is right around the corner. He will soon leave childhood behind.

But, he will always be his mother’s baby.

The video clip is very touching and the social media commentators react accordingly, many noting that they are crying as they watch.

Here’s a link with a compilation of “last time” video clips. Some are funnier than touching, but you get the idea

It’s true, though, that we aren’t always cognizant of things that happen for “the last time,” unless it’s something finite, like death.

And even that can slip up on us unawares, forcing us to look back to remember “the last time” we saw someone or spoke to them.

The other day during my class on Japanese modern women writers, my co-teacher and PhD student, Yue Wang, took a photograph of me as I lectured. We were discussing the story “A Wife’s Letters” by Uno Chiyo.

She posted the photographs on Facebook (at my request), noting: “Dr. Rebecca Copeland just wrapped up her last class on Uno’s ‘A Wife’s Letters’ in modern Japanese women writers.”

It was a very thoughtful gesture, and yet when I read the post, I felt a tinge of surprise.

Is it really the last time?

I suppose it is. I will retire in June.

I won’t be teaching this course at this university again.

“A Wife’s Letters” is not a text I taught very often.

I remember I began translating the story, “Tsuma no tegami,” in 1999 after communicating with Van Gessel about a volume he was planning with Tom Rimer. They eventually published “A Wife’s Letters” in the Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: From Restoration to Occupation, 1868-1945.

After completing the translation, I gave a few presentations on the work and published my analysis of it “Sincerely Yours: Uno Chiyo’s ‘A Wife’s Letters’ as Wartime Subversion,” in Representing the Other: A Critical Approach to Modern Japanese Literature in 2006. This volume, edited by Mark Williams and Rachael Hutchinson, was the culmination of a wonderful symposium they organized in Leeds in 2003.

Once my translation was available, it was easier to incorporate the text into the classes I taught—such as my course on “Postwar Literature in Japan” or “Women Writers.”

Even so, I don’t remember the first time I taught the story.

For that matter, I don’t really remember the first time I taught at Washington University.

I have snippets of memories of uncomfortable moments in the classroom, such as being challenged by aggressive students who took issue with my readings or my grading, but those are rare.

I have fragments of memories of things that students said during class. I’ll never forget Linda Flores bringing up the “crazy cat lady” during our discussion of the yamamba in Ōba Minako’s works. “Men who live alone are ‘eligible bachelors’,” she said, “but women are ‘crazy cat ladies’.” That comment stuck with me.

I recall the rooms I taught in, such as the strange one in Prince Hall (now defunct) set smack dab in the middle of the hallway. If a person wanted to traverse to the other side of the building, they had no choice but to cut through the classroom. It was awkward!

The class I taught in that room was on Tokugawa literature and the students included David Holloway, Leona Middleton, and Abby Shelton—I didn’t know it would be the last time I taught that class or in that building.

Celebrating lasts with “A Wife’s Letters” is certainly appropriate, though.

In the story, the woman narrator doesn’t realize, when she leaves her soldier-husband at the entrance to his barracks, that it’ll be the last time she sees him before he leaves Japan.

She expects to see him again at the train station for a proper sendoff.

The train leaves before she can reach the station.

Her last memory of her husband, then, is one of him walking away from her, joking with other men, not appreciating the significance of their departure.

She is denied the special moment of separation, of meaningful parting words.

That hazy memory of her husband disappearing into the barracks, merging with the larger group of other men similarly setting out to fight for the country, is a fitting image though. It memorializes the individual-denying pull of the nationalistic collective. Much of “A Wife’s Letters” teases out this tension. The wife, in her celebration of her soldier-husband, refuses to allow him to become just “one of the crowd.”

Uno published the story in 1942, at a time when little was being published due to paper shortages and extreme censorship. I argue in my classes, and in my essays on this story, that Uno camouflaged her notable individualism with a performance of wifely patriotism.

A Wife’s Letters, published 1942.

She published the story—a scant eighteen pages when translated—in a small book. The binding was of her own design, resembling kimono material with a cherry blossom pattern. The binding itself is a sort of camouflage. The delicate blossoms belying the power of the woman’s voice.

I am grateful to Yue for memorializing my last class on Uno Chiyo’s “A Wife’s Letters.” Thanks to her, this memory won’t be just one small sliver in the kaleidoscope of my teaching past. This one class, this one day, this one room and the students in it will always stand out.

I have one more “last class” memory to share.

Last summer Jon Holt, professor of Japanese at Portland State University, contacted me about participating in his Japanese Women Writers class. We arranged to meet virtually and to share a discussion of Uno Chiyo’s “A Wife’s Letters.”

I was delighted to learn that Jon absolutely loves the work.

And I was even more delighted by the conversation about it that transpired over ZOOM. Jon is such an excellent reader.

Please take a listen:

After my conversation with Jon, he sent me a first-edition of the book, which he had picked up at a secondhand shop in Japan. It’s a beautiful volume, and a fitting ending to a wonderful chapter in my own life. [The photo of it is above.]

And, as with any class I teach, I always learn more from the discussions that ensue. Jon pulled so many interesting ideas to the surface.
Now, this “last time” is also memorialized indefinitely.