I was twenty and alone in the world in a way that felt intentional, as if solitude were a discipline rather than an absence. After high school, I left everything familiar behind and flew east, crossing oceans and time zones, landing in Japan with a suitcase that carried more hope than clothing. December 31, 1976, the year folding itself shut as my life opened. Tokyo waited, vast and humming, a city that did not know my name and did not care to learn it quickly.
The invitation came from George (Gyogi) a friend whose life had always felt like a story told in fairytales. He had been born into wealth so large it seemed fictional, the kind of wealth that builds walls between generations. His father had sent him to Canada as a young man, stripped of privilege, instructed to become someone without money holding his hand. George struggled. He failed. He learned. Eventually, he succeeded. He married Yoko, his arrange bride, built a life with intention, and named his first son James, borrowing my middle name as a gesture of friendship that still humbles me.
When I finished high school, George told me it was my turn. Come to Japan, he said. Make it on your own. Learn discipline. Learn humility. Learn who you are without shortcuts. I listened. I boarded the plane. I arrived at Narita Airport with jet lag and wonder colliding in chaos.
They were all there to meet me. George, smiling with the calm confidence of a man who had earned his peace. Yoko, warm and gracious. Little James, wide eyed and curious. A second child too, who I met that day, a baby named Kim, bundled and quiet. The infant was held by a young woman with long, dark hair that fell like silk over her shoulders. She stood slightly apart, composed and gentle. I assumed she was hired help, a caretaker entrusted with precious cargo.
I was wrong.
This woman had been chosen for me.
Not casually. Not accidentally. Carefully. Deliberately. George and his family had conducted a search, thoughtful and extensive, as if selecting a rare book or a trusted ally. The candidates were considered, discussed, and weighed. Kumiko was selected. She spoke English with ease. She was studying English and business at university. She was intelligent, funny, curious, and appropriate in ways I did not yet understand. She was my height, elegant, and beautifully fit and graceful, her presence calm without being distant. Her long hair framed a beauty that did not ask for attention but received it anyway.
George explained it plainly. A man has three fears, he said. Fire. Tsunami. And a girl’s father. His tone was light, but the message was firm. I was to be a perfect gentleman. Perfect manners. No missteps. No assumptions. Respect was not optional.
So began the strangest relationship of my young life.
We were meant to be boyfriend and girlfriend, yet nothing about us resembled the relationships I had known before. There was no urgency. No claiming. No heat that demanded resolution. Instead, there was formality, politeness, and space. Kumiko called it ‘platnik’ love. The word puzzled me. I asked her again and again what she meant, trying to hear it correctly, trying to place it in my vocabulary.
Eventually, it revealed itself.
Platonic love.
A deep bond. Affection without possession. Closeness without expectation. Friendship elevated to something intentional and rare.
When I understood, something in me softened.
Romance was not forbidden, but it was set aside. Desire was acknowledged, then gently placed on a shelf. What remained was companionship. We dated for what seemed like forever in the quietest sense of the word. Movies where our shoulders never quite touched. Coffee shops filled with laughter and long conversations. Walks through neighborhoods where the city felt suddenly intimate. Events where we arrived together and left unchanged, except for memory.
This was new to me. I had been raised on pursuit, on hormones and hunger, on the idea that success with women meant conquest. In Japan, with Kumiko, that narrative dissolved. In its place grew something steadier. We shared jokes. We teased. We listened. We learned how to be present without performing.
It was refreshing. It was valuable. It rewired something essential in me.
Time passed, as it always does. Seasons shifted. My stay in Japan drew to a close. The night before my departure, in a place far too public and far too late, I kissed her. Once. Deeply. Meaningfully. A kiss that carried restraint and unspoken possibility. It lit something bright and painful inside me. It promised everything and nothing at the same time.
And that was all.
The next day, I flew home to Toronto. Life resumed, louder and faster, as if Japan had been a dream spoken in another language. Yet even now, decades later, I carry that question with me. Quiet. Persistent.
What if.
Not as regret, but as reverence. For a love that asked for nothing and gave so much. For a young man who learned that intimacy does not always need an ending to be complete.