There's a story about my father that my mother still likes to tell. Back when my siblings and I were small kids, Mom asked our お父さん (otōsan, father) to watch over us for a couple of hours while she ran errands. When she got back, it seemed to her that Dad had lost 10 kilograms and aged about five years. "こんなことなら仕事をしていた方がいい" ("Konna koto nara shigoto o shite-ita hō ga-ii," "I'd much rather go to work than deal with this"), were his words.

Throughout my childhood, my father avoided contact with his kids, preferring to channel all his energy into his job and working till late. My mother was proud of her husband's single-minded dedication and often referred to him as the typical 働き者の日本の父 (hatarakimono no Nihon no chichi, hardworking Japanese father) — which was 20th-century Japan's most socially prized model of masculinity.

In our household, the unspoken agreement was that the less the male parent mingled with the children, the better. My dad was a 会社員 (kaishain, company man) through and through, and that meant giving his all — I mean all — to the company. Us kids never thought to question it.