Looking Back on Session House’s 35 Years

Keiko Nabeshima (鍋島敬子; administration and accounting)

 

 

I remember nervously waiting for participants in Session House’s dance classes in April, 35 years ago. I can still picture the instructors, Toshinori Takagi (高木俊徳) and Yasuyo Omoto, standing dignified and tall, their backs straight.

 

My elder sister, Naoko Ito, was starting to run a studio. At the time I was a full-time homemaker raising a child, so I offered to do office work. A fellow mother I had met at a performance in our housing complex, who specialized in accounting, advised me to earn a Grade 3 bookkeeping qualification. I studied by correspondence to prepare for the work.

 

When my son was three, I began leaving him at nursery school and commuting to Kagurazaka. Children’s illnesses are a difficulty for working mothers even today; when there was an infectious illness, I stayed overnight at the workplace to work. With sudden fevers and the like, help from people around me made it possible to keep going.

 

I started without accounting experience, but my friend Kiyoko Sasaki (佐々木清子), a veteran accountant, and Naho Kamiya (神谷菜穂) of Daiichi Keiri (第一経理) helped me, and I am filled with gratitude.

 

The wave of digitization is hard on an aging brain, but I will carry on with the help of younger people. I also receive so much vitality from the positive energy and smiles of those who come for dance-class lessons.

 

Finally, Ryohei Kondo, Mitsutake Kasai and Taiju Matsumoto, who have been part of our lives since their youth: please keep lending us your strength.