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left there. Then the young guide took us upstairs.
    We started the tour in the living room. There was the piano that I had remembered. Then in the dining room we saw the dining table and a small table with a couple of chairs by the window, which was for little children who couldn't behave with good table manners. The huge black stove in the kitchen, the President's christening dress which had turned almost gray with age in the nursery room on the second floor, the pictures on the wall in the narrow hall, the index cards recording the Kennedy children's health conditions on the small desk in the sewing room— all these were where they had been before, but they had faded considerably. The taped voice of Mrs. Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, who was ninety-eight years old at the time of our visit, sounded unnaturally vivacious in the empty house. It was as if a mother who had lost her sons were making a speech forcing herself to appear strong, and the voice evoked sympathy rather than admiration. I listened to it as if it were a lecture on life. Trying to survive seemed to mean that we often had to admit that we were mortal. The house might have been dedicated to the mother of the President, not to the nation, after all. Years have passed and the world has been changing all along.
    Questions about President Kennedy's assassination and character remain unresolved in the minds of many people. Nevertheless, as far as I have seen, in the United States the Kennedy name has seemed to hold onto a certain status as time has passed and sometimes it even evokes the impression of a royal family. They said that the President's fame might have been made by the wealth and ambition of his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, not by his political ability; or that the President created his fame by the media-enhanced image of himself. What I would say is that the man who appeared in front of cameras was always himself until the very last moment of his life. In my mind, the President is still a symbol of a graceful America of that time, and serves as a reminder of my adolescence and Japan's growth in the 1960s.

"WHY DOESN'T Barbara Bush get her hair dyed? She looks like the mother of the new President!" One after-noon in the fall of 1988, a middle-aged woman called in to a radio program to state her opinion of the new First Lady of the United States. How frankly the woman talked about such personal matters! I was surprised to hear it at first, but then realized that it was not only the woman on the radio but also other people who recommended that the new First Lady should dye her hair. It might have been because many American people felt a new closeness with Mrs. Bush. As I thought about it, however, I came to realize that coloring one's hair seemed to be so normal for American people.
    While I lived in Fort Lee, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from New York City, in the second half of the 1980s, I used to see many blondes everywhere I went. Especially in New York, businesswomen with blond hair looked dashing and sexy. They had a proud look as if they were the freest women in the whole world. They confidently walked the streets, their bright hair waving in the wind. Their hair color surely matched the image of Manhattan. I used to think that not only the skyscrapers but blondes seemed to embody Americans lust for wealth, power, and freedom. Most of those women, however, were artificial blondes. Their original hair color was obviously not blond. I could see their dark roots. In the beginning, I ridiculously assumed that the color of their hair turned blond as their hair got longer, because there were so many blondes. I soon came to know the truth, but it wasn't as easy to understand why they wanted to become blondes. The purpose couldn't only be so-called rejuvenation. They were in the prime of life. They looked independent, and I thought they would be beautiful even if they were not blond. Not all American gentlemen seemed to prefer blondes as the title of