The Life Saver

When I was two, I was hospitalized for a month, plagued by a mysterious ailment. I had high-grade fever and I was red and swelling up. My heart was functioning abnormally. Doctors were at a complete loss and were probably secretly pleased to be presented with a medical mystery. My parents thought I was going to die. My father bought a clunky, analog alarm clock for the long, bedside vigil as I was subjected to an endless series of tests.

(You'll understand why the anecdote related by Ian Holm's character near the end of Atom Egoyan's "The Sweet Hereafter" moves me to tears. The overhead shot of the father holding his infant daughter dying of an insect bite, pen knife at the ready to perform a tracheotomy should she asphyxiate during the long drive to the hospital, is one of the most powerful images in modern cinema.)

No one knew that I was displaying the symptoms of Kawasaki Disease, an illness that was first identified only a few years earlier. Japanese toddlers are more susceptible to this disease than children of any other ethnicity. Although the cause is still unknown, treatment is fairly straightforward today. I was not so lucky back in 1974.

Given that other symptoms include cracked lips, swollen lymph nodes around the neck, and blisters on the tongue, it's not surprising that I stopped eating. Everyone desperately tried to get food into me but I refused.

I don't know why, but my parents stocked the little fridge in my hospital room with natto. As it happened, that was the one and only food I would eat voluntarily. You could say that natto saved my life.

Natto (納豆) is fermented soy bean, usually served with a bit of Japanese mustard and soy sauce. It is extremely pungent and not universally liked, much like blue cheese and other stinky foods that are an "acquired taste". What puts people off more than the smell is the slick, slimy texture. The more you stir up the natto, the slimier it gets. I love the slime.

So, say what you will about how smelly or gross-looking natto is. I couldn't live without it.