Gentle On Our Wives: My Contribution to Mitigating Japanese Retired Husband Syndrome

The linked live performance below is special to me. Not because we performed particularly well. In fact, we are all very ordinary amateurs who practiced together just a few times and, trust me, it shows. (So I won’t hold it against you if you don’t take a listen.)

A gaggle of retired husbands in their natural habitat giving their Japanese wives room to breathe. 😉

What is special to me is the story behind the performance

The backstory…

A few months back I decided to learn an old bluegrass tune called Gentle on My Mind, one of just a few country songs that I love

Upon recording and uploading it, I soon learned that my brother-in-law Toshi and cousin-in-law Shozo also love this song. Go figure.

As fate would have it, Toshi plays the drums and cousin Sho plays mandolin. So I decided to invite them to our house for a little jam session.

Initially, the idea was just to have fun. But as I thought about it, I saw some other benefits to inviting them over.

I proceeded to pitch the idea to my wife, half-jokingly mentioning that it would “contribute to family harmony by getting the old boys out of the house and alleviating any ‘retired husband syndrome’ issues (also known as “RHS”) that might be going on.”

She laughed but agreed with me.

Well, during our first jam session, cousin Sho showed up with his mandolin and brother Toshi left his cajon (not “cajones”!) at home and brought his guitar instead. I rolled with it, and Toshi-chan was surprisingly good!

Featured above: an abandoned, homeless
Cajon that sadly never made it onstage

At the end of the first session, cousin Sho deemed our session “not too horrible” and suggested we perform at a private music event that was scheduled late last month. We all agreed and this was the result. Not too horrible.

So why are five of us playing? Because at the last minute, Sho-chan called me to say that his buddy Hara-san wanted to play the banjo and his other buddy, Shimura-san, wanted to play bass. Again, I rolled with it and we squeezed in one more practice with all five of us.

All in all, it was a good experience and we had fun. We’ll be better next time!

Also happy to report that the Retired-Husband-Syndrome mitigation worked so well that my sister-in-law has been pestering me to schedule another practice. Being the good brother-in-law that I am, a practice session has already been scheduled for next week.

It feels good to be a hero. 😉

For those who watch the clip, cousin Sho is immediately to my left (with his back to me), and brother Toshi is directly across from Sho.