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“Dear Iosie Iosidzovna…”

80 years ago, in September of 1935, on the invitation of M.A.Sholokhov, Vyoshenskaya was visited by Iosie Abe, a harpist and an employee of the Japanese embassy in Moscow. The editor-in-chief of the Tokio journal “Kaidzo”, Mr Yamamoto, asked I.Abe to interview M.A.Sholokhov.

She arrived at the stanitsa accompanied by writer V.Kudashev, a friend of Mikhail Alexandrovich. Iosie Abe recalled about this: “At that time already, Sholokhov was highly appreciated in Japan. The readers were enthusiastic meeting the translations of his books. Very different people were interested in details of the writer’s life and work. <…> I was met with hospitality and captivating simplicity. From the first hour I had become one of their family people. Mikhail Alexandrovich asked me:

* Abe-san, what is your name?

* Iosie.

* And your father’s name?

* We do not use our father’s name.

* But according to a Russian custom a person is called by name and his father’s name. So you are Iosidzovna, aren’t you?

So I was called Iosie Iosidzovna in Sholokhov’s house.

I.Abe spent several days in Vyoshenskaya, together with the writer she visited the collective farmers’ holiday of Harvest Day. In memory of this meeting M.A.Sholokhov made an autograph for I.Abe:

“As a steppe inhabitant I will be glad if I.Abe will remember sometimes our hunting outing, the virgin steppe and wonderful white little bustards against the background of the blue September sky. M.Sholokhov. 23.IX.35. Vyoshenskaya”.

Under the impression of this trip there was published an essay “Meetings in the Country of the Quiet Don” telling the Japanese readers about Sholokhov, his life in Stanitsa Vyoshenskaya, about his family and Cossack grain-growers.

The essay reads: “In all his judgements and conduct a noble nature is felt, which is difficult to put in words. It is difficult to understand where from the young writer has got such restraint and simplicity of nature. We were particularly captivated by his modesty. No matter how much you talk with him, he may never show the slightest hint of complacency. We can only bow to such modesty…” (Journal “Kaidzo”. Tokio, 1936, № 2).

Later, the Sholokhovs and Iosie Abe met in Moscow and corresponded. Many times I.Abe invited Mikhail Alexandrovich to visit Japan. She was among the first to congratulate the writer for his Nobel Prize. When in 1966 the Sholokhovs visited Japan, she accompanied them in their trip about the Country of the Rising Sun. I.Abe did a lot for promotion Sholokhov’s work in Japan.

The memory of the years of friendship between the Sholokhovs and I.Abe – a musical box playing a melody from the opera “The Quiet Don” by I.I.Dzerzhinsky – has been still kept in the Memorial House-Museum of M.A.Sholokhov.

Yelena Popova