Singer and actor Mayuko appeared on Tetsuko Kuroyanagi's long-running talk show "Tetsuko's Room" (TV Asahi) broadcast on December 26th. She talked about her memories of her father, Masahiko Tsugawa, and mother, Yukiji Asaoka, whose deaths marked their seventh anniversary this year.
When her mother passed away, her father's health deteriorated. At that time, her current husband, who had not yet been given permission to marry her, asked her, "Can I get another chance and go and ask (for permission to marry)?" Mayuko herself had wanted to show her father her wedding dress, so she thought it was a good opportunity.
Until then, my husband had been told to "go home" after meeting my father within about five seconds. This happened three times, and he said, "I might not be able to do it anymore." On the fourth time, they went to eat together and he told my father, "No matter what happens, I want to make Mayuko happy for the rest of my life." My father was silent for a while, but then he started to cry and said, "Please take good care of Mayuko," and shook his hand.
I was surprised that my father accepted without complaint, but since it was my husband's fourth time, he cried and declared, "Thank you. I will definitely make you happy." Perhaps my father was in poor health and thought that he couldn't be with me, an only child, all the time, or perhaps he thought that there was no other way to deal with a man like him and so he entrusted me to him...
It took about 26 years for them to decide to marry. They've been together for 29 years. They say they've never experienced the joys of being newlyweds and have become like an old married couple.
