Dear Japan. A Letter To My Home
Dear Japan,
First, I want to say that I love you. You were the country where I took my first breath. My lungs filled with your air, and from there I was home. My first tears happened in your hospitals. My cries echoed throughout the hallway and took me throughout my childhood, becoming laughter, then to tears and back again.
You were the only home I knew.
I grabbed at floating cherry blossom petals from three years old until now. I danced in the summer with hanabi, the sparks singed my fingertips and wrists, but we gleefully let them burn. We did rajiotaiso at swimming pools. In the fall my sisters and I played in the fallen momiji, in a sea of red leaves. When winter came along we huddled together in front of the gas stove, our feet burned and our faces cold.
I love you, my country, my nippon. You made me who I am.
I love you in both sunshine and disasters. I scrambled under the table with my family in the Kobe earthquake of 1995. I stayed inside for your raging typhoons and your overpowering heat. But I swam in rivers and lakes of perfect water, hiked through mountains where the Gods live. Read Siddhartha in the middle of my quiet forest in my hometown.
But Japan, you see, you are my home, but you do not want me.
When I was a child, I told a crowd of people that I was from Japan. Everyone laughed hysterically, because I do not look Japanese. The laughter trailed through years all the way to adulthood. I found it echoing wherever I went, pulsing through meetings with friends, to schools, to bars as an adult. It echoed again yesterday when I said I was born in your cities. The man standing behind me in line at a restaurant who asked me where I was from laughed at me. “Americans are hilarious.” He said. The child in me wonders what I said wrong.
I trailed to my working life as well. “We think our clients would prefer having someone Japanese” I was told several times in job interviews when I was younger.
You see, I may not look or sound exactly how most Japanese do. My parents aren’t from here. No Japanese blood runs through my veins.
I want you to know Japan, it does indeed hurt to love you. I wince when I explain my background and someone asks if that is “An American Joke”. No sir, it isn’t.
Having old men stare at me on the train because I was blonde, from the ages 6 to now, then go back to reading their porn magazines right next to me isn’t a joke.
It isn’t a joke when I’m followed home at night, with drunken people from my town jeering. “Hey American girl, how much are you?”
I didn’t understand when I was a child why I was stared at. Why people silently take photos of me without thinking I see them. I am here. I exist. I see you.
It is painful to argue with people, when they tell me and list off the reasons why I’m not from Japan. Where they tell me where I belong. Asking me if I “understand”, with each conversation.
Or even the simplest questions I get often. Do you like Japan? Yes sir. Can you eat natto? Yes sir. Can you use chopsticks? Yes sir.
It hurt the most when someone knew my story. They knew where I was born. Then said my art was interesting, saying it was fascinating to see Japan from a foreigner’s perspective. Sir, I’ve breathed in Japan just as much as your daughter has. We are the same age. I’ve only ever lived here.
As an adult, it makes me frustrated that I never had Japanese citizenship, despite being born and raised here. I care about this country as much as anyone does, maybe sometimes more, because I have to fight to make people believe that this is my home. I have to fight to convince people.
Dear Japan, I hope you can love me one day, as much as I love you. This is unrequited, I know. I can feel it in my bones. I do not know if I can make you want me, with my third culture mind and soul. I am not exactly like all of you. But perhaps, one day, despite it all, you can open your arms to me. And I can finally be your daughter.
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5 Comments
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Mike Marr
Japan the nation is a sad little old man
Sad that a big strange bully crushed his dreams
Stripped him of his pride
Japan the land is a beautiful young woman
Vibrant, loving, creative
Bathes your soul when you hike in the forest
Gently touches your face with her mist
Energizes your Qi as you laugh with friends
Soon we will attend a remembrance
For the sad little old man
Admire his handsomeness
Remember his accomplishments
Long for his love
He will look back and weep
While she hugs you
Knowing his role made you more
Vibrant, loving, creative
So we love
the setting sun
even more -
Catherine Purucker
Unbelievably powerful. The heart of so many spoken so profoundly simply and honestly and startlingly true. This is a real hurt and I admire your courage to express it . We are all all sojourners in this world and only the knowledge of God and being a citizen of His kingdom can ever fill that desire for love requited .
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Liz Rice
Thank you for this. Beautifully said and written. I grew up in South Korea and can relate in so many ways. (My memoir, Rituals of Separation, addresses these same issues).
Seval
Dear Reylia!
What a beautiful love letter, with all its yearning for just wanting to belong unconditionally.
Your words resonated with me. I was born and raised in Germany but my parents are Kurds from Turkey. When people don’t fit in the usual boxes it gets really confusing for most people and I need to be careful when I say this because I’m sure I’ve been guilty of similar comments myself without realizing.
But your story is wonderful as it helps to become aware of our own stereotypical thoughts, actions, and words.
I also would like to add that I remember how as a child I envied people for whom their nationality, their sense of belonging to a country, seemed clear and straight. They loved their country and felt pride. In my time here in Japan though I came to understand that I’ll never be able to hug Germany or Turkey or Japan like you can hug a person and that the meaning of home for me was made up of memories, a sense of belonging to people who I love and who love me back, of cultural rituals and common understanding. That growing feeling helped me free me from this aching desire wanting to be accepted. I’m still learning how to feel accepted from the inside, not so much from the outside. And the truth is, we are kind of like a new strong hybrid being, and I for myself need to own up to that.
Nevertheless, stories like yours and mine are important. They might not change things on a bigger scale in our lifetime, sadly, but they will make a difference in smaller ways. And those count!
Warm hugs, dear Reylia!
Your Seval