Japan and Me

My feelings towards my mother’s country are of love and hate. Although having grown up in Belgium, surrounded by European values and culture, my parents made sure I was bathed in the Japanese way of living and behaving at home. Like any teenager, I underwent an identity crisis, which was more of a “nationality” crisis. I sensed how my Japanese sensibility and way of relating to others differentiated me from my schoolmates, and probably wondered how my life would go on in Europe if I continued feeling this way.

When I graduated from University in Belgium, I decided I had to try out living in Japan. I would then know whether I really fit better in the Japanese society rather than in the European one. I applied for a MEXT scholarship, and left for 2 years as a Research Student to the small city of Sendai. That departure to Japan was, for me, a “return” to my motherland, a place where I belonged. Very soon, however, I would find out I was daydreaming. For the Japanese people, I was just a foreigner. I felt great sorrow when people complimented my knowledge of Japanese or their customs. I felt anger when people responded to me in English when I spoke to them in Japanese. Although I couldn’t bear their attitudes, I understood the historical or cultural backgrounds that lead them to take such attitudes and consequently felt trapped by my dual ethnicity. Strangely enough, during those hard times, visits to Shinto shrines soothed me the most. I very seriously considered coming back to Belgium after one year, but thanks to the understanding and friendship of the Professor in charge of the lab I was working in, I decided to give myself one more year to understand and maybe love again the country that was hosting me. It was, of course, the good decision to be made. The second year went on more peacefully, finally finding true Japanese friends and accepting the fact that I am, quite naturally probably, much more European than Japanese.

A few years after my return, little by little, my attraction to Japan came to life once again. It was time for me to find a job in which I could use my Japanese language skill. Conveniently, I was given an assignment that implied working to foster business relationships between Japan and a part of Belgium. Having been bathed in the Brussels’ Japanese School’s hymn, I was happy to finally be in a position that would allow me to become a “rainbow-bridge between Belgium and Japan”. This job is giving me the opportunity to meet a type of Japanese people that I had never met before. It is while discussing with them that I feel my dual ethnicity finally respected, accepted and useful. This job has also given me the chance to go back to Japan for the first time since I had left it in 2006. The country I had left didn’t seem to have changed. Having shed a few emotional tears in the plane prior to landing in Narita, I suddenly found myself in known territory, my “Japanese social attitude” switched on as soon as I had entered it. During my stay, I realized how a true friendship with a Japanese person is never lost. A friend from Sendai, with whom I had barely exchanged a few mails during these 7 years came to meet me in Tokyo, leaving her child with her husband. In fact, this shouldn’t have surprised me, as I am lucky enough to still enjoy the friendship of Japanese friends I met at the Japanese school when I was just 10…

All these recent experiences have proven that Japan will undoubtedly be part of me for the rest of my life, and beyond.