Dear Ken-Chan: A Letter to Japan (Global Oriental): A Letter from Japan (Contemporary Issues in the Middle East (Hardcover)) - Hardcover

Winter, Kazuko

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1860340091 ISBN 13: 9781860340093

Publisher: Global Oriental Ltd, 1996

Synopsis

This candid memoir is a gripping personal tale of cultural schizophrenia. Kazuko Winter was the daughter of a high-ranking Japanese diplomat, raised and educated outside her native Japan in India, South Africa, Australia, and Oxford, England, in the 1950s and 1960s. She also spent time with her parents in Nigeria and Paraguay. Never fully at home anywhere, she suffered from an increasing sense of isolation that once led her to the brink of suicide, and at another stage to seriously consider entering a Catholic order of nuns. Written in the form of a letter to an old Japanese friend, the book relates the author's turbulent love affair with a young Japanese diplomat, her turbulent decision to break off the affair because she did not believe she belonged within Japanese society, and her subsequent happy marriage to a German scholar. At once disturbing and uplifting, this is an intensely felt story of the path to healing and her gradual reacceptance of herself, her mother and her Japanese heritage.

About this title

Synopsis:

Written as a letter to her closest Japanese friend, Kenji (Ken-chan is the familiar form) this very candid autobiography is the story of a high-ranking Japanese diplomat's daughter, who grew up and was educated mostly outside Japan (India, South Africa, Australia and finally Oxford, England) in the 1950s and 60s, but who rejected her Japanese roots and cultural heritage from an early age. She recalls how her "Japan-phobia" evolved while living outside Japan - out of her bewildering experience of Japanese behaviour abroad and a growing sense of restlessness and isolation as she moved around the world following her father's progress up the diplomatic ladder. She describes her love and engagement while at Oxford University to a young Japanese diplomat, only for her to realise more forcibly than ever that she did not belong within Japanese society and that she could not accept its values. It was a desperate and traumatic parting. Having embraced Christianity, she even considered at this point returning to Australia, to become a nun at her old convent school. Finally she chose to marry a German scholar with whom, for a time, she lived in a remote village on the slopes of Kilimanjaro.

In this extreme cultural situation, far away from Japan and the West, she began to come to terms with her "multi-cultural" self. Today she lives in Bayreuth and the processes of reconciliation with her own culture are well advanced. She no longer has to endure what she perceived as the nightmare of "cultural schizophrenia". Kazuko Winter's story and her "rebirth" as a Japanese should appeal to a wide cross-section of people, both for those who relate to Japanese culture, with its insight into the nature of "Japaneseness", and as a love-and-life story of great intensity.

About the Author:

Kazuko Winter was born in Tokyo in 1945 during the last months of the Second World War. As the daughter of a Japanese diplomat, she left Japan soon after beginning primary school and has lived abroad most of her life. After graduating from the University of Sydney where she studied Anthropology, Latin and Linguistics, she completed a postgraduate course in Social Anthropology at Oxford University. Her major interests lie in languages and intercultural studies. Today, she works as a freelance translator, teacher and writer. She has written an African cookery book and a Japanese textbook for German speakers. Currently, she is teaching at the University of Bayreuth, Germany.

About this edition

• Publisher: Global Oriental Ltd
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 1860340091
• ISBN 13: 9781860340093
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 156