Dear Ken-chan: A Letter from Japan

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.