bikerbar (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} bikerbar) wrote,@ 2007-04-11 21:39:00 |
|
A foreigner everywhere
The tale of two exiles caught in the slipstream of time and space between Japan and Bohemia.
First, Mitsuko Coudenhove-Kalergi, married to an Austrian count in 1892 and whisked away at the age of 18 to the little chateau in Ronsperg/Poběžovice in West Bohemia where she lived the rest of her life, mostly as a widow, raising her 7 children and painting naive landscapes. Like some true-life "Howls Moving Castle", she was lost in a fairytale Europe, reeling towards war. Her husband Heinrich had written against the rising currents of anti-semitism and his writings, along with the paneuropean writings of his son Richard, were blacklisted by Hitler. She must have run, I suppose, in the end to Vienna, where she is buried. Her story, little known in Europe, has inspired a manga and a musical in Japan.
Second is the example of Czech-Japanese businessman Tomio Okamura who is making big money, it seems, helping Japanese tourist groups travel to Prague. His mother Helena immigrated to Japan in the 60's, but slowly went mad there and had to return after some time with her children to Czechoslovakia where she was hospitalised and Tomio ended up in an orphanage. Even in Japan, as a half-European, Tomio had dealt with constant rejection and isolation from his fellow Japanese.
"Maybe one of my most important memories was when I was about four years old. I went to the supermarket for the first time and a woman behind the counter there asked 'Why do you speak Japanese like a Japanese person when you aren't Japanese?! At that moment I understood for the first time and definitely that I am a 'foreigner' everywhere. At that time I thought about how it would have been better to have been 100 percent Japanese or 100 percent Czech. And I still was not able to find my position and my place in society."
I wonder how Mitsu felt in Europe, so far from her homeland, and so much an outsider, the rare Asian at the turn of the century -- a "china doll", the curious Viennese society must have thought of her. These stories are compelling for me as I am also a foreigner in Bohemia, a self-imposed exile of sorts. Outsiders are marked by their nationality, and especially by their race. Its odd how when one gives up their homeland, its not possible to go back the same. I have become a foreigner everywhere as well, even if I were to return to America, I would see it with different eyes. And time keeps pushing us from behind like a strong wind.
The tale of two exiles caught in the slipstream of time and space between Japan and Bohemia.
First, Mitsuko Coudenhove-Kalergi, married to an Austrian count in 1892 and whisked away at the age of 18 to the little chateau in Ronsperg/Poběžovice in West Bohemia where she lived the rest of her life, mostly as a widow, raising her 7 children and painting naive landscapes. Like some true-life "Howls Moving Castle", she was lost in a fairytale Europe, reeling towards war. Her husband Heinrich had written against the rising currents of anti-semitism and his writings, along with the paneuropean writings of his son Richard, were blacklisted by Hitler. She must have run, I suppose, in the end to Vienna, where she is buried. Her story, little known in Europe, has inspired a manga and a musical in Japan.
Second is the example of Czech-Japanese businessman Tomio Okamura who is making big money, it seems, helping Japanese tourist groups travel to Prague. His mother Helena immigrated to Japan in the 60's, but slowly went mad there and had to return after some time with her children to Czechoslovakia where she was hospitalised and Tomio ended up in an orphanage. Even in Japan, as a half-European, Tomio had dealt with constant rejection and isolation from his fellow Japanese.
"Maybe one of my most important memories was when I was about four years old. I went to the supermarket for the first time and a woman behind the counter there asked 'Why do you speak Japanese like a Japanese person when you aren't Japanese?! At that moment I understood for the first time and definitely that I am a 'foreigner' everywhere. At that time I thought about how it would have been better to have been 100 percent Japanese or 100 percent Czech. And I still was not able to find my position and my place in society."
I wonder how Mitsu felt in Europe, so far from her homeland, and so much an outsider, the rare Asian at the turn of the century -- a "china doll", the curious Viennese society must have thought of her. These stories are compelling for me as I am also a foreigner in Bohemia, a self-imposed exile of sorts. Outsiders are marked by their nationality, and especially by their race. Its odd how when one gives up their homeland, its not possible to go back the same. I have become a foreigner everywhere as well, even if I were to return to America, I would see it with different eyes. And time keeps pushing us from behind like a strong wind.
