I speak Japanese. I grew up in Japan. My
parents are pure Japanese, and I carry a Japanese passport.
Obviously by anyone's standard I would have to be a Japanese.
But I am not.
I am really Filipino because that's what I think I am. Most
of my Filipino friends agree that I am one of them, and most
of my non-Filipino friends think I am more Filipino than anything
else. I am a member and officer of the local Philippine community,
and often attend meetings with Japanese representing the Filipinos.
In May of 1989 I visited Manila for just two days. I was on
my way to Bangkok on business, and really had no particular
reason to be there. Oddly enough, as I stepped out of the airport
into that dirty crumbling city (Manila was in a pretty bad shape
in 1989!), I found myself feeling high and wildly excited. "Hey,
I love this place," I said to myself. "I could live here forever!"
There was no way I could explain it--it was my first time there
and I didn't know anything or anyone--but there was something
about this place. I knew I was finally home, like for the first
time in my life.
Years passed and in 1993, shortly before I went to church and
became a Christian (more
about that HERE), I made a Filipino friend and she introduced
me to some of her friends here. Most Filipinos speak fairly
good English, so I had no trouble communicating with them. As
I made friends with more of them, I was impressed--almost stunned--to
see the way they lived happily and let live one another generously.
They were living life to the fullest, vigorously and happily,
showing me how much more there was to life than I used to know.
Millions of Filipinos work abroad because their country's ailing
economy doesn't offer enough jobs. Most of the friends I have
made here are women who work as domestic helpers and babysitters
for Americans and other foreigners in Japan. Many have a husband
and children back at home, and work thousands of miles away
to make a simple living, which isn't really that simple. Life
is much harder on them than it is on the rich and spoiled average
Japanese. Yet, those Filipinos seemed to me like the happiest
people I had ever seen. Despite all the life's hardships, they
looked at the sunny side of life and enjoyed and thanked God
for whatever they received. None of them was very rich, but
whenever someone needed help, they would generously go out of
their ways and do more than their share. I admired them, and
wished I were like them. I wanted to know what made them live
like that.
A few years later I visited a friend's hometown in the Philippines
and stayed there with her family for one month. It was a most
memorable experience that more than renewed my love and respect
for the wonderful people of this beautiful country. I confirmed
my old intuition, that I wasn't wrong that day six years earlier
when I was in Manila and thought I was home.
As I got to know the Filipinos better, they accepted me as if
my racial or cultural differences didn't matter. My inability
to speak their language wasn't a problem either, because whenever
I was around they would talk to me in English from time to time
so I might not feel left out. With them, I felt more like myself
than I ever had with my own people. They allowed me to be my
own self, and accepted me and liked me for the man I was. As
for the secret of their being so happy all the time, my question
was at least partly answered when I learned their Christian
religion and eventually embraced it.
For 28 years I didn't know who I was. I grew up in Japan among
the Japanese, always having a distant suspicion that I wasn't
really one of them. Somehow I didn't fit in there, and I would
be met by either rejection and hatred, or pressure to change
myself to fit the correct Japanese model. Now I have realized
I am actually Filipino, I can be myself like never before, and
have people accept me the way I am. Even the Japanese accept
me and don't try to change me anymore because they understand,
in a way, that I am not one of them. They treat me as if I were
a foreigner who just speaks their language very well. They know
I can still be a good friend, because I am not, after all, such
a bad guy. I'm only different.
Am I Filipino? Am I Japanese? Does it even matter? After all
these years in search of myself, my answer to the last question
is no. I have friends of many different nationalities but it
hardly occurs to me that they are American, Canadian, or Indonesian.
Most of the time I forget that they are foreigners at all. Nationalities
and races just don't matter. People are people. Many are kind
and friendly, some more than the others, and some are not. A
few may be unkind or even harmful, but anywhere you go, most
people are good. I like people. |
