[Prologue]A Letter from a Japanese Woman
©︎Shiho Niim @sviesosdaina
[Prologue]
It's been 20 years when a black classmate told the Japanese woman that “only you can call me Negro”.
9.11, 3.11, BLM, and the US Presidential Election.
The root of it all is connected, even for her as a Japanese, being away from the US.
This series of articles was initially motivated by the 10th memorial this year, the timing of the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011.
As I was wondering if I could do something to be a beacon of light for the day while I was in America, I came across the music video "Waiting for a Friend" by Utsukushiki Hikari, a Japanese band.
As soon as being drawn to that, I decided to simply introduce the video and music, just to remind people and myself of that day.
However, more than two months after 3.11, the time has finally come for me to bring this song into this form. Moreover, my initial plan has changed drastically, and here is attached below a long and very personal letter to me from the woman who made the video for the song.
The woman, her name is Shiho, studied in a high school in a small town in Geogia around the time of 9.11 in 2001 and kept revisisting that town for about two decades.
More than a decade, she had been working on film phtography as her lifework, but now she is taking a break from making art works since she became a mother of a baby boy.
——
To begin with, this song is not about the day of 3.11, nor does the video show the people and scenery of Tohoku, where the heavy Tunami and earthquake hit in.
Selfishly, it brought back personal memories and sensations to me from 10 years ago, and I couldn't help but think of the people around the world who are still in the midst of all forms of instability.
The title of the song is "Waiting for a Friend". At that time, many people were thinking about someone far away, and were growing anxious and fearful about the future just around the corner.
According to Shiho, when she was working on editing this video right after 3.11, it was in between the rolling blackouts (to make up for the power shortage caused by the explosion of the nuclear power plant, the main power source in the Tokyo area).
I wonder what kind of feeling she must have had when she edited this video in the midst of such fragile moments.
"I felt that the information coming in and through the screen was filled with all kinds of negative energy. So I wanted to create something that would somehow help me and others look forward and bring light into our heart”
There were also no requests from the songwriter, MC sirafu in his mind neither. According to her. The only particular thing to share with her from him was “not to match the images to the sound”
So, this was how she interpreted the situation.
“I could express the story of this song as the light that someone sees"
She continued,
"For me, 3.11, BLM, the 2020 presidential election, and even going back to my time in Georgia before and after 9.11 in 2001, have always been connected issues and awareness.”
The comment reflain and made me not to help but ask her what she really meant.
——
Her response, it was written in a long, long letter from her, was the article I will introduce following.
She was forced to sleep on the floor by her host mother because she was Japanese.
The trauma of witnessing a shooting up right in front of the house in Georgia.
The shocking comment from the only black boy at her school.
The change in friends after returning from the Iraq War.etc.
After reading the letter from Shiho, I was just so shocked to realize that some distant America that I could not possibly have known no matter how many years I lived here became "one of my parts" at once.
It has been about 20 years since Shiho's high school days when she could not even recognize what happened to her as discrimination.
She is not a writer, a journalist, or an activist, but an individual who has never stop questioning and communicating with friends of her generation and their families, starting from her days in Georgia as a minority, the only Japanese in town.
Moreover, these words were originally not written to be exposed in the world of the internet, but, therefore, it is so honest and powerful, I believe.
Please allow me to say that this is an experimental attempt to show a slice of daily life in the U.S. as seen from a Japanese perspective, and to see how people who were born and raised in the U.S., as well as people like me who started living in the U.S. as adults, would feel when they hear her words.
Can we find any intersectional path for the days coming in?
I am a great believer in the possibility that an individual's one tiny stone of awareness and action can affect someone far away, beyond time and space.
“Waiting for a Friend"
by Utsukushiki Hikari
[Vo&Pf, Risa Nakagawa Steal pan, MC sirafu
Translation, mmm]
Becoming and the withering, are they hand in hand?
Things you need to know,will be kept for now
Until the view and your decisions change
Set Mouth and Heart next to each other
let them talk and will they deliver?
untill the waiting scnen comes to be bright
Water is fallin in my world
Droplets are boucing off ripples
Water is falling in m world
You’re starting to dawn