Relationship to Japanese Identity

The new name I want to give myself is the Japanese name, Ryou. Japanese names can have a variety of meanings, depending on the kanji one chooses, but the meaning I like for the name Ryou is “dragon.” Both of my parents are Korean, and despite the historic struggles between Korea and Japan, I have managed to look past these divisions and feel at home in Japanese culture.

I was born in the beautiful city of Tokyo, Japan. Until first grade, I attended an international school, so my Japanese was never fluent. My family moved to the US when I was six, and for years, I forgot about the culture and country where I was born. But then suddenly, when I was fourteen, my interest in Japanese anime made me begin to rethink the place I had been born. It felt like I had been missing out on a significant piece of my identity. My interest in Japan took off like a rocket. I bought a license for Rosetta Stone and started studying the Japanese language. Within a few weeks, I began to dig deeper into my studies of Japanese culture.

After self-studying for a few months, I started researching summer programs where I could enhance my language skills. I discovered Concordia Language Villages, located in an isolated town about three hours from Minneapolis. My new friends and I watched Japanese movies, ate Japanese food, and received rewards for going a full day without speaking English. My roommates and I sat by the campfire before we were dismissed to our cabins, singing Japanese songs. The four weeks I was there were four of the most meaningful weeks of my life.

Later that summer, my father and I took a trip to Tokyo. As we stepped out of the airplane, I felt an overflowing sense of satisfaction as my body began to accept that I was in a city that I hadn’t visited in nine years. On this trip I began to learn directly about the cultural virtues of Japan. It is a disciplined society that emphasizes respect, honesty, cleanliness, punctuality, obeying rules, and prioritizing the benefit of the collective over that of the individual. I realized that a big part of me identifies more strongly with Japanese culture than American, or even Korean culture.

But my family’s relationship with Japanese culture is not so straightforward. Recently, I learned from my maternal grandfather that there was a dark side of my family’s experience with Japan that I had not known. He was born in Japan, but under very different circumstances. His family had been brought from Korea to Japan as forced laborers when Japan had control over Korea in the early 20th century. It was a very harsh period for the countries that were colonized by Imperial Japan. My grandfather survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, but sadly lost his father. With historical struggles between Korea and Japan, it is no mystery that the two cultures have been at odds with one another, and to an extent, still are in the present day.

Despite my ancestors’ hardships, Japanese culture has continued to inform my identity. As someone who values freedom of choice, I believe I was born with an unbreakable right to choose and assimilate into any culture. After all, we don’t have a choice about the culture we’re born into, and we may actually feel more at ease somewhere else.

I hope to live in Tokyo again someday, where the name “Ryou” will cement the cultural identity of my choice. I also hope that as an international community we can forgive past tensions. While the events of the past weigh heavily on how we view the future, I cannot help but believe that our generation should judge and can judge others for who we are today and for what we will do in the future.