A Tokyo native of Austrian parentage, Hedwig Schreck, 61, recently retired from her career at TV Asahi. She now runs workshops that focus on Japanese cultural arts and crafts out of The Schreck House, the home where she grew up in Tokyo’s Hiroo neighborhood.
1. Can you share the story of your family's arrival to Japan? My paternal grandfather came to Kobe in 1920 as a submarine engineer. The Japanese government was interested in learning this technology, and he was involved in Japan’s Taisho Era (1912-26) industrialization process. He next moved to Yokohama and worked for a German company, then to Tokyo where he founded his own company in 1927 in steel and heavy industries, representing German and Austrian companies that imported technologies to Japan for things like tunnels and bridges.
2. So your family must have seen a lot of the dramatic history of that time period? Yes, definitely. I recently found a letter that my grandfather wrote to his brothers describing how his home burned down after the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake. He also continued running his company through World War II, working from Karuizawa, since business had to go on. He returned to Germany during the 1960s, so I never met him or had any personal connection.
3. And you yourself are a third-generation Tokyoite, is that right? Yes. My grandfather had four sons; the eldest died in Siberia during the war, and another taught at the German school in Tokyo. My father took over my grandfather’s company and introduced Austrian, German and Swiss technology for huge construction projects including the underwater Seikan tunnel connecting Honshu and Hokkaido, the Yamba Dam in Gunma Prefecture and the Tokyo Monorail — the last of which was actually inspired by the one at Disneyland. My father was always looking for new technologies. He rode his motorbike until age 91 and worked right up until his death at 92.
4. I also understand that your maternal grandmother was a famous artist. Did this significantly impact you growing up? Yes, my grandmother Emma Bormann (1887-1974) was indeed a big inspiration. I was surrounded by her artworks in the house ever since I was born, and my mother organized exhibitions in and outside Japan. Her collections can be found in museums around the world, including the Yokohama Museum of Art and the Riccar Art Museum here in Tokyo. Art has always been part of my life, and now, by starting The Schreck House, it has become my life’s work as well.
5. How did your parents meet? My maternal grandfather was a doctor in Vienna and came to China after Chang Kai-shek sent a delegation to hospitals there searching for doctors. He oversaw a leprosy hospital in Beihai, but since there was no school there for my mother and her sister, they lived in the French Quarter in Shanghai and attended the Kaiser Wilhelm School. This is where my father was also sent during the war after the German school in Tokyo had closed down, so my parents met there.
6. And how did they end up in Tokyo? My father stayed in Shanghai for several years after the war ended but decided to return to Japan when Mao Zedong came to power. Meanwhile, my mother did not know where to go after the war ended since Europe had been so bombed out. She decided to visit my father in Tokyo, and my grandfather found a job for her here so she stayed. They ended up marrying in 1953 and having four children, of which I am the youngest.
7. There must have been a lot of languages spoken in your household, yes? Indeed. My siblings and I spoke French together since we all attended French school, and we spoke German with our parents and Japanese with the neighbors, although there was also some Japanese spoken at home, since our father was also born and raised here.
My parents felt that my German was sub-par, however, so they decided to send me to the German school. That was a horrible experience for me. The French school had been completely international and open, but there were only Germans at the German school, and their community was really insular. They ridiculed me for my language skills and for things like bringing onigiri (rice balls) to school for lunch.
8. Did you eventually adapt? I did. I found my people — we were the bad girl crowd who liked to hang out in Roppongi. We also traveled around Japan during school holidays, staying in youth hostels and discovering the richness of this country.
9. What did you do after that? The plan was for me to go to Vienna after graduation, where we had a house. I was anxious to go to Europe, but in Vienna I found a heavy existentialist energy. I was used to the bright sunshine of Tokyo winters, but in Vienna everything was just dark and depressing. People also did not believe me when I said I was from Tokyo, and since I had learned to speak high German, I would just randomly make up cities in Germany where I said I was from, even though I had never been to Germany in my life. I had a pretty bad identity crisis around this time.
10. Would you say you identify more as Japanese? Not really. I don’t have Japanese citizenship, and even though my family has been in Japan for more than 100 years, I never considered becoming Japanese.
11. Were you able to experience any other cities of Europe? Yes, I visited Paris and absolutely loved it. It was such a beautiful and exciting city. I felt the stress lift off me there, like I could finally just be myself. I had been attending university in Vienna and simultaneously working for Kyodo (News), but it was not challenging enough for me. I spent some time traveling throughout Europe, which was a good chance to figure out who I was and what I wanted to do. After finishing my studies in Vienna, I ended up getting a job with the Asahi Shimbun in Paris, so I moved there in 1987.
12. Were you producing the news? No, I worked in the cultural division, where my responsibilities included organizing art exhibitions. I worked with museums including the Louvre, Centre Georges Pompidou and Musee Guimet, and brought masterpieces back for exhibitions at places like the National Museum of Western Art in Ueno. The division closed after the economic bubble burst, so I did spend a year after that in the news department. I found covering the daily news to be unfulfilling, however, as I wanted to go deeper. I became interested in documentaries then and applied for a television production job at the international department of TV Asahi back in Tokyo. It was a big decision to make, as I did not particularly want to live in Tokyo again, but after the testing and interviewing process I was offered the job and decided to take it.
13. You were one of the only non-Japanese full-time employees at TV Asahi, is that right? Yes. It was a totally Japanese environment, and I was treated as such, but not at first. People would come ask me to translate things into English that were non-work related, and it only stopped when I got angry and reminded them that I had not been hired as a translator.
14. What shows did you work on? We worked with overseas broadcasters on international co-productions, including one on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and another on the revolution in the Philippines against former President (Ferdinand) Marcos. We also did a special millennium celebration. Since Japan has a system of rotating employees around departments, I also worked on sports, anime and a series called the “Sunday Movie Theater.” I loved producing the Japanese version of movies we had purchased the rights for — the voice-overs were great.
15. Are there other particularly memorable experiences from your career there? I worked on the broadcasting rights for international sports events, such as the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating series, as well as the actual live broadcasts of other sports. Back in the international department, I sold formats of TV Asahi programs to be broadcast in other countries, where they took the concept and produced their own versions. That was a really interesting cross-cultural experience. Some were 1980s bubble-era programs, so there were a lot of crazy game shows and romance-related variety shows. Now there are a lot of financial and compliance restrictions, but back in the day, it was truly anything goes. I was then transferred to work on events, which was like returning to my roots back at the Asahi Shimbun in Paris.
16. What sorts of events did you enjoy most? I did a lot of art exhibitions, theater and music festivals. I loved working on the Ryukyu Festival in the Hibiya Park outdoor stage; the performers from Okinawa were just so friendly and easy to work with, and everyone ended up dancing and drinking together. The exhibition at the Yokohama Museum of Art featuring the art collection from the Musee de l'Orangerie was also memorable.
17. How did your transition to launching The Schreck House workshops come about? My father passed away in 2017, and it took me a couple of years to recover from that, as we were very close. All of my siblings live in Vienna, so it was up to me to decide what to do with our childhood home. After a lot of thought, I decided to retire and pivot to showcasing the beauty of Japanese culture while also creating an international community — something totally different from my career at TV Asahi, where I was essentially living in a 100% Japanese environment. I did some renovations but kept a lot of the original elements like the entrance, lighting and wood in order to retain the spirit of the house.
18. What types of arts are you featuring at your workshops? Everything I am interested in, such as kintsugi (repairing pottery with urushi lacquer), sumi-e ink painting, classical Japanese cooking, cha-no-yu (tea ceremony), and mizuhiki (creating knots from traditional washi string). I tend to be more interested in lesser-known pursuits, but I know that people are interested in more stereotypically well-known arts as well, so I am trying to find a balance between the types of offerings.
19. I see that your company name is “One by One.” What does that mean? My father used to tell me to slow down and do things step by step, so when I was thinking about a company name I just hastily put down “One by One” to reflect this idea — and the name stuck.
20. What future plans do you have in the works? I’d love to start offering more elevated, sophisticated styles of Japanese cooking, as well as sake and food events where we can use the outside terrace and in-depth tea-related events including one featuring hakucha (white tea). I also plan to offer the space to artists who wish to produce their own events. I’ve found that one artist keeps introducing me to others, so the network is continuing to expand in a really natural way.
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