It’s not that filmmaker Atsuko Hirayanagi didn’t like Japan. When growing up, she was even okay with school. But from her early teens, she had an urge to leave.

“I think I have some kind of nomadic DNA,” laughs Hirayanagi during an interview on a recent visit to Tokyo. “I sent off my saliva sample to a company that analyzes your DNA and I was told that my pattern was a very common one in Chile. Maybe I have some kind of native South American blood. Maybe I’ve always had a hankering to go back to my roots. Either way, I left Japan when I was 17 to stay with a Japanese host family in LA.”

That was in August 1992, and Los Angeles was still reeling from the Rodney King incident, race riots and lootings. Worried for the safety of his daughter, Hirayanagi’s father was strongly opposed to the plan. “My mother persuaded him to let me go,” she says. “I think she knew that if I was stopped, I would find some other way to go on my own. And my father saw that she was right. I’m really grateful to my parents for letting me leave.”