Ghost, half-human and spy — Shigeru Oyama has been called all these things growing up half-Japanese in postwar Beijing.
Oyama, who now drives a taxi in Yokohama, breaks out into a gentle smile talking about the customers who try to guess from his accent what part of Japan he comes from. "They say, 'Kyushu, right?' and it makes me so happy. It means I've been accepted, even by strangers," he says.
Oyama came to Japan in 1987 with his wife and son after the government recognized him as a war-displaced Japanese. He was 42. "'Why did you bring us here? Let's go home,' my son said when we saw our apartment," Oyama says in describing the public housing unit that is now his home. "It was empty. There was only tatami — can you imagine what it was like?"