People | WHY DID YOU LEAVE JAPAN? Oct 21, 2017
Cultural disorientation is dancer Yumi Umiumare's artistic drive
by Andrew Eglinton
At a certain level, the act of resettling overseas unsettles the idea of home itself. It ruptures the narrative of belonging that we construct through attachments to people and places. For the immigrant, home is no longer an immutable fact, but a space between memory and desire — always elsewhere. This sense of estrangement is perhaps most strongly felt when returning "home" after a long period of leave. As Czech novelist Milan Kundera once put it, going back reveals "the substantial strangeness of the world and of existence." ...