Woman keeps memory of war-displaced grandma alive
Hitomi Shibazaki remembers being stunned when she found her grandmother's name in a poem in her textbook during a Japanese language class at her junior high school. The poem, titled "Bowing Person," was accompanied by a photo of Liu Guiqin in March 1985, bowing deeply ...
Volunteer who left China in 1946 teaches Japanese to war-displaced
The 80-year-old female volunteer looked on warmly as men and women of all ages cheered and laughed with performers on stage at a public hall in Yokohama. "I could have been one of them," Akiko Nakamura said gently, looking at some 180 participants in the ...
29 years since leaving China, war-displaced woman still struggles in Japan
At a language class earlier this year for war-displaced Japanese left behind in China as children at the end of World War II, Tsuyako Suzuki was suddenly reminded that it had been exactly 29 years since she managed to make it to the country ...
'War orphans' from China to be surveyed this fall
The government will conduct a comprehensive survey this fall on the latest living conditions of war-displaced Japanese orphans repatriated from China and their descendants, with the aim of easing their educational and financial difficulties, a welfare ministry official said Monday. The move will mark the ...
Japan's night schools offer hope of a second chance for many
Takashi Kinoshita, 73, lived most of his adulthood with a secret that until recently he wouldn't dare divulge even to his children: he was nearly illiterate. As a child, Kinoshita grew up at a time when Japan was still in the grip of postwar poverty. ...
Icho's ethnic vitality poses future model for Japan
If Japan throws its doors open to immigrants it might start looking like a certain neighborhood in Yokohama with multilingual street signs, ethnic eateries, and a babel of languages spoken in the streets. At the heart of this unconventional neighborhood is the so-called Icho housing ...
