I was born in the interior of the state of São Paulo, 600 km to the northwest, in the backlands of São Paulo. From the capital, there is a road that goes up and down through the vast green hills of sugarcane and cattle farms. After Bauru, the road goes straight up to the sky. A place that is always hot, with temperatures ranging from 25 to 40 degrees.
I am a descendant of Japanese immigrants, whose ancestors left Japan and went to China on my father's side and Argentina on my mother's side. Technically, my parents are Nisei , the second generation of Japanese born outside of Japan, but they experienced the horrors of the war in Japan as children.
They immigrated to Brazil in the 1960s and from that encounter, I came into the world, Brazilian and Sansei , the third generation. I grew up surrounded by many cultures, Japanese, Argentine, Chinese and Brazilian. My first language was Japanese and I grew up hearing Japanese, Spanish and Portuguese.
My name Norma came from my mother's Argentine influence, and my middle name, Chie, came from my mother's Japanese name. When she got married in Brazil, my mother lost the right to use her Japanese name when she registered her marriage at the registry office. My father, upset with the loss, registered the name "Chie" at my birth, without the knowledge of its honorable owner.
There is another peculiarity in my birth certificate. In the gap where my parents are from, my father's name is listed as Shinga-ken (the correct name is Shiga) and my maternal grandfather's name is Kataro. Imagine if the boys, who were already bullying me with the refrain “Japanese, Calabrian, eats frog every month” saw my birth certificate? They would certainly make fun of me with a “swear at who” or a “catarro” in addition to “tchê” and “vacavaca”...
As a teenager, I questioned the lack of a Chinese ideogram, the kanji in my name Chie, which I had been writing only in hiragana . Without an answer, I chose an ideogram myself, meaning “blessed in wisdom,” when I had learned the word for wisdom, satoru , in Japanese school. Later, I learned that many descendants do not know the meaning or the ideogram of their Japanese names or even where their ancestors came from.
When my paternal uncles from Japan visited, my uncle asked why he had such an ugly name, Norma. When he saw my shocked expression, he quickly explained that he had spent three years in a labor camp in Siberia at the end of World War II. Although he did not know Russian, he had learned one word and it stuck in his memory: norma. This Russian word meant a rule and a daily work quota for cutting down trees to earn a meager ration of watery soup and a slice of black bread, in a cold temperature of minus 60 degrees. It was a miracle that he survived.
So my first name was Argentine and Russian. When I was in Japan as an exchange student in Shiga Prefecture, people called me Norma, in a Japanese accent, NORUMA. Although it is a foreign name, in Japan it means rule and standard of perfection. When the Chinese spoke to me, they pronounced it “NOLOMA” and affectionately called me “ Noloma chan ”. And I became the target of ridicule among Latin Nikkei , with the pun “NOROMA”, which means slow in Japanese.
Having grown up in a Japanese family, my time in Japan was a great learning experience and a great source of personal growth. In Brazil, I lived in a society that saw me as “Japanese,” based on my stereotype. Just like Asians, Chinese, Filipinos, Koreans, and others, they were all called Japanese.
As a result, I grew up stereotyped as Japanese, even though I was third-generation, and I felt like a foreigner, not belonging to the “Brazilian being.” Here, I also received other nicknames throughout my life: Neusa, Neusinha (from Japanese-woman), San, Obasan, Nee, Neechan, Neesan, Japa, Japinha, Japonesinha, Olhos slashed, among others.
In Japan, even though I knew how to speak the official Japanese of Tokyo, life in the countryside in Shiga and visits with my maternal family to the north, in Akita, made me realize that, in a country the size of the state of São Paulo, there were many dialects, some of which were indecipherable. There I was also a foreigner because I didn't speak the local dialects.
From cultural and linguistic shocks, I went through an identity crisis.
In Japan, despite my face and my Japanese ancestry, I was not considered Japanese. I was gaijin (foreigner) and burajirujin (Brazilian). So, when people asked me which generation I belonged to, I would answer: “nunsei”... It was a time when the term Nikkei was not yet used.
Thus, with great difficulty, I managed to overcome, with my Brazilian flair, the fate of carrying so many cultures in one body. This experience taught me a great lesson: respect for differences and love for others, understanding the diversity and richness that each human being carries within themselves.
© 2024 Norma Chie Wakizaka
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