When I first came to Japan, it seemed as if people were always wanting to dress me up in traditional Japanese clothing and take my picture. The kimonos were bright, with embroidered cranes and flowers, and long furisode sleeves. I was 22 or 23. I would soon learn that such garments were only meant for young women. After marriage, Japanese women typically wore kimono with short sleeves in shades of gray.
Years later, I remember going to an event at my daughter’s school in a tunic and cardigan of light blue. One of the younger Japanese mothers commented on my outlandish fashion choice. Apparently, in Japan, I was too old for pastels. Also, it is unseemly to stand out.
Women tend to stay behind the scenes in this country. In fact, the word for wife, okusan, means “interior person.” This brings to mind someone who hides out in the depths of the house. Normally wives are not mentioned. Men do things without them. I have no idea what the wife of the current prime minister looks like.
As I became older, I could feel myself fading. For many years, I was conscious of the colour of my clothes. Wanting to be taken seriously and respected, I opted for the dark and somber. But recently I am less concerned with what other people think. This, too, comes with age.
I discovered that there is a stereotype concerning women of certain vintage in Osaka. They wear loud clothing, including leopard print, and say whatever they like. I admire that attitude. I am also a fan of Yayoi Kusama, she of the red wigs and huge polka dot dresses. Why not be iconic? Why not be a little weird?
I recently came across a call for models for a project called “40 over 40.” An American photographer in Tokyo named Tia Haygood had decided to make older women visible, to let them feel glamorous and have a good time. I volunteered to be a subject.
We had a consultation via Zoom in which I answered questions about my preferences and personality. I showed her my closet, and we talked about what I would wear. The champagne sequined dress that I bought for dinner with my daughter at the Eiffel Tower? Yes! And the four-inch heeled leopard print shoes that I had bought to go with the dress? Yes! My African print dresses? Yes! Businesslike black blazer? No!
The photo session would be fun, but I also needed a professional headshot. The author photo that I had been using, which had been hastily taken by my impatient husband in our backyard, was fifteen years old. Whenever someone asked me for a photo for a conference programme or a website, I panicked. All I had were some unsatisfactory selfies.
I packed a suitcase with clothes for the photo shoot and flew up to Tokyo. I spent the night in a hotel, and then took three trains to get to the photo studio. By the time I arrived, I was hot and sweaty.
Nobue, the makeup artist, greeted me when I peeked in the door. She ushered me into the breeze of the fan. When I had sipped some water and cooled off, I sat in a chair in front of a mirror and had my face made up.
“Don’t worry,” she kept saying, as she added colour. “Trust me.”
I did.
Tia and I talked about books and people that we knew in common and about the photo project. In December, there would be an exhibition in Tokyo featuring photos of the forty subjects. It would be a celebration, and also a networking opportunity. I vowed to be there.
For the next two or three hours, she took many photos of me in different outfits and poses. Music pumped out of the speakers. She told jokes to get me to laugh. It was fun, and it felt a tad self-indulgent, but I loved it.
While I was in that studio, no one was judging me and I wasn’t invisible. I sparkled.
Suzanne Kamata being jazzed up. Photographs provided by Suzanne Kamata
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Suzanne Kamatawas born and raised in Grand Haven, Michigan. She now lives in Japan with her husband and two children. Her short stories, essays, articles and book reviews have appeared in over 100 publications. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times, and received a Special Mention in 2006. She is also a two-time winner of the All Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest, winner of the Paris Book Festival, and winner of a SCBWI Magazine Merit Award.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Our population crossed the 8 billion mark in November, 2022. As we move towards trying to hunt for alternative domiciles for our ever-expanding population, even in outer space, we still have to take into account the increased movement of people across the Earth in search of alternative homes driven by external circumstances or by personal needs.
Some have lost their homes and lands to war, some to climate emergencies and some moved out out of choice. Here we have collected narratives of past and present migrations, emphasising the fluidity of borders, despite the lines drawn artificially by manmade constructs. In an earlier interview, Anthony Sattin talks of nomadic migrations and the concept of asabiyya, or brotherhood, which tied humans to ideas and ideals instead of a piece of land mooted in Arabia by Ibn Khaldun in the fourteenth century. Has the time come to revive this concept with conflicts and the climate crises becoming real? As weapons, fire and water affect our habitats, one wonders if reverting to the concept of nomadic existence is not becoming a necessity… This small collection of writings will hopefully highlight the concerns.
In Belacan, Farouk Gulsara shares a narrative based on the life of a migrant in 1950s Malaysia. Clickhereto read.
Ujjal Dosanjh, former Minister from Canada and former Premier of British Columbia, talks of his own journey and learning as he migrated out of India to Canada. Click hereto read.
In Mister, They’re Coming Anyway, Timothy Jay Smith writes on the refugee crisis in Lesbos Island, Greece, in 2016 with photographs by Michael Honegger. Click here to read.
An excerpt from Ramy Al-Asheq’sEver Since I Did Not Die, translated from Arabic by Isis Nusair, edited by Levi Thompson. The author was born in a refugee camp. Click hereto read.
Ujjal Dosanjh, former Minister from Canada and former Premier of British Columbia, discusses his autobiography, Journey After Midnight – A Punjabi Life: From India to Canada, and the need for a world with less borders. Click hereto read.
Professor Fakrul Alam discusses his new book of Tagore translations, Gitabitan: Selected Song-Lyrics of Rabindranath Tagore. Click here to read.
Translations
Tagore’sMusalmanir Galpa(A Muslim Woman’s Story) has been translated from Bengali by Aruna Chakravarti. Clickhere to read.
Masud Khan’s poem,In Another Galaxy, has been translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click hereto read.
Wakeful Stays the Door, a poem by Munir Momin, has been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.
Songs of Freedom: An Ordinary Taleis a narrative by Nandani based on her own experiences, translated from Hindustani by Janees. These narrations highlight the ongoing struggle against debilitating rigid boundaries drawn by societal norms, with the support from organisations like Shaktishalini and Pandies. Click hereto read.
“Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them…”
— TS Eliot, ‘Four Quartets: Burnt Norton’(1936)
Humans have always been dreamers, ideators and adventurers.
Otherwise, could we have come this far? From trees to caves to complex countries and now perhaps, an attempt to reach out towards outer space for an alternative biome as exploring water, in light of the recent disaster of the Titan, is likely to be tougher than we imagined. In our attempt to survive, to live well by creating imagined constructs, some fabrications backfired. Possibly because, as George Orwell observed with such precision in Animal Farm, some perceived themselves as “more equal”. Of course, his was an animal allegory and we are humans. How different are we from our brethren species on this beautiful planet, which can survive even without us? But can humanity survive without Earth? In science fiction, we have even explored that possibility and found home among stars with the Earth becoming uninhabitable for man. However, humanity as it stands of now, continues to need Earth. To live amicably on the planet in harmony with nature and all the species, including our own, we need to reimagine certain constructs which worked for us in the past but seem to have become divisive and destructive at this point.
Ujjal Dosanjh, former Minister in the Canadian cabinet and former Premier of British Columbia, in his autobiography, Journey After Midnight – A Punjabi Life: From India to Canada, talks of regionalism as an alternative to narrow divisive constructs that terrorise and hurt others. He writes in his book: “If humanity isn’t going to drown in the chaos of its own creation, the leading nations of the world will have to create a new world order, which may involve fewer international boundaries.” We have a candid conversation with him about his beliefs and also a powerful excerpt from his autobiography.
An interview with Professor Fakrul Alam takes us into Tagore’s imagined world. He discussed his new book of Tagore translations, Gitabitan: Selected Song-Lyrics of Rabindranath Tagore. He has brought out a collection of 300 songs translated to English. In a bid to emphasise an inclusive world, we also have a translation of Tagore’s ‘Musalmanir Galpa’ (A Muslim Woman’s Story) by Aruna Chakravarti. A transcreation of his poem, called ‘Proshno or Questions’ poses difficult challenges for humanity to move towards a more inclusive world. Our translation by Ihlwha Choi of his own Korean poem to English also touches on his visit to the polymath’s construct in the real world, Santiniketan. All of these centring around Tagore go to commemorate the month in which he breathed his last, August. Professor Alam has also translated a poem from Bengali by Masud Khan that has futuristic overtones and builds on our imagined constructs. From Fazal Baloch we have a Balochi translation of a beautiful, almost a surrealistic poem by Munir Momin.
We travel to Andaman with Mohul Bhowmick and further into Sierra with Meredith Stephens. Ravi Shankar travels back in nostalgia to his hostel and Kathleen Burkinshaw dives into the past — discussing and responding to the media presentation of an event that left her family scarred for life, the atomic holocaust of 1945 in Japan. This was a global event more than seven decades ago that created refugees among the survivors whose homes had been permanently destroyed. Perhaps, their stories are horrific, and heart wrenching like the ones told by those who suffered from the Partition of India and Pakistan, a divide that is celebrated by Independence Days for the two nations based on a legacy of rifts created by the colonials and perpetrated to this day by powerbrokers. Aysha Baqir has written of the wounds suffered by the people with the governance gone awry. Some of the people she writes of would have been refugees and migrants too.
A poignant narrative about refugees who flock to the Greek island of Lesbos by Timothy Jay Smith with photographs by Michael Honegger, both of whom served at the shelters homing the displaced persons, cries out to halt wars and conflicts that displace them. We have multiple narratives of migrants in this issue, with powerful autobiographical stories told by Asad Latif and Suzanne Kamata. Paul Mirabile touches on how humans have adopted islands by borrowing them from seas… rather an unusual approach to migrations. We have an essay on Jane Austen by Deepa Onkar and a centenary tribute to Chittaranjan Das by Bhaskar Parichha.
The theme of migrants is echoed in stories by Farouk Gulsara and Shivani Shrivastav. Young Nandani has given an autobiographical story, translated from Hindustani to English by Janees, in which a migration out of various homes has shredded her family to bits — a narrative tucked in Pandies Corner. Strange twists of the supernatural are woven into fiction by Khayma Balakrishnan and Reeti Jamil.
I would like to give my grateful thanks to our wonderful team at Borderless, especially to Sohana Manzoor for her fabulous artwork. Huge thanks to all our gifted contributors and our loyal readers. Borderless exists today because of all of you are making an attempt to bringing narratives that build bridges, bringing to mind Lennon’s visionary lyrics:
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one
I suppose it is politically incorrect to say that I was somewhat under the influence of the movie, Out of Africa (1985), which featured European expatriates living the colonial life on a coffee plantation, or that my do-gooder impulse had been activated by other films such as Cry Freedom (1987) with Biko in it. I had decided that after I graduated from college, I would join the Peace Corps as a volunteer.
I had wanted to be a writer since I was a little girl growing up in Michigan. I have especially always wanted to write fiction. However, by the time I became a student of English literature in college, I realised that it would be difficult to make a living as a novelist. My plan upon graduation was to travel the world through teaching English as a foreign language. In this way, I would accumulate life experiences which would become fodder for my stories and novels.
Earlier, as a junior, I had spent a semester in Avignon, France, on foreign study, somewhat following in the footsteps of my older brother, who’d spent a year in Germany while we were in high school. I’d been inspired by his letters telling of his adventures abroad, sleeping on Spanish beaches, skiing down Austrian slopes. When he came back home, I saw how living abroad could transform a person. I wanted that for myself.
The interview for the Peace Corps was gruelling – a four-hour grilling, sometimes quite personal. They asked me if I had a boyfriend. I winced, because I had recently broken up with someone I thought I wanted to marry. “No,” I said. They told me that the most common reason for leaving a Peace Corps posting early was a boyfriend or girlfriend back home.
In the meantime, my brother, who’d majored in business, and who was concerned that I would be working for free, sent me a newspaper clipping about something called the JET Program, a fledging one-year scheme for “native speakers of English” to work as assistant language teachers in Japanese public schools. The position came with a salary that was decent at the time. I applied to that, too, as a back-up, in case the Peace Corps didn’t want me.
To be sure, I had an interest in Japan. At t the time, its economy was thriving and Japanese companies were buying up iconic American buildings. It seemed as if Japan was about to take over the world, and that it would behoove me to know something about the country. Also, I had taken a course in Asian history, and developed an interest in Heian Court poetry. I loved the idea of a country where people had communicated by passing poems to one another. And I was intrigued by the futuristic images depicted in the movie, Blade Runner (1982) the kitschy aspects rendered in Jay McInerney’s novel, Ransom (1985).
Anyway, I was accepted into the Peace Corps and told that I would be sent to Cameroon. After some consideration, I decided that I would go to Japan for one year, and then enter into a two-and-half stint in the Peace Corps. But then once I arrived in Japan, I found that I wanted to stay a little bit longer. Just one more year. There was still so much to learn, so much to explore. I hadn’t yet climbed Mt. Fuji! I hadn’t been to Okinawa! I renewed my contract. In my second year, I fell in love with a Japanese high school teacher. And, yes, dear reader, I married him. I stayed in Japan and started a family. I have never been to Africa.
As I write this, I have been living in Japan for well over half of my life. From time to time, I wonder how my life might have turned out differently if I had gone to Cameroon as originally planned. Would I be working for an NGO in Africa? Or what if I had gone back to the United States after one or two years? Would I be living somewhere in suburbia, working nine to five at a company?
However, I also often consider what Japan has given me. Living outside my country has opened my mind, and has given me countless opportunities, including fodder for the stories that I write. And thanks to my writing, I am now employed at a small university where we have many students from around the world. I continue to nourish my heart and mind by reading literature and watching films from and about other cultures.
I find that we are not so different after all.
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Suzanne Kamatawas born and raised in Grand Haven, Michigan. She now lives in Japan with her husband and two children. Her short stories, essays, articles and book reviews have appeared in over 100 publications. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times, and received a Special Mention in 2006. She is also a two-time winner of the All Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest, winner of the Paris Book Festival, and winner of a SCBWI Magazine Merit Award.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595) by William Shakespeare
Famous lines by Shakespeare that reflect on one of the most unique qualities in not only poets — as he states — but also in all humans, imagination, which helps us create our own constructs, build walls, draw boundaries as well as create wonderful paintings, invent planes, fly to the moon and write beautiful poetry. I wonder if animals or plants have the same ability? Then, there are some who, react to the impact of imagined constructs that hurt humanity. They write fabulous poetry or lyrics protesting war as well as dream of a world without war. Could we in times such as these imagine a world at peace, and — even more unusually — filled with consideration, kindness, love and brotherhood as suggested by Lennon’s lyrics in ‘Imagine’ – “Imagine all the people/ Livin’ life in peace…”. These are ideas that have been wafting in the world since times immemorial. And yet, they seem to be drifting in a breeze that caresses but continues to elude our grasp.
Under such circumstances, what can be more alluring than reflective Sufi poetry by an empathetic soul. Featuring an interview and poetry by such a poet, Afsar Mohammad, we bring to you his journey from a “small rural setting” in Telangana to University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches South Asian Studies. He is bilingual and has brought out many books, including one with his translated poetry. Translations this time start with Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s advice to new writers in Bengali, introduced and brought to us by Abdullah-Al-Musayeb. Tagore’s seasonal poem, ‘Megh or Cloud’, has been transcreated to harmonise with the onset of monsoons. However, this year with the El Nino and as the impact of climate change sets in, the monsoons have turned awry and are flooding the world. At a spiritual plane, the maestro’s lines in this poem do reflect on the transience of nature (and life). Professor Fakrul Alam’s translation of Masud Khan’s heartfelt poetry on rain brings to the fore the discontent of the age while conveying the migrant’s dilemma of being divided between two lands. Fazal Baloch has brought us a powerful Balochi poet from the 1960s in translation, Bashir Baidar. His poetry cries out with compassion yet overpowers with its brutality. Sangita Swechcha’s Nepali poem celebrating a girl child has been translated by Hem Bishwakarma while Ihlwha Choi has brought his own Korean poem to readers in English.
An imagined but divided world has been explored by Michael Burch with his powerful poetry. Heath Brougher has shared with us lines that discomfit, convey with vehemence and is deeply reflective of the world we live in. Masha Hassan is a voice that dwells on such an imagined divide that ripped many parts of the world — division that history dubs as the Partition. Don Webb upends Heraclitus’s wisdom: “War is the Father of All, / War is the King of All.” War, as we all know, is entirely a human-made construct and destroys humanity and one cannot but agree with Webb’s conclusion. We have more from Kirpal Singh, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Nivedita N, John Grey, Carol D’Souza, Vernon Daim, George Freek, Saranyan BV, Samantha Underhill and among the many others, of course Rhys Hughes, who has given us poetry with a unique alphabetical rhyme scheme invented by him and it’s funny too… much like his perceptions on ‘Productivity’, where laziness accounts for an increase in output!
Ratnottama Sengupta takes us back to how imagined differences can rip humanity by sharing a letter from her brother stationed in Bosnia during the war that broke Yugoslavia (1992-1995). He writes: “It is hard to be surrounded by so much tragedy and not be repulsed by war and the people who lead nations into them.” This tone flows into our book excerpts section with Red Sky Over Kabul: A Memoir of a Father and Son in Afghanistanby Baryalai Popalzai and Kevin McLean. Popalzai was affected by the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1980 and had to flee. A different kind of battle can be found in the other excerpt from The Blue Dragonfly – healing through poetry by Veronica Eley – a spiritual battle to heal from experiences that break.
In our reviews section, KPP Nambiar reviews The Stolen Necklace: A Small Crime in a Small Town by Shevlin Sebastian and VK Thajudheen, a book that retells a true story. Sangeetha G’s novel, Drop of the Last Cloud, we are told by Rakhi Dalal, explores the matrilineal heritage of Kerala, that changed to patriarchal over time. Bhaskar Parichha reviews Burning Pyres, Mass Graves and A State That Failed Its People: India’s Covid Tragedy by Harsh Mander. Parichha emphasises the need never to forget the past: “It is a powerful book and sometimes it is even shattering. The narrative is a live remembrance of a national tragedy that too many of us wish to forget when we should, instead, etch it in our minds so that we can prevent another national tragedy like this one from recurring in the future.” While we need to learn from the past as Parichha suggests, Somdatta Mandal has given a review that makes us want to read Ujjal Dosanjh’s book, The Past is Never Dead: A Novel. She concludes that it “pays tribute to the courage and tenacity of the human spirit and its capacity for hope despite all odds.”
We have more content than mentioned here… all of it enhances the texture of our journal. Do pause by our July issue to savour all the writings. Huge thanks to all our contributors, artists, all our readers and our wonderful team. Without each one of you, this edition would not have been what it is.
Community weed-pulling is one of the things that produces anxiety in me. At times like this, when we are summoned to the shrine on a Sunday morning, I miss my Japanese mother-in-law. You only have to send one person from your household, and for as long as we lived with her, she was the one to go.
Sometimes my husband takes part, but on this particular weekend – well, most weekends – he was playing golf. (He is the three-time overall champion at his golf club.)
I am an insomniac and an introvert. The evening before, I was thinking about how I would sleep in the next morning, and then I would make a pot of coffee and continue reading this wonderful novel that I had been immersed in.
“Tomorrow is weed-pulling at the shrine,” my husband said. “Sorry. You’ll have to go.”
I must admit that I did not always look at the memos attached to the clipboard circulated in the neighbourhood. (No, we did not have a Facebook group or use What’s App.) The groundskeeping had probably been mentioned, and I had ignored it.
Most of our neighbours are farmers, growing carrots, rice, and smaller amounts of other vegetables such as corn. Many families have lived here for generations, and know each other from helping out at harvest time. My husband and I are educators – him at a nearby high school, me at a teacher’s college. We moved into this neighbourhood to look after my mother-in-law, who has now passed on. I don’t really know most of the people who live in the houses nearby.
The neighbours probably know more about me than I know about them. Before she went, my mother-in-law suffered from mental illness. Her delusions included stories about me – my alleged affairs, my theft of her dishes and other things – which she shared with the neighbours. I always wonder if these rumours come to mind when the farmers look at me. Like, not only is there a foreigner in their midst, but do they also think I’m some kind of Jezebel?
My husband said that weed-pulling would be from eight thirty to nine o’clock. Before leaving very early for golf at his fancy club in the mountains, he laid out a cloth hat with a back flap to keep the sun off my neck, a pair of guntei – white cotton gloves sold in packs and used for all manner of outdoor chores – sleeves for protecting my arms from the sun, and some money – annual “dues” for the neighbourhood committee. He didn’t prepare a gardening tool for me.
I got dressed, had a cup of coffee, and fed the cats. I wondered whether I should carry a mask. Probably, yes. Although the government had put out a statement weeks earlier that pandemic protocols need no longer be followed, and the local newspaper had stopped posting the daily number of COVID-19 cases (which here, in Tokushima, had been zero for weeks at a time), most people still wore those white paper masks. They wore masks while outdoors, washing a car, alone; while driving alone; while shopping; while out walking for exercise. I had pretty much stopped wearing a mask, unless someone asked me to, like while visiting the buffet at a work-related party, but on this occasion, I figured I had better put one on.
I recalled how early in the pandemic, someone in our neighbourhood had returned from a cruise on the Diamond Princess and tested positive for the coronavirus. That person had been pelted with carrots. A window was broken in their home. They’d had to move away, at least until the furore died down. I recalled how our son had been stranded in South Carolina for months, after being kicked off campus during studies abroad. My sister-in-law had sent urgent messages wondering when he would leave her house. Meanwhile, my husband forbade him from returning to our home in Japan. What if he caught the virus en route? We would become pariahs. These neighbours would torment us, too.
I put on the hat, but since I was wearing a long-sleeved red shirt, I didn’t wear the sleeves. When I arrived at the grounds of the wooden shrine, raking and weed-pulling was already underway. Of course, everyone was wearing a mask. Women in aprons and hats similar to mine squatted on the ground, hacking at weed sprouts with small scythes. I realised that I should have brought a tool. A man sitting on the shrine steps was collecting money. I waited while he wrote out a receipt, after which he handed me a plastic bag containing coloured garbage bags (orange for plastics, pink for combustibles) and a bottle of Pocari Sweat.
I decided to take the swag back home and get a tool. Our house is only a few yards from the shrine; it would only take a minute. I thought about not going back; they probably wouldn’t really miss me. But they would notice I had been there and gone, me with my red shirt. Duty prevailed. I found a trowel in the shed and returned. I found a spot.
I’m probably doing this wrong, I thought, as I loosened the soil with my trowel and tugged at weeds. The woman nearest me — a farmer, no doubt – was pulling briskly with both hands. She wasn’t using a tool. Huh. I never did things “correctly” in Japan. There was the time when I was called out for eating curry and rice with a fork instead of a spoon. There was the time when I was helping serve lunch at my daughter’s kindergarten and I was chastised for heaping the rice too high in the rice bowl – as one would prepare a bowl of rice for the dead.
Then, an ambulance appeared. Apparently, in those few minutes when I had been gone, retrieving my gardening tool, someone had fainted or otherwise felt poorly. I looked around and saw an elderly man lying on the shrine steps. He was wearing a mask. I wondered if he had felt faint because he was exerting himself on a warm morning while wearing that mask. I wondered why he didn’t take it off. He lay completely still. From where I crouched, he resembled a corpse with a white handkerchief over his face.
I heard someone say that the man was alright, and he didn’t need to go to the hospital. The ambulance attendants dragged a gurney over anyway and took a look at him. They lingered for a while, then left. The man remained prone on the shrine steps, completely still, the white mask on his face.
The other women seemed to have no problem crouching and pulling, but I had to stand up from time to time to stretch my legs. My cotton-gloved fingers scrabbled at dried leaves and uprooted weeds, which I shook the dirt from and tossed into a net. I kept glancing at my watch. Nine o’clock came and went.
Finally, someone approached and announced that weed-pulling was over. I helped another woman carry the net to a flat-bed truck heaped with leaves. I arched my back, happy to stand up straight, and edged toward the periphery of the group, where a few younger women stood. I was done. I could go back to my book and my coffee.
“From now, we will have disaster training,” a man announced.
Oh, no. This could go on all day.
“Are you going to stay?” one of the younger women asked me.
It occurred to me that I could set an example – maybe not a good one, in the eyes of the neighbourhood committee, but I could give these women the courage to leave. I sensed they were outliers like me. We could be rebels together.
“No,” I said. “I’m escaping.”
They giggled and followed me away from the shrine.
Suzanne Kamatawas born and raised in Grand Haven, Michigan. She now lives in Japan with her husband and two children. Her short stories, essays, articles and book reviews have appeared in over 100 publications. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times, and received a Special Mention in 2006. She is also a two-time winner of the All Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest, winner of the Paris Book Festival, and winner of a SCBWI Magazine Merit Award.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Shadows, a poem in Korean, has been translated by the poet himself, Ihlwha Choi. Click hereto read.
Pranor Lifeby Tagore has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click hereto read.
Conversations
Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri converses withVinta Nanda about the Shout, a documentary by Vinta Nanda that documents the position of women in Indian society against the backdrop of the #MeToo movement and centuries of oppression and injustice. Click here to read.
Perhaps, most sceptics will say it is against human nature to stop fighting and fanning differences. The first recorded war was fought more than 13,000 years ago in what is now a desert but was green long ago. Nature changed its face. Continents altered over time. And now again, we are faced with strange shifts in climate that could redefine not just the dimensions of the surface area available to humankind but also our very physical existence. Can we absorb these changes as a species when we cannot change our nature to self-destruct for concepts that with a little redefining could move towards a world without wars leading to famines, starvation, destruction of beautiful edifices of nature and those built by humankind? That we could feed all of humans — a theory that won economist Abhijit Banerjee his Nobel Prize in 2019 so coveted by all humanity — almost seems to have taken a backseat. This confuses — as lemmings self-destruct…do humans too? I would have thought that all humanity would have moved towards resolving hunger and facing the climate crises post-2019 and post-pandemic, instead of killing each other for retaining constructs created by powerbrokers.
In the timeless lyrics of ‘Imagine’, John Lennon found peace by suggesting we do away with manmade constructs which breed war, anger and divisions and share the world as one. Wilfred Owen and many writers involved in the World Wars wrote to showcase the desolation and the heartfelt darkness that is brought on by such acts. Nazrul also created a story based on his experience in the First World War, ‘Hena’, translated for us by Sohana Manzoor. Showcasing the downside of another kind of conflict, a struggle to survive, is a story with a distinctive and yet light touch from S Ramakrishnan translated from Tamil by B Chandramouli. And yet in a conflict-ridden world, humans still yearn to survive, as is evident from Tagore’s poem Pran or ‘Life’. Reflecting it is the conditioning that we go through from our birth that makes us act as we do are translations by Professor Fakrul Alam of Masud Khan’s poetry and from Korean by Ihlwha Choi.
A figure who questioned his own conditioning and founded a new path towards survival; propounded living by need, and not greed; renounced violence and founded a creed that has survived more than 2500 years, is the man who rose to be the Buddha. Born as Prince Siddhartha, he redefined the norms with messages of love and peace. Reiterating the story of this legendary human is debutante author, Advait Kottary with his compelling Siddhartha:The Boy Who Became the Buddha, a book that has been featured in our excerpts too. In an interview, Kottary tells us more of what went into the making of the book which perhaps is the best survivor’s guide for humanity — not that we need to all become Buddhas but more that we need to relook at our own beliefs, choices and ways of life.
Another thinker-cum-film maker interviewed in this edition is Vinta Nanda for her film Shout, which highlights and seeks resolutions for another kind of crisis faced by one half of the world population today. She has been interviewed and her documentary reviewed by Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri. Chaudhuri has also given us an essay on a bookshop called Kunzum which continues to expand and go against the belief we have of shrinking hardcopy markets.
Gastronomical adventures seem to be another concurrent theme in this edition. Rhys Hughes has written of the Indian sweets with gulab jamun as the ultimate life saver from Yetis while trekking in the Himalayas! A musing on lemon pickle by Raka Banerjee and Ravi Shankar’s quest for the ultimate dosaaround the world — from India, to Malaysia, to Aruba, Nepal and more… tickle our palate and make us wonder at the role of food in our lives as does the story about biryani battles by Anagaha Narasimha.
Talk of war, perhaps, conjures up gastronomic dreams as often scarcity of food and resources, even potable water and electricity is a reality of war or conflict. Michael Burch brings to us poignant poetry about war as Ramesh Karthik Nayak has a poem on a weapon used in wars. Ryan Quinn Flanagan has brought another kind of ongoing conflict to our focus with his poetry centring on the National Day (May 5th) in Canada for Vigils for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women by hanging red clothes from trees, an issue that perhaps has echoes of Vinta Nanda’s Shout and Suzanne Kamata’s poetry for her friend who went missing decades ago as opposed to Rachel Jayen’s defiant poetry where she asserts her womanhood. Ron Pickett, George Freek and Sayantan Sur have given us introspective perspectives in verse. We have more poetry asking for a relook at societal norms with tongue-in -cheek humour by Jason Ryberg and of course, Rhys Hughes with his heartfelt poem on raiders in deserts.
The piece that really brought a smile to the lips this time was Farouk Gulsara’s ‘Humbled by a Pig’, a humorous recount of man’s struggles with nature after he has disrupted it. Keith Lyons has taken a look at the concept of bucket lists, another strange construct, in a light vein. Devraj Singh Kalsi has given a poignant and empathetic piece about trees with a self-reflective and ironic twist. We have narratives from around the world with Suzanne Kamata taking us to Osaka Comic Convention, Meredith Stephens to Sierra Nevada and Shivani Shrivastav to Ladakh. Paul Mirabile has travelled to the subterranean world with his fiction, in the footsteps perhaps of Jules Verne but not quite.
We are grateful to all our wonderful contributors some of whom have not been mentioned here but their works were selected because they truly enriched our June edition. Do visit our contents page to meet and greet all our wonderful authors. I would like to thank the team at Borderless without whose efforts and encouragement our journal would not exist and Sohana Manzoor especially for her fantastic artwork as well. Thank you all.
Wish you another lovely month of interesting reads!
When my twenty-three-year-old daughter Lilia, who is deaf, sent me a text saying that she wanted to attend the Osaka Comic Convention, I messaged back “Go ahead!” I figured she would want to go with her friends, fellow manga and anime and Marvel movie enthusiasts. I am more of a literary-novel-type person, unfamiliar with the DC universe. My idea of a good time is reading a book of poetry with a cat on my lap. However, a week or so later, she repeated her desire, along with a GIF of a crying cat, fountains of tears gushing from its eyes. This was followed by three attempted video phone calls while I was at work.
“Do you want me to go with you?” I texted.
“Yes,” she replied.
Well, I could do this for her. On our mother-daughter trip to Paris several years back, she had put up with my dragging her (okay, pushing; she is a wheelchair user) to the Orsay Museum, even though she would have rather gone to the Concierge to look at a lock of Marie Antoinette’s hair. She had made concessions for me, so I could make some for her. Besides, I had never been to a comic convention before. It might be fun. At the very least, I could write about it.
I put her in charge of buying the tickets from the Japanese website. She sent me a screen shot: 25,000 per ticket. What? “That’s really expensive,” I texted her. “I’ll pay for it,” she texted back.
I later found out that admission was only 3,610 yen. The extravagant fees were for a photo opportunity with one of the celebrities who would be headlining the event. One of them played the role of Lilia’s favourite character in her favourite TV series. She had watched all ten episodes of all thirteen seasons, and regularly posted related fan art on her Instagram feed. She had purchased the chance to be in close proximity to the actor.
Sure, it was expensive, but research has shown that experiences are often ultimately more satisfying than things. I know that to be true myself. In Paris, we had a never-to-be-forgotten dinner at the top of the Eiffel Tower. When we went to Hawaii, on our last trip together pre-pandemic, we had gone on an open-door helicopter ride. For Lilia, having her photo taken with the celebrity would probably be just as thrilling. She had also bought a ticket for me.
I didn’t know much about the celebrity. In fact, I knew nothing. I had glimpsed him onscreen, occasionally, when Lilia was bingeing episodes of the show on our widescreen TV. I looked him up on Wikipedia. He had an impressive background. He’d started out in politics, had probably met President Obama, and then transitioned into entertainment. He had kids, whom he was concerned about feeding well. His wife was a university professor, like me, and he’d published a book of poetry, which I immediately ordered.
I started thinking about how I could make the most of this opportunity. As the author of several novels published by small presses, I was always looking for ways to promote my books. I knew that a celebrity endorsement – or even having a famous person be photographed while holding one’s novel – could bring attention to a book. Maybe I could get the celebrity to hold my book during the photo-op, and then I could post it on Instagram.
But then I went to the website for the Comic Con. I came across a notice that one of the celebrities who had been scheduled to appear in Tokyo in 2022, would not be coming after all. The message read, “Due to a last-minute personal issue,” the celebrity “is unable to travel and had to postpone his appearance at this year’s Tokyo Comic Con. He was looking forward to coming back to Japan and seeing everyone. He is deeply sorry and looks forward to coming back to Japan next year.” But the actor was not attending this year either. He had been run over by a snow plow a few months before and was still in recovery. (This was not mentioned on the website.)
Elsewhere on the website, I came across a list of exhibitors, food vendors, celebrity guests (seven men, one woman), and rules regarding the autograph and photo sessions. So many rules! We would not be allowed to hug the celebrities or touch them at all. We would not be allowed to take selfies or other photos with our own smartphones, or bring props (like a book?), or wear masks, or give gifts to the celebrities. Okay, so maybe I wouldn’t be able to ask the TV star to hold my book.
Since the Comic Convention started relatively early, Lilia and I stayed overnight at a nice hotel in Osaka. The next morning, I put on make-up and a pretty dress. I helped Lilia with her hair. We went down to the dining room for a gorgeous buffet breakfast – made-to-order omelettes, tiny French pastries, a big bowl of fresh lychee fruits, and other delights. Although I had splurged on accommodations, I thought that we would take public transportation to the convention site to save money. But that morning, on the third day of the event, the day of our scheduled photo op, rain poured down. We had forgotten to bring waterproof ponchos and umbrellas. I decided we’d go by taxi.
We hopped into a cab at the hotel. The driver was surprised when I mentioned the destination. “We’ll have to go by highway,” he said. That would mean toll fees. But at least we would get there on time, and we would be relatively dry.
The venue, Intex Osaka, was over a bridge on a small island with lots of boxy warehouses. At first, I was amazed by the lack of cars. And people. Were we even in the right place? I didn’t have enough cash on me for a taxi ride back to Osaka Station, and this driver didn’t appear to take credit cards. At last, we reached the huge convention center.
“This is it!” the driver said. Still, no people. He continued to drive around the building, rain spattering his windshield, until, to my relief, we came across some men in uniform waving orange batons, and then to the front, where a long stream of young people holding umbrellas flowed toward the entrance.
Once inside, Lilia flashed our tickets. After a cursory bag check, red paper Comic Con bracelets were fastened to our wrists. I grabbed a map, and tried to get my bearings, but Lilia whipped out her tablet, wrote something on it in Japanese, and showed it to one of the many attendants, a young man wearing a white surgical mask. She’d asked, “Where do we go for the celebrity photos?”
“I’ll show you,” the attendant said. “Follow me.” We scurried past cosplayers dressed up like Spiderman and the Joker and one woman dressed in green carrying a huge candy cane. Some people, not in costume were slurping noodles at a table near a food booth.
Cosplayers. Courtesy: Suzanne Kamata
The attendant indicated an area at the back of the building. We still had a couple of hours before our photo session. “So, we just come here at one fifteen?” I asked. We had an appointment, after all.
“You should get here early,” he said. “At least an hour before.”
I nodded. “Now, where is the Celebrity Stage?”
According to the program, another actor, famous to this crowd, at least, for his role in a movie based on an American comic book, would be participating in a Q and A session onstage in another twenty minutes. I figured we had plenty of time to find a good spot, but when we entered the enormous hall, I saw that all of the seats were filled. We were late.
“This way,” another attendant said, lifting the chain to the wheelchair-accessible area, just to the left of the stage.
We had a good view, but I couldn’t help thinking that at such an event in my native country, the United States, there would probably be a sign language interpreter. In Japan, there was almost never one, unless it was requested in advance. I did my best to interpret for my daughter.
In the program, the celebrity was pictured as bald and sleek. With his dark glasses, he appeared to be the epitome of cool. The man who ambled onto the stage, however, looked a bit scruffy, as off-duty actors often do. He had a beard, glasses, and a leather newsboy cap over his frizzy grey hair. One of his teeth was missing. He greeted the crowd in Japanese and was met with applause.
The emcee tried to engage him in conversation, but he was hard to pin down. He wandered around the stage, joking around. When asked a fan’s earnest question, “What special thing did you have to do to prepare for your role in the film?” he replied, “Nothing.” Later, he was asked if he would appear in another superhero movie. He rubbed his fingers together to indicate it would depend on how much money he was offered, and then, to demonstrate how little most actors actually earn, he took out a one-thousand-yen bill and ripped a tiny corner off. I imagined the horror of all of the frugal, hard-working people in the audience who would never do such a thing. The emcee gently admonished him for tearing money.
Finally, in true Japanese fashion, the emcee asked him to deliver a “special message” to his fans. The celebrity avoided responding to the request, at first, hopping off the stage, and peering into the camera, pretending to check his teeth. Again, “A message for your fans, please?” He got back onstage and adjusted the interpreter’s mic, before, at last, delivering his “message,” one Japanese word: “Hai.”
In this country where everyone was always so orderly and polite, I couldn’t help but be a bit embarrassed by his behaviour. I mean, I wouldn’t have shown up to a writer’s festival or an academic conference without thinking about what I would say. Then again, maybe his performance – and he was performing – was better than him sitting calmly in the chair, giving straight answers. Maybe the unpredictability of this mad genius was entertaining. Maybe just seeing this man who had brought beloved characters to life onscreen, live and in-person, and to be able to pay homage to him, was enough for his fans.
At about 12:10, after we had checked out the exhibitors’ tables and a display of manga posters, I suggested that we get in line for the photo session. Lilia eagerly rolled herself back to the spot we’d been shown to upon arrival. This time, we were early. Not only that, we were first in line. As we waited, Lilia composed a message to the celebrity on her smartphone. I figured that since she was deaf, the convention organisers would allow her to use her phone as a communication device.
A young woman in an orange kimono filed in behind us. More and more people followed. There were other cordoned-off rows for the other celebrities who would be signing autographs and posing for photos, including a Norwegian actor who was known for his role as a cannibal.
When we got closer to the appointment time, an attendant led us to another room, cordoned off like the immigration area of an international airport. Because my daughter uses a wheelchair, we got to take a shortcut. We were still at the head of the line. We were told to put all of our possessions into baskets – again, like the security line at the airport.
“My daughter is deaf,” I explained. “Is it okay if she hangs on to her phone? She just wants to show a few words to the celebrity.”
The attendant shook his head. “Talking to the celebrity is NG.” No good. Prohibited.
Regretfully, I explained what he’d said to my daughter. Lilia, who had also read all the rules on the website, was nonplussed. She put her phone away without complaint.
We stood there, waiting. Although I had the addict’s urge to check my email and scroll through social media, I left my phone in my bag. But I did reach for a notebook and pen.
“What are you doing?” my daughter asked.
“I’m just going to make a few notes,” I told her. “I might write an essay about this.”
“No, you can’t write an essay.” She made an “X” with her arms. No selfies, no touching the celebrity, no talking to the celebrity, and probably no writing about the celebrity.
“I think it’s okay to write an essay,” I said. I scribbled a few words then put the notebook and pen back into my bag.
I asked the attendant where the nearest subway or train station was, already thinking about how we would get home. My daughter asked me what we were talking about and then became irritated. I understood that she wanted me to focus on the celebrity, to think only about him, and what would happen when he arrived. I tried.
More and more people, mostly Japanese women, lined up behind us. I began to realise why the organisers didn’t allow conversation. If the celebrity had to engage in small talk with a hundred or more people, he would become exhausted. As it was, he’d have to smile non-stop for an hour or so. His cheeks would ache. But he would probably make a lot of money from doing this. I wondered how much of a cut he would actually get from the photo-op fees. I thought about all the times I had sat at a table in a bookstore or at a book festival, hoping to sell my novels, and no one had come. Yes, I envied the celebrity.
We waited and waited. The celebrity was late to the photo op. He was probably still signing autographs. Finally, we were led, just a few of us, including the young woman in the orange kimono, into a tented area with a backdrop. A photographer and team stood at the ready. My daughter began to tremble. She indicated that her heart was pounding: doki doki. I thought she was going to hyperventilate. We waited some more.
I wondered if this guy would be scruffy and irreverent like the actor onstage. I hoped not, for my daughter’s sake. We had been planning to have our photo taken together, the three of us, but at the last minute, Lilia changed her mind. She wanted to be in the photo alone with the celebrity. Fine with me.
“He’s coming soon,” someone said. “Please be patient.”
And then…at last…he entered the tent. He was dressed nicely in a blue collared shirt and black pants, a bit of stubble peppering his handsome, now familiar face, his hair neatly groomed.
Lilia’s hands flew to her flaming cheeks. She let out a squeal. The celebrity, and everyone else, were amused by her extreme excitement. He smiled at her as she pulled up next to him in her wheelchair. A piece of tape served as a divider: fan on one side, celebrity on the other. He stood there towering over her, with his aura of fame.
And then, Lilia’s favourite actor, the man who brought her most beloved fictional character to life, crouched down so that their heads were at the same level. He put his arm firmly around her shoulders. The woman behind me, no doubt as aware of the “no touching” rule as I was, gasped. The photographer clicked the shutter, and just like that, it was over. Lilia wheeled out of the way.
Next was my turn. I stepped up to the screen. The celebrity put his arm around me, and I smiled for the camera. “Thank you,” I said in a low voice and exited the tent.
By the time we gathered our belongings, the photos were already printed and ready to be picked up. In the first one, Lilia and the celebrity grinned widely. She held both thumbs up. His body leaned toward hers. They both looked cute. In the second photo, my hands hung down, my posture was stiff, the celebrity’s smile was a tad dimmer, and…my eyes were closed.
But it was okay. The celebrity would probably never see this unflattering, awkward version of me, or the hundreds of other photos taken at this and other Comic Cons. And at least I got an essay out of it. For my daughter, though, this has been the thrill of a lifetime — expensive, yes, but more precious than gold!
A cosplayer holding Suzanne Kamata’s TheBaseball Widow. Courtesy: Suzanne Kamata
Suzanne Kamatawas born and raised in Grand Haven, Michigan. She now lives in Japan with her husband and two children. Her short stories, essays, articles and book reviews have appeared in over 100 publications. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times, and received a Special Mention in 2006. She is also a two-time winner of the All Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest, winner of the Paris Book Festival, and winner of a SCBWI Magazine Merit Award.
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