Yukimi Miki: More Than Words

How They Did it – Stories for Migrants by Migrants

I was born here in Japan to a Japanese father and Filipino mother. When I was younger I started learning Tagalog on my own, but each time I tried I would just become frustrated and the vocabulary cards and textbooks I used would end up with the furniture as part of the interior decor of our house.

I often wondered why it was that my mother, who was exceptionally polite to everyone and had studied Japanese wholeheartedly, would tell me that I needed to strive harder than the Japanese themselves and that I could not afford to lose—After all, even though I am half-Filipino, I had been raised as a Japanese and have never lived anywhere but Japan. In fact, I only speak Japanese.

Whereas since the 1980s, my mother and her seven siblings have been spread out all over the world, working in the Philippines, Italy, Canada, Hong Kong, Mexico, and the US. They often call each other long-distance, and when she talks to them my Mother does not use Tagalog, but Ilocano, their native dialect.

During these calls, I do not understand a single word so I have no idea what they are saying, but I do know that my Mother becomes more expressive and her moods more pronounced to the point that sometimes I would even find her a little scary. While she is on the phone with her family, my Mother laughs a lot. Sometimes, she gets angry. Just before she hangs up, always, her voice sounds like she is about to cry. And while Mother is talking with her family over the phone, I feel myself being transformed a little bit from being Japanese to being Filipino. My life is like that, every day I am Japanese, but at times, I am Filipino.

When it is my turn to talk to my relatives over the phone, our conversations usually go like this:

“Kamusta ka na?”

“Mabuti naman.”

And when it is time to say goodbye, I go:

“Good night!”

“Ingat kayo palagi.”

Though they are only a few words or phrases, my Mother would always insist that I say them and never let me get away with it when I did not. Regardless of at whose house I was staying or even when a friend came over to stay for the night, she would always make me say those words and phrases in Tagalog.

At a family reunion in the Philippines, I finally got to meet my aunts and uncles from all over the world whose faces look exactly like my Mother’s, their children, my cousins who were born and raised in different places from where their parents were.

Until then, I was under the impression that if you did not understand the language, you would not be able to connect with others. But I soon found myself laughing a lot with my cousins as we watched TV cartoons together. I was also able to follow when Grandfather taught me how to light a fire as well as when an aunt taught me how to cook a dish that they often ate in Italy. Without understanding the other’s language, we were able to connect and spend a lot of time as a family.

I was so happy that I even enthusiastically showed my family my homework and a certificate of commendation with my name written on it. My Grandfather’s only question was, “Where has the name Panggayan gone?” “Is it no longer needed?” I was so flustered that all I could say was, “I wonder why it is not there–I wonder what happened to it!” It was the painful truth and I could barely squeeze it out from the back of my throat.

Just before I returned to Japan, while eating adobo cooked by Grandmother that tasted the same as Mother would cook it back home, it occurred to me that I was not strictly a citizen of either country, as I already had roots in both Japan and the Philippines. I supposed that was only natural.

From that day on, I would rarely shift from being a Filipino and being Japanese like I used to.

For someone like me who had been using the bits and pieces of Tagalog that I had heard and picked up as a child until I became an adult, it was a big step when I decided that the very first piece of Tagalog that I would study on my own and learn by heart was the Philippine national anthem which I considered to everyone’s song.

I had my mother sing it several times, and then I rewrote the words myself in Katakana. I did not want anyone to notice that I was practicing so I would just hum it over and over to myself or sing it in a very small voice. On the day that I was finally able to sing it out loud for the first very time, my Mother, in a tearful voice said that it was “amazing!”

I wanted to learn more, so I went to several bookstores in search of textbooks that I could refer to on my own. In the bigger ones, books in Tagalog could usually be found in the corner for “Asian Foreign Languages.” At one bookstore, I picked up a book entitled “The Philippines” with illustrations and brief descriptions of familiar Filipino food. Flipping through the pages, I suddenly found the illustration of a heart and when I went back to look at the cover, it said there was an illustrated article on “the techniques for a Japanese man to lure a Filipino woman”. I then wondered if this was how my parents met, began to exchange words with each other until finally were bonded together, but this was not the information I was seeking. Since that time, I did not study Tagalog for perhaps 10 years.

Meanwhile, I would return to the Philippines every few years, but my cousins there would say that I was Japanese and did not understand Tagalog and so would leave me behind whenever they went out to play. It did not seem to matter that all my life, I had been eating the same food as that which was being served to us there.

Back in Japan, I would be asked why it was that I didn’t appear to know much about the Philippines. I would be told “You’re now Japanese, right?” because I could only speak Japanese. But there is more to your identity than the language you speak.

Naturally, language is vital to the formation of identity: This feeling has not changed at all. However, I have also come to think that it is not the only language that will mold me. I think that there are many other important things that have to do with the make-up of one’s identity. For example, the music that my Mother would play at home was the same kind that I remembered being played in the Philippines. It reminds me that even though I am in Japan, I am still Filipino, too.

I have now come to view the life that I have built up for myself every day as fascinating, powerful, and vital, and since I discovered this I have begun studying Tagalog again because now I don’t even aim at being a perfect half- Japanese or perfect half-Filipino anymore. I have realized that I am both Japanese and Filipino and by learning the Filipino language, I have come to treasure even more the unique heritage which has been a part of me all my life.

Share Your Life Story

If you would also like us to feature your story send us an email to stories@kakehashi-ph.jp