ISHINOMAKI, Miyagi Prefecture--Long overlooked in coverage of the earthquake and tsunami disaster, foreign wives and mothers finally have a voice.
ISHINOMAKI, Miyagi Prefecture--Long overlooked in coverage of the earthquake and tsunami disaster, foreign wives and mothers finally have a voice.
For that they can thank a Chinese film school graduate who also is seeking a sense of belonging in Japanese society.
The women that Bai Di spoke to live in rural communities and lost their homes and livelihood in the 2011 disaster.
Capturing the women's volunteer activities on film, along with face-to-face interviews, led to much soul-searching by Bai, who is 29 and obtained her Master's from Tokyo University of the Arts.
She was also desperate to find her own place in Japanese society.
"I needed to know why I felt connected to Japan after the disaster and decided to stay, even though I had never really felt I belonged here," Bai said in an interview with AJW.
It was through her interaction with the women from China, Taiwan and the Philippines--who took Japanese spouses and live in the rural communities of Ishinomaki and Minami-Sanriku in Miyagi Prefecture--that she found an answer.
Bai decided to title her first documentary "Shenfen," the word for identity in Chinese which denotes a sense of belonging.
"These women came to realize that Tohoku is really where they belong--sort of like their own hometown--although all familiar landmarks were swept away with the tsunami," Bai said. "I can now at least say that people's connection to the land is very intricate."
Bai completed her course at the Graduate School of Film and New Media of the country's top art college, a year ago. Two months after she graduated, she started to travel almost every weekend to film the three women.
A week ago, on March 3, Bai met Mie Sugiyama, 52, and Bi Lijun, 45, in Ishinomaki, for final interviews in a series that had gone on for 10 months. It was an emotional occasion.
The two mothers helped run a volunteer social group, "team of happy mamas," which organizes monthly cooking classes on ethnic food for married women, both foreign and Japanese.
The disaster left nearly 4,000 people dead or missing in Ishinomaki.
Sugiyama, who came to Japan 30 years ago from Taiwan, laughingly told Bai that she recently realized her neighbors had mistaken Bai as her own daughter "because you are around so often."
Switching between Japanese and Chinese, they started reminiscing about their friendship.
Bai, second nature kicking in, whipped out her digital camera, aimed it at Sugiyama and Bi and hit the record button.
In China, Bai attended the prestigious Nanjing University of the Arts in Nanjing, her hometown. Afterward, she worked as an interior and industrial products designer.
A love of Japanese movies brought Bai to Japan in 2008. She studied filmmaking at the Tokyo University of the Arts graduate school, where comedian-turned-director Takeshi Kitano, her favorite, used to teach a course on the subject.
The Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011, struck while she was on a filming project at the end of her freshman year. Her parents begged her to leave Japan as the scale of the disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant unfolded.
Glued to television news footage of the devastation across the Tohoku region, Bai was struck by the "perseverance" of the Japanese people, which she had not noted previously. Despite fierce opposition from her family and friends, she returned to Japan in April.
"I still couldn't put into words the exact reason why I felt so attached to Japan," she said.
Her artistic streak pushed her to explore the emotional upheaval she felt.
She started traveling to Tohoku from Yokohama at weekends. She contacted foreign residents to find out why they stayed, even after losing their homes and livelihood to the disaster.
Among those she interviewed, Bai was particularly struck by foreign brides she met in fishing and farming communities. Even before the disaster, they had struggled to win acceptance and overcome all sorts of cultural obstacles in their daily lives.
Many of the women had a hard time trying to build an identity as individuals, but through the disaster they bonded with their communities.
During the course of the project, Bai met Sugiyama, Bi and Amelia Sasaki, a 61-year-old resident of Minami-Sanriku, in May 2012. Sasaki, who works as a special teacher for foreign-born students at local schools, is held in high regard as a community leader in the town, whose central district was obliterated by tsunami.
Sasaki's home and family-run restaurant was destroyed in the disaster that is estimated to have claimed nearly 20,000 lives. She was still struggling to rebuild her life.
"But, it was not like she was interviewing me," Sasaki said. "It was as if I was helping her talk about her own problems, sort of like counseling, in those early days."
As a student from China, Bai had often felt she existed on the periphery of Japanese society, spending much of her time going back and forth only between her school and the Chinese restaurant where she worked. Having no friends outside this small circle, Bai felt "rejected" by Japanese society.
She was also dismayed by anti-Chinese sentiment in Japan whenever diplomatic friction flared between the two countries, such as the row over sovereignty of the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.
Sasaki had a much harder time trying to carve out a life for herself in Japan.
She settled in a small fishing port nearly three decades ago, and was almost the only non-Japanese for miles around.
As a foreign bride, she had a long list of family obligations, and unlike Bai, she felt she had nowhere she could return to.
"I came to realize that a bride in a traditional Japanese family in the countryside is kept in a shadowy presence," Sasaki recalled. "You have nothing that belongs to you at home and never have a say in family decisions."
Since the disaster, local people have come to cherish the presence of the Filipino wives, who, with their trademark forward-looking, cheerful attitude, have encouraged community members, Sasaki said.
To help her fellow foreign brides regain their livelihood, Sasaki set up a volunteer Japanese school to help them obtain credentials to work as home carers.
Bai was inspired by Sasaki's seemingly limitless energy to persevere.
She was determined to keep her film project going even after she had exhausted the 700,000 yen ($7,500) subsidy provided by Tokyo University of the Arts. She worked the nightshift at the restaurant and traveled almost every weekend to Tohoku by overnight bus.
Three of her former classmates offered assistance in gathering and editing materials. She was got a grant of 590,000 yen from various bodies, including the Sendai Cultural Foundation. Over the 10-month period, she visited Tohoku 30 times and amassed 300 hours of video footage.
During the last interview with Sugiyama and Bi on March 3, Bi, a single mother who emigrated from China, said: "The reason we are able to send encouraging messages to our neighbors is that we have firsthand experience of leaving everything behind when we came to Japan."
"That is," she said, "why we can tell Japanese neighbors, 'hey, let's start from the scratch again.'"
Since the magnitude-9.0 earthquake, one of the strongest on record, a growing number of foreign wives who had rarely ventured from their homes started to socialize with the rest of the community.
"When the tsunami destroyed their homes, it could have also smashed their emotional walls," Sugiyama said.
Sugiyama and Bi now hope to establish a day-care center for foreign brides so that they have somewhere to stay "and belong to" 10 or 20 years from now when they are in their senior years.
"Their homes used to confine them. After the tsunami destroyed their homes, they were forced to mingle in the larger community," Bai explained. "It was through the disaster that they found their roles in the community, which in turn gave them a strong identity."
As the second anniversary of the disaster approaches, the three women in Tohoku will spend much of the day praying for those who were lost. For her part, Bai will spend the day editing the footage at her alma mater in Yokohama.
With her visa due to expire in April, Bai realizes she does not have much time to edit all the footage into a manageable 90-minute film.
She said the documentary project allowed her to "really grow up, not only as a filmmaker but also as a person."
After she returns to China, Bai intends to keep making TV documentaries. But right now, she is overwhelmed by sadness at the thought of leaving her second home, Japan, behind.
"I hope Japanese audiences will discover there are so many precious things in daily life that you cannot really appreciate until they are all lost," Bai said.