My Japanese Dad

I met him in August of 1981 when I worked as a Japanese interpreter during my summer holidays after the forth year of the university. He brought to the USSR a group of seventy people, sixty of whom were girls from his ballet studio, aged from six to fourteen, several parents, and a couple of professional dancers. They were going to perform Russian traditional dances and modern ballet in Novosibirsk, Moscow and Leningrad (currently St. Petersburg). I joined the group in Nakhodka, where they came by ship from Yokohama, and we traveled together the whole circle. Two weeks later, I saw them off when they boarded the same ship to go back home to Japan. Between the tours in the cities, preparations for the performances and flights, I spent a lot of time with Rokuro--that was the name of this gentleman--listening to his stories and telling him about my life. By the end of our trip, we became very good friends. Besides, I was going to Japan in October and he wanted to see me in Tokyo.

Two months later, when the Ship of Friendship, as this kind of tours to Japan were called in those days, was approaching a dock in Tokyo, from a distance I saw him and several others from the group waiting on the pier. It was an unforgettable day of freedom from the Iron Curtain in a company of good friends. Rokuro generously showed the best of Tokyo, including attending a short play in the famous Kabuki Theatre. The day was over almost in an instant. He and his companions brought me back to the ship and returned to Utsunomia, a city about an hour and a half away from Tokyo.

We had been exchanging letters until August 1982, when I was ordered to severe all my contacts with foreign nationals, and after that we lost each other. In November of 1988 I was no longer under these restrictions and asked one of my new Japanese acquaintances to look for Rokuro for me--I gave him his phone number and address--but next time I saw him he said that Rokuro seemed to move and he couldn't find him.

Two and a half years later, while cleaning up my papers I ran across Rokuro's business card. I was working in the advertising department of a major shipping company in Vladivostok and a phone call to Japan wouldn't be something I could get into too much trouble for. I dialed his number. "Rokuro's speaking," said the voice. I told him that it was me and we both couldn't believe that it was happening. He told me that he had been trying to find me, but it was impossible to get to the closed at that time Vladivostok. We managed to meet again only eighteen months later, first in Tokyo and then in Utsunomia where he gathered almost all group members who travelled to the Soviet Union eleven years earlier. Rokuro showed me several newspaper articles published in mid-80s and titled something like "Japanese gentleman is looking for his Russian son." It was unreal, wonderful and sad at the same time.

We kept getting together any time I was in Tokyo and eventually Rokuro met my whole family when we lived in Japan from 1995 to 1997. We continued to be in touch after we had moved to Canada. Starting 2000-2001, he always complained that he couldn't see well, felt weak and spent most of the days at home. And it showed indeed, for it was getting more and more difficult to understand him over the phone. I hoped to go to Japan one day and see him again, but it never happened. From around 2002 I was unable to get through to him and didn't know anybody who could find out what had happened.

I don't know if I am ever going to be able to visit his grave and pay my respect and love to a wonderful human being, my Japanese Dad, but the memory of him will stay with me for the rest of my life.