Interviews

1. Decided to leave Japan to Argentina (Spanish)

2. Tango makes him to stay in Argentina (Spanish)

3. Leaving to Argentina (Spanish)

4. His first jobs in Argentina (Spanish)

5. Learning Spanish (Spanish)

6. Journalism as Vocation (Spanish)

7. Marriage to a non-Japanese (Spanish)

8. No more close family in Japan (Spanish)

9. Conflicting relations between Argentina and Japan (Spanish)

10. To feel uncomfortable in Japan (Spanish)

11. Argentina is my home (Spanish)

12. Generational Gap (Spanish)

13. Need generational change in Japanese community (Spanish)

14. No discrimination in Argentina (Spanish)

15. Nikkei identity (Spanish)

Kazuomi Takagi

(1925-2014) La Plata Hochi, Journalist

To feel uncomfortable in Japan (Spanish)

(Spanish) I go to Japan, and it is very disciplined. I admire it, but here [in Argentina] it is more subdued. I feel more at home here. Japanese society is very busy. If I do something, because when I was very young, my mother would challenge me instead of saying, “Don’t do that,” she would say, “What is the family going to say, what are the people going to say?” Ever since I was a little boy, therefore, I thought: I have to keep in mind what some other person might think of what I’m doing. And it can’t be [that way]. I am free. I want to do as I want to do, and in Japan that is difficult, very difficult. I have to watch my behavior. Good, that’s o.k. Here no one controls me. For me, Argentina is much better than Japan.

Argentina identity

Date: February 23, 2007

Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina

Interviewer: Takeshi Nishimura, Ricardo Hokama

Contributed by: Centro Nikkei Argentino

Interviewee Bio

Takagi Kazuomi was born in Japan on March 27, 1925, in the Mie province. He arrived in Argentina as a tourist and never returned to Japan. By chance he started out in journalism, a profession that provided employment for more than fifty years on radio and in the graphic arts. Today, at eighty-one years old, he continues to fervently work as a journalist for the newspaper of the Japanese collectivity, La Plata Hochi (Japanese Section), including acting stints in various forms of publicity. He passed away on November 10, 2014 at age 89. (January 2021)