If it had to be a drawing it would be Tinker Bell. Small, pretty face, voice that sings every word. Yes, Kaori Flores Yonekura has the grace of the smallest Disney fairy. You can see it in the photos, when you see her posing. “Lately I've been feeling like her, so many emotions don't fit inside me,” she says, like the winged being that explodes if it has more than one feeling at a time. But Kaori's world is real: she has just released her first film, a documentary that confronted her with her origins, the search for a memory. That was Nikkei, the work that now has her on the verge of exploding.

Kaori Flores Yonekura presentó su película en Perú, la puerta de entrada de sus abuelos a Sudamérica.

“It was incredible to see that people understood the film, I thought only my family would!”

Kaori is a Venezuelan filmmaker who a few years ago began to wonder why she behaved so differently from her friends. Would there be something beyond what is learned where one lives or is born, similar to a genetic memory – with inherited traumas – that is stronger than one? She said yes.

At first he wrote his doubts as a story, until the pages moved forward and he already had a documentary project in hand. Then he was encouraged to unravel the story of his Japanese grandparents, the details of a migration that had remained silent.

Making Nikkei was like putting together a puzzle.

At home they didn't talk about the past. Maybe that's why in her memories her grandmother watches movies with her, plays, feeds her. And he doesn't speak. Never.

The result of their adventure was seen for the first time at the Lima Film Festival (August 2011) where Kaori was present. The film had a magical effect and turned the director into a flesh and blood fairy for many Nikkei. She received thanks that she does not understand until now (“for making a movie?”); A girl told him that from his work she had the starting point to form her own identity; A woman assured him that by watching the documentary he was reconciling with his Japanese side because similar things had happened to his family.

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Telling the life of migrant grandparents was also talking about thousands of other Japanese who left with desires for a better future. And Kaori wanted to understand them by retracing the steps they followed before settling in Venezuela. He knew that his grandfather Rinzo had been born in Yamanashi and one day in 1921 he left Yokohama heading to the port of Callao, in Peru. Nine decades later, her granddaughter would make the same journey but this time documenting the images with a high-definition camera.

After finding a Nikkei co-producer (“because it was going to be difficult for a non-Nikkei to understand me the way I thought”) and having the financing, Kaori left for Japan without any certainty. In Tokyo, the girl who as a child laughed while covering her mouth like Japanese women (without anyone having taught her) was overwhelmed almost to the point of fainting. He closed his eyes to rest from the visual stimulus and three sounds took over his mind: the trains, the machines that told him what to do, and the singing of crows.

The coexistence of traditional with modernity and the urban tribes swarming the streets made her think “noooo, you guys are a little crazy, this is a little extreme for me.” It wasn't from there.

When he arrived in Lima his color faded, he found a place that seemed two-dimensional, a place that in winter has no shadows, and that seems to float in water gas without any horizon.

“I said to myself: 'Wow! What a change!', the Japanese do not embrace, it is very difficult to communicate with words, but it is communicated through aesthetics. "I don't know how they could have come from the other side of the world to here."

It didn't take long for him to discover that the climate and the gray landscape make up for it with the food, the greatest cultural expression in Lima (and in all of Peru).

In the film, the escape of their grandparents Rinzo and Rosa with their first daughter in their arms is shown in animations, photographs and maps. A kind way to relive a tragic time.

In the press room at the festival, Kaori states that she needed that culture shock to imagine what her grandparents felt. Already in Venezuela, Kaori incorporated the political context of the time, the Second World War, the concentration camps, the growth of the family tree, and he finally knew that he had evolved.

Nikkei explores memory with testimonies of survivors, places, historical information, objects, but even more so with the log of a first-person search, an inner voice that resonates and unifies. The film is his intimate story.

El filme tuvo un efecto mágico. Una señora le aseguró a Kaori que viendo el documental se estaba reconciliando con su lado japonés porque a su familia le habían sucedido cosas similares. (Foto: Difusión Nikkei)

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She has been standing on the street for more than twenty minutes enduring the cold. It's winter in Lima. Kaori will appear in the photos framed with that opaque sky that intrigues her so much. On this second trip he has once again proven that affection here enters through the mouth. Lima, her grandparents' gateway to Latin America, that place that defines her today more than ever, welcomes her with a festival full of applause.

“We are not Japanese, we are Latin Americans with Asian features. Maybe the film can help with that type of recognition,” he says, already with a coffee in his hand.

Kaori has a new goal: she wants to encourage families to put together their own albums with photographs, letters and objects that generate memories. “In my case it happened and it was very healing,” says the girl who became a fairy with a movie.

La cineasta venezolana reconstruye la historia de sus abuelos japoneses en Nikkei. (Foto: Difusión Nikkei)

Crazy Adams

• Kaori opened a Facebook account where she and her 36 cousins ​​posted family photos that she used during filming.
• He had a blog that helped him organize his daily life. It was hacked. No longer exists.
• The film took about two years to make.
• They recorded more than 45 hours in total.
• Its co-producer is the Peruvian Hugo Shinki. He contacted him online.
• Nikkei is registered in 25 festivals.
• In Peru it will be distributed by Grupo Chasqui.
• He will soon begin producing a DVD with commentaries on the film and scenes that fell by the wayside.
• His parents are artists and his brothers are designers. In their family they are called the crazy Adams (most of them are lawyers).

* This article is published thanks to the agreement between the Peruvian Japanese Association (APJ) and the Discover Nikkei Project. Article originally published in Kaikan magazine No. 59, August 2011 and adapted for Discover Nikkei.

© 2011 Asociación Peruano Japonesa; © 2011 Foto: Asociación Peruano Japonesa / Fernando Yeogusuku