I only started attending the local public school when I was seven years old. Up until that point, my world was just my grandparents' farm and the laundry room. On the first day of class, I discovered that the vast majority of students did not have slanted eyes; I was one of the few yellow-skinned students in the school. This fact in itself did not cause me any discomfort, since I had already seen a Brazil like that on TV, but it became a problem that was highlighted by the jokes made by some of my classmates about my phenotype and my origins, which I did not find at all funny.

At school, there were many girls named Marcia, and the teachers started calling me Tieko, my Japanese name. As difficult as it was to explain my name to others, I felt protected by it and liked being different.

The Japanese believed that choosing a name and how it would be written was a huge responsibility, as it could influence the child's future. The ideograms chosen by my father were: ti (智), which means wisdom, and (恵) blessed and ko (子) child. My name could have been written with another kanji for ti (美), which means beauty, but my father preferred me to be wise, so my name in Japanese is written: 智恵子, child blessed with wisdom.

Sometimes, it was wiser to use Marcia, due to the ignorance of my interlocutor or those who were not interested in knowing:

- I already said, I'm not Diego, but you can call me Marcia – the one that comes from Mars and means warrior, but I felt like an ET.

Being different was not an option. I couldn't escape the nicknames given to Asian girls: Japinha, Japa, China, Nisei, Nãosei, which changed according to the season. I was once called Tieta because of a soap opera, Tieppo because of a famous crime, Pokahontas and Mulan because of Disney.

Language became something violent when it naturalized terms like slanted eyes, slits or flat faces. The maxims: All Japanese are the same. Speak Xing Ling. Go back to China. Open your eyes! – transformed me into an object of identity, always seen as a thing, never as myself. It was a battle that I almost always lost. Even if I expressed my discomfort with this violence, it was very common for them to invalidate me: – Oh, why did you get angry, aren’t you Japanese? Oh! You’re too sensitive. These types of comments didn’t allow me to understand and correctly name the difficult situations I went through. The jokes masked the racial hostility of their authors, maintaining their positive and superior image. – It’s just a joke.

I was an accidental “Japa” lost and trying to find myself. At that time, the image of the Brazilian woman was translated into Sonia Braga, with her sensuality and joy. I wanted to be Gabriela. Because of her, I raised the hem of my uniform skirt and went to school, heard things I didn’t like and decided to undo the hem the same day, when I returned home. It wasn’t easy being Brazilian.

On the other hand, I didn’t have many references to Japanese culture, except for the programs Japan Pop Show and Imagens do Japão that I watched on Tupi and TV Gazeta on Sundays with my family. I had an ambiguous feeling, because I also didn’t know what it meant to “be Japanese”, from a certain East, beyond the stereotypes that were imposed on me: being intelligent, good at math, a nerd, well-behaved, delicate, quiet, obedient and submissive. In a process of denial, I made a huge effort to distance myself from the Asian feminine model, by which I was seen and determined, a lonely path, with no stars to guide me.

I was always intrigued by the meaning of my surname: Irii. It was a rare name even for the Japanese. Iri (入) means to enter, i (井) is well or community and is also part of the word well. Entering the well was how I explained the way my surname was written.

In Japan, most common people such as farmers or fishermen did not have surnames. In the Meiji Period, with the increasing modernization of the country, the Civil Registration Law was created. For the first time, all individuals were required to register and adopt a family name. Since people could choose, they adopted names of important figures or created them based on the place where they lived or associated them with some element of nature, for example: Yamashita, which means at the foot of the mountain.

I was trying to understand why my ancestors adopted the name Irii. Did they live near a well? Was it a natural well? Was it a sacred place? Or was the only thing they had? Was it something essential for their survival or something that only they had? Were they well specialists? Why did they go into the well? How could this determine my life?

Entering a cold, dark well didn’t seem like a very pleasant thing to do, but I often felt like I was in it. However, it might be more comforting to imagine floating in that pure water, like amniotic fluid, which nourishes and protects the baby dreaming of life outside. And if I decided to dig the well even deeper, so deep that it reached the other side of the world, in Japan, would I find any answers?

 

© 2024 Tieko Irii