Anna Matsushita

  1976 — Family and University Entrance Exam Preparations   When I returned to the boarding school, another move was waiting for me. Third-year students were given single rooms.   I left the four-bed room I'd been sharing and moved into a single room for senior students in another wing of the residence. The old desk had clearly seen years of use. Its surface was covered with messages and doodles left behind by generations of former occupants.   I heard that two of my former roommates had gone back to Japan. For some reason, quite a number of students seemed to have gone back to Japan after the spring holidays. By the time the first term began, our year group had shrunk from twenty-eight students to just fifteen.   Even a few of the friends I'd grown close to had gone. It felt as though little holes had been left in my heart. I missed them.   Our university entrance preparation began in earnest. The school organised supplementary ...

1978 – The Japanese Boarding School by the Sea "A Japanese school." I'd never heard the term before. It was only when Father was told he was being transferred to England for three years that it entered my life. In 1974, I was in my first year of high school, attending one of the city's top academic schools. If I worked hard enough, I believed I could sit the entrance exams for the university I wanted. Then came the news of Father’s transfer. The following year, in early summer 1975, my parents took me to England with my younger brother, who had only just started junior high school. Father had only one plan. He was determined to put both of us into British schools. I wanted nothing of the sort. I wanted to go to a Japanese high school in the UK. Even so, as soon as we arrived in England, Father dragged my brother and me from one school interview to another. Everywhere we went, the answer was the same. “You're already seventeen, and you don't speak English. I...

  On my very first day of preschool, when I was a three years old, I couldn't understand a single word my teacher was saying. I was so scared that I clung to my mother's skirt. Mom and the teacher talked for a while. Then Mom knelt down, smiled at me, and said in Japanese, "Go have fun, Yuki." She gently placed my hand in the teacher's. The classroom walls were painted a soft pink. Sunlight poured through the big windows, making everything sparkle. There was a shelf full of toys in the back. Children my age were running around, laughing at the tops of their lungs. Some had blond hair. Some had dark, curly hair. Some had sun-tanned skin. They all came over to talk to me. I couldn't understand a single thing they were saying. I was frightened. I didn't understand anything. I cried my way through the whole day.   The moment Mom picked me up, I threw my arms around her and burst into tears. I couldn't stop crying. ...

  “ Ema, that’s not right. Put your tongue against the roof of your mouth. Again.” Mum’s sharp voice rang through the living room.   My two little sisters and I were all born and raised in Tokyo, to Japanese parents.   It was 1977.  From the age of six, we had English lessons at home every single day. My sister, Marie was four, and the youngest, Emi was only one year old.   Mum was our English teacher, and she was tough. She showed no mercy, even with my sisters. "Mum was born in America and came back to Japan. At the time, I didn't know why."   She often told us about those days. Wide roads. Big houses. Kind teachers. A sense of freedom. And she always ended with the same words.   “ America is our homeland. One day, we’re going back. If you can’t speak proper English, people will think you’re a foreigner and look down on you.”   I was too young to understand what “look down on” really meant. But the word left...