Brigitte

Brigitte Part II

Tokyo 東京

1989-1993

Finally in our new house

Tokyo-to, Suginami-ku, Miyamae, June 1989

With the monkeys on Takao-san, Tokyo, 1989

Ueno Park, Tokyo, 1989

Ueno Park, Tokyo, 1989

At Yoshizawa's place, Tachikawa, 1989

Once my post at the German Institute for Japanese Studies was decided, we got into frenzy preparations for our relocation to Tokyo. During the winter semester of 1988/89 the students of the Free University had been on strike and the East Asian Institute had been occupied for two months. Now it had been liberated by the police, but nobody was allowed to enter the building. Fortunately I had got my research materials and books out of the institute just on the day when it was occupied, but there was still some of my stuff left and also the stuff of a Japanese guest professor. So I got a special permit to enter my office and to pick up our stuff under close supervision of security guards. We had a lot of paperwork to do, pay off Brigittes study loans, file our tax returns (we got them all back) and organize the move of our books and other staff. We were done by the end of March and left West Berlin on April 2 to spend some time with our families and friends in Hessen. We arrived in Tokyo on April 30, 1989. It was raining like hell, and it continued to rain until autumn with only very few nice days. The first month we spent at a hotel close to the institute. One of my new colleagues introduced us to a real-estate agency that was very versed in dealing with foreigners. Foreigners were still strange in Tokyo and the negotiations with the landlords were sometimes quite difficult. In the end we found a house for rent in Miyamae in Suginami-ku and we could move on June 15. Our stuff had not yet arrived, so we bought some futon, a table and stools, and minimum kitchen ware. After that we used our rail passes and traveled to Tohoku and Hokkaido. Brigitte had agreed with her supervisor at Marburg University to do doctoral research on a comparison of adult education in Germany and Japan and she had already got into contact with Hara Hiroko and was to become a research student of the Institute of Women’s Studies of Ochanomizu University in October, and once we were settled into our new house, she started to attend an intensive Japanese language course at a school in Hiroo. Later she received additional classes at Ochanomizu University, which actually were practice classes for the students of Japanese as Foreign Language at that university. We also got back into contact with our friends in Tachikawa, and by autumn we had several groups of Japanese friends in Tachikawa and in Tokyo, but our private involvement with the German community remained largely limited to several close friends that were doing research in Japan. This situation had a very beneficial effect on Brigitte’s Japanese language progress, by autumn she was largely able to participate in Japanese conversations, and once she was in Ochanomizu University she also started to improve her reading and writing skills.

In Nara, 1989

In Nara, 1989

At the Penguin House in Koenji, 1990

With artist friends of Sunagawa Naoto in Tachikawa, 1990

With her brother Heinrich in Hakone

1990

On the Mogami river in Yamagata, 1990

Hokkaido, 1990

With her friend Petra in Hokkaido, 1990

In 1990 we had our only visitors from Europe who came to visit us in Tokyo. First came her brother Heinrich during the Easter holidays with whom we traveled to Hakone. Then came Brigitte’s friend Petra from Berlin during the summer holidays. With her we traveled through Hokkaido and to Sado island. But both ventured for one week of traveling alone through Japan. Actually it was a pity that we had so few visitors in Tokyo. At that time we had a big house and lots of money, which was perfect for receiving guests and traveling with them.

Sado-ga-shima, 1990

At Yoshizawa's place, Tachikawa, 1990

At Yoshizawa's place, Tachikawa, 1990

Learning Korean drums, Tachikawa, 1991

With Sunagawa Saeko sensei and her students of tea ceremony, Tachikawa, 1991

For more than two years we had not been back to Europe. But in July 1991 we traveled to Germany to attend the weddings of Brigitte’s brother Heinrich in Martinhagen and of my cousin Petra in Muenchen. We also made a short trip to Pontoise. Then in September and November we traveled to conferences in Berlin, and in October to South Korea and in December to Kanazawa with our friends from Tachikawa.

With my mother in Fritzlar, 1991

Muenchen, 1991

Tokyo 1991

On Chejudo, South Korea, 1991

On Chejudo, South Korea, 1991

With Furuuchi Ayako in Kanazawa, 1991

With Yoshizawa Emi on the morning market in Kanazawa, 1991

With Sunagawa Keiko at Sunagawa's house, Tachikawa, 1991

In South Korea 1991

With Sunagawa Saeko in her tea room in Tachikawa, 1991

Kugayama, Tokyo, 1992

Her birthday party with her friends Ulricke Nennstiel, Kobayashi Reiko and Nakamura Hiroko at a restaurant in Kichijoji, 1992

Tokyo 1992

Workin in her room at home, Tokyo, 1992

In the mountains of Gumma, 1992

Kassel, Germany, 1992

Holzburg, 1992

Back in Tokyo, 1992

Brigitte loved Tokyo. Tokyo in the early 1990s was a real World Metropolis, and at the same time it consisted of many small villages, which all had their peculiar culture. She also had enough free time to explore the city. And through our friends from Tachikawa and from Ochanomizu University she also was connected to various activities, and once her command of Japanese had attained a certain level of convenience, she participated in many sides of traditional and modern Japanese culture in a way that was normally closed to expats. When we first got back to Tachikawa in 1989, she accidentally dropped that she would like to learn tea ceremony. And in the Tachikawa circle there was Sunagawa Saeko, a tea master of the Omote Senke, and her husband Naoto was a master potter. Suddenly Brigitte found herself invited to Sunagawa sensei’s lessons and she was the only foreigner among her students. Brigitte pursued her interest in tea ceremony very earnestly, she practically became adopted by the Sunagaws and also became a member of the senke. But there were many other activities that she engaged in. At the Ochanomizu University she also became very much involved with gender research and research on adult education and she published several papers. By the end of 1992 Tokyo was a place she didn’t want to leave at all. But the clock was ticking. My final extension of contract was due to run out in April 2004, and two years after reunification job opportunities in Germany didn’t look good at all. At that point we had another major decision to make. In September 1992 I got a phone call from my mentor at Tokyo University, Toshitani Nobuyoshi. He had been contacted by Uchida Yoshiaki from Chubu University who was scouting for someone who could cover sociology, European studies and Japanese studies, and they were offering a tenured position at least as an associate professor. He asked me to send him my resume, which I did, but I also had to talk with Brigitte about this matter, we had to decide whether we would go on with the negotiations or whether we would stop them immediately, there was no way I would enter into any negotiation without being sure first that we were seriously interested. Brigitte did not want to leave Japan, but she did not want to leave Tokyo neither. She loved our house in Miyamae (the rent of which we only could afford because 95% of it was paid by the German Government), she loved all her connections in Tokyo, and Nagoya looked like a very drab place (actually in the early 1990s it was an extremely provincial place despite its size and its strong involvement in world economy). There were other matters to consider as well. Five years abroad was normally thought to be a maximum period for an expat to get reintegrated at home without too many problems (one of which was the amount of money we could spent from our special allowances, counted everything together, I basically earned about 20,000 USD per month in Tokyo, housing allowance alone covered something like 7,000 USD), additional time away from Germany without major progresses in our academic qualifications would only make it more difficult to go back, and there was the problem of working as a foreigner in a Japanese organization (the experiences of other people had not been very encouraging, but Japan seemed to open up at last), but there was also the problem that the promises of government help with reintegration that were advertised to us in 1989 had defaulted to zero, and the only job offers available in Germany were limited contracts in research projects, and I had already crossed the age of forty, and there we also our families and friends in Europe. And while the guys at Chubu University’s College of International Studies considered my paper form, we did a lot of soul searching and discussing our predicaments with a lot of people who knew Japan and who knew Europe (besides our Japanese mentors, the discussions with Sung-Jo Park, Harumi Befu, and Jan van Bremen were especially helpful, Josef Kreiner also helped a lot, albeit he had much on his own plate at the time). At the end we grudgingly decided to go in seriously, but with a definite time-limit of five years that we would use for further academic qualification, this time not mine, but Brigitte’s, because she was ten years younger than me. I met Uchida in Kamakura, and he was impressed enough that I next was asked to meet the head of the department of Comparative Culture, Miyamoto Shozaburo in Kichijoji, and in January of 2003 I was invited for an interview with the president of Chubu University. Everything went basically well, we agreed on all the essential issues, but due to the timing, I could only be hired into a full-time position in October 1993, which was fine with me (starting on April 1, 2004 would even have been better, but I decided not go into the pecuniary details of my job in Tokyo), but they asked me to teach a seminar from April on as a part-time teacher, and my boss Kreiner was so happy to have the first of his flock under different wings that he immediately agreed to this condition (actually the prospects of the first crew of the German Institute for Japanese Studies were not too good, of the other members of our research group, one stayed on as a librarian, one retired as a housewife, one became a free-lance translator, one entered a time-limited contract in a research project, and two became temporarily unemployed, but Kreiner took his responsibilities seriously, and in the end all of those who wished it, got secure positions). In the summer of 1993 we first searched a house in Nagoya, and then we traveled to Europe. In September we moved to Nagoya, and Brigitte hated the place. Things eased a bit when she got more acquainted with people we met through the Nagoya German Culture Forum, and she also had enough time to explore the city while I was preparing lectures in Japanese. But she basically did not want to get involved with the place at this time. And there also was the problem with furthering her academic qualifications, her advisor from Marburg University had moved to Hamburg University in the autumn of 1993, and while she had collected considerable material on adult education in Japan, she was lacking equivalent material from Germany. So in the end we decided that she should go to Germany for at least three months and work in centers of adult education in Muenchen and Frankfurt. And through our network of friends that we had developed since 1984, we were able to set up the thing quite quickly, especially since we didn’t need any third-party founding.

In my home office in Tokyo, 1993

In my home office in Tokyo, 1993

Nagoya 名古屋

1993-2005

Nagoya, 1993

Nagoya, 1993

With Nakamura Hiroko at Nagoya Port

With me at the same place, New Year's 1994

There’s a German proverb der Mensch denkt, aber Gott lenkt, which can roughly be translated as “man plans his destiny, but God decides it”. And while I’m not quite ready to admit the existence of a higher entity that is busy with planning every nook and cranny of our life, I have to admit that destiny can be a bitch and destroy all of our well conceived plans with just a twitch. Brigitte went to Germany in January 1994, she planned to stay at least until the end of March for her research. She went a bit early to help with the preparations of her mother’s 70th and my mother’s 75th birthdays which were coming up in February. I was meant to join her as fast as my work with the entry exams for Chubu University was finished. But then everything was thrown in limbo: 30 minutes after Brigitte arrived in Holzburg her mother had a stroke. It took quite a time to get her into a first-aid hospital (the downside of living in the ‘country’, especially on a weekend), and that didn’t have a stroke unit. Still in the same night she was transferred to another hospital with a stroke center, but her prospects were not very good especially since she had additional strokes. Chubu University decided that this was an important family matter and gave me emergency leave. During the same time I had been coaxed by one of my colleagues, a professor whose name I would not like to name, to proofread and correct a German manuscript on macro-economics by a former professor of Nagoya National (Imperial) University who had become the president of some new regional university. It was my first experience with Owari-han style “scratch my back, and I scratch your’s”, but it also contained a promise to give Brigitte a job offer. That was the situation when I arrived in Frankfurt on my birthday, February 5th, three days before my mother-in-law’s birthday and eight before my mother’s. When I got to Holzburg, the situation was gloomy. The three siblings were devastated, not only because of their mother’s situation, but also because of the unresolved problems of inheritance, both of which were also reinvigorating old hidden animosities. The only person that was still functioning was my sister-in-law Susanne, but she also had to take care of her two babies. We visited my mother-in-law at the hospital where she lay in coma already since several weeks. She eventually died three days after her seventieth birthday, and while I was helping the three siblings with the preparation of the funeral, I also had to think of my mother’s birthday, which in the end became a very gloomy affair, not only because of my mother-in-law’s death, but also because my god-mother was terminal ill with cancer and because my sister’s husband Hubert had just been diagnosed with kidney cancer. Both of them died in the same year. I had to return to Japan after three weeks, but Brigitte stayed on to take care of family business, and all her plans for research went down the scrapper, but at least she got an offer for a job as part-time German teacher.

Tokoname, 1994

Tokoname, 1994

With my cousins Annette and Dirk Hillenhagen in Nagoya, 1994

In Higashiyama Park, Nagoya, 1994

Nagoya, 1994

Nagoya, 1994

Nagoya, 1994

With Mutsuo Ohkawa at Tanakas' party in Kozoji, 1994

In hindsight, the events of 1994 caused a major turn in our life, but that was not obvious to us at the time. Brigitte came back to Japan at the end of March. She hadn’t much achieved concerning her research. So she went back to Germany in August and September and collected some material, but again got more entangled in family and inheritance matters than in her research. And slowly she started to loose interest in the project. The death of her mother and the subsequent negotiations with her brothers left deep emotional scars. To a certain degree she felt that she had lost her home. On the other hand she had started to teach German at Yokkaichi University in April. Four hours in the first year, which were increased to eight hours in 1995. Additional part-time teaching positions followed at Chubu University and especially in the Open College of Chukyo University, which she continued even after she was hired by Mie University. She still didn’t like Nagoya and longed for Tokyo, but she slowly built new friendships and got involved with the professional organizations of German studies. As her work as a German teacher was recognized by her colleagues, her professional outlook changed too. I on the other hand was still strongly involved with finishing the German Institute for Japanese Studies’ research project on value change until 1997, but at the same time I got more and more involved with my work at Chubu University. It was a slow and gradual process, but by the time Brigitte was hired by Mie University as a full-time lecturer for German with a five-year contract in 1998, we had quietly abandoned any plans to return to Germany. It was still not a conscious decision; it took us another six years until the spring of 2004 to apply for a permit of permanent residence, which was granted in October 2004. In the meanwhile we built our social networks and got involved in various activities, I engaged in art, and Brigitte got more and more involved with the study of literature. After her contract with Mie University ended, she quickly secured new part-time teaching positions at Nanzan University, Aichi Prefectural University, and Sugiyama University.

1995

1995

1995

1995

With her brother Hans in Holzburg, 1996

In Holzburg on the farm where she was born, 1996

With my mother in Fritzlar 1996

In a hospital in Nagoya after surgery, 1996

With her brother Hans in front of our house in Nagoya,

right after she was released from hospital, 1996

In front of our house, 1996

With Mutsuo Ohkawa and one of his friends at Mutsuo's place

In June 1996, a cyst was detected at one of Brigitte’s ovaries during a routine obstetric examination. It had grown to a considerable size and surgery became necessary to remove it. It was not a very complicated or dangerous procedure, but Brigitte was horrified by the idea to undergo surgery. Therefore she wanted first to travel to Europe, especially to Greece with Mutsuo Ohkawa and his Greek friend who owned some property on Samos. Because the semester at Mutsuo’s and Brigitte’s universities ended about two weeks earlier than at Chubu University, I was unable to accompany them. After she got back, she entered hospital and underwent surgery. Right at the time when she was released from hospital, her brother Hans came to visit us in Japan. In Nagoya we have had many more visitors than in Tokyo. The first to come had been my cousin Annette and her husband who already arrived in August 1994. My sister came in 1997 together with her friend Carmen, and then again alone in 2001.