午夜剧场

My encounter with the Kurdish people was accidental. About 10 years ago, during my time at the Mainichi Shimbun, I left the headquarters and was assigned to the Kawaguchi Bureau, one of the reporting bases in Saitama Prefecture. One day, while chatting with a staff member at the Public Relations Division of the neighboring Warabi City Hall while looking for story ideas, the staff member suddenly mentioned, “Every year, Kurds hold a traditional festival in the city park.” This was “Newroz,” the Kurdish New Year festival held around the spring equinox, which also celebrates the liberation of the people.

At the time, all I knew about the Kurdish people was the “Halabja massacre,” where thousands were slaughtered by the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. I think I had almost no knowledge of Newroz either. However, the word “Kurd” remained strangely in my mind.

With the collapse of the Hussein regime in Iraq and the Syrian Civil War, the Kurdish people came into the spotlight, and related news increased rapidly. I decided to run a series in the Saitama edition of the Mainichi Shimbun and started the project “Far from Home: Kurds in Kawaguchi.” The series ran for a total of 24 installments from Part 1 to Part 6, from December 6, 2017, to August 3, 2018. This book is almost entirely rewritten based on those reporting notes.

In Chapter 1, “Kurds Who Came to Japan,” I chronicled the difficult life histories of Mamo-san, the first person I became close to; his wife Elmas-san, who was the first Kurdish woman to come to Japan; and Ali-san, the first Kurd living in Japan to arrive. In Chapter 2, “Detention Cornering the Kurds,” I listened to the voices of those who came to Japan as “refugees” but were not recognized as such, and were driven to despair by deportation orders and detention in immigration facilities. Chapter 3, “Enduring Hardships,” depicts the struggles of a young man who set foot in Japan again after being arrested in his homeland of Turkey following deportation from Japan, and a family struck by successive misfortunes such as the father's suicide. Finally, Chapter 4, “Kurds Rooted in the Community,” introduces Kurds living resiliently while coexisting with local residents, including Japanese language classes run by volunteers, traditional Oya embroidery classes, and a young man who successfully opened a kebab shop.

I wrote this book to listen to the voices of the Kurdish people and to help others understand their current situation. I hope it will serve as a resource for thinking about the refugee issue, for which each and every one of us is being asked for an answer.

Tetsuo Tokizawa

Bunanomori

208 pages, 1,600 yen (excluding tax)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.