My memories of Asahi Gakuen

I attended Asahi Gakuen (“Asahi”) from first grade (6 years old) until I was one year away from finishing high school (17 years old, or koukou ninen sei). Through Asahi, at first at Virgil, then Pasadena, then San Marino, and then Torrance, I went from being a young child to a young adult. Among all the things that my Parents did for me to make me a better Japanese person, Asahi played a big role. My best friends in life are from Asahi, and I can not speak about my childhood without thinking about my experiences at Asahi. I looked forward to October for the Undou-kai like any other child, and Asahi was where I went to find a community that was both Japanese and American in the same way I was. It is an environment that I yearn for when I don’t have it, and when I have it, I feel grounded by it. Asahi was my home throughout my childhood, and it is a distant memory that I still recall with great fondness.

Asahi Gakuen is a place where world class citizens are made.

I am proud to be among the very successful alumni of Asahi Gakuen. Some of us are artists, business executives, lawyers and doctors. Others are news casters, TV producers and journalists. Wherever we ended up, we are all thriving, and all of us look back to the days that we goofed around at school with pride and sentiment. There is no doubt that our perspectives as bicultural and bilingual beings have benefited us in the real world.

The difficulty of creating a world class citizen

It’s not easy giving children a dual education. The parents and children have to work twice as hard. My parents very much knew the difficulty of raising Japanese children in the United States, and they were quite the Spartan educators. For example, we were not allowed to speak English in the house. My mother left manga versions of the “kotowaza jiten” (“A book of Japanese proverbs”), among other books in Japanese in the bathroom, and we would read these books when we sat on the toilet. To this day, my mother compliments me for knowing certain proverbs. But it was all due to my parents’ efforts all along.

Every other summer, my parents generally sent us kids back to Japan. I am certain that this cost a fortune to do back in the 1970s and 1980s. During our summers, my sister, brother, Mom and I stayed with my Mom’s parents in Umegaoka. The summer vacations in the U.S. were long enough to allow us kids to go back to Japan, go to the same elementary or middle school that Mom went to, and stay for 2.5 months. After 2.5 months, I had friends, I had club activities, and I was fully assimilated. I loved Japan. The food was good, and everyone looked like me, and idolized the same people I did (i.e., Kondo Masahiko and Nakamori Akina).

My Japanese identity waxed and waned frequently. I fought with my parents a lot, particularly my Father, about whether I wanted to spend every Saturday studying Japanese. I couldn’t join the Girl Scouts because of Asahi, and I hated doing Japanese school homework on Friday nights on top of my regular school work.

Having two different perspectives gives us a broad understanding of the world at large.

I love Japan because it is part of me. I am also very American. The best quality many Americans possess is our ability to love others regardless of, or even because of, these differences, not despite them. It is my firm belief that our backgrounds give us the ability to understand this complex world better, and that has made us better citizens of this World. I have always been very concerned with social justice issues – and our responsibility as humans to make this world a better place. I chose to go to law school to pursue these interests.During and after law school, I had focused primarily in not-for-profit causes. Asylum, Worker’s rights, battered women’s issues, landlord tenant, HIV law … you name it, I was interested and work at various places that dealt with aggressive alleviating the human causes associated with these problems.

Six years ago, I started my own practice in the San Francisco Bay Area. My law firm, Yorozu Nagano, P.C. (www.yorozunagano.com), focuses on business law, technology transactions, immigration law, estate planning and estate administration. My business partner and I are both fluent in Japanese and English, as are most of the people in our office. Being at work is like being at Asahi in many ways, because most of us here are at some level American and Japanese. Because of that my office is an important part of what balances me as a human being. At Yorozu Nagano, I have been able to balance my need to surround myself with people that share my love for Japan, as well as my passion for social justice issues, by spending a substantial amount of energy towards exploring issues that concern me. My business supports me spiritually and financially, and I feel very fortunate for the fact that I have been able to find this balance.

Recognizing the diversity with the Japanese community will lead to a stronger Japan.

When I was in fourth grade at Asahi, there was a big debate at Asahi as to whether they should admit kids that had green cards. My father had obtained a green card through Sanwa Bank, and so I had one by the time I was five years old. I remember my mother being outraged by the actions of the school. A long-time teacher of Asahi at the time had children of her own. She fought the school, won, and as far as I know Asahi still admits kids that are permanent residents of the U.S. If that fight had been lost, I may have lost a very important connection that I had with Japan. For that, I am grateful that Asahi continues to be inclusive of students that seek to maintain their connection with Japan while they reside in the U.S. Asahi is a place where world class citizens are raised, with the best qualities of all the things that we have access to. By reflecting the diversity that our community truly possesses, we can create a stronger Japan, as well as a better World.