Hello, all!

I guess it’s about time I say こんにちは and share with everyone my own reasons for learning 日本語.

I might as well start with the stereotypical reason — anime …bear with me, because it goes a lot deeper than this. A couple of years ago, I started watching more anime and became a big fan. And then, at a point in my life when I was in a very bad place, I saw Neon Genesis Evangelion and End of Evangelion, and it literally changed my life. The characters and the issues addressed — the feelings of isolation and inadequacy — spoke to me very clearly, and I felt the director Hideako Anno really kenw more… more than anyone else ever had.

As I watched more anime, I began to develop an appreciation for Japanese culture. In particular, in anime and manga and even novels, Japanese media seemed to me to have so many stories about isolation and weakness in comparison with Western media, and I connected to that very deeply.

At the same time, I have long been a very big fan of Haruki Murakami’s work. I’ve read all of his English-translated novels (still working on the short stories), and I love his work. I’m a big fan of magical realism, and how subtle and different his novels are from the Western novels I read.

As I was realizing all of this, I remembered something else. I am Native American. Zuni, specifically. (For better or worse, I didn’t grow up on the rez, so unfortunately I speak very little Zuni.) Both Zuni and Japanese are language isolates, but share many similarities on morphology and phonemes. There are various theories circulating that there may be a link between the Japanese and the Zuni people, suggesting that hundreds of years ago, Japanese explorers made it to the Americas, and eventually met up with and interbred with my own ancestors.

In my own life, and in my (albeit limited) understanding of Japanese culture, I’ve observed many, many similarities between Japanese culture and those of Zuni culture (as well as certain similarities to other Southwestern tribes). For example, the humbleness that goes hand in hand with Japanese speech is very prevalent in Zuni culture as well as other Southwestern tribes.

My reasons for learning Japanese stem from both my own personal interest in Japanese culture from its media, as well as my desire to further investigate and understand the differences and similarities between Japanese language and culture and my own native culture.

I’m a gradaute student, and I’m hoping to find an internship in Japan one of these summers.

よろしくおねがいします。