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This candid memoir is a gripping personal tale of cultural schizophrenia. Kazuko Winter was the daughter of a high-ranking Japanese diplomat, raised and educated outside her native Japan in India, South Africa, Australia, and Oxford, England, in the 1950s and 60s. She also spent time with her parents in Nigeria and Paraguay. Never fully at home anywhere, she suffered from an increasing sense of isolation that once led her to the brink of suicide, and at another stage to seriously consider entering a Catholic order of nuns. Written in the form of a letter to an old Japanese friend, the book relates the authors turbulent love affair with a young Japanese diplomat, her traumatic decision to break off the affair because she did not believe she belonged within Japanese society, and her subsequent happy marriage to a German scholar. At once disturbing and uplifting, this is an intensely felt story of the path to healing and her gradual reacceptance of herself, her mother and her Japanese heritage.
About the author
Kazuko Winter was born in Tokyo in 1945 during the last months of the Second World War. As the daughter of a Japanese diplomat, she left Japan soon after beginning primary school and has lived abroad most of her life. After graduating from the University of Sydney where she studied Anthropology, Latin and Linguistics, she completed a postgraduate course in Social Anthropology at Oxford University. Her major interests lie in languages and intercultural studies. Today, she works as a freelance translator, teacher and writer. She has written an African cookery book and a Japanese textbook for German speakers. Currently, she is teaching at the University of Bayreuth, Germany.
