In the small, ancient island country known as Japan, the days before the New Year are a bit of a big deal, much more than they are in Western countries. Around this time, hopeful Japanese from up and down the coast are making wishes and plans, or else daydreaming about what the coming year might bring them. However, for Ishiyama Takeo, a otherwise unremarkable businessman of Edogawa, Tokyo prefecture, the New Year’s season of Heisei 3, or 1991, was a bit more important than it might have been otherwise.
This was because that New Year’s Day just happened to be his wife’s due date.
The birth was long and exhausting, even for Takeo, whose only job was to stand by the bedside, hold his wife’s hand, and reassure her every so often that she was doing fine. It was a long, dull effort, and even though he was excited- it was his first child, after all- he found himself getting very, very tired. And thirsty. Very thirsty. After about sixteen hours of fruitless labor, he excused himself to get a drink, convinced that the birth wouldn’t happen for another hour at the most.
He was horribly wrong. Just after he had gotten to the nearby vending machine, deposited 200 yen, and put the Coke can to his lips, loud voices erupted from his wife’s room. Fearing the worst, he threw the can aside, raced down the hall, and ran into the room. It was just as he’d feared. The birth had been over in less than a minute, and he’d missed the whole thing. Various doctors he didn’t know were weighing his newborn daughter on a nearby scale, other doctors he didn’t know were congratulating him from all sides, and his wife, Akiko, looking alert even as she was recovering, was glaring at him angrily from the hospital bed.
It wasn’t as joyous as it could have been.
Despite it all, however, the Ishiyamas’ daughter was born perfectly healthy, which is a good thing to say for any baby. She was given the name "Ishiyama Yumi", meaning "hard mountain bow". Akiko liked the name because it was strong, powerful, and independent. Takeo liked the name because it was easy to write.
Apart from the usual difficulties that new parents find when first raising children, such as sleeping through the night, diaper changes, and constant visits from relatives, the Ishiyamas had relatively little difficulty with Yumi in her infancy. If anything, the two new parents were having worse conflicts within themselves. Though they loved each other, their marriage had been tense from the very beginning. At the root of it all was the fact that each of them had grown up in vastly different worlds- Akiko had come from a very traditional family in Hokkaido, while Takeo had spent most of his not-so-traditional life in the Tokyo city limits. Akiko had been the first girl in her family to go to college, where she had met Takeo, who wasted no time in educating her in the Tokyo lifestyle. However, none of it could change that their worldviews, philosophies, and upbringings were entirely different- a constant source of friction. Their fights were small but constant, and happened over every little thing, such as whose turn it was to change the baby, rock her to sleep, or persuade Grandma Miyuki that no, it was not a good idea to start looking for a husband for her at the moment. But, despite the spats, they worked well as a couple overall.
Yumi herself was about as happy as a little Japanese girl could be. Though the Ishiyamas were of a modest household and income, Yumi, in her childhood naïveté, didn’t care about any of it. To her, everything was special, from the apartment they lived in, to the TV that her father often watched American wrestling on, to the small fruit markets that her mother often bought her cooking ingredients from. She attracted friends easily with her sunny, forthright personality, both at school and closer to home. Sure, she threw tantrums, but they were just as spirited as her moments of joy. Her parents were bemused as to where all the energy came from, but made no attempt to squash it. Even when her constant jumping began to annoy the downstairs neighbors. (They’d never liked those neighbors anyway.)
Around the time that Yumi was five, Akiko became pregnant again. Takeo went to get soused at the nearest bar when he heard the news, but Yumi was excited beyond comprehension. She was going to be an oneechan, a big sister! She couldn’t stop thinking about it- or talking about it. She told everyone she met, even though, walking with her mother, they’d pretty much figured it out anyway. When the time came to take Akiko to the hospital, she could hardly sit still. She didn’t come to the hospital, though. They doubted she could handle that.
It was a much easier birth than Yumi’s had been. After only an hour or so, "Ishiyama Hiroki", meaning "hard mountain’s prosperous tree", entered the world. (It’s worth note that just after he was born, Takeo had to be taken to another part of the hospital to get his hand wrapped up. Akiko had been gripping it so hard, she’d twisted it out of its socket. He got the point.) Two days after he was born, he was taken home, where Yumi saw him for the first time. She was so happy, she didn’t stop screaming for a full ten minutes. All day long, she kept trying to hold and see her new brother, ensuring that he got no sleep at all. And even then, in the rare moments that baby Hiroki did sleep, Yumi kept her parents awake with her dreams for the future, spoken aloud.
"I’m gonna teach Ha-oki-chan how to make bread rolls!" she’d say, while seated on the edge of her parents’ bed. "And I’m going to take Ha-oki-chan to the park, and the school, and the temple, and the festival, and the dog statue, and I’m gonna- I’m gonna-"
However, barely a year later, news came to the Ishiyama household that would take their lives in a very different direction. The company that Takeo worked for, Takahashi Corporation, had recently opened up a new branch in Paris, France, nearly halfway across the world. Takeo was to be transferred to this branch, not only to fill up working spots there, but to open up new ones for Japanese workers locally. This didn’t make Takeo too happy. But, he had only one other option, and that was forfeiting his job. So, reluctantly, the Ishiyamas packed their belongings, took Yumi and "Ha-oki-chan", then only a few months old, boarded a plane, and headed to France.
The family of four settled themselves in Bolougne-Billancourt, a small town near Paris. They stayed with a family friend, another man who had been transferred, until they were able to find and buy a house elsewhere in the city. Within a month, they had one- its previous owner had died, and its heir hadn’t wanted it, so they were able to buy it at a low price.
Both Takeo and Akiko, while they wanted to stay close to their Japanese roots, didn’t want to end up as "idiot foreigners". So, they made an effort to learn as much French as possible. Both adults, whose lingual knowledge consisted only of English loanwords like "besubaru" and "number one", took classes in the language. Hiroki was taught French from the get-go, learning just enough Japanese to get the gist of it. While Yumi was legally able to attend school, there was no possible way she could learn anything from it, so the family decided to homeschool her until she could understand and speak French. All household conversations had as much French as possible. Yumi was a bit confused at first, but over time, she caught on, and learned quickly. Her accent was a bit thick, but she was understandable.
Finally, at the age of eight, the Ishiyamas decided that Yumi was ready to tackle French public school. They enrolled her in the nearest one. All summer, she could talk of nothing else, switching between French and Japanese whenever it was convenient for her emotions. When the big day came, September 1st, she got up early, dressed herself in her favorite dress, packed her own lunch, and stood by the door, waiting to go. For about two hours.
Unfortunately, things didn’t go as well as she thought they would. Very few of the kids in the class had ever seen an Asian before, let alone one so ethnic as Yumi, and all of them were taken aback by her unusual appearance, accent, and habits. Nobody seemed to understand why she pronounced her l’s like r’s, ate rice for lunch instead of sandwiches, or seemed so uncomfortable wearing shoes in the classroom. They couldn’t make sense of any of it. And, in the normal mob response to anything strange or different, they put it upon themselves to stomp her down as far as they could.
They imitated her accent and her habits. They’d stretch the skin around their eyes, calling it the "Yumi face". For a while, none of them wore shoes. Not a recess went by where someone didn’t try to throw a rock at her, pull one of her pigtails, or crowd her into a corner, chanting, "You’re retarded! You’re retarded!" She didn’t know what to make of it. Most recesses ended with her hiding beneath the slide, crying to herself. Either that, or she would stay inside during recess, helping to clean the classroom. She was quiet about the teasing to the teachers, and so they did nothing.
But one unfortunate day, the short, sweet little girl finally snapped.
It was a sunny day, around the beginning of June. One short, brown-haired boy from a lower grade had tried his luck with a double whammy- throwing two rocks at her at the same time. It had worked- one hit her in the back, and the other clipped her shoulder. He expected her to run away crying, like she usually did, but instead, she whirled around and punched him in the face. He fell to the ground, screaming, as she, also screaming, punched him again and again. She was terrified out of her wits as she did it, but at the same time, she felt like she had no other choice. Nine months of anger was pooling itself into her fists, and it all felt so good.
Beyond bruises, the kid wasn’t seriously hurt. But, the episode did get her in a lot of trouble. Akiko and Takeo were shocked and embarrassed by her behavior, but, after hearing the complaints that she had been holding in for so long, decided that Yumi was having trouble meshing into her new home. At the insistence of family members back in the islands, Yumi was sent back to Japan that summer, where she would live with her grandparents, and go to a Japanese school.
At first, she was extremely happy with the arrangements, not only because she was back in Japan, but because she’d be with people who wouldn’t think she was strange, and who’d be friends with her. Again, this didn’t exactly work. Though she looked as Japanese as the next kid, it was almost impossible not to notice that there was a rift between her and her classmates. They knew that there was something different about her, something that had changed in the three years she had missed in Japan, but rather than aggravate it as the other kids had done, they simply chose to ignore it. They didn’t throw rocks at her, but their avoidance and excuses hurt more than any object ever could. To them, she was a mistake, better brushed away. Barely any of them talked to her, and if they had to talk about her, they’d call her "gaijin-chan", foreigner girl.
Yumi was more mature at this point, and knew better than to lash out. Instead, she closed herself in, not talking to those who didn’t talk to her. She found outlets for her anger in self-taught martial arts, but, though there were martial arts clubs at school, didn’t share this with anyone. After all, no one asked.
Eventually all this, coupled with homesickness, led to her wanting to return to her family in Bolougne-Billancourt. When she was eleven, and had just finished the Japanese equivalent of elementary school, she left her grandparents’ home and caught a plane back to Paris. Her family, who had missed her terribly, was ecstatic for her return- especially Hiroki, who had hardly ever seen his sister, save for summer vacations when she returned home. However, when she arrived at the front door, she was met with a pretty nasty shock. Hiroki, now five and happy to see her, bounded right up to her and greeted her with a rousing "Salut, Yumi! Es-tu heureuse être chez toi?"
Yumi, slightly bewildered, replied, "Yes, I’m happy to be home," in Japanese. Hiroki didn’t answer. He just gave her a blank look.
As she later found out, he had begun kindergarten, and had already gotten himself a wide circle of friends. In fact, three of them were over that very day, talking and laughing without a care in the world. All told, it was a bit more then Yumi could take. She was a freak in her new home, and a "gaijin" in her old one. And here was Hiroki, a social butterfly, who didn’t have to make any sort of effort at all to be liked. His accent was flawless- if it wasn’t for his looks and obsession with giant toy robots, one could hardly tell he was Japanese. He was perfect. And she was a failure.
She didn’t make any more effort to learn French, even though her parents and brother spoke it all the time. She spent much of her time cloistered in her room, reading or practicing her martial arts. She hardly ever spoke to Hiroki, and when she did, she was dark, almost bitter. It worried Hiroki, and aggravated their parents. Their fights, which had subsided, went on full force. It was a turbulent time in the Ishiyama household.
At summer’s end, neither parent could take it anymore. Without telling Yumi, they enrolled her in the local junior high school, Kadic Academy, for her seventh grade year. Despite her protests- her experiences with school had been less than great- she was made to go anyway. She woke up late, and nearly dragged herself there the first day.
She wasn’t ecstatic with Kadic, but, at the same time, she wasn’t begging to leave. Though some of the kids there were the very same that had tortured her in the third grade, none of them resumed the abuse, or, indeed, paid any attention to her. Sure, she was different, but they’d grown past that. After all, people came from Kadic from around the world, a few of whom knew less French and had stranger customs than she did. That, and she had a feeling that none of them remembered her. After all, she’d only been there for one year.
Only one person in the whole school paid her any mind, and that was Ulrich Stern, a strange, brown-haired boy. She had the oddest feeling that he had a crush on her. He would discreetly follow her around, offering to teach her French, or answer questions about the school. Somehow, she never got around to telling him she knew enough French to get by. She acted aloof, and perhaps a bit naive, but deep down, she liked the attention. His attention, in turn, got her MORE attention from Sissi Delmas, the school’s resident drama queen, who had a crush on Ulrich.
One day, seeing Yumi practicing martial arts by herself in the woods, Ulrich walked up to her and told her about a class that took place in the gym on Saturday nights in Penack Silat. Yumi was annoyed, yet mildly interested. She agreed to attend, and then turned away from him.
You know the rest of the story.