Author’s Note. As a fellow journalist, I was invited to Japan by my friends Hiro Ainoda, a human rights lawyer, and Sakai Ito, a television documentary producer (not their real names, to protect their privacy). At that time, I wrote editorials for the Inquirer and produced Youtube documentaries. Through them, I learned about the bitter-sweet lives of OFWs in Japan in personal interviews.
eastwind journals, June 10, 2024 – Archives tr16
By Bernie V. Lopez, eastwindreplyctr@gmail.com
Share this article – https://eastwindjournals.com/2024/06/10/lives-of-ofws-in-japan/
The Prince and the Prostitute.
From Tokyo, Hiro, Sakai, and I drove by car to Nagoya. There, I was introduced to Lisa, a Japayuki, who lived in a container van converted into a cramped house, a squatter home Japanese-style. It was so crowded, I had a hard time conducting the interview. She was breastfeeding a 4-month old baby during the interview.
Lisa met a young handsome Japanese guy back in Tokyo, who visited her at the night club every day, and showered her with expensive gifts. Lisa felt like a princess, pampered by a rich prince charming. They quickly fell in love and got married, only for Lisa to discover later that her wealthy paramour was a construction worker. The guy was later laid off his work, and they moved to Nagoya. Lisa ended up working again in a club, supporting her husband. She would breast feed their months-old baby during the day and work in the club at night. It was a sad story – a lover who was charming but not a prince.
After the interview, while taking a sulphur bath in a hot spring resort, Hiro told me that Lisa is just one of tens of thousands of Japayukis. If I stayed for a month, I could write a book of their sad tales. I felt sad for the plight of poor Filipino women in strange foreign lands.
The Farmer and the Queen.
A friend in Manila asked me a favour to give an expensive diamond ring to Rose, her friend in Tokyo, a Filipino married to a rich Japanese plantation owner. She was well educated and had been an executive secretary back in Manila. The worlds of a farmer and a professional were poles apart, but Rose tried hard to bridge the gap. She was strong and could take anything.
The farmer loved her fanatically and pampered her as his queen. They had a sprawling farm home. He gave her a sports car of her choosing. But he was the super-jealous type. He had a terrible fear that Rose would be tempted by the evil world outside and leave him, so he insulated her from the world. He forbade her from seeing any Filipinos. She used her sports car only to bring and fetch their daughter to school every day. Her social life was zero.
When I met Rose, she was in a terrible state of depression and loneliness. She did not tell her husband she would meet me, but the ring was important to her. I gave her the ring, and she could not help but blurt out her miserable life in tears in a small crowded café. I listened in utter silence and shock.
Rose lived in utter wealth and misery all at once. I gave her a few names from the Filipino community that Hiro gave me. They were mostly chamber maids and house help mixed with a few Japayukis, whom she could secretly meet. Rose was in tears of joy. She told me I was sent by heaven, an answer to her constant prayers. She held my hand hard before we parted.
After a month, I found out in Manila from Hiro that Rose was doing very well, secretly seeing these Filipino women, and was very happy. She became a dear friend of the group, and even rescued a few financially. They looked up to her as a mother and a leader. She initiated a movement to rescue Filipinos in distress. She passed the hat for beleaguered Filipinas. It was her way of giving back to the group who rescued her from utter loneliness.
Hiro gave me a red-carpet treatment. He and Sakai treated me to dinner every night. We began with beer, of course, and Japanese pulutan (aperitif) of steamed fresh soy beans in the pod. Hiro gave me a ten-day rail ticket, a Japanese version of the Eurail pass, where you can travel anywhere for a fixed cheap rate for a given time period. I wanted to go deep north to Hokkaido, but I did not have the time nor the money. I had only ten days in Japan. Hiro booked me in a cheap YMCA room in Tokyo because he knew my budget was not that big.
Nara and Kyoto on my Mind.
With the Eurail-type ticket Hiro gave me, Sakai suggested I visit Nara, the ancient city and capital during the early days of the Shoguns. This was my respite from the coverage of OFWs. Sakai’s boss at the TV network TVS, who knew me as his executive producer for a TVS documentary filmed in Bukidnon, paid for my overnight stay at Kyoto in a plush five-star hotel complete with a dinner cooked in front of me by a chef, and with a whole bottle of red wine I dutifully did not waste. I felt like a king.
At Nara, I used a technique I learned in my adventures as a backpacker in Europe for three long years. Instead of taking the bus, I rented a bicycle at the train station and got a map. The bike trip in itself was awesome, as I passed through small streets and quaint shops before I reached the gates of the walled temple area. There, I was so mesmerized by temples built as far back as the 8th and 12th centuries, when the oldest Catholic churches back home were built in the 16th century. I was on sacred grounds.
I did not know there was a curfew. At 5 pm, they closed the place. I was stranded inside with all gates locked. Finally, after 30 minutes of walking aimlessly, I was rescued by an old woman gardener who opened the gate for me. I bought a small bottle of sake (rice wine) to celebrate my encounter with ancient Japan on the way back to the train station where I returned bicycle.
Adapting to the Japanese Culture.
Jennifer was an Ilongga, a very dominant girl who had her rich timid Japanese husband under her thumbs (under the saya). In Japanese macho culture, a woman in charge is extremely anathema, a total shame for a man. But that was the way it was. Jennifer and her husband agreed that when his mother was visiting, they would pretend he was in charge, to save him from shame in the family. Jennifer gladly agreed.
And so, when the mother came, the husband would boss her around, tell her to cook, prepare beddings, and so on. It was not hard for Jennifer to play the role of the submissive Filipino geisha. As soon as her mother-in-law left, things were back to normal.
In traditional culture, the Japanese frowned on marriage to foreigners. The mother-in-law, in spite of Jennifer’s kindness, shouted and insulted her every time she visited. For an Ilongga, this was nothing. This was one golden trait of Filipinos in Japan, patience, humility, and giving kindness in return for cruelty. She had a hard time suppressing her smile whenever she would get a barrage of insults, and get lessons on how to be a proper wife to her son. She was immune to the mother-in-law’s insults.
One day, the mother-in-law contracted cancer of the uterus. She moved in to her son’s home, and Jennifer was forced to be her nurse. She did not complain. She relished doing it out of love for her husband. In the beginning, the mother-in-law kept insulting her, but when she felt Jennifer’s warmth as a comfort for her pain, she apologized to Jennifer in tears. Jennifer embraced her and from then on they became the best of friends.
They would spend long hours talking. Love conquers all. Jennifer had a hard time pretending to be the submissive wife every day. The husband would wink at her. That was good enough for Jennifer. Finally, after two years in the care of Jennifer, she died. For Jennifer, to turn cruelty to goodwill was not a monumental feat. It was as easy as pie, done out of love.
Japayukis in Action.
Before returning to Manila, Hiro brought me to a night club whose hostesses were 80% Filipino. I sat with a Japayuki, not as a customer, which she thought I was in the beginning, but as an interviewer. When I said I was a journalist, she jumped excitedly, giving me a picture of the life of a Japayuki in Tokyo. She could not stop talking.
She said that Yakuza-controlled (Japanese mafia) Japayukis, even if they were ‘illegal’, namely no government license, preferred this option because they earned more than the legal ones. It was a sort-of status symbol to be a Yakuza Japayuki. I was surprised to learn that Yakuza godfathers were adored rather than feared by people. Their charisma was total. They were often featured in newspapers. This is one aspect of the feudal culture of Shoguns that had persisted into modern times. There are many more stories to tell, but they are too long to feature in this article.
Read “The Japanese Messiah” about a human rights lawyer who rescued Japayukis abandoned by their Japanese lovers = https://eastwindjournals.com/2022/12/10/japanese-messiah-rescues-japayukis/
Go to VOLUME1 for more OFW stories = https://eastwindjournals.com/2024/04/22/true-ofw-stories-1-holocaust-maiden-2-valium-addict-3-syntagma/
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