Greek souvlaki or yakitori?

(Picture: Greeks in Tokyo during the Korean War as featured in Prof. Tamis' book)
Sarah Robertson is on the hunt for Greeks in Japan and finds they have been there in one way of another since the 1600s

Sarah Robertson
Tokyo is a striking, sprawling, bustling, yet beautiful city that folds the contemporary in with all things ancient. It's the international cultural and artistic heart of a country steeped in tradition while simultaneously advancing ever faster into the future.

I enjoy the country's quiet and unassuming beauty, the peace that wraps around a bustling undercurrent, and the striking differences to western culture. Japan delights you in the everyday. In the way your purchases are always wrapped with care and attention to the smallest detail; in the striking contemporary designs of the buildings housing the world's leading fashion brands and the minimalist wood facades of the older bars and dwellings; in ancient Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines; and in the way geisha women shuffle silently up the backstreets of old Kyoto.

Japan has so much to offer travellers and Tokyo is so full of offerings from everywhere I was surprised when I had trouble finding a Greek element. Indeed, in a country with a population of over 127 million people, the Greek community is small with only about 350 Greek nationals.

Despite their small presence in number, Greek culture is alive in Japan today. In a book by author of The Greeks in Australia (2005), Professor Anastasios Tamis tracks the Greek experience in Japan, finding that Hellenic culture there dates back to the 16th century, with Japanese translations of Aesop's Fables.

In Greeks in the Far Orient, to be released next month, Professor Tamis brings together the available literature, primary sources and interviews with current day Greeks to provide a thorough sketch of the Hellenic Diaspora in China, Japan, Korea and the Philippines. While Japan was a closed country between 1603 and 1853 Hellenic culture still left its mark. As one example Professor Tamis points to Greek physicist Hippocrates whose thoughts were "well received," and who became worshipped as a god of medicine.

Meanwhile, Greek-Irish writer Patrick Lafcadio Hearn (a.k.a. Koizumi Yakumo) travelled to Japan in 1890 and played a key role in introducing Japanese culture and literature to the West. Greeks in the Far Orient shows that it was not until the post-WWII years that significant Greek settlement took place in Japan. Initially, Greek migrants from Russia and China as well as Greek American officers and soldiers travelled there, and from the 1960s through to the late 1980s hundreds of Greek sailors and ship workers settled in Japanese ports.

Today, the Hellenic identity in Japan "is seen as fragmented and prolific" and is manifested in participation in Greek events and communal institutions, Professor Tamis writes. Greek Australian Fay Savvaidis-Shimo's reasons for establishing the first Modern Greek language school for school-age students in Japan in 2008 reflect this tension of identity.

She told Professor Tamis: "I started the school as a concerned mother to initiate my two small children, who are growing up in Japan into the Greek culture…In gathering the children and their parents, I realised that this was the only way that I could transplant my Greek roots onto my children and other Greek kids in Japan."

Meanwhile, George Manetakis is a Greek-Australian who moved to Japan from Sydney in 2002. "Ever since, I've promised myself that it'll be just another year or two before I go back to Australia," he tells Neos Kosmos. So what has kept him in Japan? "I really enjoy the metropolitan-rural divide and its associated variances in people, dialects, food and culture," he explains. He adds that Tokyo offers a very different kind of ambience that makes living there both stressful and enjoyable.

"The overcrowded trains and cramped living spaces are tempered by a society where crime is almost a non-issue and where some of the best French and Italian restaurants in the world can be found," he says. Despite missing the abundance of Greek restaurants and his friends in Australia, Manetakis says the Greek spirit is alive in Japan. "When I meet Japanese people here who take a keen interest in the works of Giorgos Seferis and Nikos Kazantzakis, or join Greek dance classes - and tailor make their own outfits from scratch by themselves! - I do get a sense that the Greek spirit is alive and well even here in Japan."

He adds that he does get the impression the Japanese hold "a very deep respect for Greek history and its achievements". At the day-to-day level, though, Manetakis says Greece and Japan represent two diametrically opposed universes. "The painstaking dedication to quality and perfection for even the most mundane products and services, and the restraint with which Japanese people display find few parallels in Greece.

And that's not a bad thing: I can't imagine for a moment that the Japanese would want Greeks to be anything other than who they are." He says he would encourage anyone who doesn't have any prejudices or preconceived notions of Japanese food, its culture and people to visit Japan. "Japan straddles the ultra-modern, a decaying - but charming - 1960s landscape in rural areas, and the ancient. The paradoxes are worth the visit themselves."

Asked to recommend one thing visitors should do while in Japan, he chooses a visit to a crowded izakaya, or Japanese-style bar-restaurant. "There is no better place to watch fatigued office workers unwind, and almost start to resemble the Greeks as they forget their troubles and enjoy themselves for the night."

http://neoskosmos.com/news/en/Greeks-in-Japan