Dear You: A Chinese film revives Japan’s diasporic memory

(Edited and refined by Candice Chan, with the assistance of AI translation.)

Dear You, a Chinese film that opened in Japanese cinemas on 26 June, has not generated the same enthusiastic response as it did in Singapore and Malaysia, but it has nevertheless become a talking point among the Chinese community in Japan.

The emotions portrayed in the film extend beyond romantic love. More importantly, it highlights the spirit of mutual support among those who left home to seek a living in foreign lands during a turbulent era.

The film depicts Chinese migrants who travelled to Nanyang not only striving to earn a livelihood for their families, but also making great efforts to ensure that their children could learn Chinese, which has resonated deeply with some overseas Chinese in Japan.

Chinese in Japan

The earliest Chinese settlers in Japan can be traced back to 1859, when Yokohama port was opened. The world’s first modern overseas Chinese school, Datong School, was established there in 1898 at the initiative of figures including Sun Yat-sen and Liang Qichao.

In Dear You, Chinese lessons are conducted in a rented room, a scene that has struck a chord with many elderly overseas Chinese in Japan.

Yokohama Yamate Chinese School traces its origins to Datong School. Fu Shun He, a former Chinese-language teacher at Yokohama Yamate, recalled that in 1952, when she was in Primary Two, the school was forced to suspend classes for an entire year because of political issues.

At the time, many members of the overseas Chinese community offered up their homes to serve as makeshift classrooms, with pupils moving from one house to another depending on the subject being taught. “To preserve Chinese culture, the overseas Chinese in Japan endured the tremendous challenges of the time.”

She also remembered that the Chinese-language textbooks she used as a child were imported from Southeast Asia. “The overseas Chinese community in Japan was much smaller than that in Southeast Asia. When I was in primary school in the early 1950s, we used Chinese textbooks compiled by the Nanyang Chinese community. The illustrations in those books showed coconut trees, something never seen in Japan.”

Now retired, Fu opened a Chinese-language tuition centre 15 years ago to pass on Chinese culture, only closing it recently due to her age. She said: “There are few Chinese schools in Japan. They receive no government subsidies and the fees are expensive. Some Chinese children cannot afford to attend them and have no choice but to enrol in ordinary Japanese schools.”

A Chinese who has lived in Japan for 20 years observed: “Compared with the last century, the children of Chinese immigrants in Japan now have many more opportunities to learn Chinese. In Tokyo, there are not only private Chinese-language tuition centres, but they can also learn through the internet.”

The film, which tells the story of the overseas Chinese community in Nanyang, has reportedly also attracted Brazilians of Japanese descent living in Japan.

Before World War II, Japan encouraged emigration to ease labour surpluses, and Brazil became the largest destination for Japanese emigrants. There are around 2.7 million Japanese in Brazil now, roughly 1.7 times the number of Japanese Americans.

The first emigrant ship, the Kasato Maru, departed Kobe in 1908 carrying 781 passengers. After sailing around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa, it reached São Paulo in Brazil some 50 days later.

Like many Chinese migrants to Nanyang, the early Japanese emigrants dreamed of working abroad for a few years, earning enough money, and then returning home in comfort. Reality, however, proved very different. On Brazil’s coffee plantations, Japanese immigrants endured conditions akin to slavery. Forced to work under the threat of guns and whips, they received meagre wages and suffered from endemic tropical diseases.

After Japan attacked Pearl Harbour in 1941, people of Japanese descent in Brazil were subjected to even greater hostility. With their dreams of returning home shattered, many abandoned the idea of going back to Japan and chose instead to settle permanently in Brazil. Over time, they gradually integrated into Brazilian society and established themselves there.

A window into Chaoshan

The version of Dear You shown in Japan is presented only in the original Teochew dialect, with Chinese and English subtitles but no Japanese subtitles, making it a challenging watch for Japanese audiences. As the Chinese language has wide regional varieties, even I could not understand every line, as the Teochew spoken in the film differs somewhat from the variety I heard growing up in Singapore.

Some of my Japanese friends were puzzled after watching the film and asked me to explain certain details. One of them even enthusiastically declared that they wanted to learn the Chaoshan dialect. Online, Japanese viewers have also been exploring the food culture of the Chaoshan region and discovering that it is the birthplace of gongfu tea (功夫茶) — literally “tea made with skill” or “tea requiring mastery”.

The everyday love portrayed in Dear You transcends national boundaries and is deeply moving. One Japanese film critic noted that the given names of the three main characters — Zheng Musheng, Xie Nanzhi and Ye Shurou — contain the Chinese characters for “wood” (Mu, 木), “branch” (Zhi, 枝) and “leaf” (Ye, 叶). Together, they symbolise the resilience of migrants striving to make a living far from home. No matter how high the mountains or how long the journey, a single seed can still take root in foreign soil, blossom and ultimately bear fruit.

This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao as “《给阿嬷的情书》超越国界感动人心”.

Related: Dear You: China’s Nanyang dream and Singapore’s lived reality | The truth behind Dear You, from a first-generation Nanyang migrant