In Broken Wigwag

Are they emigrants or exiles, these young Japanese in Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side of New York? The ones who love Jazz and buy their vintage clothes on the streets between Avenue A and 1st Avenue and speak in broken wigwag, their very own version of English. Is Tompkins Square Park a sanctuary from what they perceived as a stultifying Tokyo, the place where their lives had been neatly laid out for them, much too neatly?

Suchi Asano, a denizen of the area for the last five years, tells us in a very poignant way that "life here can be marginal" but you have to put that up against her native Tokyo where the order of the day is "Don't dream, don't hope, just follow the orders." And that contrast between cultures makes the overwhelming melancholy and sadness of emigre life seem bearable, especially when it is laced with her wonderful humour and delightful self mockery.

Shortcuts to feeling abound in broken wigwag speech. Sometimes they are hilarious, sometimes very cutting, exposing the always present wounds of the self exiled. These particular Japanese come seeking not so much the treasure of gold, as the treasure of personal freedom and mobility. They hope our country will be truly "the land of the free." It may be that but it can also make one feel terribly emptied and not-belonging.