We are pleased to release an article in English contributed by Mr. Jagmohan S. Chandrani to our monthly magazine “GEKKAN INDO” November issue. He lives in Tokyo for the last 30 years. During this period, he has encountered with various matters which are annoying for him and derived from typical Japanese way of thinking and customs.
ジャグモハン スワミダス チャンドラニ さん
1952年 インドのコルカタ生れ
1978年 (デリー大学卒業後)市場調査のため初来日
1979年 東京都江戸川区の西葛西に居住
1981年 当地でジャパンビジネスサービス(有)を設立
代表取締役に就任
現在、インドの紅茶や食品の輸入ビジネス、インドレストラン経営等を手がける傍ら、“江戸川インド人会”会長として在日インド人への支援や日本人とインド人との草の根交流の促進に努める。
当協会個人会員
It is with a sense of trepidation, wonder and honour, that I find myself writing this article. I am informed that this is the first time in the 105 years of history of the Japan ? India Association monthly newsletter that a person of Indian origin has been asked to write an article in it.
I should start with a small introduction of myself. It has been thirty-one years since I arrived in Japan. It was the year 1978, in the first week of the month of April. The next day was a bright and sunny day, my first morning in Tokyo, Japan. The city was a sight to see, filled with cheery-blossoms “Sakura” trees in full bloom. It was for the first time that I had seen so many “sakura” flowers in one place. I was totally astonished and instantly enamored.
During those days, there was not much information about Japan in India. Most of what was known was either through text books or throughe beautiful pictures in the calendars of Japan Airlines and the diaries sent by Japanese companies show casing the cultural life of Japan- the tea ceremony, the calligraphy, the kimono-clad ladies and the beautiful scenes of nature and temples.
On my part, I came to stay in Nishi Kasai because of the proximity to the warehouse I had rented and the truck terminal at Rinkaicho for my import business. When I first came here, there was no Nishi Kasai station on the Tozai line of Tokyo Metro. My office was located in Iidabashi and I would come to Kasai station and take a bus to the warehouse. Most of the area around Nishi Kasai station was empty land and the land which became later Sei Shin-cho was still un-reclaimed..
During those days, there were not many Indians living in Japan, maybe two thousand in Tokyo and about another three thousand in the rest of Japan. All this changed in the year 2000. It was in 2000, that the visit of Prime Minister Mori to Japan changed a paradigm of Japan-India relations which had suffered heavily because of India’s nuclear tests in May, 1998. PM. Mr. Mori and PM. Shri Atari B.Vajpayee agreed to establish the “Global Partnership ” between Japan and India. Under this agreement, the Government of Japan began to ease conditions for granting visas to Indian IT engineers to come and work in Japan. It was the first time in the history of modern Japan that such a large number of Indians were issued visas to work in Japan. With the opening of the IT sector to Indian industry, the Japanese companies began to make business tie-ups with Indian companies for the provision of ICT services in Japan. This brought about an unprecedented situation in which suddenly a substantial number of young Indians came to work and live in Japan. It was something for which neither the incoming Indians nor the Japanese were prepared for.
In the year 2000, I began seeing a number of new Indian faces in the vicinity of Nishi Kasai. Up to that time, there were only four Indian families living here and they all knew each other very well. This was a very new phenomenon for all of us. Upon greeting them, I got to know that they had come to Japan to work in some IT related projects and had come to Nishi Kasai to find a house for themselves to live in. As a matter of fact, a large number of Indian IT engineers being called by the financial services houses, the work place for the Indian IT engineer was typically, Otemachi, Kayabacho, Kamiyacho, Toranomon, etc. Hence, Nishi Kasai was a very convenient location for them to stay, as the commuting time between Nishi Kasai and Otemachi was only seventeen minutes. However, they were facing a lot of difficulty as, in most cases, local building owners were not agreeing to rent them house premises. House brokers would show the Indians a house and inform the rent. When the Indian agreed to the terms and conditions and the broker would then contact the landlord that a person of Indian origin was going to rent the house, these brokers were told that the house would not be rented to an Indian.
The same story was repeatedly told to us within a period of six months. Hence, in the month of July, 2000, the long time residents of Nishi Kasai felt that it may be a good idea to try and get all the Indians to meet each other. So by word of mouth, we began to contact the Indians we met in the street and informed them that we were planning such a meet in August and that we would like them to attend. Not only that, we requested them to inform their friends who were living here in Nishi Kasai area. On a Sunday, in August, 2000, we all met at the Japanese Tea House in the Gyosen Park in Kita Kasai. We found that we were more than thirty. It was a big surprise for us. We could not believe it. However, it was also a very good feeling to see so many of our fellow countrymen who were living in the same place here in Tokyo, Japan.
Except for four old families, all were recent arrivals. After the introductions were over, the topic soon turned to the difficulties the new arrivals were facing while staying in Japan. Upon hearing this, it was felt that an organization to support the Indians who were living in Japan would be a useful entity. That day we all decided to put together a voluntary organization for the purpose of supporting the lives of Indians and it was named ? The Indian Community of Edogawa (ICE) since the meeting had taken place in Edogawa and most of the visitors were living in Nishi Kasai, which is located in Edogawa Ward of Tokyo.
With this began the voluntary efforts to help the Indians coming to Tokyo for work. In the initial stages, there existed two major difficulties faced by almost all newly arriving Indians. One was the difficulty of renting houses and the second, non-availability of Indian food, particularly vegetarian Indian food at reasonable prices in the locality. Most of the new arrivals were young IT engineers who were typically singles and those who were married felt that they would bring their families only when they had found suitable housing. Since, most of the newly arrived Indians were living in hotels and “weekly mansions”, it became imperative that some arrangement had to be made for provision of Indian food, including vegetarian food acceptable to the Indians in taste, quality and price.
I was fortunate that I could locate a place suitable for preparing and serving Indian food. It was a Japanese “ko-ryoriya” which had closed operations recently. It was about three minutes from the Nishi Kasai station on the north side. As the idea was to prepare a facility of serving of food to Indians, it was sufficient that the food be prepared in the evening as the IT engineers would be away to work during the day time. In other words, it was to be a “mess” for the Indians who lived near Nishi Kasai. Similarly, the taste of the food had to be authentic to the satisfaction of the Indians and not too rich as these IT engineers came to eat it almost every night. I took up this place and appointed two cooks who would prepare the food every evening and the IT engineers would come and eat there. The rate was kept very reasonable also.
That was comparatively the easier part. As most IT engineers and their companies were finding their living in the hotels very expensive and lonely, they wanted to rent an apartment and live there. As mentioned earlier, as most Japanese building owners, in Nishi Kasai area and their agents did not have any past experience of dealing with Indian tenants, they were unwilling to rent out the apartments to Indians as they did not understand the situation of the Indians. Most felt that the Indians had come as “de kasegi” migrant workers to Japan to earn more wages and it was very difficult for the building owners to accept that the Indians would be able to pay the rent of more than one hundred thousand yen regularly, or maintain the garbage disposal rules, or there was a fear that after one person rented the house he would call a number of friends to come and live with him and pay a part or the rent.
It took me some time to get the housing agents to understand that the engineers from India were highly paid, all employed by big concerns and that they were not migrant workers. Initially I had to take the bank pass book of the Indian IT engineer to show to the agent the pay this person was drawing to convince them that the IT engineers had the capacity to pay rent. I requested these agents to try and explain and convince the building owners that by renting to Indians these house owners would not face any loss. In a few days time, one of the local housing agents called me and said that one of the local building owners had agreed to consider the proposal of renting the house to an Indian person. However, other than the financial part, which is “shiki-kin and rei-kin”, he would require a guarantor! This is something which was not going to be easy. As the Indian IT engineer had come to work in a Japanese company from India, most of the companies which sent them did not have any office in Japan. These engineers also could not ask their Japanese clients to become guarantors and as they were new to Japan, they knew no one else! The end result was that since I was making the request to the building owner, the housing agent asked me to become a guarantor! This was something I had not thought about. As a matter of fact, the persons I was trying to help were basically all new to me and I did not know them. However, the situation was such that it would be very odd for me to request a Japanese house owner to take the “risk” of renting to an Indian person without me taking any responsibility. Under the circumstances, there was no other way but for me to become a guarantor. One by one the building owners became convinced that renting the house to an Indian person was not all that bad! In this way we began to find some solutions in Nishi Kasai for the newly arriving Indians.
Once this process got underway, more and more Indians began to look for houses in Nishi Kasai and the population began to grow. With this growth came other needs ? need for short-term housing, need for education for small children, need for celebrating festivals so that they did not feel too home-sick, need for entertainment, etc. One by one, the community and its members tried to fulfill these needs.
To meet the needs of short-term visitors, I opened a guest-house in Nishi Kasai, with twenty six-tatami rooms, furnished with a bed with mattress, TV, video, table, chair, AC, high-speed internet connection, etc. and a common room for the residents to get together and chit-chat or play card games etc. a kitchen to cook their own food, and a number of fridges, some only for vegetarian food.
A kindergarten was opened to teach children of the age group one year six months to five years. The medium of instruction was English. This became the predecessor to the International Indian schools at Morishita and Mizue, where now more than four hundred students are studying. The curriculum followed in both of these schools is same as what is done in India, so that the children who study there can go and join a school anywhere in India when their parents return.
For the festivals, the community decided to hold the two major harvest festivals of India, Holi in spring and Diwali in autumn. For the last two years the Diwali is celebrated in a public park in Nishi Kasai and we are very fortunate that not only the resident Indians take part in them, but also Japanese residents have very kindly shown interest in Indian culture and have graced our events. In the area of entertainment, the members of the Indian community have formed cricket teams and have gone to play matches with other cricket teams located in Shizuoka, Yokohama etc. For one month, Indian films were shown every day, evening show, at a cinema hall in Edogawa, in August 2009. For the first fortnight it, was “Don” starring Shah Rukh Khan and for the second fortnight, it was “From Chandni Chowk to China” in which Akshay Kumar had the leading role. Of course, for daily life, arrangements have been made for TV programs to be shown live from India twenty-four hours a day over broadband internet. More than thirty channels are covered. This helps the ladies to feel at home and ensures that they do not feel that they are missing their life style in India. The news channels provide the resident Indians with latest news without any time lag.
One of the important needs which have not been met yet, is the need for a Community Center at Nishi Kasai which could be used for meeting purposes when guests come from home country, of holding of birthday parties and other gatherings, holding of events like naming ceremony of newly born children, different local festivals of India etc. On days when there are no events, it could be like a club and provide facilities for indoor games and activities popular in India and among Indians, like carom-boards, table-tennis, darts, and also provide space to hold yoga lessons, Indian dance lessons, Indian music and singing classes, cooking classes, sari classes, to name some of them.
I would like to conclude with the hope and prayer that together with the cooperation of the Indian residents of Nishi Kasai and the support and understanding of our Japanese hosts, the above need, too, would be fulfilled. I look forward to the understanding and support of the members of the venerated Japan India Association of which the chairman is no other person than former PM. Yoshiro Mori to achieve these goals of betterment of the conditions for Indians during their stay in Japan and for the growth of India-Japan friendship, fraternity and economic ties.
Namaste!
ジャグモハン スワミダス チャンドラニ さん
1952年 インドのコルカタ生れ
1978年 (デリー大学卒業後)市場調査のため初来日
1979年 東京都江戸川区の西葛西に居住
1981年 当地でジャパンビジネスサービス(有)を設立
代表取締役に就任
現在、インドの紅茶や食品の輸入ビジネス、インドレストラン経営等を手がける傍ら、“江戸川インド人会”会長として在日インド人への支援や日本人とインド人との草の根交流の促進に努める。
当協会個人会員
It is with a sense of trepidation, wonder and honour, that I find myself writing this article. I am informed that this is the first time in the 105 years of history of the Japan ? India Association monthly newsletter that a person of Indian origin has been asked to write an article in it.
I should start with a small introduction of myself. It has been thirty-one years since I arrived in Japan. It was the year 1978, in the first week of the month of April. The next day was a bright and sunny day, my first morning in Tokyo, Japan. The city was a sight to see, filled with cheery-blossoms “Sakura” trees in full bloom. It was for the first time that I had seen so many “sakura” flowers in one place. I was totally astonished and instantly enamored.
During those days, there was not much information about Japan in India. Most of what was known was either through text books or throughe beautiful pictures in the calendars of Japan Airlines and the diaries sent by Japanese companies show casing the cultural life of Japan- the tea ceremony, the calligraphy, the kimono-clad ladies and the beautiful scenes of nature and temples.
On my part, I came to stay in Nishi Kasai because of the proximity to the warehouse I had rented and the truck terminal at Rinkaicho for my import business. When I first came here, there was no Nishi Kasai station on the Tozai line of Tokyo Metro. My office was located in Iidabashi and I would come to Kasai station and take a bus to the warehouse. Most of the area around Nishi Kasai station was empty land and the land which became later Sei Shin-cho was still un-reclaimed..
During those days, there were not many Indians living in Japan, maybe two thousand in Tokyo and about another three thousand in the rest of Japan. All this changed in the year 2000. It was in 2000, that the visit of Prime Minister Mori to Japan changed a paradigm of Japan-India relations which had suffered heavily because of India’s nuclear tests in May, 1998. PM. Mr. Mori and PM. Shri Atari B.Vajpayee agreed to establish the “Global Partnership ” between Japan and India. Under this agreement, the Government of Japan began to ease conditions for granting visas to Indian IT engineers to come and work in Japan. It was the first time in the history of modern Japan that such a large number of Indians were issued visas to work in Japan. With the opening of the IT sector to Indian industry, the Japanese companies began to make business tie-ups with Indian companies for the provision of ICT services in Japan. This brought about an unprecedented situation in which suddenly a substantial number of young Indians came to work and live in Japan. It was something for which neither the incoming Indians nor the Japanese were prepared for.
In the year 2000, I began seeing a number of new Indian faces in the vicinity of Nishi Kasai. Up to that time, there were only four Indian families living here and they all knew each other very well. This was a very new phenomenon for all of us. Upon greeting them, I got to know that they had come to Japan to work in some IT related projects and had come to Nishi Kasai to find a house for themselves to live in. As a matter of fact, a large number of Indian IT engineers being called by the financial services houses, the work place for the Indian IT engineer was typically, Otemachi, Kayabacho, Kamiyacho, Toranomon, etc. Hence, Nishi Kasai was a very convenient location for them to stay, as the commuting time between Nishi Kasai and Otemachi was only seventeen minutes. However, they were facing a lot of difficulty as, in most cases, local building owners were not agreeing to rent them house premises. House brokers would show the Indians a house and inform the rent. When the Indian agreed to the terms and conditions and the broker would then contact the landlord that a person of Indian origin was going to rent the house, these brokers were told that the house would not be rented to an Indian.
The same story was repeatedly told to us within a period of six months. Hence, in the month of July, 2000, the long time residents of Nishi Kasai felt that it may be a good idea to try and get all the Indians to meet each other. So by word of mouth, we began to contact the Indians we met in the street and informed them that we were planning such a meet in August and that we would like them to attend. Not only that, we requested them to inform their friends who were living here in Nishi Kasai area. On a Sunday, in August, 2000, we all met at the Japanese Tea House in the Gyosen Park in Kita Kasai. We found that we were more than thirty. It was a big surprise for us. We could not believe it. However, it was also a very good feeling to see so many of our fellow countrymen who were living in the same place here in Tokyo, Japan.
Except for four old families, all were recent arrivals. After the introductions were over, the topic soon turned to the difficulties the new arrivals were facing while staying in Japan. Upon hearing this, it was felt that an organization to support the Indians who were living in Japan would be a useful entity. That day we all decided to put together a voluntary organization for the purpose of supporting the lives of Indians and it was named ? The Indian Community of Edogawa (ICE) since the meeting had taken place in Edogawa and most of the visitors were living in Nishi Kasai, which is located in Edogawa Ward of Tokyo.
With this began the voluntary efforts to help the Indians coming to Tokyo for work. In the initial stages, there existed two major difficulties faced by almost all newly arriving Indians. One was the difficulty of renting houses and the second, non-availability of Indian food, particularly vegetarian Indian food at reasonable prices in the locality. Most of the new arrivals were young IT engineers who were typically singles and those who were married felt that they would bring their families only when they had found suitable housing. Since, most of the newly arrived Indians were living in hotels and “weekly mansions”, it became imperative that some arrangement had to be made for provision of Indian food, including vegetarian food acceptable to the Indians in taste, quality and price.
I was fortunate that I could locate a place suitable for preparing and serving Indian food. It was a Japanese “ko-ryoriya” which had closed operations recently. It was about three minutes from the Nishi Kasai station on the north side. As the idea was to prepare a facility of serving of food to Indians, it was sufficient that the food be prepared in the evening as the IT engineers would be away to work during the day time. In other words, it was to be a “mess” for the Indians who lived near Nishi Kasai. Similarly, the taste of the food had to be authentic to the satisfaction of the Indians and not too rich as these IT engineers came to eat it almost every night. I took up this place and appointed two cooks who would prepare the food every evening and the IT engineers would come and eat there. The rate was kept very reasonable also.
That was comparatively the easier part. As most IT engineers and their companies were finding their living in the hotels very expensive and lonely, they wanted to rent an apartment and live there. As mentioned earlier, as most Japanese building owners, in Nishi Kasai area and their agents did not have any past experience of dealing with Indian tenants, they were unwilling to rent out the apartments to Indians as they did not understand the situation of the Indians. Most felt that the Indians had come as “de kasegi” migrant workers to Japan to earn more wages and it was very difficult for the building owners to accept that the Indians would be able to pay the rent of more than one hundred thousand yen regularly, or maintain the garbage disposal rules, or there was a fear that after one person rented the house he would call a number of friends to come and live with him and pay a part or the rent.
It took me some time to get the housing agents to understand that the engineers from India were highly paid, all employed by big concerns and that they were not migrant workers. Initially I had to take the bank pass book of the Indian IT engineer to show to the agent the pay this person was drawing to convince them that the IT engineers had the capacity to pay rent. I requested these agents to try and explain and convince the building owners that by renting to Indians these house owners would not face any loss. In a few days time, one of the local housing agents called me and said that one of the local building owners had agreed to consider the proposal of renting the house to an Indian person. However, other than the financial part, which is “shiki-kin and rei-kin”, he would require a guarantor! This is something which was not going to be easy. As the Indian IT engineer had come to work in a Japanese company from India, most of the companies which sent them did not have any office in Japan. These engineers also could not ask their Japanese clients to become guarantors and as they were new to Japan, they knew no one else! The end result was that since I was making the request to the building owner, the housing agent asked me to become a guarantor! This was something I had not thought about. As a matter of fact, the persons I was trying to help were basically all new to me and I did not know them. However, the situation was such that it would be very odd for me to request a Japanese house owner to take the “risk” of renting to an Indian person without me taking any responsibility. Under the circumstances, there was no other way but for me to become a guarantor. One by one the building owners became convinced that renting the house to an Indian person was not all that bad! In this way we began to find some solutions in Nishi Kasai for the newly arriving Indians.
Once this process got underway, more and more Indians began to look for houses in Nishi Kasai and the population began to grow. With this growth came other needs ? need for short-term housing, need for education for small children, need for celebrating festivals so that they did not feel too home-sick, need for entertainment, etc. One by one, the community and its members tried to fulfill these needs.
To meet the needs of short-term visitors, I opened a guest-house in Nishi Kasai, with twenty six-tatami rooms, furnished with a bed with mattress, TV, video, table, chair, AC, high-speed internet connection, etc. and a common room for the residents to get together and chit-chat or play card games etc. a kitchen to cook their own food, and a number of fridges, some only for vegetarian food.
A kindergarten was opened to teach children of the age group one year six months to five years. The medium of instruction was English. This became the predecessor to the International Indian schools at Morishita and Mizue, where now more than four hundred students are studying. The curriculum followed in both of these schools is same as what is done in India, so that the children who study there can go and join a school anywhere in India when their parents return.
For the festivals, the community decided to hold the two major harvest festivals of India, Holi in spring and Diwali in autumn. For the last two years the Diwali is celebrated in a public park in Nishi Kasai and we are very fortunate that not only the resident Indians take part in them, but also Japanese residents have very kindly shown interest in Indian culture and have graced our events. In the area of entertainment, the members of the Indian community have formed cricket teams and have gone to play matches with other cricket teams located in Shizuoka, Yokohama etc. For one month, Indian films were shown every day, evening show, at a cinema hall in Edogawa, in August 2009. For the first fortnight it, was “Don” starring Shah Rukh Khan and for the second fortnight, it was “From Chandni Chowk to China” in which Akshay Kumar had the leading role. Of course, for daily life, arrangements have been made for TV programs to be shown live from India twenty-four hours a day over broadband internet. More than thirty channels are covered. This helps the ladies to feel at home and ensures that they do not feel that they are missing their life style in India. The news channels provide the resident Indians with latest news without any time lag.
One of the important needs which have not been met yet, is the need for a Community Center at Nishi Kasai which could be used for meeting purposes when guests come from home country, of holding of birthday parties and other gatherings, holding of events like naming ceremony of newly born children, different local festivals of India etc. On days when there are no events, it could be like a club and provide facilities for indoor games and activities popular in India and among Indians, like carom-boards, table-tennis, darts, and also provide space to hold yoga lessons, Indian dance lessons, Indian music and singing classes, cooking classes, sari classes, to name some of them.
I would like to conclude with the hope and prayer that together with the cooperation of the Indian residents of Nishi Kasai and the support and understanding of our Japanese hosts, the above need, too, would be fulfilled. I look forward to the understanding and support of the members of the venerated Japan India Association of which the chairman is no other person than former PM. Yoshiro Mori to achieve these goals of betterment of the conditions for Indians during their stay in Japan and for the growth of India-Japan friendship, fraternity and economic ties.
Namaste!
