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Full transcript follows.
Welcome to Diversity rocks innovation! Vol. 1 with Dr. Jackie F. Steele, CEO of enjoi D&I consulting, an interview series starting February 2, 2021. This initiative serves to highlight the benefits of collegial sharing of expertise, experiences and worldviews, and the current opportunities for fostering innovation and solidarity-building across a variety of industries and countries by “thought partnering out loud” with featured enjoi D&I thought partners.
What is thought partnering out loud?
Thought Partnering is when two people come together to share expertise and improve the world. Through thought partnering, we can amplify the promise of diversity, democracy, and innovation.
In this episode you’ll hear:
- The impact of Japanese-Canadian internment on Mits’ identity
- His family heritage, and how Canadian citizenship has learned from this and evolved to become more inclusive
- How Mits’ identity has morphed in various contexts during his life in Canada and now in Japan
- The full range and power of how thought partnering can light the way and enrich co-creativity within a couple, within the family, and also in pursuit of enriching a grassroots volunteer international association fostering intergenerational play in northern Nagano.
About Mits:
Mits Matsushita is a global IT architect and lego enthusiast living in Northern Nagano.
Connect with Jackie:
Website: https://en-joi.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/enjoidiversityandinnovation
https://www.facebook.com/jackiefsteelephd
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackie-f-steele-phd/
Transcript
Jackie: Welcome to Diversity rocks innovation! I am so pleased to meet all of you today. My name is Jackie Steele. I’m a long time Canadian political scientist living and working, teaching in Japan. And I’m also the CEO and Chief Diversity Officer of enjoi Diversity and Innovation. enjoi is a Japan based global facing business, working in English, Japanese, and French.
And we are committed to writing research policy and evidence-based diversity, equity and innovation training and education to leaders and corporations. We see value in the importance of intersectional diversity, accessibility, and of democratizing forms of innovation so that we can build vibrancy and holistic wellbeing into our people systems everywhere all the time.
This livestream shines a spotlight on the beautiful diversity of enjoi DNI thought partners who are each making individual efforts to bring inclusive, diversity positive and gender equal leadership into the world. In their own unique way. How are we doing? Well one of the things we want to show today is the value of the concept and practice of thought partnering out loud.
I learned about this practice several years ago from a leadership coach named Izumi Yamamoto in Seattle, who I had the pleasure of learning from. And it stuck with me as such an important part of lifelong learning and as a practice of solidarity building with, and through, the rich experiences and insights of others.
And I’ve decided to make it a pillar of how enjoi is a business that is committed to democratization and solidarity building, committed to reciprocal giving of ourselves and respect for differences across leaders, stakeholders, actors in our networks, both here in Japan and across Asia Pacific to try and role model this more and make it public in the world.
* Mieruka suru (見える化する) in Japanese, we would say. Basically each week, I’m going to invite one of my enjoi DNI, collaborators and thought partners. There’s about a hundred in this network and I will be showing up with them. We’ll just be human beings, individuals minus the business card, throw the meishi out the door. *Minus our Sempai – Kohai relationships.
And really in defiance of the various, what are often toxic, gendered, racializing, age based, ability based hierarchy that our societies, despite being democracies keep perpetuating through our laws and our policies and our norms and our culture. So we want to show up today in a horizontal relationship based on respect for ourselves, our individualities, our diversities, and to thought partner across our radical individuality.
Out loud, real time. So through this route, we will enjoy a collegial exchange of expertise, worldviews, identities, experiences. And this will be a very intentional act of thought, partnering out loud to learn from each other, gain awareness and enrich our understanding of the complexities of the other person, because there’s so many gray zones of the human experience and of each other’s lived realities here on earth.
And in this particularly unique moment in 2021 during a global pandemic, that seems to not end. So enjoi’s mission as a company is to try and bring this livestream forward. And I guess one of my observations has been that for the last 20 years of studying political philosophy and critical theories and thinking about, how do we move the dial on happiness and wellbeing?
And I guess I’ve been feeling that. One of the reasons I pivoted out of academia was to try and build a company that could maybe bring political philosophy and the fun and the creativity of political philosophy back into the world, maybe through business, so that we could have more time for reflecting on our human experience.
How do we build new systems and build a good life for all of us and take that time to engage with these broader explorations? Of the purpose of our existence and our journey into wellbeing and thriving here on earth. So in my experience, political philosophy to citizenship studies, diversity studies, civics, ethics, all of these interesting knowledge systems and practices and thoughts.
And they really can help us build resilient happiness, wellbeing, and a mutually supporting togetherness here, both for emotional, physical and our environmental needs as a species. Where hopefully we can find a more thriving interdependence and balance. So political philosophy is core to nourishing my soul.
And I hope that we can deliver a little bit of that through this live stream today, I invite you to take just 55 minutes to join us in our journey of seeking out these nuances in ourselves and our, in each other to find enjoyment in the rich diversity, that really is a blessing to our families, our colleagues, our friends, and that stands to enrich us immensely.
And it’s a driver also of innovation. When it is supported by equality, equity and ties of solidarity. So let us be open today to the gray zones around race, gender ability, nationality, language, sexual orientation, professional expertise, whatever it is. Let us move away from judgmental absolutes, the black, white, or totalitarian dictates about who we are and what boxes we fit in.
Let us find time for those in between spaces of our identities. That make, in fact, I think the project of democratic self-government so exciting. And so with pursuing in solidarity with one another, and it can be pursued in every space of democracy in our homes and our couples and our bedrooms and our workplaces, our communities, our countries.
And of course, through our transnational social justice and global sustainability networks. With that it is my distinct pleasure to introduce to you my first guest for Volume One. For those who know me, this individual needs very little introduction. For those who don’t know me, Mr Mits Matsushita is the thought partner of all thought partners in my life.
He is such an incredibly generous and caring individual. Who shows up for me every single day for all of my crazy ideas, all of my diversity, feminist visionings and goals, and my democratic projects and volunteerism. And for enjoi this new journey, enjoi Diversity and Innovation is trying to bring into the world.
And yes, we are literally here. Remote work from home here in Northern Nagano joining this live stream together, but from our separate home offices within the same house. So Mits, welcome to Diversity rocks innovation! And thank you for joining me today for this volume one of thought partnering out loud. I’m so glad to be sharing it.
About Mits Matsushita [06:20]
Mits: A great pleasure and honor to be here and I guess be the first in this great road that you’re traveling on and I’m more than happy to support you in any way I can. And I look forward to this conversation.
Jackie: Thank you. I think today, one of the goals is to do a deep dive into some of your experiences, how you understand your diversities, your complexities, your gray zones as an individual, both from your perspective of your time living in Canada and then also your more recent journey into Japan. I wonder if you could just take a moment, give us a brief introduction. Tell us a bit about yourself and what is most important to your identities and your sense of self?
Mits: Sure. I have always called myself, I guess I’m a third generation Japanese Canadian, born and raised in Montreal, for those that you know Eastern Canada, a French speaking city. So I grew up speaking French and playing hockey, a true Canadian. But my full bilingualism ends there. I don’t, or I only speak very basic Japanese. So I joke about it here in Japan that I’m bilingual, I’m fully bilingual. But of course they expect it to be Japanese, but no it’s French.
My parents were both born and raised in Canada. They are Canadians, but my grandparents, all four grandparents, are Japanese nationals born in Japan. So as a third generation full Japanese, as opposed to, some are mixed, parents or grandparents half, I think they call it “Hafu”, which was a term I’ve learned recently.
Jackie: And so you’ve, so much of your experience, maybe you could tell me a bit about when you were in Canada. Did you introduce yourself as a Japanese Canadian?
[00:07:53]Mits: It’s an interesting one. Yes, I guess I always did say I’m a Japanese Canadian. And I don’t really have the history and this is maybe a good question for my parents, but again, my name is Mitsuo for the Japanese people.
[00:08:07]Jackie: That is your legal name is actually Mitsuo Matsushita.
Mits: But I guess as a youth in Montreal, I was always known as Meets, abbreviated from Mitsuo. Meets and I think everybody called me that. And I assume that’s because that’s the way I introduced myself. In fact to this day, when I speak to friends from Montreal, “Hey Meets, how’re you doing?”.
[00:08:29]I’m still called that. When I moved some 25 years ago or so, I moved from Eastern Canada, Montreal to Western Canada, Edmonton, primarily an English speaking province. My name transitioned to Mits as I use today, as I, I introduced myself today as Mits. As in, gloves and mitts.
Jackie: I see. So you’ve gone from being like Meets that you would eat meats to Mits. Mitts that you would wear.
Mits: Yes. And I was actually oblivious to this. I didn’t realize that if I’m talking to somebody in Montreal I’m Meats, but today I’m Mits. And it was you Jackie that pointed it out. I think I was probably talking to my sister or my sister was saying something and Patsy said, Meets. And you said to me, why does she say Meets? And it triggered the question, which I still don’t have the answer to as to why I’m Meets to some people from Montreal or to most people in Montreal, but I’m Mits to everybody else. And that’s purely me. I introduce myself that way. Why I transitioned is a mystery.
Jackie: We met in Ottawa through our taiko community in Ottawa. I learned your name as Mits.
Mits: Because I had just come from Edmonton. So after the move to Edmonton, I transitioned to Mits and it’s stuck. So even today, if I go back to Montreal and I meet somebody for the first time, I’m introduced to somebody for the first time, I’m Mits, I’m no longer Meats.
Jackie: And then now you’re in Japan and your Matsushita san.
Mits: Who’s that? Yeah. I don’t know who they’re talking about.
Jackie: Interesting and obviously naming is obviously a really important part of our identity and it often does correlate with our linguistic community and how that gets framed, and whether it’s something that the different populations can pronounce, right?
And so the whole issue of shortening names that are not standardized Anglophone names in Canada to something that is more easily pronounced by Anglophones often is what happens, what ends up happening, because it’s not intuitive to know how to say Mitsuo with the right pronunciation necessarily, unless you’re in the Japanese Canadian community, in which case that’s a different story, but I know that you have felt strongly about now thinking back on, and capturing, and documenting your family history.
And I know we’ve discussed often about your, the history of your parents and your grandparents, and in the context of me as a political scientist, I was so fascinated and going back to my McGill studies, the first thing I am writing an essay on, and I’m not really, maybe it was because I was studying Japanese and so already had that on my radar. But I remember my first essay being about wanting to research the Japanese Canadian internment, because I didn’t understand why that happened in Canadian politics.
And in that time in history it didn’t make sense to me given everything I had been learning about. Canadian constitutional protections of equality and diversity. And then I thought wow. And then the history class learning about the interment. And you’ve mentioned today that you would be open to sharing about your parents’ experience of that.
Could you tell us a little bit about how that has affected you and how you have worked to keep those learnings alive?
The impact of Japanese-Canadian internment on Mits’ identity [12:12]
Mits: One thing that you mentioned and I did some, I’m gonna say about 10 years ago or so, my father passed away several years ago, but before my father passed away, I traveled down to Toronto where they were living to interview them.
And it was, I think, other than one of the best ideas I’d ever had. And it’s certainly something that I share. I’ve shared with many other people. As soon as we start talking about heritage and where you came from, I say, interview your parents while your parents are still with us. I sent my parents a list of questions and we tried to stay in chronological order because the question of where did your parents meet? Why did your parents, or what happened?
Certainly for us the whole internment during the war was a big part of their growing up. So I had no idea growing up of any of that history, I didn’t understand anything about it. So I interviewed them and I got a lot of that information, which was eye opening, not only from the internment, being interned part of it, but also just, how did my mom end up from here to here to here? And where did my parents meet? Was terrifically insightful. But to touch on what you asked Jackie, the one thing I think I take away from, I personally took away from having talked to my parents about being interned was that they didn’t hold a grudge. Yes. It was a horrible thing.
And for those that don’t know, I’m not a historian but you can go look up the Canadian interns or American interns that were interned during the war, but essentially they were enemies of the state. They lost all of their rights and possessions. So many Japanese Canadians were entrepreneurs. A lot of them were fishermen. They lost their boats. They lost their houses.
Jackie: Well, the fishery community in British Columbia in particular, where there was such a vibrant fishing industry heritage around, built around by the Japanese.
Mits: Yeah, and all of that was taken. But you asked, that happened and that was a horrible part of history, but the one thing that I remember when I talked to my parents was, yes, during the internment, I’m sure they had grudges, but after it was over, it was okay, let’s get on with our life. Let’s go to school or educate, or have children, have a family, make sure that the children are educated and they’re well taken care of. It wasn’t a time to say, oh, woe is me. Yeah. That was really the biggest thing.
Jackie: I think that’s amazingly generous towards the Canadian government, frankly. I certainly am, for those who maybe are less familiar with Canadian history, right after Canada having been, at that time still a part of the British empire, was involved in World War II and therefore was at war with Japan. Once you have the bombing of Pearl Harbour and that leading to then really a full scale engagement of Canada in the efforts also in the Pacific. And of course we see that in 1942 then, we have this internment of what has ended up being predominantly, just Japanese descent, right?
Canadians, although technically German descent, Canadians were also declared enemies of the state, but people didn’t know which people who were, from which descent lines, if they were, Caucasian, white descent. And so inevitably it was mostly the Japanese Canadians that were singled out and 22,000 rounded up by the Canadian government and put in, maybe you would share the living conditions, I visited those locations, where they were relocated to, forcibly at the time, right?
Mits: When my parents and my parents’ families were evicted or forcibly removed from their homes, they were rounded up no matter where they were from in BC, or there was a hundred mile line, west of this hundred mile line. They were rounded up and moved to Vancouver to what was I believe then called, well it was called Hastings Park, which I believe now is called the PNE.
[00:15:11]And they lived in horse barns, horse sheds or whatever they’re called, stables. That’s the word. Yes. In horrid conditions and were eventually moved as intern camps were built in the interior BC. Where I think at that point they were given the choice to repatriate to Japan or move, or maybe that happened a little later, but eventually they were moved into these camps in interior BC. If you go visit today, there is actually one that I visited in New Denver, where my mother stayed. They’ve turned it into a Memorial Center. It’s in a beautiful location. If you go as a tourist, it is a beautiful area, but in the middle of winter, living in a wooden shack with holes in it, with no insulation, with two or three families to a shed, it wasn’t so beautiful. I don’t imagine.
Jackie: And again, when I read that history as a McGill undergrad, I just thought there was no due process. We have civil political liberties in a democracy, and yet there was no due process. There was no crime committed. There was no proof that any of them had done anything wrong.
[00:16:13]And the RCMP later revealed that they really had no foundations for suspecting the collaboration of the Japanese Canadian community with their fishing boats. They were alleging they would support Japan if they ever attacked North America. And there was no evidence.
And so the lack of, the complete violation of democracy and of our values of due process and of having rights and freedoms protected, I’ve found so shameful as a Canadian when I was so young. And just that is such a huge shame on our past that we need to learn from and then do better to never have this kind of arbitrary use of racial descent markings on a body to deprive us of those critical civil political liberties. And of course the economic side of what ended up destroying the Japanese Canadian community economic base.
Mits: It’s hard to know what, of course, I don’t know if my families or friends and relatives did not lose what they had, who knows? You don’t know, maybe one of them would have built a fishing empire. We don’t know. We don’t know. And again, I think that was the thing. The takeaway was; it happened, let’s move on. Let’s not worry about what could have been had the government not taken away the businesses, the shops, the restaurants, the fishing boats, et cetera. It happened.
Jackie: And then we saw, Prime Minister MacKenzie, 1944, forcibly then relocate everybody east of the Rockies. Is that how you then ended up, you were from Montreal, born and raised, but is that why your family obviously was in Quebec?
Mits: Yeah, the further east, from what my mother and father tell me, the further east you went as during the war you were moved, certainly from Vancouver into interior BC, and then in different parts across the country. But the further east you went, I guess the less danger you were. So the freer you were. There was a sense of, if you’re farther east then you’re less danger and therefore you were going to be less strict upon you.
I am not sure that the racism changed, but from what I, when I asked my mom about the racism piece, the only piece that I do remember that alluded to a little bit of racism based on appearance, as I said at the beginning, I speak very basic Japanese. My parents are born and raised Canadian, grew up speaking English and learnt Japanese from their parents and in the little school rooms and whatnot, but went to school in English.
So their Japanese is fairly basic. Therefore they didn’t speak Japanese to us. But one thing that my mom told me, I remember this, is growing up, once the war was over, whether they were in back in Vancouver or somewhere else or in Montreal. The idea was to not be Japanese, to speak English, to assimilate to some degree. Obviously they can’t change their appearance with the jet black hair and the dark eyes or whatever.
Jackie: But to not stand out.
Mits: Not to stand out by speech and language. So growing up, they spoke to us in English. That’s partially because they aren’t fluent in Japanese. They’re fluent in English. So it’s natural speaking or in your mother tongue, but we didn’t, none of us grew up speaking Japanese.
Jackie: With your parents?
Mits: With my parents. So that would have been, that’s the one maybe downside of all of this is they’re hiding as they grew up and then as they raised us to be Canadian.
Jackie: They felt, they had just suppress that part…
Mits: A little bit, yeah.
Jackie: …of themselves and their identity to fit into the times of that period of Canadian history when we weren’t so multicultural or celebrating of diversity at that point.
Mits: Yeah. Ironically, growing up, in Montreal, which, well, Canada is a very diverse culture. Montreal, I always think is very much, it’s not a melting pot. There are so many very distinct neighborhoods. The Italian, the Greek, the Jewish, et cetera neighborhoods. But I grew up, of course, one of the few Japanese people in my high school and friends. I got the question of, where are you from?
I know that they, I never took it as an insult, as a racist comment. It was just, they’re curious because they see somebody who looks a little different and they actually mean where’s your family, and originally because the vast majority of those people, be it the Italian or Greek or Spanish or whatever it is, maybe they’re white and don’t stand out as being from a different country right away.
A lot of them were actually, their parents were born and raised. So they’re even less Canadian theoretically than I am. So I never really took it as…
Jackie: And they probably always maybe get asked it, if they’ve got an accent.
Mits: They do. Yeah. And I never took it as, took offense to it. But what I’ve come to realize is now that I’ve been in Japan and I look, so in Canada, I didn’t look the part because I’m Asian, but now I’m in Japan. I look the part. I never get the question, but by far I’m an absolute foreigner. I’m not Japanese. I’m very much more out of place.
Jackie: I’m outing you as a foreigner.
Mits: As opposed to back home in Canada.
Jackie: And I think it’s so interesting that the Canadian government, at the time, the two options were move east of the Rockies, or we’ll repatriate you back to Japan where you’ve never lived before.
Why would that have been an option? And I assume that certain, obviously certain numbers of people did maybe decide that, wow, there’s no welcome for them in Canada. And maybe they did give up and go home. And the ones who stayed needed to have that kind of generosity towards the Canadian, towards Canada as a country to be forgiving, to then want to stay and still feel like there’s a place for them to contribute.
Mits: Yeah. I think like my mom, when they got out east, found a loving family, friends and whatnot, and quickly, felt at home. I don’t think there was, there are certainly not horror stories of racism. Absolutely, there had to have been. There’s no doubt, but I certainly, it wasn’t a highlight when I spoke to my parents about their experience.
Jackie: Well, and often it’s just like the water you swim in. It’s the microaggressions that just happen all the time. And sometimes it’s a microaggression and sometimes it’s just because people are curious about you and it’s not necessarily meant to be taxing. 22 odd years that I constantly, the minute I step out of my little community, and people don’t know me all of a sudden then it’s where are you from? And why are you here and why do you speak Japanese? And when you’re going home? What?
So it’s often just very much about a curiosity towards me in a positive way, but it also can be heavy. To have to always constantly be sharing the privacy of my life choices to anybody who decides that they have a right to be curious about why this visibly white looking person who thinks that this is her home community for 20 years, but is constantly being told, that we don’t know that this is your home community and you don’t look the part.
So you need to explain yourself if you think that, where you fit in. So yeah, it does have a taxing element. So we have this reverse dynamic going on where I fit in Canada and I never get asked those questions for my first half of my years of my life in Canada.
And then, the second half of my life in Japan, I’m constantly in your shoes. We have a little character foil going on there. I guess one of the things that I often find and are reminded, and certainly, becoming a parent, I am became really, I knew this in theory as a political scientist that, in Canada, we had this democratic innovation that we would make our constitution recognize the multicultural heritage of Canada and take that to be we’re celebrating and protecting legally and politically as a shared value.
And we recognize in the constitution, the presence and contributions of first nations in Canada and that legacy that we need to take seriously as a democratic project. And that’s still ongoing. But thinking about how then we as a Canadian country, really, if you look back to World War II, where race was conflated with national identity and loyalty, and a sense of who is us right.
And if you were white, British passing or French speaking, white passing, you were us Canadian. But if you were not, if you were racialized Asian or Black or other, you were not necessarily seen to be loyal like us. One of us, on our team and part of the Canadianness that we saw in World War II.
So pivot forward, then, the last 70 years of Canadian evolution, of the democratic project of then saying, we’re going to separate out, you can be a legal and political member of this country called Canada, but there’s no assumption that you have to have a certain racial or ethnic makeup.
[00:24:19]Mits: Yeah. Something that I’ve come to learn, certainly in discussions with you. You’ve really broadened my experience, but certainly as we just alluded to about the change from my experience in Canada and now my experience here in Japan, and is that culture, the culture, you were, the culture you experienced and who you are, the language and all that doesn’t come from your bloodline, and I’m the perfect example. As I said, my parents are both Japanese. Born from parents that are Japanese national, my grandparents…
Jackie: Jun Japa – a hundred percent (純ジャパ).
Mits: My four grandparents are Japanese national and raising two children…
Jackie: If we think about bloodline.
Mits: Yeah. Bloodline, a hundred percent bloodline, which in Japan I believe is really important, but I am the farthest thing from being Japanese.
I am Canadian. I grew up, and I said it earlier, I call myself Japanese Canadian, but after having lived here for six years, I’m really, I’ve come to the realization that I’m Japanese with, sorry, Canadian with Japanese heritage. I’m not, I am not Japanese. Although I’m of Japanese bloodline.
Jackie: Culturally, or linguistically.
Mits: Culturally, linguistically…
Jackie: Mindset?
Mits: Mindset, mannerisms and you, being the 20 year veteran, understand all of these things are poking me, don’t do that. You can’t do that. That’s not Japanese.
Jackie: Yeah. And I remember being so, I remember laughing out loud because I would say, you know, how people see us when we walk down the street in Japan, you know how people see us, what do you think they see? And what was your answer?
Mits: We’re a banana and egg.
Jackie: But at first you told me that you saw yourself as the Canadian guy.
Mits: Oh, I’m the Canadian guy.
Jackie: Nobody in Japan sees you as the Canadian guy when we’re walking down the street. And you were like shocked!
Mits: Prior to the pandemic, of course, standing in the train in Tokyo. I’m looking around and I would pick out foreigners and I go, there’s a foreigner, but I would never think that there’s another foreigner like me, there’s another foreigner, white, tall, white guy, whatever, all of these different people, that they were foreigners just like me. Maybe I should go talk to them because they’re foreigners and I’m a foreigner and everything is going to be cool.
But of course, they’re looking at me going, oh, there’s another Japanese guy. There’s another Japanese guy. There’s another Japanese woman. There’s another, I’m just a Japanese person by appearance.
Jackie: And so what is the, for those who maybe don’t know the expression, what is the banana and the egg mean?
Mits: Banana and the egg being banana, being me, yellow on the outside and absolutely white on the inside. And that’s me.
Jackie: For your culture? You’re Canadian.
Mits: I’m purely Canadian. In my head, I am white. I am Canadian. I’m not, but Jackie, white on the outside, knows and understands completely all of the Japanese mannerisms, culture, language and everything like that, and I think very much thinks more like a Japanese person than I do or understands those things. So we are the banana and the egg couple being the, where we have these conversations. And I joke about this conversation loop that happens where if we sit down at a restaurant or we’re at a store or wherever it is, and there’s the two of us and there’s a Japanese person serving us.
I think there is also, this is not just a culture of sort of a visual thing in Japan. They’re going to talk to the male. They’re gonna, they’re going to talk to the man. They’re not going to talk to Jackie. They’re going to talk to me for whatever, and we can get into those reasons later, but the conversation would start by looking at me and the person would start talking and I’m oblivious to what they’re saying, and Jackie will respond.
So the conversation goes from the person to me and then Jackie leaves and then the person would continue to look at me and talk to me. And it would go around like this, right? Jackie you’d be responding. And I’d be sort of mmm, until I get to the point where I’ll pull out my phone and just turn away and pretend to look because I don’t want to be part of this, I can’t be part of this conversation. You’ve really got to talk to Jackie. She understands. And that just goes on and on. It happens. It still happens when we go somewhere.
Jackie: Yeah. Happening often and you wonder if it’s yeah, certainly on, on first instance, maybe it’s because you’re looking Japanese obviously, and depending on, certainly if you’re in certain contexts, professionally, often people look towards men more than they look towards women to have the answers.
And the head of the household dynamic in Japan that is still quite valued that gives a man a certain position to speak for the family and things like that. Yeah. It’s interesting. And I think what I find interesting for us when you first, we knew each other as friends in Canada and so as friends, that some of those things don’t flesh out quite as in detail as when you’re actually now life partnering.
[00:28:45]And I would find that when we were here, I really felt like we were in an international marriage. And I was like we’re two Canadians, but whoa I just felt like that I had a lot of integration to do to help in some ways you understand the relations of what we would call and “shinrai kankei” that I have in my 22 odd years, relationships with people here in Chikuma, Nagano and how they look to my spouse to be a certain way or fulfill certain relationships of trust. And speaking on behalf of being a part of this family as an extension of my trust with them, then they give that benefit of trust to you. And they expect you to give back to them whether you know them or not, it’s just a, you’re a part of the family now, like you’ve married in or something.
And so now those expectations are being placed on you, but you’re oblivious and I thought, oh, I have tow bring you up to speed a little bit about what they’re expecting and then how do we navigate that? Because it’s no longer just this, well I’m an individual and those are your friends.
Those are your relations of trust, but that doesn’t have any bearing on me, but in Japan or in this particular, and I think in Canada, we do have those deep ties of relationship, relations of trust across family formations and extended family formations that you do in some ways have the marrying in factor, right?
Where there are roles that the in-law or the daughter-in-law ended up taking on, or the son-in-law taking on. But how that plays out specifically in rural Japan, Northern Nagano. I was feeling like I need to…
Mits: I need a course before…
Jackie: I need to explain some of those nuances. For certain of our really strong ties here, who, of course now you’ve come to, to build strong relations and trust it too.
Mits: It’s been a journey, a lot of handholding.
Jackie: Beautiful to see unfold. And then, you’re the one baking them cookies and taking cookies over to them. And thinking ahead to say, oh, we should, they brought us vegetables. We need to go deliver something back. How about cookies and you make cookies. And I think, thank God he thought of it. Cause I hadn’t thought of it.
And whatever. So the journey is really exciting in that sense. From my perspective, I think we both have a Canadian side of ourselves and a Japanese side of ourselves, and it also leads us to when we’re in which mode and then knowing when we’re in which mode, so that we’re on the same page with one another is also kind of interesting.
Mits: You point out me having a Japanese side, a mode. I don’t think of it, but you do point out to me that sometimes I do things that are of Japanese mode, but I don’t realize it.
Jackie: Yeah. And I just, I see the influences of your parents and their Japanese cultural elements that they’ve got from, in the way they interact. And it’s a really lovely part of them that I see as well that I said, so much often echoing my experience of elder Japanese here in rural Nagano, who I have relationships with, who have that similar, gentle, just gentle way of being.
And they’re so generous and they take life in a certain speed and non-judgmentalness towards others. And there’s a, I don’t know, I feel that in the, so many of the jii chan, baa chan (elderly men and women ) in our community here in rural Nagano, and then also in the way that your parents interacted with me and brought that forward.
I want to pivot a little bit, the conversation if I could. Cause I did on the posters that you were a global IT architect. And I didn’t, we haven’t dived into that yet. There’s so much to talk about on your personal history as well, but maybe you could talk to me a little bit about, you said we had our international marriage crash course when you joined me in rural Nagano.
But then you also had to face, I think a lot of culture shock at work. So can you talk to me about how your journey as a global it architect has unfolded and what’s been going, what you like about your work and also maybe the cultural shocks that you’ve experienced?
Culture Shock [35:05]
Mits: I remember, oddly enough, I remember quite distinctly sitting at the airport in, I don’t know what, just before, I guess maybe it was Vancouver. I said, oh, I should do a blog. I’m not a writer, but I decided I’m going to, and I remember the very first thing that I wrote and I’m sure it exists somewhere if I could find it. And I said, I’m moving to a place where I’m going to become illiterate, and knowing, cause I don’t speak Japanese and I don’t read it and all that sort of stuff and write it. But I sorta…
Jackie: Outrageous.
Mits: Or crazy, but I had in the back of my mind this notion that because I’m Japanese Canadian, I’ll figure out the culture. There won’t be this big culture shock, that I’m just gonna, no problem. Yeah. I can’t read, I can’t write, I can’t speak, but the rest is going to be easy.
Well, that was a bit of a shock. Certainly on the work front, you touched base about work. And I think I read a lot about this early on. Yeah, the Japanese work ethic, if you will. But what I’ve discovered working in Japan is that, to a great extent, there is an expectation of working an exceptionally long day.
It’s not enforced, where you leave and somebody is going to stop you at the door. But you do get that sort of pressure a little bit. And having raised two great boys that are now adults back in Canada. When they were young, I was involved, I was helping a little bit with their school, but I coached them in soccer.
So we did stuff, went off to Starbucks together and that sort of thing. So I was involved in their life. So I was used to, the end of the day is 5 or 5:30 or maybe 6 o’clock and certainly in the world of IT, it’s constantly moving. So you do need to stay abreast of things.
And sometimes, yeah, there were some late hours in the evening here and there, it happened, but the norm was, the office was empty. I’m in the office at five o’clock, you can shoot a cannon down. There are very few people in the office, but certainly in Japan, come 6 o’clock pre COVID…
Jackie: No one’s packing up.
Mits: No, one’s packing up. It’s still packed. It’s still really crowded. But yet, at 8:30 or whatever the start of the day is there’s a lineup to get in the building. So everybody’s there on time. So it’s not a flex hour thing. It’s not a sort of shift hour thing. It’s just everybody, or a lot of people work late. Now certainly in today’s world, different than 10 years ago, the technology, the ease of everybody’s smartphones and tablets and remote access to everything, not withstanding COVID, you get emails flying back and forth and chat messages; did you check that server? What about this? How about this? What about, can we, and it just goes back and forth throughout the evening.
Jackie: And you’re in a global company that’s global times zones.
Mits: Exactly. So you get people, at the end of our day, it’s the beginning of the day in Europe. So the guys in Europe are contacting people and it never seems to end. And it’s very difficult there.
It’s very difficult to unplug, to say no, because I’ve got a family here and I have, there are responsibilities, but they’re things that I want to do. It’s not like I’m saying; oh I have to do these things at home. These are things that I want to participate in. To get away from that was difficult because, as I said earlier I thought it was going to be really easy. I’m going to come to Japan, I’m Japanese, I’m going to just fit in.
Jackie: And there’s the momentum, like the environment in which you all of a sudden are the new guy, six or eight years or whatever, they’re not packing up. And you’re like, why is nobody packing up? It’s like the end of the day, like labor code says, we’re done.
Aren’t we done? Have I not done enough? And so then how do you gracefully exit? Because you do have child-rearing responsibilities. And especially if none of, often I think a lot of your colleagues were younger than you, and maybe didn’t even have kids yet. So didn’t have the same pressures, but they should still go home and have their hobbies or I don’t know, go date or swim or whatever.
Finding that work-life balance for men. I feel to be such a challenge, in Japan in particular, that’s not named or acknowledged and how it may be is very much to the detriment of men’s mental health.
Mits: I think it’s a huge problem. And you’re right, I think as the new guy, it was difficult. But certainly as time has gone by, and I’ve gotten to develop relationships, work relationships, but also friendships with a lot of the people that I work with, they certainly understand, and I do not at all feel any kind of pressure anymore that; oh, it’s 6:30, where’s Mits? How come Mits isn’t still working and how come I can’t reach Mits to do this?
Jackie: But I think you’ve been very strong and strong boundaries and educating and being open about your Canadian understandings of family life. Yeah. And how we as a two career family juggle as a team constantly, and with two kids under 10, it’s a heck of a lot of coordination to be managing all of that all the time.
And I think there’s been a journey for all of your colleagues and people who know you, about how you do have all of these things you like to be involved with and want to be involved with and are great at, obviously I’m so grateful. And I think, I always think how we were at the point where when, a second child arrives and it’s two, it’s exponentially harder. Holy Crow.
And so then who is, just even managing who’s on daycare drop, who’s on daycare pickup, and then you’re saying; we’re going to use an IT tool here. I’ve set it up. This is the shared calendar I’m plugging in when you pick up, and I’m plugging in when you drop it, I’m plugging in. And then we would every single night go; okay, who’s dropping? Who’s picking up? Who’s dropping? Is it in the calendar? So that we wouldn’t forget our kids right?
Mits: The whole week was, had to be laid out. Cause it was so, as you said, so crazy with two careers. And two young children.
Jackie: And a long commute to daycare cause we couldn’t find daycare near home in Tokyo, which was really a huge challenge.
Finding a balance as a family [41:02]
Mits: That was a really a real burden and it was a very, a really difficult time for the family, for us as a couple for, at work, for you at work, for me at work. It was just really stressful. But I think our togetherness, our saying that it wasn’t going to be a 50, 50, just let’s tally up all the things and say, okay, you’re responsible this half and you’re responsible for this half.
No, it was; let’s look at your strengths. What do you do well Jackie? And certainly the language part, the legal part, all of that stuff, of course you excel. And even in English, I think if we were living back in Canada, you would still be better at it than I am. But there’s pieces that I’m better at. It’s not about let’s divvy them up. It’s let’s say; let’s work on our strengths.
Jackie: I think we tried to do a little bit of that in the beginning. I was dying under having to cook. I’m like, God, I was just, I was trying to menu plan and multitask. Cooking and unhooking so I can go think and plan to cook the meals and then I’m not good at it.
And when you finally said; you know what, why don’t you just let me handle all the menu planning and the cooking. And I went, oh, thank God. Because not my strength and that takes a huge mental load off what I’m not good at. And I would much rather yes, handle school communications and all the Japanese and all the, whatever, that has to be done in Japanese.
Mits: I think that’s a key piece is that, work on your strengths and that’s something at work. There are people who are good at X and people that are good at Y. So although you do want to continue to train people, and I think that’s a part too, something that doesn’t, I don’t know if we, we don’t seem to do enough in Japan is that training piece, but to get to build on people’s strengths.
Jackie: And use the diversity of strengths to real advantage, in that sense as our team. And yeah, absolutely. I’ve had to lean on them a lot for all of my IT infrastructure and understanding how I need to set things up for enjoi. And I’ve been very grateful to have all of that in-house tech advising because otherwise I wouldn’t know how to set things up and make it secure for my company and things that I have to think about.
So that certainly has been a blessing to combine our strengths in that way. And I think it makes us a stronger couple and a stronger household. And hopefully our children are seeing us role model this so that they won’t have stereotypes around what you can or can’t do because you’re a girl or a boy or whatever it is.
[00:39:58]And I think, I guess another area where I think it really I’ve enjoyed collaborating with you has been on your Lego hobby which, now time is bleeding, but we have a couple of minutes to talk about. We’ve been doing now, two big Lego, multicultural Lego play festivals in Northern Nagano here featuring all of your collection and your genius around Lego building and design and getting children to play through the Lego club that you lead for the international association here, that’s been going strong for 20 years. But then we could add in your passion for Lego.
Mits: I think it’s been, this is another great example of leveraging strengths, where your strength is you’re certainly seeing the vision of what could benefit, Chikuma or The International Association and how we can introduce new people, hopefully engage, certainly because this is Lego, which, although I know the Lego corporation is really working hard to make it less gender-based, but it is, I would gather still more boys playing with Lego. But I think they’re working very hard at bringing in the girls. But maybe this would engage the fathers and say; hey, so you know, you envision all of this and you come up with all these great ideas.
Jackie: Because I see you with our kids. I see you teaching our kids on hours and on hours, doing all of this Lego building with them. And they are enraptured.
Mits: Yeah, they love it. It’s great. I think it’s great bonding. My boys back home, growing up for many years, Christmas was Lego Lego, Lego. I’ve seen some amounts of Lego. And to this day, actually, my oldest son is still, and has a YouTube channel, he still does the Lego cause there’s a huge, what’s called an AFOL community, adult fan of Lego. AFOL. There is a huge community of building all kinds of great things.
And I think that Lego itself has been, or is a great tool. In fact, the Lego corporation has what I deem as a separate arm of the Lego education division, where they have developed kits and education platforms for schools. And there are schools that teach these programs. It’s a great way to teach STEM, but not only STEM. When we might think about Lego as being building bricks to build houses or cars or airplanes or whatever it is.
But I think it, much like reading a book, it’s not about just reading the book and getting to the end. It’s learning new words or ways to use words and develop that creative part of your brain. Well, I think that’s what Lego does too. It says; well, I’m gonna build, I have to build something round with square bricks.
How do I do it? Well, you use your imagination? Sure, it’s never going to be exact and I think that’s really good. One of the things that I remember, I know I’ve been teaching our kids a lot about Lego, they get, sometimes we get stressed about putting the bricks in and then; oh, we made a mistake! And I always say, it’s Lego, no harm, no foul.
Take it apart and put it together again. That’s the great thing about Lego. One, there’s no real thing as a mistake…
Jackie: There’s no failure.
Mits: There’s no failure. And that’s something in Japan, whereas I’ve seen, jumping back a little bit to work is that there is this; no willingness to stick your neck out because you don’t want to fail. You don’t want to make that mistake. Whereas, with Lego, just do it. And it’s never wrong.
Jackie: It kind of takes away the space of experimentation and play out of work that I think could drive innovation in such an, not just innovation for the benefit of the companies, but also enjoyment in the journey of the work.
If you can have that sense of play and a psychological safety that you can make a mistake and it won’t be the end of your career.
Mits: Yes. And I think that would, this is something that I’m certainly trying to teach our kids is that…
Jackie: And the kids of Chikuma.
Mits: And Chikuma with the Lego clubs that we do is that we just build. And there is no mistake, you just build and it is what it is. And if you don’t like it, take it apart and start over. And there’s no harm, no foul.
Jackie: Well on that amazing takeaway note. I think if we can all certainly find that space of play, innovation, using our inner diversities, playing to our strengths, but also learning to be open to other people’s teachings and their diversities that can help us evolve and morph through learning their experiences and building those connections and bonding through these experiences together of enjoyment and play and work.
If all work could be somewhat more playful and enjoyable, I think, it blends into your hobbies and then there will be these different boundaries around what we consider to be the face time day job in the future of work, that I think is both exciting, but it also has to be democratizing so that it doesn’t enslave us as well.
And that’s the tension, right? That’s really the tension So I want to thank you Mits, for sharing about your identities, your selves, your multiple selves, depending on where you are and which period of your life and which country you’re living in, which hat you’re wearing at any given day. I certainly am blessed to experience that every single day of my life with you as my life partner.
And I’m very grateful that you would join us today on the show.
Mits: Well I’m grateful to have been chosen as your first, to hopefully made it inviting for the rest of your thought partners that will come on and share their insights and views into their life experiences and business experiences.
But it’s just been a lot of fun, a lot of fun to share and talk about all of this sort of stuff. And I hope that your listeners here can take away a little bit of the few bits that I’ve shared and be interested, whether it be something as dark as the Japanese internment or something as fun as the Lego play that we do here in Tacoma.
Jackie: Excellent. And on that note, I’d love to share an announcement. So I hope that you will all join us next week. We are, I’m very excited to welcome Shu Matsuo post, who will be the second person featured and he will be talking about his book, ‘I took her name’, and his journey into feminism and trying to fight for his right as a man to choose his last name and that he wanted to share it with his wife and have his name be in that dynamic and his journey into vulnerability, masculinity, and feminism.
I also would love to just mention that, of course, enjoi Diversity and Innovation has offerings. We have a multidisciplinary team, consultants, educators, and facilitators. We offer workshops, training and of course, consulting for audits of your company infrastructure and of your policy ecosystems. If that should help you move the dial in this area, check out our website, www.en-joi.com.
And on that note, thank you very much for joining.