Caught between two homelands
- Posted on August 22, 2025
- By The China Daily
- 3 Views

Caught between two homelands

In a modest apartment in Tokyo, 80-year-old Narihiko Kimura dips his brush into black ink and writes graceful characters across a sheet of rice paper. The quiet rhythm of his hand belies the emotion beneath. As he writes, his fluent northeastern Chinese dialect fills the room with memories of a childhood not spent in Japan, but in China's Jilin province, where he was left as a newborn during Japan's wartime occupation.