Japanese Kotaro fell in love with our country at first sight: He married a Serb girl, he loves the SFRY history, and this is what he said about Tito and Djindjic (PHOTO)

Japanese Kotaro loves our country, history, and culture. Serbia fascinated him when he came her for student exchange, and he continued to be interested in our way of life, our people and our problems. He has found a love of his life in Belgrade, and their happiness is still lasting. 

He came from Qatar and he saw snow on Zlatibor for the first time: He has a Serbian coat of arms and Cyrilics on his arm, and he plans on partying in Serbia this summer (VIDEO)

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He spoke to Telegraf.rs about his life and work, meeting with Serbia, its people, and culture. He revealed why he loves our country and what are the things that amazed him. He openly expressed his opinion about the history of former Yugoslavia and Tito, and about the problems of Balkan encounters even to this day.

• Tell us something about yourself for starters. Where were you born, where do you live, what do you do, what do you love the most?

My name is Kotaro, I am Japanese from the Tokio vicinity. I am 27 years old and I studied European history, and I am especially interested in the history of the former Yugoslavia after the World War II. When I was in the third year of studies, I was at the Belgrade University for a year for student exchange so I could learn the Serbian language. I wanted to learn it for studies and to see the country I am interested in.

I had a remarkably good experience and Serbia became the most beautiful country to me despite living there for only a year. I have traveled a lot over Europe so far, but I haven't found a single country more beautiful than Serbia. That is when I met the girl I married after a few years. That's right, My wife is Serbia, who thinks that I am crazy because I love Serbia. 

After a year I returned to Japan and I graduated. I started working in a Japanese company trading with car parts. When we got married we started living together in Japan.

Two years later, we decided to leave Japan for overall bad working conditions. We found a special opportunity for life in the Netherlands, which never occurred to me as a place to move to. Then we moved to the Netherlands for a better life, and it has been a year and a half since then.

I speak Japanese, English, and Serbia. Unfortunately, I don't speak Dutch. My hobbies are music, sports, movies, and beer. 

My favorite food is pljeskavica (burger) at Mikan's, cevaps (kebabs) at Cica's, and Karadjordje's schnitzel in Balkan express. His favorite domestic beer is Niksicko light, Zajecarsko dark beer, and Kabinet Kraft beer, especially SuperNova Ipa.

Foto: Privatna arhiva

• When was the first time you heard about Yugoslavia and Serbia and what attracted you to fall in love with our country? How did you experience facing with our history as a Japanese and as someone coming from a different culture, and what were the feelings you had while reading and listening about it?

I don't remember when I heard about Yugoslavia for the first time, and I learned about Serbia for the first time when Serbia and Montenegro played a friendly football game against Japan.

I was in high school when Kosovo declared independence from Serbia. That was a big news even in Japan. Many newspapers and media wrote about details like "what happened during the war on Kosovo". Those details attracted me and I started reading books on the history of former Yugoslavia. Honestly, it was really hard to understand its history due to unknown regions and history for me even though I read books as if they were in my native language.

I didn't understand it but I asked how the former Yugoslavia existed with so many different nations, having different religions, historical experience, and cultural differences, and how did they manage to live in harmony. 

I wanted to understand how life generally looked like in a state like that since Japan is an almost unique ethnical state (it is now slowly changing to international state), where it is hard to understand multiethnic state like Yugoslavia. That is how I started researching Yugoslavia and Serbia.

Foto: Bridal Prestige Kagaen

• You are extremely good in the Serbian language, you are even writing your blog in Serbian. I want to know, was it hard for you to learn it since foreigners often say that Serbian is a beautiful language, but a hard one.

Thank you for your compliment. It was probably hard for me at the beginning because of the cases and Cyrillic since I started learning it when I came to Serbia. However, I fell in love with Serbian language and it was no problem.

I don't think that there is a single language you can learn easily. But the learning of language depends on your interest for language, or something else like culture, the country, music, etc. My interest in Serbia was history from the start, and then it expanded to culture, politics, economy, etc.

When I studied the Serbian language at the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade I noticed that some foreign students often compared the Serbian language with their mother tongue and they often said: "Oh my... this grammar doesn't exist in my language".

Every time I heard this nonsense, I told myself: "Again? Of course not!" I think that you can learn a language no matter how different it is and you just complain how many differences there are. In my opinion, Serbian is not as hard as most of Serbs think.

• You love the history of former Yugoslavia very much. How did you manage and how long it took for you to understand everything that has happened in the area of former Yugoslavia? Would you agree that the period of former Yugoslavia was a "golden era" for people in this region?

I couldn't find out everything about the history if former Yugoslavia and Serbia. I am still learning with new studies, books, papers, etc. I am currently reading several books on Balkan history under the Ottoman Empire. I will probably learn about the history of Serbia for the rest of my life.

As much as I listen to the parents of my wife and different people who lived in the period of Socialist Yugoslavia, I hear nice stories like the ones that everybody had their own apartment and that the Yugoslav passport was the strongest in the world, I think that probably it was the "Golden time" for certain people.

However, I don't believe that it was the case for all people who were against the ruling government, or different groups or nations who had conflicts with the authorities for some reason. 

Because there is such "Yugonostalgi" among people in the region 26 years after it fell apart, I would like to return to the time of '60 and '70 as a historian and a man who knows how bad the economic situation is in today's time and to see what was the life back then.

Foto: Privatna arhiva

• How did the people in Japan see Yugoslavia and how do they see Balkan and Serbia today, and how many people even know where we are?

People of Japan who are over 40 and 50 knew Yugoslavia as a communist country and as a country that had a strong football team. But I think they were not informed well because many think that Yugoslavia was a part of SSSR, or that it belonged to that zone. People ask me "Serbia? It was in SSSR zone before, right?"

Young Japanese, despite the fact that more and more people travel the world, have no idea where Serbia is. Even some people of older generations think that Yugoslavia still exists. For example, my father still believed that Yugoslavia exists and he thought that Serbia is in the middle east (no offense, but my wife was insulted). 

I see that many Japanese people have difficulties to make difference between Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Macedonia (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) because Balkan is geographically unknown region to Japanese people in general. It was hard to learn where each country is on the Balkan territory, even for me.

People see Balkan as a region with many wars during the 20th century and Serbia as a country which had War on Kosovo and where buildings are still demolished.

Foto: Privatna arhiva

• What do you think about the wars that happened in this area, what led to the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia? Will people from the Balkans ever be able to overcome their differences and agree again to something in order to make progress? What is your opinion on Tito, Slobodan Milosevic, Franjo Tudjman, Zoran Djindjic...?

I was a child when the wars in the territory of the former Yugoslavia happened. For this reason, I have my opinion on its disintegration and wars in the region from the books.

Wars on the territory of the former Yugoslavia are a terrible tragedy and it's hard for everyone to believe that they happened in Europe during the 1990s. People began to hate each other, their neighbors because of nationalistic propaganda. This hatred still casts a dark shadow in the region.

Of course, I desire from the bottom of my heart for all people in the region to stop the hatred and to reconcile. The most important thing is that the parents who have children have to give them room for liberal thinking. Young people, who were born after the year 2000 shouldn't live in this kind of reality surrounded by hatred. 

I don't have a personal opinion on Tito, and I think that Slobodan Milosevic and Franjo Tudjman are war criminals although they were not sentenced by the Hague Tribunal at the end. The wars in the region happened because of the two of them and other nationalist politicians and generals, which led to the worst outcome.

Foto: Privatna arhiva

• Who is your favorite historical figure from Yugoslavia/Serbia, or perhaps someone from the recent history and why?

My favorite historical figure is Dr. Zoran Djindjic because, as far as I know, he was a special and unique person, who tried to establish democracy in Serbia after the communism, terrible wars and Milosevic regime.

People say that life in Serbia was different because Zoran Djindjic was alive. That is understood when I look at the political scene and the fact that nothing has changed in the inner politics of Serbia although it has been almost 20 years since the fall of Milosevic regime. I partially agree with home and foreign journalists and Serbs, who say that the current political situation is worse than the one under Milosevic's regime.

I have learned a lot from Djindjic' speeches on Youtube when I studied in Serbia. I am still listening to the compilation of his speeches.

• Do you watch sports, and if you do who is your favorite athlete from Serbia and why? Were there our athletes that were popular in Japan and that still are? Why did the Japanese like them?

I watch European football and Japanese baseball almost every day. But I watch all kinds of sports like tennis, basketball, handball and so on. If I look back at the past of Serbian sport, my favorite athlete is certainly Sinisa Mihajlovic, who played a long time in Italy and who led the football national team of Serbia. 

Foto: Privatna arhiva

Mihajlovic was a remarkable football player, and I remember the free kick during those '90s when it was the golden age of Italian league. Many Japanese people watched Italian league at the time because of the legendary Japanese player Nakata played there.

Piksi, or Dragan Stojkovic, was the most popular among the Japanese because of his career as a football player and a coach in Japan, and because of his charisma. And today... probably Novak Djokovic due to his great tennis success and interesting personality.

• Since you are a writer yourself, have you read some works of our writers and which one had the greatest impact on you, and why? What do you think about the works of Haruki Murakami and do you think that he will even win the Nobel Prize in Literature?

Actually, I am not a kind of writer like Ivo Andric. I work as a freelance journalist for Japanese media, as a translator and a blogger.

I've read several domestic books like "Na Drini Cuprija" (The Bridge on the Drina), in order to perfect the language while I lived in Belgrade. However, I didn't manage to read everything because of the low level of language knowledge at the time and a lot of unknown words which have Turkish origins.

Personally, I don't like Haruki Murakami because of his strange and imaginative world in his books. In fact, I've read his book for the first time in Belgrade. My friend from Novi Sad recommended to latest book at the time "1Q84" and I read it in Serbian language but I didn't like it. 

I see that there are many of his fans in Serbia and in the world. Each year the fans of Haruki gather and they wait for the Nobel prize in Literature announcement in Japan. I am not a great fan but hey, I am Japanese. I hope that he will win the award some day.

Foto: Privatna arhiva

• Do you listen to our music and what kind, what groups, singers, and what is your favorite song? Do you watch our movies and do you have a favorite one?

I don't listen to domestic music that often. I don't like popular music in Serbia like pop or turbo-folk music, but the metal music of my childhood. However, I listen to few songs for my own taste and for fun.

Feud “Vlast” - this is a great video and a very strong message in the lyrics. This song is very significant taking into consideration the current political situation in Serbia.

Lepi feat. Djogani & Baki “RAVAKU” - this is probably one of the dumbest songs ever. However, the beginning of the video is very funny and great. Lepi is my idol. 

I don't watch domestic movies but I did watch movies by Emir Kusturica. My favorite movie is "Otac na sluzbenom putu" (When Father Was Away on Business), that is the first Yugoslav movie I have seen.

• Japan was almost completely destroyed after the World War II, but you managed to build a strong and stable country thanks to hard work. What do you think that Serbia lacks to be a developed and successful economy like Japan is today?

I am not sure that Japan is a successful economic state when I see a lot of mistakes in the system and the state itself, that is why I can't look at its future with optimism.

For Serbia to become a developed country, let's say like the average level of Western Europe, the Serbian government has to bring back home to young people into future to keep them from leaving their country. Also, Serbia has to be completely democratic country, which is led in the democratic political way without politicians form the nineties.

The outflow of young, especially talented young people is the biggest loss for the country. I believe that keeping the talented young people is the greatest investment for the bright future of the state.

I believe that there is a great possibility to development of the economy in Serbia since there are a lot of talented young people, and unfortunately, they think and talk about running out of the country. 

For Serbia to be a developed country, a lot of changes have to happen. However, the government of Serbia has to know why are the young people going away. Even I understand why... and the reason is in the interior government.

Foto: Privatna arhiva

• What are the similarities between Serbia and Japan, how are these two states different? What do Japanese people think about Serbia? What do you think about the slogan Serbia to Tokyo and do you know how it was created?

I never thought about the similarities between Serbia and Japan since all the countries should be different more or less by culture, tradition, and mentality. Serbia has what Japan lacks, and that is why I like Serbia, your culture of coffee making and how to enjoy it.

Of course, I know about the slogan "Serbia to Tokyo" and how it was created! Almost all Serbs I had met greet me with this slogan when they find out I am from Japan. 

The national stadium In Tokyo, where Red Star won the Intercontinental Cup in 1991, is being renovated for Tokyo Olympic games in 2020. I want the Serbian national team greets everybody with the slogan "Serbia to Tokyo" in Tokyo during the Olympic games in 2020.

• Japan is considered a really unique country for its way of life, work, thinking... How would you present your culture to us? What do you think that are pros and cons?

I would say that Japanese culture is very special and mixed with other cultures, Chinese, Korean, American, European etc. For example, we Japanese believe in two religions, Shintoism and Buddhism, and we celebrate Christian Christmas no matter the fact that we are not Christian. We are conservative for our own culture and open to other cultures, which shows that we are flexible people. You can say that it is our advantage.

On the other hand, the flaws in Japanese culture is that Japanese aren't so interested what is happening outside of Japan, which led to the poor knowledge about the rest of the world. We Japanese have the excuse for that: "That is because Japan is surrounded by sea".  Perhaps it is easier not knowing what is happening outside Japan, and to watch TV, which only gives news about every day trivialities. 

We don't have to go out of the country in searching for jobs like Serbs do. And that is why we don't have to speak English. That is why we are afraid of foreigners asking us something in English. Therefore, we have not yet become an international society even though we are one of the most developed countries in the world.

Foto: Privatna arhiva

Read Kotaro's blog "Tokyo to Serbia".

(Telegraf.co.uk / A.Taskovic-a.taskovic@telegraf.co.uk)