Emily Midorikawa
Emily Midorikawa was an ALT, working in high schools in Matsuyama (Ehime Prefecture), from 2001 – 2003. I am of British and Japanese descent, and a desire to learn more about the country my mother came from was a main reason why I applied for a place on the JET Programme.
Looking back on these two years now, I can regard them as a period of firsts. I had only just graduated from university in London, and so JET was my first fulltime job. It was the first time I’d lived on my own (in a tiny studio apartment, which I loved); first experience of having to get by with very limited language skills; first time I’d ever properly considered the challenges my mum must have faced when she arrived in Britain – and without anything like the level of support the JET Programme provided.
My new life contained so much interest for me that I found myself wanting to record my experiences in writing. Throughout my time in Matsuyama, I kept a series of notebooks in which I would jot down observations about the places I went and the things I did: descriptions of a visit to Matsuyama’s famous castle or Dogo Onsen; my thoughts on the democracy of cleaning time in Japanese schools, when everyone was expected to pitch in; the surprising sight of a gently humming vending machine beside a watery paddy field. Eventually, I began to write snippets of fiction in these notebooks too: plot ideas, fragments of scenes, half-realised character sketches.
Part way through my second year in Japan I began working on a novel about a young English language teacher who befriends a nightclub hostess – a mysterious young woman who suddenly disappears. A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing is a literary suspense novel, set not in Matsuyama but Osaka. Its dramatic events are a far cry from my own tranquil time as an ALT. Nonetheless, I could never have written this book without the benefit of my JET experience.
A Tiny Speck of Black and the Nothing has had an extremely lengthy gestation period. I worked on it for a long time, and then circumstances forced me to put it aside for many years – an interval during which I established myself as a writer of biography, freelance journalism and short fiction. Then, in a twist of fate that I still find hard to comprehend, a publisher's editor who’d read the manuscript some years ago unexpectedly got in touch to see if the book was still available. So, close to a quarter of a century later, the novel I began as an ALT will finally be published this July.
I will always be grateful to the JET Programme for saying yes to my application. My time in Matsuyama changed my life so many ways. Most significantly, it allowed me to connect more meaningfully with the Japanese side of my identity, and it gave me the seeds of a story that would ultimately become my debut novel.
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