Guo Yun at his Tokyo apartment.

In 1914, the poet Guo Moruo (1892-1978) arrived in Japan a refugee of sorts. Five days after being forced by his parents to wed a woman whose looks left much to be desired, Guo Moruo, then just 20 years old, fled his native Sichuan Province.

He eventually made his way to Kyushu University where while studying medicine and later Spinoza, Goethe and Walt Whitman he fell in love with a Japanese woman. Together, they would raise five children, and Guo Moruo would not see his hometown or his parents for 26 years.

In 1981, nearly 70 years later, Guo Yun, Guo Moruo's Shanghai-born grandson, would repeat the journey, study at a Japanese university, and fall in love.

Although in the interview at his Tokyo apartment, Guo Yun insisted that he did not "come back to Japan" rather he "went to Japan", the voyage was in many ways as much a homecoming as it was an arrival in an alien land.

A stranger in mother's land

Guo Yun's longing for home is most evident in his photography as in the picture taken during his 1,300-mile journey across northern China. 

Guo Yun came to Japan almost by accident. One day, a Japanese friend of his father's offered Guo Yun an opportunity to attend university without taking an entrance exam. Not the most stellar student, Guo Yun jumped at the chance. And besides, Shanghai in the late 1970s and early 1980s was hardly an ideal place for a young man with a Japanese background to find his place in the world.

Japan could have been considered home. Guo Yun's mother is, after all, Japanese and his half Japanese, half Chinese father grew up in Japan. But Guo Yun was born in Shanghai in 1956, just two years before the Great Leap Forward, and came of age during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) history that has profoundly shaped modern China. Despite his ancestry and fluent Japanese, he has never felt completely welcome in Japan.

After spending 25 years working in Tokyo as a photographer for the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, Guo Yun longs for what he considers his real home.

"Once you are a part of this culture, although people have absolutely no ill intentions, you still sense very strongly and unexpectedly a certain loneliness."

"My parents, even now, still don't speak very good Chinese. In Shanghai, when I go out with my father, many people won't be able to understand him. But they won't think he's a foreigner. They'll think he's from some faraway province," Guo Yun said.

"Japan isn't the same. All you need is a slightly different accent and they'll say 'A foreigner? You're a foreigner.'"

Feeling different has made Guo's years in Japan lonely ones. Guo Yun explained that in Japan, to use a Chinese expression, "Talk between gentleman is as light as water."

"Friendship isn't just about talking to waste time. I challenge you, you challenge me," he said. "On the whole, Japanese people do not like to debate with you until everyone's red in the face. That would be considered almost shameful."

"I have a friend of mine who, like me, is interested in philosophy. I once discussed the works of Miki Kiyoshi and Hegel. He is Japanese, I am Chinese. Our countries have a similar history, but they also have a history rife with conflict. Because of differences in our points of view, it becomes impossible to continue the discussion."

So, then, it's easier with Chinese people?

"Of course, it's easier with Chinese people. Japanese people are always" Guo Yun suddenly stood up from his chair and kotowed profusely six times in apologetic Japanese "but in Beijing it's always.." Guo Yun sits down, leans back in chair, brings one hand to his mouth, as though drinking a beer, uses the other to give a friendly pat on the back to an imaginary buddy. "So in this respect, then yes, eating dinner in Shanghai with Chinese friends is much more relaxed."

What Guo Yun misses most a sense of community he's known only in Shanghai. He frequently returns to visit his aging parents who live in an apartment as old as they are and in constant need of repair.

"Today the water stops running, tomorrow the power goes out, the day after that it's something else. What do I do if the water isn't working? I call some friends and they're over in an instant. In China, everyone needs to care for each other and help each other out."

Chinese people are also just be more fun. "The Japanese are a melancholy people. The weather outside can be beautiful, but they are still in a bad state of mind."

"Aren't you talking about yourself?" said Nana Endo, his wife, laughing.

"Maybe a little bit!"

Guo's wife is an advertising executive from a similarly cosmopolitan family. Half Taiwanese, half Japanese, Nana grew up in Beijing. Her parents met while her father was studying abroad in Japan.

Nana is a tempering influence on her husband's headstrong personality, challenging him, coaxing him, and reminding him not to take himself so seriously.

Nationalisms

At a certain point in our conversation, we got to talking about history. Like his grandfather, Guo Yun is suspicious of convention and harbors a feeling of never fully belonging to the world into which he was born.

I wondered if his background gave him a unique perspective on China and Japan's sometimes challenging relationship.

A lot of Chinese people, he explained, have negative or prejudiced opinions of Japan that are based on ignorance, "but I have been here for 25 years. I understand Japan. But in my 25 years of living here, my view has not changed. If there is a conflict between China and Japan, Japan is 100 percent in the wrong."

But of course, it's not really so black and white. Guo Yun, for all his criticisms of Japan, is never bitter. His words are heavy with regret and disappointment.

"Maybe my mind is not open enough. When I first came to Japan, I had absolutely no preconceptions or prejudices. My mother is Japanese. When I was young, I would look at my mother and think of my own roots. Sometimes I would even cry by myself, thinking of it."

"I came to Japan in a very positive state of mind. Now I have become a little cynical. Everyone needs to have something to believe in a philosophy."

Photographs that dream of home

Guo Yun's longing for home is nowhere more evident than in his photography. He finds little to inspire him in Japan, which for him offers only drab shades of gray. But China? China he sees in brilliant, living color.

Taken during a 1,300-mile walk across northern China, his photographs rural landscapes of farmers spread against sprawling canvases of green rice paddies and amber wheat fields are lyrical in their simplicity. Arrestingly beautiful, they suggest nostalgia for a life that for Guo Yun is quickly receding into memory.

The artist had a somewhat different take on his work.

"There was an article in a science magazine about an Orangutan. This Orangutan was holding a camera and was clicking the shutter. I thought, Oh wow! Even an Orangutan can take pictures."

I insist his photos are quite amazing.

"Really?" he said coyly, his eyes betraying the fatherly pride artists feel only toward their favorite work.

Whatever their similarities, Guo Yun has inherited none of Guo Moruo's wild ambition.

I asked Guo Yun what it was like growing up with a grandfather who was the first president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a celebrated poet, an author, a historian and a playwright

"Back in Shanghai, some people were overly nice to me because of my grandfather. Others were mean. Perhaps they were jealous. But I knew that their treatment had nothing to do with me, but with my grandfather."

"I think if I had stayed in China, I probably would have grown up arrogant. In Japan, I am just another Chinese man."

Guo will always be, first and foremost, a Chinese man.

"Maybe if I were to relax a little bit, I could also consider Japan my country. But I am still a Chinese citizen. When it comes down to it, this still isn't really my country."

At dinner, Guo admonished me not to take anything he said during the interview too seriously.

"I'm also a little bit, how shall I say it? A little bit..."

"To put it a nice way, you're 'principled'," Nana offered, laughing. In plain speak?"You're stubborn."

I ask Guo and Nana what language they use to speak to each other.

"Half the time we speak in Japanese," Yun replied. "The other half"

Nana interrupted: "We fight in Chinese. We make up in Japanese."

(China Daily March 1, 2007)