Today, the world connects in countless ways. Encounters cross borders, families blend, cultures cohabit. But this mixing doesn't always happen without difficulty. Each family comes to terms with it in its own way, shaped by its history, its context, what it knows or doesn't know of the other.
My mother is Japanese, my father is Swiss; two people nothing destined to meet.
Their parents never really spoke to one another. Thousands of kilometers separate them, and yet they share a common story: part of the same family, the same grandchildren.
This book brings together the accounts of my four grandparents: how did they come to terms with a foreign culture, accept a child's departure, or welcome a daughter-in-law from elsewhere?
These are the words they shared with me, and the images captured by my parents throughout their life together, that form the heart of this work. Each testimony is presented in its original language, Japanese or French, alongside its translation on the same page.