Niharika Chibber Joe is a service-oriented public diplomat with experience across government, corporate, and nonprofit sectors. She currently serves as Deputy Agency Head of the Japan–U.S. Friendship Commission, an independent federal agency strengthening the U.S.–Japan Alliance through educational and cultural exchange in support of U.S. partnerships in the Indo-Pacific. Previously, she was General Manager at Tata Sons, managing corporate sustainability for the North American operations of the $100 billion Tata Group, where she monitored U.S.–India trade policy, oversaw partnerships, and coordinated public-private initiatives across 11 brands and 25,000+ employees. Earlier, she held leadership roles at the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation. A published poet and writer, she also mentors youth and advises arts organizations. Niharika holds an M.A. in Japan Studies from Johns Hopkins SAIS, an M.A. and B.A. (magna cum laude) in Japanese Language & Literature from Jawaharlal Nehru University, and an executive leadership certificate from the University of Michigan. She communicates in seven languages and multiple dialects.

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Podcast

 

Transcript

Introduction

Hello, everyone. For this episode, I’m honored to welcome Ms. Niharika Chibber Joe. We met through her current work at the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission, a federal agency that strives to strengthen U.S.-Japan relations. I respect Niharika immensely as someone who’s continuously carved her own path. She grew up in India, studied Japanese—becoming so good that she got a master’s [and ABD (all but dissertation)] in it and became an interpreter—and is now based in D.C. working on U.S.-Japan relations.

I hope to discuss her career spanning nonprofits, the private sector, and the government. I’m also fascinated by her identity, as she is currently one of the very few people of South Asian descent in the U.S.-Japan space and how she might help diversify the landscape.

Thank you so much, Niharika, for joining me today.

Thanks so much for having me, and thank you for the kind words.

 

Childhood and Upbringing

First, may I ask about where you were born and raised?

I was born in India, on a military base in a town called Ahmednagar, which is on the west coast of the country. It’s not very far from Mumbai. That’s not where I’m from, but I think it shapes my identity, because I identify first and foremost as a military brat. My father was in the Indian army and training on this military base. I remember being in different parts of India, but if I were to call one part of the world home, that would be Delhi, where I mostly grew up.

 

Language and Code-Switching

I understand that many people in India speak different languages. Could you describe how it was for you? I also feel like we all code-switch when we speak different languages. Were you used to doing that from a young age?

Yes. Code-switching is an interesting phenomenon. I’ve read about the history of code-switching, and it’s been used when people wanted to assimilate and not really share where they’re from or what their real identity is.

For me, growing up in India, the code-switching was just part of which side of the family I was with, who my friends were, and what we were talking about.

My mom and dad spoke to each other only in English. That was very weird to my friends and classmates. Like me, my parents were both military brats who grew up all over, and they chose to communicate in English.

My mom and I speak to each other in Bangla, English, and Hindi. My mother is a professor of English and a prolific writer. English comes very naturally to her. But we have this mixture because her family heritage is from Bengal. But she never grew up there. So, I always joke that my Bangla is better than hers. She’s not the one who taught me, and I cannot tell you how I picked it up. I’m illiterate in Bangla, but I speak it fluently.

I also speak Punjabi. My dad’s heritage is Punjabi. Again, I’m illiterate in it, but speak it fluently.

I also speak other various dialects and languages. Maybe I have an ear that picks up sounds and wants to mimic or reproduce it in the same way. I found that when I switch languages, my personality also changes. I know some of your other podcast guests have talked about that.

I might get a little bit more boisterous in a certain language, or when I speak Japanese, I go very inward. When I’m speaking English like an American, it’s very different from when I speak English like a cosmopolitan Indian. It’s fascinating how everything in your being shifts.

In the United States, there’s a lot of “Where are you from?” questions. Shiori, you might answer, “I’m from Hawaii” or “My parents lived here,” but then they’ll say, “No no, where are you from from?”

I know; it’s so annoying!

Instead of the “from from” question, I got, “What is your mother tongue?” Because in India, your last name can literally determine your address or where you’re from in your family lineage. The way I look doesn’t line up with my last name, because even though I’m Indian, I am a mixed person, which is a fascinating concept.

So I got bullied because of that: because I didn’t have a mother tongue and because everybody wants to put you in a box, and they couldn’t figure out which box [to put me in]. And there were several boxes that I could jump in and out of. As kids, that wasn’t something that you did.

I was an only child for a long time, until I was 11 years old. That was an issue too, because everybody had brothers and sisters and I did not.

If I said English was my mother tongue, that was a problem. Nobody said that. Growing up in India, [people think,] “What kind of bourgeois thing are you talking about, trying to show off? You’re Indian. How would you have English as your mother tongue?”

And so I used to sometimes just make stuff up to just get by, and not have to have those conversations or [be made of fun of, like] “Na-na, na-na, boo-boo, she doesn’t have a mother tongue.”

But yeah, code-switching and adapting comes very naturally to me.

 

Switching Accents for Better Communication

Thank you so much for sharing that. I think there’s so much in common between India and Japan. Even though there’s so much advantage in knowing all these different cultures and languages, I feel like as a child, you need to sometimes pretend that you don’t know them or are made to feel irregular or like an outsider.

And I also thought it was so interesting that even within the same language, you code-switch between American English versus the cosmopolitan speaker of English!

I do. If my parents were to call, I would not be speaking like this. I would speak in what I call the cosmopolitan Indian accent.

I’ve been trying to explain to people for my entire time in the United States that there isn’t one Indian accent. The one that people mimic is the call center guy or Apu on The Simpsons (who wasn’t even Indian, it was [voiced by] Hank Azaria). There is this staccato, and that’s not how I speak or my family speaks. And of course there are regional accents.

If I were to speak in an American way to my friends and family back home, that sounds pretentious to them because I didn’t grow up here. They would be like, “Ok, cut it out. You’re with us now.” It’s very interesting how that works.

Haha! That is really fascinating. I remember going to college on the East Coast and then coming back to Hawaii [on a break] and talking to my former classmates from high school. And somebody said, “You have an East Coast accent now.” Even within the same country!

Exactly. And it’s like you’re a sellout. It’s not a compliment.

As somebody who studies languages, I used to be very much a purist, thinking, “this is how the language needs to be spoken.” And then I read a lot and I realized that language is organic and evolving, and the aim is to be able to communicate.

In an environment where I’m not the majority, there is maybe a prejudice or something when I’m talking to somebody who doesn’t know me. So the easiest way to get through to them is to be able to speak like them. I feel that may be disarming, too. And you can get further.

I started speaking like this only because I remember being on an airplane and asking for a glass of water [“water” in a cosmopolitan Indian accent]. I was on United Airlines and the flight attendant was like, “Excuse me?” So I was like, “Could I please have a glass of water?” [in an American accent]. And I got my water. So I realized that there was something that I had to switch up.

I didn’t feel like it was a burden. I just approached it as if I’m living in another country and learning another language. If I lived in Sweden, I would be trying to speak Swedish. If I lived in Japan, I would want to practice so that my Japanese gets better. So why not here? So now I sound like I’m from Virginia.

That is so cool.

 

Fighting Prejudice Everywhere

You mentioned that some people would be surprised when you say you’re from India and ask, “Where’s your accent?” It’s such a rude comment.

All the time. But it’s been so long. The world has advanced and we’ve gotten very far away from that.

I remember when I first came to the U.S., I’d be asked, “Did you ride elephants?” So I’d say, “Only on special occasions or to go to school.”

Or people would watch the Indiana Jones [and the Temple of Doom] movie, and some characters would [go to India and] eat monkey brains. I was asked if that’s what we eat. So I was like, “No, it’s really expensive, so only on special Sundays when my mom makes it.”

Haha!

My smart mouth comes and goes. Sometimes I’ve gotten to a point where I’m thinking it’s not even worth it. People are so high-strung these days—you could just move on. So now I’m like, “Sure, yeah, it’s high protein” or whatever.

But there was a time where I had to use humor because of the absurdity of it. When you stop to think about it, it’s like, “First of all, where does this ignorance come from? And secondly, what gall to be able to say this?” Especially when people start out with, “I don’t mean to be rude, but… “

Yeah, you know it’s coming!

But over time, people get better because there’s more information.

The opposite is also true because of the so-called model minority thing. The assumption is that I’m a doctor. When I say, “I study Japanese,” they say, “Why? You can become a doctor.” So yeah, it’s a journey.

My gosh. Thank you so much for all those anecdotes. It really helps illustrate the prejudice you go through no matter where you are.

I know, right? It doesn’t matter where you are. I’ve received the same kind of comments growing up in India. [For example,] about the color of my skin. I’m too dark. They say, “How sad. You’ll never get married.” I’ve been told that to my face by well-meaning aunties.

It’s not just in the United States. You encounter it everywhere. I’ve watched all your podcast episodes. And I found that a lot of it resonates or is a shared experience.

 

Studying the Japanese Language

Why did you become interested in Japan and decide to study Japanese?

I fell into Japan and feel like I don’t have some big story. Growing up in the United States—no matter when—and being interested in Japan is very different from growing up in India when I did and being interested in Japan. I don’t think [people around me] wanted to go study in Japan or [expressed a lot of] interest in Japan.

I actually wanted to study Russian. It was a language that I had had some exposure to. My dad had been sent to Moscow for military training, and he had studied Russian. My toys were from Russia. I had books of Russian fairy tales. That’s what I was consuming and growing up on as a kid. And Russian sounded really good to me. Japanese had never come up.

I graduated from high school pre-med. I was interested in medical school. But in India, you go to medical school right after you graduate from high school. You don’t go to college first. I was 17 when I graduated from high school, and hadn’t really prepared the way you’re supposed to. Think of it like in Japan [or the U.S.] when people study for the Foreign Service exam. It’s very intense and you’re competing with millions of people. I hadn’t really put in that effort and didn’t know what I wanted to do.

The default was always that I would study English literature, which my mom taught as a professor. Then I learned about this university that offered a B.A. in various language: a “B.A. honors” as they say in those countries.

You had to take an entrance test, which was very difficult. And because I scored high on it, I was given the choice of studying Japanese, Chinese, or Arabic. Those were the most difficult languages. And I picked Japanese after consulting with my mom. She had done her Ph.D. at the same university. She knew all the professors and talked to them for me. It turned out that with the Russian [department] you didn’t really have to study that much. Everybody who didn’t know what they wanted to do or wanted to be tour guides were going into Russian. Japanese was more serious.

So I got into studying Japan because it was a difficult language, and serious people studied Japanese. And after you study Japanese, there was a chance of getting a real job, because Japan had started investing in India at the time. The economy had liberalized in India and investment from Japan was coming in. And so that’s how I started with a, i, u, e, o¹.

Then I never looked back from the age of 17. And I have to thank my teachers. My teachers were all Indian people who had benefited immensely from Japan Foundation scholarships and fellowships that took them to Japan. They spoke unaccented, wonderful Japanese, and at a very high level. So our curriculum was very intense. And I really enjoyed it. And because I enjoyed it, I did well in it. It was a self-reinforcing thing.

That is so interesting because it’s very different from what we usually hear on why people became interested in Japan. I think Japanese culture is often the entry point, especially now. You mentioned earlier that you’re a language purist, and it really makes sense that language was your entry point.

Yeah. It was India in the 90s and we did not have access to original textbooks because they were very expensive. Our senseis had their textbooks and dictionaries that they had gotten during their fellowships, and we used photocopy versions of those.

So all of the Japanese books that I owned for study, all my dictionaries like the big Kenkyusha ones—I won in speech contests. I used to participate in Japanese language speech contests just so I could win books.

Incredible…!

All of my books are hard won because that was the way that you could get books from Japan without paying for them. The books were all $70, $80, or $120 each, and nobody could afford that. With the character [kanji] dictionaries, the famous one was the Nelson. They’re kind of obsolete now because nobody’s using giant dictionaries anymore, but I still have them because they have tremendous sentimental value.

They should be family heirlooms!

I know! They’re in my office.

But yeah, I got interested in Japan through language. The JET Programme was not available in India at the time, so that was not something on the radar. Opportunities to go to Japan were very few and far between, and our senseis went with limited opportunities, too. So for us students, there was never any concept of going to Japan. Travel was prohibitive in terms of cost, and there weren’t any scholarships or fellowship opportunities as such.

So I studied Japanese without knowing if I would ever go to Japan. Now that I think about it, it’s fascinating how I stuck with it. I’ve never lived in Japan. I’ve never studied in Japan. But I have done everything with the language that people with those experiences do or may not even do.

And that’s because of my teachers. We didn’t have any native Japanese teachers, but we did have the spouses of Japanese expats who were living in India. Their wives needed something to do, and some of them were more genki² than others. So they would come to our university and we would have sessions hanging out with native Japanese speakers. They would teach us mannerisms and accents and things like that.

You also pursued a master’s degree in Japanese language studies. What drew you to Japanese in particular? What do you love about the language?

There’s nothing grandiose about this. I was just a kid who’s a language nerd. They taught us kotowaza³. They taught us onomatopoeia. We had giongo⁴ and giseigo⁵. Then I started finding that all of that existed in the various Indian languages that I spoke.

The Bengali language has a lot of giongo and giseigo. When your head hurts, you say in Bangla, “my head is going tonton.” And if it’s raining, you say, “the rain is falling tupur-tapur.”

Really? That’s cute!

So there were things like that that made complete sense. It was very easy, linguistically, to get into Japanese.

And kanji were the death of me because we had to know all kanji ever written. After three years in college of Japanese language study (called Nihongo Senmon), you had to be able to read The Asahi Shimbun without a dictionary.

We had interpretation class and you had to be able to interpret what the sensei would read. The interpretation sensei was the interpreter for the Prime Minister of India and he was hardcore. It was extremely serious.

Wow!

Every night, I used to write so much kanji and dream about it. I had a dream, which later became famous, of how the aruku⁶ kanji had big boots on and was walking and stomping all over me.

So we had to study really hard, and I think what developed from that was a real love of the language and its usage. Then there’s the joy you got from hanging out with visiting Japanese people and throwing in a kotowaza here and there while you’re speaking, and they’re like, “How do you know this?” And you’re like, “Well, my sensei taught me, and I’m used to using it.” I still use them.

So even though I feel like my Japanese is not as excellent as it used to be—or maybe it’s just because of lack of practice—people are still amazed. And that amazement doesn’t stop there, because then everything else doesn’t add up. They think, “You haven’t lived in Japan, you haven’t done JET, you haven’t done this or that. Why do you speak Japanese the way you do if you haven’t done all of these other things that are the known pathways to language proficiency?”

And what I am trying to say is that there are many pathways. That’s what I tell young people. There is no one road where if you do this and this and this, you will land here. I am a prime example of the non-linear, going round and round, not knowing what I wanted to do. Then all of a sudden, one day you’re the deputy of a federal agency in the United States, and you’re like, “How did that happen?”

 

Interpreting and Having Your Own Voice

You said you studied interpretation, and I understand you became an interpreter later on at the Suzuki Motor Corporation. Would you mind talking a little bit about that?

Sure. When we were in college, one of the only ways to make money of any sort, earning a little pocket money so you could buy your books if you didn’t win them, was to become a kateikyoshi⁷. We would go to the homes of Japanese expats and tutor their spouses in English.

The second way of earning money was interpreting. By the time we were in our second year of Japanese, those of us who were so into it that we lived and breathed it started getting tiny interpretation jobs. And those paid really well.

I wouldn’t take notes when I was interpreting consecutively, because if I started to take notes, it would distract me. So I held everything in my head. The only time I took notes was when there was a number and it was some kind of oku⁸ or hundreds of man⁹ or whatever.

Gosh, I hate those numbers!

In India we have a different numbering system. When you get into a hundred thousand, the comma is at a different place.

My gosh!

For 100,000, there are commas after one, then again after the two zeros. There’s a word for it, just like oku and cho¹⁰ and man and all those in Japanese. 100,000 in India is one lakh. And 100 lakhs, which is 10 million, is called a crore. So you’re talking in lakhs and crores, and then you’ve got man, cho, oku—all of that. Those are the only things I used to write and shift zeros around, but I found that if I did anything else, it would throw me off my game.

So I used to listen, look up, and then just say what had to be said. That went on and my skills developed.

When I graduated from my master’s program, there was a job opening at Suzuki Motor Corporation. They had a 50-50 partnership with the Government of India and they were looking for interpreters. That seemed like a very respectable job.

Before that, I had interpreted for big companies like Hewlett Packard, large printing presses, and all kinds of visiting delegations at conferences.

One time, Mitsubishi Heavy was installing a huge printing press at a place called Thompson Press in India that published a magazine called India Today, that was sort of the equivalent of Time and Newsweek. They were installing the press, and I had to be inside the machinery with the Japanese team who was teaching the Indian team how to run the machine. I learned a lot about printing [presses just to be able to interpret].

So that was the journey to become confident—and I was able to go to the automotive industry and grasp how cars were made. Because it’s not just sitting and reviewing notes. I wasn’t in meetings. I was following around the Suzuki engineers from Japan. They came from Shizuoka, and spoke a dialect called Enshuben. It was not something that I’d ever heard. I spoke standard Japanese.

I learned how to speak Enshuben by following the engineers around the plant. We had to go with them to the shop floor, look at the cars being made, do quality control, do engine repair work—all of that. So that had me develop this very interesting Japanese language vocabulary, which I don’t use anymore.

But as an interpreter, I’m not there to express my opinion. The way I described it at the time was, “I’m tired of speaking in somebody else’s voice. I’m tired of speaking for somebody else. I want my own voice. I want to be able to speak.” And that’s why I decided that interpretation is not for me because I don’t want to speak for somebody else.

But it’s very interesting because I’ve had an existential moment listening to your podcast episodes. You have talked about wanting to be a communicator and connecting people, and that’s why interpretation is important to you. Lefteris [an interpreter who was a guest on Episode 10] also mentioned bringing people together.

And if I’m thinking of myself as a connector, then I need to be able to communicate and help others communicate. So thanks to you, my whole mindset has changed regarding interpretation.

Thank you for saying that.

I respect [interpretation] a lot, but I just felt it wasn’t for me. Suzuki was just supposed to be a job. I needed a full-time job, and that’s a job where I learned a lot.

I had some very interesting encounters because it was a male-dominated field. These were Japanese kachos¹¹ and buchos¹² in the late 90s; people who are now called Showa-era [1926-89] managers. So they had specific ideas of what women should do and how women should behave. We never paid attention to them and told them they were in our country.

But yeah, it was a good experience. I was only there for a year, but it taught me a lot.

 

Move to the United States

You mentioned that you wanted to express your own voice. Was that the impetus to move to the United States and go to grad school, or was there something else that happened before that?

Before I went to work for Suzuki, I did this part-time gig (arubaito) in Japan. It was with a company that brought performing artists from all over the world to Japan, and I was their interpreter. It didn’t matter if they were from India as long as they were from an English-speaking country.

So I was going to Japan and being on a tour bus, which was awesome because this was a part of Japanese culture that I hadn’t seen before—geinokai, or the world of performing art. We would travel from Aomori to Okinawa on a bus with the music people, the sound people, the light people, etc. We also traveled with some rabbits (usagi) because we had a magician from India. That’s when I learned that usagi are counted in wa and not hiki because their ears are floppy¹³.

Oh, is that why? I didn’t know!

I did that for two summers and had a very good interpretation experience. I earned some money and decided to take my aunt—my mom’s sister who has since passed away—to Europe. My aunt and I traveled around Europe, and I came to the United States.

And I said, “It’s time to study abroad. I missed out on a study abroad opportunity to go to Japan. I need to study in the United States. Everybody’s doing it, and I need to do it too.”

So that’s how I applied [to graduate schools]. And the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) [at Johns Hopkins University] is the one that promised me some money. They said if I did well, they would give me money, and so that’s how I ended up at SAIS.

I see. And you pursued Japan Studies at SAIS, right?

Yes. For me, there was nothing else to study. I had to study Japan.

 

Working at a Nonprofit vs a Company

That’s great. After you graduated, you went to the Mansfield Foundation and you worked there for quite some time, about seven years. Would you mind talking about your experience there?

Yes.

But before that, I had applied to the Woodrow Wilson Center, which was the job that I wanted. I didn’t get it, and I was completely gutted and went back to the drawing board. I went into the Mansfield Foundation and was interviewed by Paige Cottingham-Streater [who was Deputy Executive Director at Mansfield] as well as the Executive Director at the time, Gordon Flake.

I was 25 years old, and I was shaking because I thought I’d done well in one interview and didn’t get the job. I was like, “I’m not getting this one. There’s no way.” But I got it.

I remember walking in on my first day on the job. It was my first time ever working in the United States. You have to keep that in mind because I don’t know how I’m supposed to behave. I’d only ever worked full-time in India in a factory, and I had done a summer internship at a think tank in Japan during my time at SAIS. These were very different [from working full-time in the U.S.].

As I was walking in, Paige, who we all know and love [in the Japan-related community in Washington, DC], was walking out with her bag, saying, “Good to see you! Welcome; it’s your first day! I am leaving for Japan. Bye!” She’s supposed to be my boss. As she’s leaving, she stopped in the hallway and said, “Today we have a group of Mansfield Fellows starting. It’s their orientation.”

And I was told to “handle it.” It was my first day on the job! Then I guess it went well because I stayed for seven years. It was a really good time and I learned a lot.

But because of the nature of the nonprofit world, my salary was not moving much. I was still in the 30,000-dollar bracket, and it was time to start a family. My husband is an academic. He was finishing his Ph.D. There was no way that one could afford to go on with life with that sort of income. I didn’t want to leave, but I thought, “What am I going to do?”

So it wasn’t really the job that compelled me to leave. I got poached out of there. [Mansfield] had done a U.S.-Japan-India program. The gentleman who was the head of the Indian company in DC that we had partnered with offered me a job.

I decided to take it. It was a tough decision on the emotional front, but on the practical front, it was an easy one to take at the time.

That makes sense. I was surprised to learn that you were the General Manager of North America. You’re so humble about all of this! And this company [Tata] is one of the biggest Indian conglomerates ever. Going from a nonprofit to that must have been a huge transition.

It was a huge transition, but [what made it easier was that] my boss, the person who had hired me, was a retired State Department official. So in terms of the mental makeup or where one comes from, there was parity there. And he had been posted in India and so there was some comfort.

But I remember being very stressed out because I was six months pregnant with my son. And going into the private sector from a nonprofit, one difficult part of the decision was, I started thinking, “I’ve been in this job [at Mansfield]. I know everybody if I’m to have a baby.” It’s the classic dilemma of a woman about to be a mom. I thought, “If I stay here, I’ll be looked after. I know my job and everyone supports me.” My boss at the time had religious beliefs that suggested that women should stay home and take care of the baby. In that sense, they would have allowed me to be part-time or even work from home at a time when nobody did.

The other thing was, all of a sudden you have to become corporate. I remember a good friend of mine saying, “You’re going to have to wear stilettos and pearls now.” And I was like, “How am I going to do that?” But I decided that I was going to do it. It was more important to have that bump in the salary. So I sucked it up.

I decided that I was never going to be “the pregnant woman in the room.” I was going to do everything. I was not going to talk about my pregnancy. I was not going to ask for any allowances. I was just going to suck it up and do it. And that’s what I did. I was going to New York two to three times a week, taking the Amtrak or flying at 5 a.m., attending events and giving talks. The dark suit, the pearls, and the stilettos had shown up. Some men in the office would say, “Are you okay? Do you need to sit?” And I’m like, “No, I’m fine.”

I think this is also generational. I feel that younger people would say, “No, I need to be accommodated. I need a minute.” That’s probably the way to do it, but I hadn’t learned that yet. And so that’s what I did. In fact, I was in the office the day my son was born.

I learned a lot from this job, but it took me away from Japan for a long time.

 

Working with Japan Again

Did you miss Japan because of that?

I did. So after that, I got my current job at the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission and went to Japan [the first week]. It had been eight or nine years since I’d last been there. I arrived in Tokyo and I felt like Urashima Taro¹⁴.

Everything had changed. There was a lot more English. This was 2015, and Japan had started planning for the Olympics. There were a lot more tourists. I was hearing different languages. And truth be told, I didn’t like it. I was like, “What is this? Where is my Japan? I want to speak Japanese. Where are my people?”

Then I slowly reacclimated. Things had changed, new buildings had come up, things had moved. But it was good to be back, and very quickly my language came back and it was fine.

Could you take a step back and talk about what you do at the Friendship Commission?

I’m a civil servant. The Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission is an independent federal agency. And I direct our grant making. I handle some of our internal programs. I build relationships. I see myself as a connector.

It’s everything. We’re a small shop, but we’re very dynamic. This space of public diplomacy is so important, as is supporting the U.S.-Japan alliance. And I think those of us who are in this business are working very hard, especially right now.

 

Connecting People

I think what you’re doing is incredibly important, especially with the tensions with the tariff discussions and other things in terms of diplomatic and economic relations [between the U.S. and Japan]. It’s really the citizen-to-citizen relationship that’s the most important and will keep us going. What you’re doing in terms of hosting events and symposia and supporting people-to-people exchange is incredible.

Yeah. But I think all those symposia and policy events can’t happen without you either, because we need you [as an interpreter] to be able to communicate. So I think we’re all in this together.

One of the first phrases that my teachers in India taught us was jinmyaku¹⁵ . And jinmyaku is the “human pulse”¹⁶. We all have our fingers on each other’s pulses. I think the U.S.-Japan community has really come together, and it’s referred to as an ecosystem now. In people-to-people exchange and public diplomacy, we’re all working very hard and we’re all in it together. And the more we support each other and work together, I think we can really make a difference even though times are tough.

I remember Kazuyo [Kato, head of the Japan Center for International Exchange USA] saying on your podcast [in Episode 11] that she brought six people to Japan on a congressional exchange. That’s an exchange that the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission funds. If we can take six bipartisan congressional staffers to Japan and have them see each other as human beings working towards the same thing, I think we’ve done our job. It doesn’t have to be hundreds. It has to start somewhere and we’re supporting the next generation.

I think that’s a really wonderful explanation of jinmyaku, because I had always thought about it as a network of veins with the center being you—your heart. I never thought about the pulse aspect of it. But you’re absolutely right. It’s a living thing and you need to keep it updated and keep in touch continuously with everyone.

Yeah. I have become this very hardcore crusader on connecting people. I’m constantly introducing people to each other. It’ll be mottainai¹⁷ if like-minded people don’t talk to each other. There’s no agenda. But if there is one in the future, you won’t feel hesitant about talking to them. So I think we just have to keep supporting each other and moving forward.

 

Diversity in the U.S.-Japan Space

We just talked about connecting people, and in that vein, I wanted to ask about Paige, one of your great mentors. I think it’s fascinating that she’s been your boss both at the Mansfield Foundation and now at the Friendship Commission.

You’ve also mentioned that she has something in common with you, and it’s that you’re both unique as stakeholders in the U.S.-Japan space. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Of course. I am at the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission now sort of because I received a phone call from Paige one day while I was working at my corporate job at Tata. She said, “There’s an opening and there’s going to be an ad about it. And I think you should look at it.” I was like, “Nah, I’m fine where I am.”

But I ended up applying and interviewing for the job. Paige and I had an agreement where just because she knew me didn’t mean that she was going to hire me.

Anyway, I got the job. And it seemed like nothing had really changed in the U.S.-Japan world [while I was away at Tata] because she and I seemed to be interchangeable as far as people were concerned. I would go to events and meet people, and they would say, “We’ve already met.” And I typically don’t forget names and faces, and definitely didn’t when I was younger. I would think, “What are they talking about?” [then figure out that there were mistaking me with Paige.] And Paige and I would joke about it.

But I remember somebody who’s also a fellow person of color telling me, “They’re not taking the time to think how much more they’re getting by having you two there.” And I hadn’t looked at it like that. But if you take a beat, you will see how much more I have to offer. And that goes back to being multicultural and speaking all these languages, and how we feel like we don’t fit in or belong.

Over time, that’s what I have learned from going to various conferences and whatnot. Women leaders talk about bringing your whole self to any team that you work with, because that’s your value add. When you start editing [yourself], you’re not doing your team or your colleagues a favor. You think you are, but you’re not.

It’s your perspective. It’s your lived experience that brings it all together and makes for a more cohesive team. Paige and I have had our moments and we chuckle about it, but we’re very grateful to see that the queue behind us is not going have the same issues we faced.

Are you doing anything in particular to foster the next generation and ensuring that more people of color participate in programs and panels and things like that?

I think what tends to happen is that people just default to their friends when they’re putting together panels. That’s human nature. The first thing we would do when we start a new venture is talk to our friends, asking, “What do you think?”

But I think making a little bit more effort [makes a difference]. We [at the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission] have worked with our grantees and said, “Go outside this area and push [your boundaries].” We offer that guidance.

I hadn’t realized the impact my being somewhere makes to somebody else in terms of “If you can see it, you can be it.” We all have our own imposter syndrome. We think, “I’m not required there. What’s the point of me going to that event?” Sometimes I feel, “Paige is already there. What do I have to do there? We’re interchangeable and she checks their box of who they want. And she is such a stalwart person in the U.S.-Japan community. She has everything to offer. What do I have compared to that?” And I’ve internalized that a lot.

But slowly, my Gen Z [interns and program alumni] have been putting me on the spot and say, “But Ms. Niharika, you’re a South Asian immigrant like my family,” or “You have encountered these issues where your family didn’t know what you were going to do with Japanese [language].”

So I found that there is something that I have to offer. And by being there, I am finding now that so many women of color are coming to me, or finding me on LinkedIn wanting to connect and wanting to talk. I do make an effort of just catching people and saying, “Listen, I have something to tell [teach] you!”

And I have received very good advice over time. When Paige and I sat down for a meeting when I went to work for the Mansfield Foundation, the first thing she told me was, “As a person of color, never wear a black and white suit to a catered event.”

It’s happened. I’ve been in a white shirt and a black blazer and black pants or black skirt, and somebody asked me to pour the coffee or asked where the bathroom is. I learned that as a 25 year old and I haven’t done it since. And that’s what we teach our interns, for people who look like us. Because apparently it’s a thing.

I had no idea! That’s so sad.

And I got called a “little brown girl who speaks Japanese” [by a man calling me over while snapping their fingers] because he couldn’t remember my name.

But it just makes you a more whole person to have all that kind of experience. I think it makes you more empathetic.

You’ve shared your story and your vulnerabilities [in Episode 13]. And even though it’s a terrible memory for you, having that makes you so much more empathetic and kind that you would never ever do that. And I want you to know that that is an essential part of who you are, even though it was traumatic.

I hope so.

 

Connections Built Through the Podcast

I want to thank you for including me [in this podcast], but what I really want to thank you for is building this community. Because as I have listened to each and every episode, I have found that there are people who I know but never knew in this way. So all of a sudden I feel closer to them and can relate to them. And then there are people who I know of but never met. And now I feel like I know them. And I feel like I reach out and say, “Hey, by the way, we met on Shiori’s podcast.”

It’s not just the intention you have behind it. The way that you conduct yourself and this whole podcast is what is required in today’s world. I am so proud of you for just taking this leap of faith and building a whole community like this. It’s very important, because we all need this. We didn’t realize we needed it, but you’ve taught us that we do.

And I have seen you grow through these 15-16 episodes. It’s been wonderful to see that.

Thank you so much…! You’re making me tear up.

Apparently, that’s what I do. In their exit interviews, a lot of my interns come out crying. And everybody’s like, “What did she say? Did she say something terrible?” And they’d say, “No, Ms. Niharika makes us cry.”

What I said is true, though. Also, your friend and [college] roommate, Gigi, said [in Episode 14] that she wants people to reach out to her if they’re struggling with their Indian identity.

Yeah, Gigi’s great.

And it was fascinating to hear that she specifically says “Indian,” because we tiptoe around and say “Native American.”

This is something you can share with her because it’ll make her as crazy as it made me, but somebody asked me the “where are you from from” question. And I said, “I’m Indian.” And without batting an eyelid, they said “Dot or feather?”

What does that mean?

Dot [pointing to her forehead to signify a bindi] or feather [signifying a headdress].

Okay—wow, my goodness. That’s terrible.

Right? So “Indian” and “Indian.”

And I’d never heard of that before. I honestly did not know how to react. I think I took a beat or two and said, “Well, why don’t you go look at the map?” or something like that. I don’t know what I said, but yeah, people say the darndest things.

And you’re making sure that that doesn’t happen in a deeper way rather than just saying, “Don’t say this,” or making people feel uncomfortable and think they have to be on eggshells.

I’ve learned so much about myself too, but I’ve learned so much from all the guests and all their experiences because they resonate with me and my family. Like Mr. Onoda’s story [in Episode 12] about growing up in Gary, Indiana. My husband grew up in rural Illinois and is Asian. So there’s a lot to unpack. There’s a lot to talk about.

And I hope we can continue the conversation and keep talking. I wish you well.

 

Growing New Hearts

Thank you. You’ve continuously provided advice for younger people and people who might be watching this podcast. May I ask again, just as a formal question and answer: would you have any advice for people who might be struggling with their identities or making big life decisions?

That’s a tough question, and sometimes I feel like I’m very ill-equipped to offer that kind of advice.

But in terms of identity, I feel like it’s not “this” or “that.” Your identity is not half this or that or blood quantum this or that. It’s all of that—it’s both, triple, quadruple; it’s whatever it’s meant to be.

I also have found that identity shifts around. It doesn’t remain the same. There’s one thing, which is your cultural, national, ethnic identity and where you think you belong or don’t belong. But then there are also life things that happen.

A few days ago, I read of a concept called “matrescence,” which is like adolescence, but for women who have given birth. Adolescence changes the body of a human being and the neurons and the brain cells and whatnot. Apparently, the idea of matrescence is that it changes the woman after she’s given birth. That in and of itself is an identity shift. Biologically your identity has shifted, as well as how the world sees you.

And I think especially as women, we all go through changes in identity. You don’t have to biologically give birth for that to happen. We all struggle sometimes with our identities, such as, “Am I the perfect daughter? I live abroad. My mom’s over there, overseas. I’m not able to take care of her. What am I doing? Should I move back? Should I not?”  [Or you wonder,] “Am I American? Am I Japanese? Am I Indian?” That is constant. It’s not going to go away.

The best we can do is manage it. I think it was Grace Kim [in Episode 2] who said, “Use it as a skill set.” The fact that you are Japanese and you’re American is what makes you perfect to do this and put us all at ease and to have these conversations. If you weren’t, there would be nothing wrong with that, but you would not be able to feel it. You would conduct it in a more intellectual way rather than a kandoteki¹⁸ way where people feel that they can connect to you and to your experience.

So if I have any advice, it is just to own it—own the superpower of being able to speak and think in different languages.

And I learned from my son because my son is Indian, Korean, Irish, and German. All of those are mixed in there. And I see that he owns his Korean identity, even though my husband doesn’t own it the way my son owns it. And he owns his Indian identity, and he’s got friends everywhere. He told me, “Bro, I get in where I fit in.”

For me, when I came to the United States, I was very specific [in my goals]. I was here for grad school. I was not going to hang out with Indian people. I did not leave a billion [Indians] behind to come here and find them. I was not going to keep eating Indian food all day long, because what’s the point? Why would you [leave India to] go abroad and eat Indian food?

There was no reason for me to go back to India because India didn’t hold that much miryoku—appeal—or value for me. As long as I saw my family and my parents, it didn’t matter. I could meet them in Europe or somewhere halfway.

But slowly, I realized that I do miss India, because when I went back, [I enjoyed] the sights and the sounds and the smells. That’s what made me whole.

So, I own my Indian-ness. I’m very much Indian, but I’m also American. I always say that I was born and raised in India, but I “grew up” in the United States. My mental growing up happened here, even though I was not born and raised here. My upbringing informs who I am as a human being.

That is a wonderful way to put it.

I’m okay with being both. In relationships and all that, people have told me, “Your heart is in two places. Your heart is split.” And I decided that my heart is not split. I just grew a whole new one.

That’s lovely!

So I have two hearts—or maybe three or four. The world is more interconnected and more multicultural. The way we grew up was different, but we’re able to connect with each other, speak different languages, and meet people more seamlessly now.

 

Get In Where You Fit In

For me, my best friends are people I went to grad school with, not people who I share genetic makeup with or people I’ve worked with.

If you happen to be Indian, sure, why not [connect with other Indians]? But I found when I was working at Tata with Indian Americans, I had nothing in common with them. Because they were second generation Indian people who were born and raised here, with immigrant parents who forced them to assimilate. They don’t speak the language.

There’s another community of Indians who have moved to Northern Virginia or wherever to work. They are working in the IT sector and have different aspirations. I can’t relate to them either.

So for me, my community is people I go to church with, people I went to school with, PTA people, music parents, hockey parents—people I share something in common with. That’s also my identity. I never knew growing up in India that I would be a hockey mom or a music mom.

We don’t realize it, but we all have multiple identities. They don’t just have to be linguistic or cultural. There are normative, societal identities, too. We’re all constantly code-switching. We’re all chameleons. We have to be that way. Being one-dimensional is boring.

It’s so helpful to know that we all have multiple identities. And what you said about there being scientific evidence of biological changes is so interesting. I’m sure it happens for those of us who don’t have kids, too—like when we come to different country, we start to eat different things, and that probably changes our biological makeup as well.

Exactly.

Looking at somebody who’s Indian, I can tell if they grew up in the United States, or if they grew up abroad. Because the way we carry ourselves changes. When I’m in Asia, I’m like, “Oh, sumimasen¹⁹,” like a little more bowing to the cars and doing all of that. Here, I’m more upright. The way I speak starts changing the muscles in my face. So I think that’s biological.

Right.

Stages of life are biological; those identities change.

When you turn 40, you go for your annual checkup and the doctor will say, “Well, now that you’re 40, we’re going to be asking these other questions.” Or, “You have to know that your metabolism is going to do this or that.”

I’d say that’s an identity shift because you’re like, “That’s not who I am. Why are they telling me that?” Or when you’re exercising in the gym and you’re like, “When I was 27, I was able to do this, but now I can only do this because I’m 35.” You’re not benching or lifting as much, and that’s an identity shift, too. I think [those changes] are constant.

This is an identity shift for you, right? Being a podcaster.

Yes, very much so. But I love it.

So there are some things that we love and some things that we don’t, but we’re all shape-shifters. So get in where you fit in.

Will do!

I want to thank you again for building this community and for this conversation because we haven’t had an opportunity ever to sit down and chat. And so I really appreciate it. I look forward to all the others and binge listening to them.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time.

Thank you.

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Notes:

1. A, i, u, e, o: The first five letters of the Japanese alphabet. ↩︎
2. Genki: energetic. ↩︎
3. Kotowaza: idioms. ↩︎
4. Giongo: onomatopoeia for inanimate objects. ↩︎
5. Giseigo: onomatopoeia for living beings. ↩︎
6. Aruku: to walk. ↩︎
7. Kateikyoshi: a tutor who teaches in the homes of their students. ↩︎
8. Oku: 100 million. ↩︎
9. Man: 10,000. ↩︎
10. Cho: trillion. ↩︎
11. Kacho: head of the section. ↩︎
12. Bucho: head of the department/division. ↩︎
13. In Japanese, the counter for small animals are usually hiki. One of the few exceptions are rabbits, which are counted as wa (using the kanji that means “wings”). Here’s an article explaining the counter wa and how it applies to rabbits. ↩︎
14. Urashima Taro: Japanese folktale of a man who returns to his hometown after being away for 300 years. ↩︎
15. Jinmyaku: personal connections; network. ↩︎
16. The kanji for jin is “person,” and myaku is “pulse.” ↩︎
17. Mottainai: a waste. ↩︎
18. Kandoteki: moving. ↩︎
19. Sumimasen: excuse me; sorry. ↩︎