Anything Japanese in Broome and Thursday Island? Let's ask the authors

Two Japanese authors in Sydney have recently both published a fictional novel. Both books are set in Northern Australia and feature Japanese pearl divers there.

Hiroki Iijima (left) and Mina Matsudaira in SBS Sydney. Source: SBS

In 2016, Mina Matsudaira, a Gosford-based Japanese author, wrote a fictional novel Jo No Hitotsubu （Jo's grain of rice) in Japanese.  The novel is based on a real Japanese immigrant Jo Takasuka who is known as a pioneer of the rice cultivation in Australia.  

After completing Jo No Hitotsubu, Mina published another fictional novel Guuzen No Ten No Tsuduki (A series of coincidences) which is set in Broome, Western Australia last year.  In the novel, the quest of the main fictional character, a Japanese uni student Go Komori, is to trace his ancestors eventually bringing him to Broome.

Hiroki Iijima, a Sydney-based Japanese journalist, published his book Kiseki no Shima (Miracle Island) last month.  The novel is fictional but based on a true story that a woman on Thursday Island found her long-separated Japanese father and reunited with him after 56 years.

Hiroki witnessed the miraculous reunion and actually played a key role in the real pursuit of the father, which started as a post on Facebook.  That experience lead him to write a novel based on the story.

In the audio, Mina and Hiroki share their experiences in Broome and Thursday Island.  They also tell us their thoughts on the Japanese people who came to Northern Australia and worked as pearl divers.

Source: SBS

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