Politeness Behind Human Nature
Due to work commitments Uesaka had to return to Japan on the final day of AniCon. My interview with her took place just before she left.
You’ve always wanted to visit St. Petersburg and now that you’re here what do you think?

Uesaka “I’ve been to Moscow twice before, once with my university club and once with you, Sakurai-san, on cultural diplomacy activities, but this is my first time in St. Petersburg. The city is full of all these place names that I have seen in my Russian textbooks at university, so just riding around on the bus here gets me excited. The first thing I did when I entered university was learn to spell place names. Places like Peter and Paul Fortress and Saint Isaac’s Cathedral. I don’t know why but the textbook I had was a St. Petersburg themed one with the characters in the book explaining the history of Saint Isaac’s Cathedral.”

What did you think of the people you met in St. Petersburg?

Uesaka “I mostly only got to meet people involved with AniCon, but everyone was so polite and intellectual and generally just quite people. I love the way girls are bashful here, too.”

What did you think of AniCon?

Uesaka “I just thought each and every person looked to be really enjoying themselves. You really got a sense that these people had been waiting for this day. The audience was taking everything in and they weren’t about to let a single moment slip by unnoticed. During my performance there were a lot of Russians waving around glowsticks that my fans from Japan had passed around. Even when I was signing autographs, my Japanese fans were handing out some of my goods to people and I had a blast signing all the CDs and photographs. It was funny to say “hello” to people in Russian and then be told “konnichwa, yoroshiku onegaishimasu” (hello, thank you in advance for anything you’re about to do for me) in Japanese. The Japanese words that the Russian people have learnt are really polite, and I wonder where they would even learn a phrase like “yoroshiku onegaishimasu”? That’s what I wondered to myself as I kept signing away. The politeness of words is not something that you can achieve through language learning alone. I think polite words are a reflection of the politeness behind an individual’s human nature.”

So now that we’ve carried out cultural diplomacy in Moscow and St. Petersburg, what else do you think we could do for Japan-Russia exchange for the future?

Uesaka “I know that what we’re doing won’t have much of an impact on Japan-Russia relations, but I hope that we can at least show people in Japan that there’s a different side to Russia than the one portrayed in the news. And if people see a new side to Russia then hopefully their view and understanding of the country will become more versatile. I hope that our cultural diplomacy activities can be of help in achieving that, no matter how small a role it may be.”

Just like in Moscow the previous time, a number of Uesaka’s passionate Japanese fans flew all the way to St. Petersburg to see her. There were even fans who came to AniCon and St. Petersburg to have fun with the friends they made previously in Moscow. Seeing the cultural diplomacy network expand like this is one of the big goals for Uesaka and I, and we’re very grateful to all the fans who take up the baton in carrying out the activities that we can’t.

Uesaka “I’m happy that fans are able to take part in an event that’s a good size for making friends and that it’s in Russia. If the scale is too big, you run the risk of having a Japanese-dominant gathering. I think that’s the real merit of moderately scaled events.”

After seeing so many otaku events around the world, AniCon for me had a really warm, at-home vibe. It was like a return to the roots of otaku events.

Uesaka “For real, I was disappointed that I only got to spend one day here. It was almost a midnight sun and I packed so much into my day yesterday I feel like I’ve been here about 3 days, but there’s still so much more I wanted to do and so many people I wanted to see.”

If there was one person in the visiting group who didn’t want to leave, it was Uesaka, and we all knew that. But the rest of the group took up the reigns from her and I’ll talk more about the work that we did in her absence in my next article.