‘Mandela in Japan’ — A Retrospective

I’m a firm believer in honoring our elders, heroes and inspirations while they are still with us in this life, that we may deepen our respect and remember anew how they lived, what they stood for and how they changed our lives in their own special ways.

Since no one has had for me a more positive impact and influence than Mr. Nelson Mandela, the former president of South Africa, and since he is still with us, I'd like to post here a few thoughts of my own about him.

Mandela came to Japan at least a couple times following his release from prison in South Africa in 1990 but before his inauguration as president of that country in 1994. I was lucky enough to be here in Japan then and to very briefly meet Mandela both times.

I’ll go into more detail about those memorable experiences later on, but for now, let me share with you — in pictures and in words — the impressions and images of Mandela that I managed to capture during his trips to Japan back in the early 1990s.

Have a look at these pages that I’ve added and/or updated to this website especially for remembering Mandela’s visits to Japan:

PHOTOS — “Mandela in Japan”: a photo retrospective of his October 1990 and May 1991 visits to Osaka, Japan, where I was living at the time.

ESSAYS — “Mandela in Japan” and “After Mandela”: a series of articles I wrote (listed here in two parts each) that were originally carried in 1990 and 1991 in Comrade News, the Japanese newsletter of the local Osaka branch of the Japan Anti-Apartheid Committee, of which I was a volunteer member at the time.

And while you’re at it, treat yourself to a reading of a poem I later wrote in honor of Mandela’s inauguration as president of South Africa:

F is for the FUTURE
F is for the FUTURE our children will bring
R is for the RIGHT to hear the songs they must sing
E is for EVERYTHING under Mama Afrika’s sun
E is for EQUALITY for each and every one
D is for the final DEFEAT of oppression
O is for ONE PEOPLE moving in a good direction
M is for MANDELA and the ANC
Now and forever the people will be free!!

(Sent to “Baba” [Father] Nelson Mandela on May 10, 1994,
celebrating his inauguration as president
of a free South Africa)

With the birth of a new, democratic South Africa capturing the world’s attention in May 1994, and with the birth of my own child expected just a couple months after that, the state of the world’s children was very much on my mind then. I imagined the kind of “ABCs” that South African children might be taught (or hopefully would be taught) in their schools following Mandela becoming president, and came up with this poem. So, this one is for the children — mine and South Africa’s.

And yes, as it notes, I did send this poem via the ancient technology of the fax machine to the new government under Mandela in Pretoria, South Africa, as well as to the Tokyo branch office of Mandela’s political party, the African National Congress. I’d like to imagine that included amongst all the thousands of archived boxes of official stuff commemorating that historical moment in South African and world history, my humble little poem today is right where it should be: buried at the bottom of a pile somewhere, forgotten, collecting the dust of time.

If you are a friend on social media who happened to be in Japan at the time of Mandela’s visits, please join in sharing your own thoughts, impressions and images of “Mandela in Japan” in the Comments space below. After all, we can never honor enough this great man and all that he has worked for and lived for in his long and extraordinary life.

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