Dancing in the Moonlight

Artist: Tomoyuki WASHIO

Mural Design Based on the Stories Written by

the Selected Members of IFCA’s Foster Youth Team in Japan

Part of the Foster Youth and Resilience Mural Project 2023-2025

International Foster Care Alliance [IFCA] www.ifcaseattle.org www.ifcajapan.org

 

Who We Are

IFCA (International Foster Care Alliance), a nonprofit organization based in Seattle, has formed foster youth teams in the US and Japan. For the last 10 years, young members in these teams have traveled to each other’s country and collaborated on more than 50 events that drew over 5,000 people.

 

Why Foster Youth Tell Their Stories

In Japan, unlike the US and other economically advanced countries, 85 % of foster children still live in large-scale institutions until they age out of the system. Foster youth are not given adequate opportunities to voice their viewpoint, and “youth voice” is unrecognized in this country. However, some of the difficulties that Japanese foster youth are facing are extremely similar to the ones that American foster youth are struggling with. These young people had childhoods filled with fear, humiliation and isolation. Being able to share their past experiences with peers and to transcend their cultural and linguistic differences has given them a strong bond and feelings of confidence and empowerment.

 

The Mural Project Starts in Seattle シアトル in the Summer of 2023 and Ends in Nagoya 名古屋, Japan in the Winter of 2025

This mural project is part of a 3-year grant program supported by the Japan Foundation. Japanese artist, TOMOYUKI WASHIO, and IFCA’s foster youth members have been designing the murals together based on the youths’ “stories of struggle and resilience”. This first mural in Seattle will reconnect foster youth between Japan and the US after the long pandemic period. We believe that art is a universal language that connects communities and that these two murals in Seattle and Nagoya will demonstrate our young people’s unity and strength across the pacific ocean.

Tomoyuki WASHIO (Artist)

Born in Aichi Prefecture. Based on his perception of art as a free human act, Tomoyuki Washio, a self-taught artist, engages with people and events centered on their relationship with the city to create works spanning illustration, design, animation and various other media irrespective of genre. He also develops music projects in shopping streets and other urban sites together with collaborators working in hybrid fields. His activities are multidisciplinary, including exhibitions at museums and international venues featuring Tekun, an original character with eyes and nose painted onto a hand. Major exhibitions include Aichi Triennale 2019.

In mid-June 2023, I listened to the youths’ stories.

What was their childhood like, how did they feel, what did they feel? From some of the stories, a common theme (keyword) came to mind.

I felt like I was wandering in the forest.

It was raining. It was as if plants had sprouted.

The night had dawned. From monochrome to colorful.

Accepting the past.           What is a friend?

Tracing back memories.

 And what I felt from these youths was strength.

Rain falling in the forest, scattered pieces of the moon (memories).

 

Kaho Uchida (IFCA Youth Member)

There has been enough violence to fill my life that I would not have suffered if I had had the money, calamities that I could have avoided, and despair that I would not have had to feel.

It is true that we are defeated by the violence of overwhelming social and systemic structures, but my resilience is to believe that these structures can be gradually changed through having a strong sense of independence.

I wrote down what I wanted to do in a notebook so that I would not forget, and thought about what I wanted to do if I had no constraints, and kept making choices that would bring me closer to that goal.

I was always making the best choices in a situation where I had few options. Also, my resilience includes accepting the societal structure that I cannot change with my own will power and live with that as well.

I solved what I couldn’t control by asking others for help, or by seeking other ways of doing things. I gave up on the things I couldn’t control and encouraged myself to experience beautiful things such as reading books, listening to music, and watching movies for a change of pace. I think I was trying to forget reality by immersing myself in that imaginative world.

 

Nana Miyazaki (IFCA Youth Member)

One of the things I found difficult when I was in foster care was thinking about the future.

It was like being in the forest at night when it was raining heavily, and I was just wandering around, soaking wet all over, with no moonlight or starlight. I thought my future was nothing good. I had no idea what I wanted to do in the future, and I didn’t even think about going on to higher education. I was so occupied with doing one thing at a time, wondering how I was going to make money in the future.

In the midst of all this, there was one thing that guided me. It was my high school teacher. He shined like a spirit and showed me the way.

He suggested that I should go on to higher education. He told me with a strong tone that “you are the one who should go on to higher education.”

I was a person who seemed to have nothing. However, he found the purpose of study in me. He also gave me the goal of going on to college.

When I realized, the rain had already stopped, the night was gradually dawning, and the world around me was becoming a little brighter.

However, even after that, there were times when the staff at the facility opposed my going on to higher education, or I was caught in the middle of adult-to-adult disagreements, and I almost lost my way. Nevertheless, I trusted the teacher who guided me at the beginning and set my goals on higher education.

On the day of the college acceptance announcement, the morning sun was shining in the forest.

Now I am studying to become a doctor at the National Defense Medical College in Japan. It is a future I could never have imagined when I was wandering in the dark forest.

I feel that I have been able to choose how to live my future and overcome the great obstacle to be independent.

My image of “resiliency” is a forest of a morning after rain.

There are fallen trees and leaves are still wet. But the rain is now making the soil rich and giving energy to the plants. Getting the power from the rain and the nourishments from the fallen trees, plants and trees grow. Seeds dropped on the ground by the rain will sprout. And they build a strong forest to prepare for the next hardship.

This is how a forest grows, and this is the beginning of everything.

 

Norika Tanabe (IFCA Youth Member)

When I was asked to highlight one thing in my foster care experience that I found difficult- that is, “I felt insecure because I didn’t know my own roots.”

Since I was 9 years old, I have been living in a child protection home, a complete change from my so-called “normal” family. When I was in the facility at that time, I felt that I did not need to know about my past, as long as I was happy in the present. However, when I left the institution and started living alone, I felt lonely. That was when I wondered if I really wanted to stay like this. I want to love myself, but I can only love myself from the age of 9…

I don’t know anything about myself, about the loss of my mother and my family that came with it…

So, I decided to reclaim myself.

First, I went by myself to the place where I was born and raised and saw my mother’s grave.

After that, I checked my own records and asked about the cause of my mother’s death and why I had to go to an institution.

I then searched the house where my father lived, and from the few information I had, I was able to find my relatives and we exchanged letters. We recently reunited and were able to talk to each other.

I was also able to negotiate with my uncle, with whom I had a bad relationship, to return my mother’s”ihai”(1).

At that time, I also obtained a photograph and saw my father’s face for the first time.

The time I felt I overcame a major difficulty was when I heard the cause of my mother’s death. For a long time I thought it was “my fault” that my mother died. However, I learned about my mother’s situation at that time, I was able to feel that it was not my fault.

Since then, I was not so unstable anymore.

The image of resilience for me is like putting together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Each piece has its own color- some are bright and beautiful and others are dark and monotonous.

When I was unstable, the pieces were scattered, and I could only collect the pieces that were standing out and looked beautiful to me. But every piece is part of “myself”. Including the good and the bad, they are all part of me. I had despised myself till then but only after the pieces were integrated, I was able to recognize it’s all “myself.”

I feel that I have not collected all the pieces yet. I will continue to search for more pieces of “myself” in the future.

(1) Ihai 位牌 is a wooden tablet inscribed with the posthumous Buddhist name of a deceased person to enshrine the spirit of the person.

 

Amu Yamamoto (IFCA Youth Member)

My resiliency is the ability to connect with others.

I am an only child. My parents divorced when I was one year old. My mother took me and I lived with her alone.
My mother tried hard to discipline me and even used abusive language and violence.

When I was in high school, my mother suffered from hearing loss. The hospital staff told her that it was caused by stress, and my mother told me that I was the source of her stress. Hearing this, I decided to die and told about this decision to my schoolteacher.

Then, I was taken into the custody of the Child Guidance Center as it was an abuse case. After being taken into care, I spent some time in a temporary shelter and was then placed in a foster home.

In the foster home, I was able to express my opinions to adults for the first time.

I was mentally immature and rebelled against society, adults, and my foster parents. I was very, very afraid to trust people.

I thought I would always be alone and on my own.

After leaving my foster home, I learned that there was a place for people who experienced foster care. I was able to feel the warmth of the people who gathered there through belonging to organizations including IFCA. After aging out of the system, I had to attend school while paying tuition and living expenses, was taken away by ambulance, and faced many obstacles such as trying to stop living.

I was able to overcome these obstacles because of the people who supported me. I was connected with kind and strong people. I am alive today because of everyone who has supported me.

Artist’s Apprentice: Tim Wampler (UW Art Student) Translator: Shiho Okada (IFCA Staff)

For more information about this mural project, please contact

Miho Awazu (IFCA Executive Director)

 

International Foster Care Alliance [IFCA] 501 (C)3 Nonprofit

6542 4th Ave. NW, Seattle, WA 98117 ◎ info@ifcaseattle.org

1-888-447-IFCA [4322]  Main  ◎ (206) 661-8225  Cell

 

www.ifcaseattle.org                 www.ifcajapan.org