Since last April, a young Uzbek lady is striving to learn the intricacies of the Japanese work ethics as a new staff member at the OISCA headquarters in Tokyo. She is Ms. Sitora Karimova, native of Toshkent, the capital city of Uzbekistan in Central Asia.
Central Asia is very unfamiliar region to most of the Japanese people for geographical and historical reasons. Formerly a member of the Soviet Union, Uzbekistan became an independent state with breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. The country is rich in important mineral resources such as gold, uranium, molybdenum, tungsten, copper, lead, silver, and selenium, and has a great potential for economic development with expanding trade with Japan, the Republic of Korea, China, Western European countries and US, in the future.
Ms. Sitora Karimova was very interested in Japan, particularly the Japanese language and culture when she was still in Uzbekistan. Because her mother was working in a Japanese company in Uzbekistan, she had opportunities to meet and talk with Japanese company staff. She got a keen interest in Japan and became eager to come to Japan for study in some future time.
Her long-standing dream came true when she luckily obtained a scholarship from Toyo University in Tokyo. She studied in the Japanese university for 4 years, majoring in international relations. Aside from her native Uzbek language, she fluently speaks Japanese, Russian and English. In the future, she wanted to pursue a career that would contribute to improving the lives of the people in developing countries. When she was looking for a job after graduation, she happened to be offered position at OISCA, a Japanese NGO for international cooperation through environmental conservation, capacity building and community development.
Currently, Ms. Karimova is assigned to OISCA’s International Cooperation Division, and is dealing with a variety of activities, among others, the project to improve the livelihood of the local residents in her home country, Uzbekistan, through greening and agricultural development of the desert in the dried-up Aral Sea region.
Through her experience of living and working in Japan for the past 5 years, she has observed the unique Japanese cultural characteristics close to the heart. The first is people’s proximity to nature. In Japan, the symbiosis between humans and nature is highly valued, and even in urban areas, there are many gardens, parks, and other architectural features that are in harmony with greenery, and people are in daily contact with nature in their daily lives.
She says: “the connection with nature can also be seen each season. I believe it is a uniquely Japanese experience to be deeply aware of the changing weather and the beauty of the seasons and to engage in activities accordingly, such as flower viewing in spring and appreciating changing leaves in autumn”.
OISCA, in turn, is also implementing the spirit of emphasizing coexistence with nature through Children’s Forest Program (CFP), which provides children with opportunities to plant seedlings at schools and in the community to nurture trees and foster a sense of respect for greenery. It has been promoting in 37 counties and areas around the world through CFP, including Uzbekistan. She hopes to be more actively involved in in CFP in the future.
Secondly, she feels that another unique cultural feature of Japan is that the Japanese spirit of compassion (OMOIYARI). For her, the best way to describe Japanese “compassion” is to express gratitude. This was the first thing she learned when she joined OISCA, and she realized the importance of properly verbalizing her gratitude and making others feel valued. In particular, she was given an opportunity to experience various tasks at OISCA Chubu Training Center during the new staff training, and as they worked as a team to promote various initiatives, she felt the essence of compassion deeply when she realized the responsibility and burden of putting herself in the shoes of others. Compassion is about remembering what someone has done for you, building important human relationships, and cherishing those connections. In fact, this is an aspect of the culture shared not only in Japan but also in her home country, Uzbekistan. In Uzbekistan, there is also a strong concept of keeping trust with others and supporting each other. In Uzbekistan the Navori Theater, built by the Japanese POWs after World War II, is well known to everyone, and the contribution of the Japanese is not forgotten. In addition, there is a cemetery for the Japanese POWs in Toshkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, where the government of Uzbekistan and officials of the provinces and cities are making efforts to establish and maintain the Japanese cemetery.
She affirms that “both Uzbekistan and Japan have a deep friendship and a rich history. I would like to strive for the development of mutual relations between the two countries by introducing Uzbek culture to the Japanese and deepening understanding of the Japanese culture. “
