The Catalanophile friend of Jordi Pujol who pioneered strengthening ties with Japan

TokyoSome 10,410 kilometers separate Barcelona and Tokyo, which the President of the Generalitat (Catalan government), Salvador Illa, used this week to strengthen ties between Catalonia and this Asian country. A key name runs through the history of this rapprochement: Ko Tazawa, a quintessentially Catalanophile Japanese who laid the foundations (also linguistic) for the emergence of relations that are now experiencing a golden age. Japanese study Catalan at one of the four centers that the Ramon Llull Network has in the country, in Osaka, Aichi, Hosei, and Tokyo. The ARA is also home to his widow, Yoshiko Tazawa, also an academic and professor of language and literature. The couple arrived in Barcelona in the 1990s because Ko Tazawa wanted to study Catalan—she earned a doctorate in Philology from the University of Barcelona. Ko translated the great works of Catalan literature (such as Throwing the White) and Japanese, Yoshiko began to investigate the haiku in Catalan literature and the influence of other European authors interested in this poetic form. With her husband, she translated Towpath, by Jesús Moncada. For years, the Tazawas spent their summers in Queralbs and became close friends with former president Jordi Pujol, who owns a house there. Ko Tawaza died in 2022. Having published some sixty books, he left one last major work pending (although finished), which his wife is now revising and finalizing: a Japanese-Catalan and Catalan-Japanese dictionary. "As it's such a different language, a version for Japanese and another for Catalans is necessary," he explains. But is there any similarity between the two lands? Yoshiko Tazawa finds at least one: "Japanese and Catalan people love to work, and to work well."

The path opened by the Tazawas has been followed by other Japanese with an interest in Catalonia. At Osaka University, for example, a Catalan course has been taught for years (outside the Ramon Llul network), taught by Professor Shinya Hasegawa. In Catalonia, and from the UAB, professor and researcher Makiko Fukuda has been studying the ties between the two countries for more than a decade. Also with Ko Tawaka's help, Fukuda landed in Barcelona to pursue a doctorate in Catalan Philology (with a thesis that, incidentally, was supervised by the current Minister of Language Policy, Francesc Xavier Vila) and gain insight into the country's linguistic "reality."

The challenge of Catalan pronunciation

Fukuda learned Catalan at the UB faculty, although she already spoke Spanish before because she had studied at a Catholic school where this language was taught, and with founders of Catalan origin. She remembers, amused, how she discovered that Catalan existed in a country like Japan, monolingual and where the maxim "one language, one state" applies: "I had a friend at school who had spent the summer in England and had met a girl from Barcelona. She gave me her address so we could write to each other to practice Spanish. In a letter, she goes Japan, without n. I thought he'd made a mistake. Later I learned he was Catalan," he recalls.

Specifically, Fukuda's thesis sheds light on the linguistic uses of the Japanese community living in Catalonia (2,290, according to 2024 data). between Japanese and Spanish, and those who speak Catalan and Spanish fluently, in addition to their own language. What do those in this last group have in common? Above all, that they have a Catalan partner. biggest handicaps for Japanese people when they start learning Catalan. "I still look at the weak pronouns," he jokes.

Beyond Catalanophile Japanese, there are also Catalans with an equally intense interest in the Japanese language and culture. And it's a growing interest, according to Jordi Mas, professor of Japanese language and literature at the UAB and translator, who sees it in students who are interested in this world thanks to anime, manga, or J-pop. In Mas's case, however, his introduction to Japanese wasn't preceded by these interests: he chose it as a second language in his Translation degree without having any knowledge and later perfected it with stays in Japan. The professor recognizes the value of Tazawa's work, which served as a "bridge" and he began to produce, for the first time, direct translations. "The linguistic leap that exists between both languages is very large," he admits. Among other works, Mas has translated the Japanese classic into Catalan. The narrow inland road (1984 Editions), by Matsuo Bashô, and recently Black rainin (Flaneur), by Masuji Ibuse, which addresses the nuclear tragedy in Hiroshima. Each year, around thirty students proficient in Japanese graduate from the Faculty of Translation, and around fifty graduates in East Asian Studies.

Academia is not the only path that channels this interest. Literature was Mercè Torra's gateway to the world of Japan, where she has lived for two decades, alternating teaching with translation work. At 17, reading Shogun by James Clavell changed his life: he enrolled in Japanese at the Official School of Languages and, after studying Biology, he moved to the country, where he teaches Spanish and, from time to time, meets some Japanese interested in learning Catalan. Recently, he has published Japan. The book of curiosities (Lapis Lazuli), a collection of texts about curious anecdotes and customs from Japan, arranged according to the Japanese alphabet. Despite the obvious differences between the two languages, Torra also finds some similarities: "Both are fun languages, with wordplay and humorous expressions."