Adam Papicki and Róisín Ní Bhaoill Papicki give us some idea of what are the implications of an intercultural Irish-Polish marriage forged in Japan.
Itercultural marriage. This is what may come to mind when you consider that we are from two different countries – Poland and Ireland. But in order to determine whether the relationship can be classified as intercultural, it may be useful to clarify whether two substantially distinctive cultures are in fact involved.
What is Irish or Polish culture? It would clearly take more than an article in The Word to provide even a semi-objective analysis. For some, it might be hard to imagine that two people from these two diverse nations could find anything in common, never mind make a marriage work.
Things look drastically different when given a Japanese context. Only some Japanese will note that Poland and Ireland are located in different parts of Europe. For most, Europe is not worthy of any further distinctions because it is small enough to be covered within a single holiday tour.
But regardless of what the Japanese may think, the Catholic religion is the common ground for the Irish and Poles. Catholic parishes in Japan are small enough that two non-Japanese parishioners will be treated as almost a homogeneous entity and they’ll certainly have opportunities to meet each other via numerous social events.
This was how we actually met in Nagoya and gradually got to know each other. Being practically isolated from our native cultures we naturally focused on personal values and qualities, forgetting about cultural differences. That was probably not the only reason why we have never found our relationship intercultural. At that time we both had experienced living, studying and working in the foreign cultural environments of Japan and the US, while having friends of various nationalities and religions.
Before our marriage, we obviously tried to find out more about the countries, cultures and families we were about to marry into. Despite our best efforts, there were still some surprises. First of all, the wedding was perhaps the most intercultural experience of all, especially from the Polish perspectives. Róisín wanted to choose a colour for the wedding that would be both original and express her sense of aesthetics, and it happened to be purple. In Poland it’s usually the colour used as a background motif for … funerals, so the Polish guests were slightly shocked at the outset.
Then there was the fact that the bride arrived at the church alone, contrary to the Polish tradition where the young couple join their hands at home and receive a blessing from the parents. In keeping with the Irish tradition, Róisín was about a half an hour late (to be fair, not quite by her choice), which while not unusual in Ireland, was rather horrifying to the Polish party.
The ceremony itself was in three languages: Gaelic, English and Polish, with a minor accent in Japanese. Among the guests from Ireland, Poland, Australia, the USA and Japan, there was no single person who understood everything.
The local fashion traditions were also difficult for Adam’s mother to satisfy while making preparations in Poland and so an emergency shopping tour of Letterkenny was required to find a suitable hat. The wedding reception had some surprises as well. Foreign guests and the groom himself were not quite prepared for the specific character of the wedding speeches, or the tradition of buying drinks at the bar.
The Japanese guests were not ready for the fact that the party stretched almost till the morning hours while Polish guests were surprised to see the young couple disappearing before the guests.
The real challenge came, however, several months later, when after a short period of married life in the US, we were forced to land in Ireland in a bid to find suitable jobs and settle down. With PhD degrees in fields such as physical chemistry (Adam) and international development (Róisín) finding positions that matched our qualifications was going to be difficult. But many didn’t seem to understand that these scientific degrees did not correspond to accumulated financial resources – and we were really in need of an income!
Róisín, thankfully, was able to use her teaching qualifications, which she acquired before the Japanese postgraduate studies. But then Japan appeared as a promised land again when an offer of a postdoctoral contract arrived for Adam from Tokyo.
A few months later Róisín was able to resume part-time lecturing in English in another respectable university in the Japanese capital. However, it was obvious that as foreigners in Japan we could not hope to rise above the status of a resident underpaid “gaijin” (a slightly derogatory term for a foreigner in Japanese). So settling down in that part of the world was not a promising option. Job hunting around the world resumed and it was almost surprising when the first real opportunity and an actual job offer arrived from Ireland!
That was just a few months ago and now we are trying to get settled in Ireland again. Time will show how intercultural our family will be in a few years, but the key is probably to focus on all the issues that are important for every relationship and perhaps to use the global experience to make our life more interesting.
Thus we are celebrating St Patrick’s Day and birthdays in an Irish style, name-days by Polish standards and the Polish Christmas Eve 12-dish supper with traditional fish – even if it happens to be a set of Japanese sushi!
This article first appeared in The Word (November 2006), a Divine Word Missionary Publication.
