Artist, poet, scholar and garlanded translator, Peter MacMillan has come a very long way from his childhood in the Kildare countryside, growing up in “splendid isolation” in a house of eight children.
For the past quarter century he has lived in Japan, where he paints, writes and lectures part time at the country's top institute of higher education, the University of Tokyo.
After years of intellectual toil, MacMillan is increasingly recognised as one of the country’s most brilliant interpreters of Japanese culture, putting him in a small group of elite foreign scholars.
His 2008 publication of 100 waka, a form of classical poetry, won several prestigious translation prizes. A witty collection of prints called Thirty-Six New Views of Mouth Fuji, taking a gently cynical look at consumerism and Japan's national icon, has earned him the attentions of Akie Abe, wife of Shinzo Abe, the prime minister.
“She’s very interested in promoting Japanese culture,” explains MacMillan over an afternoon coffee in central Tokyo. “She came to my exhibition and said she was so happy that someone from Ireland was doing this because she felt a special link – the respect for nature.”
A youthful 55, MacMillan left Ireland for good aged 20. “I remember the night before I left, I had a dream that I was flying above our house and I was looking down on my mother,” he recalls. “I told her that the next day and she started crying. She said: ‘That means you’ll never come back.’ ”
It was a prescient comment. Though he is very close to his mother (his father, a former art dealer, died in 2008), he has lived abroad most of his life, first in the US and then Japan, which has been his home since 1987.
Like thousands of emigrants in the 1980s, he felt there were few other options. “There was no work,” he laments. “There was no employment office at UCD; nobody talked about employment or careers; everyone of my generation left, mostly for England. I was sad to leave Ireland. But it was inevitable.”
A self-confessed workaholic, MacMillan has long been a high achiever. He graduated first in his class from UCD, where his philosophy lecturers included Desmond Connell, former Archbishop of Dublin. "Though conservative, he was a totally brilliant man," he recalls.
When he arrived in Japan, he dived into Japanese language, passing the notoriously difficult national examination in less than two years.
He says new immigrants miss out if they don’t bother grappling with the local lingo.
“If you get two languages, you get two lives,” he says. “Coming to Japan has been an enormously transformative experience for me and changed my life for the better.” Distance and time, he says, has given him deep gratitude for his parents.
For years, his day job was teaching at a university in the Tokyo suburbs, where he is still a visiting professor. Meanwhile, he steadily built up a reputation for producing translations, art and poetry. He is now a regular cultural commentator on television, where his lively enthusiasm for Japan’s gold-standard classics and fluid, scholarly Japanese sometimes astonishes viewers.
Last month, he gave a lecture at prime minister Abe's official residence on his forthcoming translation of The Tales of Ise, a 10th-century literary classic. He has just anchored a prestigious translation project for Mr Abe, explaining the government's territorial policies in English.
While still an unusual destination for Irish citizens, Japan is a surprisingly comfortable fit, insists MacMillan.
“It’s a place where you show, not say; you can have any identity but the courtesy is not to discuss it, to be too aggressive. And I also think that’s the way I grew up: one shouldn’t be too aggressive about who one is. So Japanese culture fits with my own way of thinking.”
Irish culture is popular in Japan, even with the Emperor and Empress, who once had their own Irish adviser – the Mayo-born Eileen Kato.
“They love the culture of Ireland,” points out MacMillan. “The words of the poet were sacred in Ireland, same as Japan. The belief in Shinto is similar to ancient Celtic beliefs. And there is great delicacy in their behavior and aesthetic sense. I think that’s what makes this a country I’d always like to live.”
He calls his adopted home a country of great opportunity.
“If you come with an open mind you can have a very wonderful experience, and it will transform your life,” he says. “They key is to learn a little Japanese. I think the people who don’t can only participate in a very limited way in the culture.”
Will he ever return to Ireland? MacMillan does not rule it out. “I think the Ireland I disliked the most was during the peak of the bubble because it was a coarse, brash place. But the best of Ireland has come back.”
“The Irish are great entrepreneurs and achievers and I think they can overcome all challenges.”
