A Temple of Refuge: Thich Tam Tri / Buddhist Nun

"Direct Talk"

Our guest today is Thich Tam Tri,

a Buddhist nun from Vietnam who lives in Japan.

She provides a lifeline to fellow Vietnamese people in Japan

who are facing hardship.

About 160,000 Vietnamese nationals

currently work blue-collar jobs in Japan.

They are brought over as "technical interns",

but are often treated simply as a source of labor.

Many young people caught up in this system have come to Tam Tri's temple for help.

I didn't know what I should be doing. I was yelled at when I messed up.

We speak with Tam Tri about Vietnamese workers in Japan,

and what she is doing to help them.

A temple of refuge

We in Japan enjoy convenient, comfortable lives.

But what supports that, behind the scenes,

are the multitude of sacrifices made by the many foreign workers living here.

Why aren't the Japanese government and the Japanese people

taking care of this class of society?

Tam Tri is the head nun of Daionji Temple in Honjo,

a city in Saitama Prefecture.

She freely gives out her personal phone number,

and answers calls 24 hours a day.

You might think that the faster you work, the better

but Japanese people may not see things the same way.

So stop and reflect.

The Japanese do things carefully and methodically.

She shows the astounding number of calls and texts she receives.

In 1993, Japan launched the "Technical Intern Training Program."

It places large numbers of young foreigners, many from Southeast Asia,

mainly in jobs on farms and in factories.

But the life of a technical intern comes with harsh restrictions:

interns cannot change jobs,

and they cannot bring family to Japan.

Abuses within the system are common,

and critics both in Japan and abroad have charged

that the interns' human rights are being violated.

Some of the technical interns are not as lucky as others.

Some end up in a bad union or working for a bad company.

And these interns face violent or abusive language,

beatings, bullying, retaliation.

We've also seen people being underpaid and forced labor.

Daionji Temple takes in Vietnamese interns

who can no longer endure their working conditions.

Tam Tri lives right alongside these young people.

And she assists them in figuring out the next chapter in their lives:

negotiating with former workplaces, acquiring visas to stay in Japan,

or securing passage home.

Smells great. You all are good cooks!

Let's eat.

Make sure to take a lot. And take it with those chopsticks!

This is Ha, a single mother with a four-year-old back in Vietnam.

She came to Daionji a few days ago.

She had been working at a food processing plant in Osaka

but the work wore her down physically and mentally.

I was taking sleeping pills, and I was just falling apart.

The company wouldn't let me quit.

She fled the internship and was put up by a friend.

Then, she became pregnant unexpectedly.

I had bad morning sickness.

I couldn't work, so I couldn't make money.

Ha was in dire straits. That's when a friend told her about Daionji.

I'd like to stay here.

I want to work in Japan and make money to provide for my child.

First, you need to take care of yourself.

You can only help your child when your body and mind are healthy.

Tam Tri is helping Ha make preparations for giving birth

and will help her through the visa process

so that she can start work again once she's had her baby.

I've always loved Japan.

But people often come to me with terrible stories.

Japan is such an advanced country.

How could it have such bad companies?

It seemed unbelievable.

I felt very torn. I could sense this conflict.

Today, a man has come from Vietnam to visit Tam Tri.

His brother-in-law recently died in Japan.

He had only just begun work as a technical intern.

On his first day of work, he went swimming in the river with friends.

There were six of them. Only my brother-in-law died.

I would like for you to arrange his funeral.

That's all I ask.

Allow me to express my sincere condolences.

The man asks Tam Tri to arrange a funeral service.

Holding services for Vietnamese who have died in Japan

is one of Tam Tri's most important duties.

Throughout her years of service,

she has overseen memorials for more than 400 Vietnamese nationals in Japan.

Recently, many technical interns who have had abortions

have asked the temple to perform memorial rites.

That's the most common request we receive.

We've also seen sudden deaths, strokes, suicides, illnesses,

as well as some work-related accidents.

Suicide is much less common in Vietnam.

But interns come to Japan and find that the working and living conditions are brutal,

and in the end, they choose to take their own lives.

Every time I get a phone call like that,

two thoughts immediately jolt into my mind,

"Why?" and "Another young life lost."

I feel it so strongly.

Before COVID-19,

we could return to Vietnam with the urn and present it to the family.

Once, when we arrived at the airport,

the bereaved family grabbed on to my feet,

and they began praying to me.

They said, "Thank you, sister.

Thank you for bringing our child home.

Although, who wants to see their child coming home like this?"

Then they burst out crying.

Being a part of those situations brought so much pain to my heart.

Thich Tam Tri was born in 1978.

She grew up poor, the youngest of nine siblings.

They were raised by their mother, a devout Buddhist.

When she was seven, Tam Tri decided she wanted to be a nun.

As a university student, she met a Buddhist priest from Japan.

She came to Japan to study Japanese Buddhism.

In 2011, Tam Tri was studying and living in a temple in Tokyo

when the Great East Japan Earthquake occurred.

The event changed the course of her life.

I wanted to finish graduate school and go back to Vietnam to teach.

But then, the Great East Japan Earthquake happened.

In the Tohoku region,

84 Vietnamese exchange students and technical interns were affected.

With the help of the Vietnamese embassy, we took three buses to Tohoku

and evacuated these victims back to a temple in Tokyo.

I realized in that moment that there were a lot of Vietnamese people in Japan.

And I decided not to return home.

I continued on with my graduate studies.

And I have remained here in Japan to this day.

The number of Vietnamese nationals in Japan has increased more than eightfold

over the past ten years.

Technical interns form a growing percentage of this population.

But the COVID-19 pandemic has made life for some interns even harder.

When the pandemic began in 2020, lots of interns lost their jobs

but there were no flights out of the country. They had nowhere to go.

So our temple set up four shared homes for these interns.

We gave them food and a roof over their head.

So they didn't need to sleep in parks, internet cafes, or at friends' houses.

They had their own space.

We hosted 2,600 people in total

and helped support their return home to Vietnam.

The temple helps Vietnamese people through various difficulties.

Tam Tri says that many people come to Daionji with mental health troubles.

The first few months they're here, it's really tough.

There are three of us sisters, and three employees.

It's difficult to always know how people are feeling inside.

Anxiety, depression, confusion, and fear

can lead to a mental breakdown, or to paranoid episodes.

They're acting self-destructively, and we can't always get through to them.

Some have even tried to kill themselves

by throwing themselves out a window or grabbing a knife.

When this happens, we try to respond with compassion,

we try to understand how they're feeling.

You just have to speak softly, calmly,

and find a way to make things better however you can.

The important thing is to help them calm down.

Tam Tri rents a piece of farmland,

where she grows vegetables along with the interns.

She says that doing work out in nature helps to heal the body and mind.

Sweet and juicy.

Daionji receives donations of both money and goods from across Japan.

Some of these donations come with letters.

You two, come here.

I want to translate this letter for you.

It's very moving.

It says, "The other day, I saw a report on TV

about how Vietnamese people are experiencing all sorts of hardships.

I learned that many Vietnamese people have died here in Japan.

When I heard about this technical intern training program,

it seemed like the interns face so many challenges.

I believe we must work harder to respect and protect their lives.

That is my sincere hope."

A moving letter, isn't it?

- A Japanese person wrote it?
- Yes. And there are many more like this.

I show them that a lot of people care about them.

I think this approach can help to lessen their disappointment in Japan

and bring their souls a measure of love and peace.

There are still so many people in this situation who are suffering.

In order to alleviate the suffering of these foreign workers,

I feel I must continue my work and do everything in my power to do so.

This is the idea I focus on 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

I want to be a nun that helps everyone find peace and happiness.

That's my goal.

(Do you have any words to live by?)

"The healthy leaves protect the ragged leaves."

It means you should help people who need help.

This is a traditional Vietnamese value:

having a spirit of solidarity.

We should all care for each other, support each other,

love each other, help each other.

That's the meaning of this expression, and that's why I chose it.