A culture of trust
Kumi Taguchi embraced her Japanese heritage in her role as a guest presenter for Dateline and found it created a helpful connection with her interview subjects, writes Siobhan Duck
WHEN it comes to storytelling, Kumi Taguchi believes it isn’t always what you say, but how you say it that can have the most impact.
She applied this philosophy while she was in Japan investigating the assassination of former prime minister Shinzo Abe as a guest presenter for Dateline when it returns on Tuesday, March 7.
Although she can only speak basic Japanese and relied on the aid of a translator to conduct interviews, Taguchi’s innate understanding of the country’s cultural nuances enabled her to gain the trust of her subjects.
As such, Taguchi applied a slow and steady approach to her interviews, realising that Japanese people often respond better to patient perseverance than being put on the spot.
“Even just greeting people and sort of going into a space and thanking them for being in their space” she explains.
“It might seem quite arduous and to someone who hasn’t grown up in that space, but to me, it just feels very natural.
“I definitely see it now as a skillset that I didn’t realise was valuable until you see it in action, and you see how potentially you might get an answer out of someone that you might not have otherwise because there’s a cultural trust that seems to work quite well.”
Born in Sydney to a Japanese father and an Australian mother who taught primary school Japanese, Taguchi has always had a healthy respect and appreciation for the customs and history of her father’s homeland.
“This is where it gets interesting though, all my Japanese cultural upbringing was actually through my Aussie mum and she was the one who took us back to Japan,” she says, after explaining that her parents separated when she was young.
“That [cultural understanding] was definitely imbued in us just by going back and forth to Japan a lot and visit grandparents.
“Friends of mine say to me that when I go to Japan, my whole physical body looks different. They say, ‘You change. You become smaller. Your hand gestures become more refined. You stand back a bit more when you’re conversing with people. Even the way you talk is different’.”
Like the rest of the world, the Insight host was left stunned when former prime minister Abe was gunned down on the campaign trail in July last year.
“When people cast their minds to these sorts of stories [you don’t really think of Japan],” she says.
“They might think of the sarin gas poisonings [the 1995 terror attack on the Tokyo subway that killed 13 people].
“But you can’t think of many moments. Whereas, if we’re thinking about news stories here or the US or anywhere, it would be more a case of ‘which story over the last year do we pull out?’
“So, it was shocking. That sense that this doesn’t happen in Japan and also he was this figure who
[was well known in the west]… Shinzo Abe was the Japanese prime minister who most of us would think of and know his name and he had those sort of relationships with Washington and with Canberra. For someone to shoot him was shocking.”
Adding to the intrigue, Tetsuya Yamagami later confessed to killing Abe over the politician’s ties to the Unification Church, which he claimed had bankrupted his family.
“The church was founded in Korea,” she says.
“Some people refer to it as a cult because there’s aspects of it [that are cult-like] where you pay a certain amount of money to buy an urn, or a spiritual thing so that your ancestors can be taken care of.
“The fascinating thing about Japan is that, while the church has branches around the world, Japanese church members donate far more money to the church than any other country around the world.”
Taguchi’s lead story for Dateline investigates the church and its impact. She was able to get church members to share their stories and discover fascinating insights into Abe’s family history as well.
This year, Dateline’s new format features a shorter human interest story as well as the longer investigative piece. For that, Taguchi interviewed a Japanese mother who has turned her home into a bomb shelter.
The Dateline experience has certainly been a passion project for Taguchi, who is always looking for new ways to test herself at work and in life.
Her desire to push herself out of her comfort zone is why she chose to run a half-marathon. And to take part in the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race. It’s also why she’s planning to take up mountain climbing.
“I’ve got better as I get older, but I was actually a very fearful child and quite a fearful young adult,” she explains.
“There’s something in sport that has given me courage for myself, I’ve never found in any other arena.”
Acknowledging that her background was an advantage on her Dateline assignment, Taguchi says it also spurs some of her thoughts about the industry.
She wonders sometimes whether she would be a successful broadcaster if she didn’t sound the way she does. That’s because while Australia is making great inroads to embrace diversity on screen visually, the same inclusivity doesn’t extend to what we hear.
“If you listen to say BBC Radio, you’ve got Scottish accents, Irish voices, Liverpudlians and accents from all over the place,” Taguchi reflects.
“Here you don’t hear someone with the broadest thickest Aussie accent, which should be on radio. It should be on television. So, there’s another step around diversity of accents because I feel like that gives us a real diversity of where people have grown up and how they’ve grown up.
“Yes, it’s important that someone turns on the telly and can see someone who looks like them, but I think it’s equally important that someone turns on the telly or listens to the radio and they hear someone who sounds like them.”
YOU SEE HOW POTENTIALLY YOU MIGHT GET AN ANSWER OUT OF SOMEONE THAT YOU MIGHT NOT HAVE OTHERWISE BECAUSE THERE’S A CULTURAL TRUST THAT SEEMS TO WORK
Insight, 8.30pm, Tuesday, SBS; Dateline returns at 9.30pm on Tuesday, March 7, SBS