With more than 34,000 followers on Instagram, a regular in the stand-up comedy scene, and various directing and acting credits to her name, Nina Oyama has forged an impressive career and following for her diverse talents in entertainment. We often see a more diverse and upbeat Nina on stage or on screen – but her latest project reveals a different side.
Appearing in new documentary series Shaun Micallef’s Origin Odyssey, Nina joins host Shaun Micallef on a journey to her father’s homeland of Japan to uncover more about her heritage.
With her mother having a Scottish background, Nina has mainly understood one part of the heritage that shapes her while growing up in Australia. At times, she’s felt the need to shun her Japanese side, and it’s why even being approached for this opportunity felt somewhat confusing to begin with.
“I didn’t know whether I should say yes to it originally, because I felt very disconnected from Japan. I was sort of like, ‘Why would they want me to go back there? I’m like, not even Japanese that much,’” Nina tells Missing Perspectives.
“I had a lot of shame about not being able to speak Japanese and not going back there every year to visit my family. I had a lot of shame about that element of my life. So going to Japan was when I was going to confront my shame head on.”
It was the first time Nina travelled to Japan in 15 years. She had last visited when she was 14. The comedian pleasantly surprised herself as the Japanese that she knew how to speak easily came back to her. She could get by communicating with some of the locals.
“I wasn’t on Google translate that much,” she laughs. “It was very surreal, because I think I’d locked that part of myself away. Letting her back out was really healing. It was like my inner child or something.”
Nina Oyama. Photo: SBS
Growing up in Sydney’s North Shore which was less multicultural in the 1990s and 2000s, Nina struggled to fit in with her cohort at school. She explained that “if you weren’t a size six white girl with long blonde hair”, you often felt out of place, and in her case, she didn’t feel she could fully embrace her cultural heritage.
“It was a racist place. Maybe it still is, I don’t know, I never go back to the North Shore because I’m traumatised.”
Factors such as racism, experiencing depression and frankly, just being a teenager and trying to figure out who you are, all played a role in Nina feeling distant from her culture.
“I think a lot of it is just sort of self-preservation. You’re trying to survive in a society that doesn’t reward you for being who you are – and maybe part of that is you just sort of stifle your Asianness.
While Nina touches on community and identity in much of her standup community, she doesn’t mention her family too often in respect of their privacy. But this project is so intrinsically linked to her loved ones and it greatly impacted them in a positive way. Initially, they were surprised by her involvement as well.
“They were sort of like, ‘Why, you’re not even that Japanese?’” she again laughs.” Afterwards, they were really stoked. It was pretty funny, because at first, they were also quite trepidatious about it.
“I don’t talk a lot about my family in my comedy because they like to stay very private. They were sort of worried [with this] if it could be a big breach of privacy. But when they realised it wasn’t, they were like, ‘Hey, Nina, here’s a shopping list of Japanese cooking utensils you can only get in Japan’… It was really nice that my parents supported me in the end, even if it meant that they were secretly asking for presents.”
Nina Oyama and Shaun Micallef. Photo: SBS
One of the highlights of the trip was exploring a large family tree and discovering that Nina’s great grandfather was a samurai warrior. Being able to share this information with her dad once she got back home was particularly special, and has changed her and her family’s life forever.
“I think it was quite an emotional time for him as well,” she says. “I think he found out a lot of information that he didn’t know about his family from those scrolls.
“I would never have known if I didn’t go over there for Shaun Micallef’s Origin Odyssey, so honestly, it’s a true blessing in a way.”
The six-part series Shaun Micallef’s Origin Odyssey airs on SBS at 7:30pm Tuesday nights, with new episodes available to stream on SBS On Demand weekly.