From Zen to Solidarity: The Umeda Family’s Remarkable Polish-Japanese Odyssey

rodzina_umedow_yoshiho_umeda.jpg, default, The Umeda Family in Warsaw, 1981. Pictured: Yoshiho Umeda, Agnieszka Żuławska-Umeda, Tomoho and Julia. Photo from the Warsaw archive of the Umeda fami

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Have you heard of the Zen monk who became part of Warsaw’s pre-war bohemian scene? Or the Japanese liaison for Solidarity? This is the extraordinary story of a Japanese family whose fate became intertwined with the history of 20th-century Poland.

Ryōchū Umeda was born in 1900 in Tokyo. As a youth, he was sent to train at a monastery where, after years of practice, he was ordained as a Zen monk. He also wrote poetry and played the violin – although his spiritual teacher didn’t approve much. He studied at the Sōtō-shū Daigakurin Buddhist university, where this diligent student received a scholarship to travel to Europe to study Western philosophy. His destination was Berlin.

Ryōchū Umeda, professor at the Institute of the East in Warsaw, 1934. Photo: National Digital Archives (NAC).

He set sail from the port of Yokohama in the summer of 1922. On the ship to Marseille, he met Stanisław Michowski. A Pole born near Irkutsk, where his father worked as an official during the construction of the Trans-Siberian and later the Manchurian-Chinese railways. He graduated from school in Harbin and then worked in Shanghai. He spoke a bit of Japanese – we don’t know what he told Umeda about Poland, but it clearly sparked his imagination. Umeda may also have met Wacław Wieńczysław Piotrowski on the ship, a globetrotter and aspiring writer who had spent several years in Japan. There, he was involved in a committee working on the repatriation of Polish children from Siberia, while also publishing a Polish-Japanese magazine called Echa Dalekiego Wschodu (Echoes of the Far East).

Upon parting, Michowski handed his new Japanese acquaintance a note with the Warsaw address of some friends he could stay with. As it turned out later, this chance meeting would have a decisive impact on the future of Umeda as well as his descendants.

Little Ryjeczek in Edo on the Vistula

Ryōchū Umeda didn’t stay in Berlin long – he was soon knocking on the door to a flat on Puławska Street in Warsaw. There he was welcomed in by Michowski, his friend Stanisław Maria Saliński (who had also spent his childhood in the Far East), and the latter’s mother, Julia. Umeda never returned to the German capital, and stayed in Warsaw until September 1939. His friends affectionately called him ‘Ryjeczek’ (a diminutive nickname, similar to ‘Little Ryō’).

In her 2013 book Wolny Agent Umeda i Druga Japonia (Free Agent Umeda & the Second Japan), Anna Nasiłowska quotes a letter to a relative (translated by Agnieszka Żuławska-Umeda), in which Ryōchū shares his impressions of Warsaw after a few months of living there. One passage reads:

Poland is the most eastern of Europe’s Western countries. […] There are only eight Japanese people here. The city of Warsaw feels much older than Berlin. One could say it’s built like Edo, with a centrally-located castle like the Edo fortress, the streets spreading out around it like waves. For the first two months, I just couldn’t make sense of the layout of the streets at all. It was only through exploration and long walks that I began to understand their ancient beauty and the architectural harmony of the temples. There is a lot to say about how each temple is perfectly integrated into the urban structure of the surrounding houses and streets. I came to understand that this city has a certain dignity from the past that one can’t see elsewhere.

Ryōchū Umeda, professor at the Eastern Institute in Warsaw, 1934. Photo: National Digital Archives (NAC).

He began attending the University of Warsaw, where he studied ancient Greek and Roman philosophy under Professor Tadeusz Zieliński. Together with Saliński and Michowski, he moved into a tenement building on Towarowa Street in the heart of the working-class district of Wola, right next to the famed Kercelak market. There, they befriended a neighbouring student who also dabbled in poetry – his name was Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński. Soon, others associated with the Kwadryga literary group [a quadriga is a type of chariot – ed.] also found themselves within Umeda’s social circle, including Władysław Sebyła, a poet famed for his apocalyptic descriptions. As befits a story about a member of the inter-war’s bohemian scene, Umeda’s anecdotes didn’t lack for raucous drinking sprees and stormy love affairs.

In Poland, Umeda also spent time developing his musical passions: he took violin lessons from Paweł Kochański and piano lessons from Stefan Kisielewski. He contributed to the creation of Four Japanese Songs, Op. 25 by Jan Maklakiewicz, which was composed especially for Wanda Wermińska, the prima donna of Warsaw’s Grand Theatre. Umeda wrote the Japanese lyrics, which were later translated into Polish by Maria Wodzyńska. Before that, he had introduced the Polish composer to Japanese music by playing him traditional melodies on the violin and playing gramophone records brought from Tokyo.

Things started going downhill when his scholarship ended. He moved into a tower that was part of the abandoned Belle-Vue Inn in the Wilanów district. In the ‘Yellow Inn’, as Gałczyński called it, Umeda became a caretaker and the guardian of a pack of greyhounds – the owner of the Wilanów estate, Count Adam Branicki, had leased the building to the Society for Breeding Hunting Dogs. Over time, however, Umeda secured a permanent job, and life in Warsaw stabilised for him yet again. He became the first lecturer in Japanese at the University of Warsaw and later taught at the Eastern Institute, a key research centre for the Promethean movement [an initiative trying to destabilise Russia and the Soviet Union]. Among his students were Wiesław Kotański (1915-2005), a future University of Warsaw professor himself and the founder of its Japanese department, as well as Kamil Seyfried (1908-1982), a translator of classical Japanese poetry. Just before World War II broke out, Umeda was working with Saliński on an anthology of contemporary Japanese poetry.

In September 1939, he was evacuated (or possibly forcibly removed, as some say it took physical persuasion) to Bulgaria along with Japan’s diplomats. In Sofia, he worked at the embassy and later became the Asahi Shimbun newspaper’s Balkan correspondent. Toward the end of the war, he returned to Japan on a Japanese diplomatic mission. However, Japan on the eve of surrender – ravaged by militarism and aggressive nationalism – was no longer the country he remembered from nearly a quarter-century earlier. In the early postwar years, he became the caretaker of a rural temple near the town of Mobara, and later returned to an academic career. He married his cousin Hisayo Higuchi. They had two sons: Yoshiho and Naofumi.

He never returned to Poland – just after the war, its new communist authorities wouldn’t let him – but he maintained correspondence with friends who had remained in the country. In Japan, he translated Ode to Youth by Mickiewicz, poems by Wierzyński and Staff, novellas by Prus and Sienkiewicz, and also a major work: Quo Vadis. In the final years of his life, he worked on translating Nights and Days by Maria Dąbrowska. In 1956, together with Asai Kinzo (who translated works by Mickiewicz and Słowacki into Japanese), he founded the Polish Literature Society in Japan, which was based in Osaka. Just before his death, Umeda was baptised into the Catholic Church and took the name Stanisław.

Yoshiho, or rather Józef

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Yoshiho Umeda, photo: Marzena Hmielewicz/AW

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Before his death in 1961, Ryōchū expressed a wish that one of his sons go to Poland – and according to Japanese tradition, a father’s will is sacred. Prior to that, he had written letters to his Polish friends, searching for a family willing to take his child in. The distinguished archaeologist Professor Konrad Jażdżewski and his wife Stefania agreed.

In 1963, following in Ryōchū’s footsteps, his eldest son – the 13-year-old Yoshiho – headed to Poland. He brought with him some of his father’s ashes. A funeral ceremony was organised by his father’s friends, former student Kamil Seyfried and Stanisław Saliński. The urn was laid to rest in the Seyfried family tomb in Warsaw’s Powązki Cemetery. Afterwards, Yoshiho travelled to the home of the Jażdżewskis in Łódź.

At that point, a relative of the Umedas, the painter Kōji Kamoji, had already been living in Poland for five years – likely also encouraged by Ryōchū. He too made Poland his permanent home: he completed his studies at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts and became part of the artistic circle around Foksal Gallery, forming friendships with figures such as Henryk Stażewski. His art became much better known in Poland than in Japan – he was awarded the Cyprian Kamil Norwid Critics’ Prize (1975), the Jan Cybis Prize (2015), and in 2025, he was honoured with the Gold Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis.

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Koji Kamoji, photo: Adam Tuchliński / Reporter

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But let’s return to the story of the teenage Yoshiho. His foster sister, Ewa Jażdżewska-Goldstein, in a memoir article published on the Liberte! portal, shared an excerpt from her diary when she was a youth:

Yoshiho has acclimatised quickly and grown more and more attached to his new family. But he’s had his moments of crisis. I can still see him curled up on the sofa in the ‘piano room’ and covered in tears, repeating just two words: ‘No hope, no hope!’ It’s hard to imagine what a child so far from his homeland, language and loved ones must feel… He himself had wanted to come, but had overestimated his strength. Our mother hugged and comforted him, but she wasn’t his mother. We just stood around, completely helpless.

In 1967, his mother and her second husband, Yukio Kudō, moved to Warsaw. Yoshiho’s stepfather became a lecturer in Japanese at the Institute of Oriental Studies at the University of Warsaw. According to accounts in Nasiłowska’s book, he began learning Polish after meeting reportage icon Ryszard Kapuściński. Kudō’s list of translation accomplishments is impressive: he translated works such as Pan Tadeusz into Japanese, including all of Bruno Schulz’s writings, poetry by Wisława Szymborska and Czesław Miłosz, Witold Gombrowicz’s Pornography and Cosmos, The Manuscript Found in Saragossa by Jan Potocki, and Kapuściński’s Imperium. He also had several books about Poland published in Japan, including the memoir Seven Years in Warsaw.

After finishing high school in Łódź, Yoshiho moved to Warsaw. He began studying at the University of Warsaw – Polish philology at first, during which he became friends with Tomasz Jastrun, before later switching to art history. In Warsaw, he also met his future wife, Agnieszka Żuławska, a student of Japanese studies and a member of one of the most distinguished families in 20th-century Polish culture. She would soon go on to become a renowned translator of Japanese literature. Looking a bit ahead, the couple would end up having three children: Tomoho, Julia and Hana. The youngest, Hana, would become a play director, choreographer and performance artist – and the first dancer in Poland to specialise in the classical Japanese dance of jiutamai.

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Hana Umeda in the performance 'Sada Yakko', Komuna/Warszawa. Photo: Karolina Gorzelańczyk.

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Thanks to his wife and her friends, Yoshiho found himself immersed in a community of intellectuals critical of the government. He began working with the Workers’ Defence Committee, while his Japanese contacts contributed significantly to the growth of the underground publishing movement. He imported stencil duplicator masters from Japan for Mirosław Chojecki of the Independent Publishing House NOWA. These stencils were highly prized by underground printers, enabling works such as The Black Book of Polish Censorship, The Polish Complex and A Minor Apocalypse by Tadeusz Konwicki to all be published.

When the Solidarity movement emerged, he became an activist in the Mazowsze region. He also organised equipment and cassette tapes used to record Radio Solidarity broadcasts, which were later played, for example, through speaker systems in workplaces.

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Yoshiho Umeda, MZK Strike, 1981, at the junction of Aleje Jerozolimskie and Marszałkowska Street in Warsaw. Photo: Tomasz Michalak/Fotonova/East News.

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In 1980, during the shipyard strikes, Lech Wałęsa made a famous statement about building a ‘second Japan’ in Poland. When the opportunity arose, Umeda asked him what he had meant exactly. It turned out that the future president was fascinated by Japan’s economic development and expressed a desire to visit the Land of the Rising Sun – naturally, he appointed Yoshiho as the trip’s organiser. The Solidarity delegation departed for Japan in May 1981 – participants included Lech Wałęsa, Zbigniew Bujak, Władysław Frasyniuk, Jan Rulewski, Lech Dymarski, Elżbieta Potrykus, Tadeusz Mazowiecki and Magdalena Wójcik. Before the trip, Umeda prepared some cultural orientation for the representatives, including lessons on using chopsticks. The first foreign visit of representatives of the Eastern Bloc’s first independent trade union was a resounding success: the Japanese press later wrote about there being ‘Wałęsa fever’.

After martial law was declared in December 1981, the authorities couldn’t intern Umeda since he was a Japanese citizen – but they found a more severe way to make his life difficult. His permanent residency was revoked, and he was ordered to leave the country, while his wife and children remained in Poland.

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Lech Wałęsa with Yoshiho Umeda during their visit to Japan in 1981. Photo from the Warsaw archive of the Umeda family.

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After being expelled from his second homeland, Umeda worked to raise as much awareness as he could for Solidarity on the international stage. He had an audience with Pope John Paul II, meaning he was the first Solidarity representative to talk to the pontiff after the events of December 1981. He lobbied for support from the American Polish diaspora and was active in the Solidarity Coordinating Committee in France as well as the Coordination Office in Brussels. In Tokyo, he established the Central Polish Archive and co-founded the Pōrando Geppō (Polish Bulletin), a monthly distributed to trade union headquarters and every major Japanese media outlet.

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Yoshiho Umeda, 2007, Warsaw. Photo: Piotr Sadurski/Newsweek Polska/Reporter/East News.

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Following in his father’s footsteps, Yoshiho was baptised in Japan and took the name Józef – having previously been given that nickname by Highlander friends in the Tatra Mountains, a place he loved visiting. Interestingly, his godfather was documented by proxy as Wałęsa. Umeda was finally able to return to Poland in 1988. Ahead of the 1989 semi-free elections, he became involved in organising Solidarity’s election campaign. In the post-communist Third Republic of Poland, he went into business and also worked to promote the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. He was also one of the founding members of the informal Solidarity Seniors’ Convention.

He passed away in Warsaw in 2012. For those interested in knowing more, a short documentary film about Yoshiho and his father called Góral z Tokio (The Highlander from Tokyo) written by Jan Strękowski and directed by Bożena Garus-Hockuba was released in 1995. There is also Anna Nasiłowska’s 2013 book Wolny Agent Umeda i Druga Japonia which tells the full detailed story of Ryōchū and Yoshiho, even making use of their correspondence.

Translated from Polish by Adam Zulawski

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