Why Miss Japan speaks fluent Bengali?

Priyanka Yoshikawa Ghosh looks a perfect Japanse girl, demure, intelligent, soft spoken and delicate. Being the first Miss Japan from a mixed background, she was on a recent trip to Kolkata, a land that belongs to her forefathers. What is even more striking, is she happens to be the great-granddaughter of Prafulla Chandra Ghosh, Bengal’s first chief minister.

Her crowning at the international pageant had created a stir in Japan, where barely two per cent biracial babies are born in a year. The tall Tokyo girl, whose father is a businessman and mother a Japanese yoga instructor, had spent a year in Bengal, when she was nine and manages to speak in fluent Bengali. She has learnt the language back in Japan and loves conversing with her extended family, many of whom live in Kolkata or other parts of the world in Bangla. 

Her extended family of aunts, uncles and nieces have a house in Sodepur. And while she was in Kolkata in her childhood, she studied in an English-medium school. She is also proud to be the great granddaughter of Bengal’s first chief minister Prafulla Ghosh. Priyanka is an elephant trainer and loves Bengali food and Bengali movies. She has seen the Japanese wife and wishes to see more, though Bengali or Bollywood movies are hardly available in Japan.

It was her brief stay in Bengal as a child that sparked in Priyanka the urge to get involved in social work, specially her trips to Dakshineshwar and she never forgot the face of a child chasing her car for money. This time too she visited the temple with her mother. Being Miss Japan will help her now to get more involved in social work.