Kaori Naka has spent 15 years in India, yet she admits the daily struggle of feeling like an outsider in her own art form. The Japanese dancer, who practices Odissi, confessed to early doubts about her ability to express 'Abhinaya' due to her facial features. "Odissi is my life, but I have already known that I'm not Indian or Oriya," she told the NDTV summit audience.
Naka believes dance transcends national borders. She argues that passion and surrender to the art form matter more than ethnicity or language. "Anybody who surrenders to an art form is the one who actually becomes the best or the ultimate artist," she said, adding that she now cooks Indian food daily and favors plain dosa.
Nupur Tewari’s experience in Japan followed a different path. After 24 years in the country, she noted that her journey began in Shikoku, not Tokyo. She landed in Matsuyama and felt a sense of belonging immediately, despite not knowing how to greet anyone in Japanese. Tewari credited Japan with reshaping her perspective on her own heritage. "Japan made me fall in love with my own culture," she said.
A specific memory from a trip to Yamaguchi illustrates this connection. Tewari described waiting at a small station with only two daily trains when an elderly local woman asked her origin and offered her a pear. "These are the small, small things," Tewari recalled. That single gesture of kindness now drives her mission to connect the two nations. "Because they gave me one Nasi, I want to give five Nasi," she explained, framing her work as a reciprocal act of gratitude.
Both speakers issued a direct challenge to the youth of India and Japan. Tewari advised Indian students in Japan to escape their comfort zones and engage with local festivals and shrines rather than staying within the Indian community. Naka encouraged young Japanese artists to learn their own traditions while respecting others, noting that many young Indians are unaware of classical dance forms. "You don't appreciate only other culture, appreciate your own culture too," Tewari concluded, emphasizing the need to build on a 5,000-year civilizational legacy.