Kinning through the “House in Kirinosawa”: How migrants craft togetherness, relatedness, and belonging across time

Blending discussion with ethnographic writing, this article examines repeated visits to a residence in Japan that functions as a space for events organized by migrants for migrants. Beyond the visible themes of these gatherings lie subtler processes through which the house becomes meaningful. The house is enlivened through storytelling and interactions with objects, practices that forge relatedness over time. These practices express the migrants’ desire to belong with the host society. Yet belonging takes an unexpected form: the original owners with whom kinning unfolds are physically absent but experienced through material traces and imaginative engagement. Frequent references to the owners’ affluence reveal another migrant aspiration: to be well off. The article conceptualizes this crafting of relatedness as “kinning-through-the-house,” emphasizing its temporal dimension. It contributes to broader debates on kinning and belonging in migrant contexts by foregrounding the role of place in shaping social ties across time.