TOKYO, Aug. 9 Kyodo -- Guan Lingxiang first came to Japan nine years ago with his parents and sister after his maternal grandmother, one of ''war-displaced'' Japanese nationals left behind in China in the aftermath of World War II, returned to her native country.

However, Guan, 22, repeatedly asks himself: ''Why am I here? I'm neither Japanese nor Chinese.''

Guan, who lives in the city of Kunitachi on the western outskirts of Tokyo, has not been able to find the answer as he wonders about Japan and China and often feels anxious about the issue.

He was brought up in Hunchun, a city in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in Jilin Province on the border between China and North Korea. He can still remember the deafening alarm that he heard in his infancy when tensions mounted along the border.

The Guan family is made up of his Chinese father, second-generation Japanese mother and sister, who is now 15 years old. Dreaming of attaining success in Japan, the family later followed the grandmother to settle in her homeland.

The younger Guan initially did not want to leave China, but agreed because his father did not want to leave him behind.

According to the Japanese Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry's statistics for 2002, a total of 19,757 war-displaced Japanese and their families have returned to Japan at state expense. However, support groups believe the number actually totals five to 10 times the number listed in the official statistics, if those who have returned at their own expense are included.

Two years after the Guan family started living in Tokyo, the father collapsed. Other than feeling acute pains in his stomach, he showed no other unusual symptoms. His doctor told him to come back if he collapsed again.

Guan was enraged because he felt his father was suffering from work-related stress. He himself was not quite accustomed to the middle school he went to. His classmates initially treated him well, but he was stung to hear them sometimes say, ''After all, he is Chinese.''

He recalled his days in China where people around him called him Japanese. He began distancing himself from the school. He could not find happiness in whatever he did.

Nevertheless, he advanced to night high school. But his father could not regain health. Failing to make it in Japan, the family returned to Hunchun in the summer of 1995.

The welfare ministry's survey on the livelihood of Japanese returnees and their families in 2000 showed that those receiving relief benefits accounted for 65.1% of those polled, which was a sharp rise from 38.5% in the previous survey conducted in 1995.

Three months after returning to Hunchun, the father told his son, ''Follow your own path.'' The younger Guan knew the words represented the difficulties his father endured because he had no education.

This time, he returned to Japan alone. He learned subsequently that his night school teacher Katsuhiko Saito, 47, had written a letter to his family in Hunchun expressing concern about him because he had not come to school. Saito had taught classes made up of Koreans and returnees from China.

His letter never reached Guan but he said that whenever he thinks of the letter it makes him feel warm inside because his teacher was thinking about his well-being.

Another teacher, who taught history, helped Guan open his eyes.

The teacher who studied in the United States and whose father had been a Japanese army soldier in China told him, ''Don't believe in history. Look at Japan from the outside.''

''(He helped me) broaden my horizons,'' Guan said, adding there is such a word as Japanese-American but he cannot find words like Japanese of Chinese or Asian descent.

He said he felt ''I should write my history by myself. I felt a little better after I thought about it.''

He has found wonderful friends, including those who are older than him and a physically impaired classmate. ''I've learned to recognize and respect others as human beings.''

Guan began taking part in activities to help returnees from China establish lives in Japan. ''I really received help from Japanese student volunteers,'' he said. ''If there had been a true support system my father would not have been forced to return to Hunchun.''

Psychiatrist Keisuke Ebata, who has been interviewing returnees from China since 1981 and who has researched Japanese-Americans in Hawaii, said those coming to Japan as family members of war-displaced Japanese are ''special'' immigrants because they are culturally Chinese as well.

''Adaptation to an alien culture entails mental difficulties that are more than (people) imagine,'' he said. ''It is more difficult for Nisei and Sansei (third generation) people because they have no experience (speaking or writing) Japanese.''

Ebata has been advocating the establishment of ''mental health and medical assistance'' to returnees from China.

Guan graduated from a junior college last spring and has been working for a perishable food wholesale company. He and his college schoolmate, who is a Sansei like himself, are scheduled to marry in the fall in Hunchun.

There is a saying in China that ''fallen leaves have to return to their roots.'' However, Guan has not decided whether his roots are in Japan or China, but he hopes to discover them with his bride-to-be.

His dream is to set up a business project linking Japan with Hunchun.