Interviews

1. The origin of name Kishi Bashi

2. His Shin-Issei parents

3. On being Japanese and American

4. On his songfilm Omoiyari

5. The reason for creating the songflim Omoiyari

6. On music

Kishi Bashi

(b. 1975) Musician, composer, and songwriter

The origin of name Kishi Bashi

My real name is Kaoru Ishibashi and I was born in Seattle. Kaoru is really hard to pronounce for a lot of Americans so…the A and the O next to each other…so I’ve been “K,” the letter K since I was thirteen, and I just switched to that. And K. Ishibashi, and I just stuck it together and I cut it in the middle. And that’s Kishi Bashi, and it’s kind of fun, people like to say it. And it’s kind of mysterious – it could be a band, it could be a person.

musicians names

Date: August 21, 2018

Location: California, US

Interviewer: Sharon Yamato

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

Interviewee Bio

Kaoru Ishibashi, who performs as Kishi Bashi, is a Shin-Nisei musician, composer, and songwriter, born in Seattle, Washington and grew up in Norfolk, Virginia. He attended Berklee College of Music and became a renowned violinist.

His film project, Omoiyari (Empathy), led him to places such as Manzanar, Tule Lake, the Japanese American National Museum, and Japan to learn about Japanese American and Japanese World War II history. Omoiyari explores how empathy and the lack of it has played key roles in our modern quest for social equality. (March 2019)