Rakugo in English - Rakumei-ya Eiraku is spreading English Rakugo to the Japanese community and around the world. He was recently invited to perform an English Rakugo performance at the St. Louis Japan Festival in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. Eiraku is also knowledgeable about Asian American culture, so we asked him what first got him interested in English and multiculturalism, and what kind of activities he has been involved in in this field.
Encountering the Ainu language as an elementary school student
Kawai: Let's go back in time and ask a few questions about yourself. How did you first encounter English, what was your student life like, and what kind of work and activities have you done since you entered society?
Eiraku: My first encounter with a language other than Japanese was the Ainu language. In the summer of my fifth year of elementary school, my paternal aunt and uncle, who live in Hokkaido, came to my parents' house in Aichi. My aunt is married to an Ainu man, and she stayed at my house with her Ainu husband. During the summer vacation, we had an assignment to do some independent research. My Ainu uncle taught me the Ainu language, and I immediately thought of using it as the subject of my summer vacation independent research.
This hinted at a Japanese class. In the first semester textbook, there was a passage about how Ainu language researcher Kindaichi Kyosuke collected the Ainu language of Sakhalin. After the southern half of Sakhalin became part of Japan during the Russo-Japanese War, Kindaichi Kyosuke traveled to Sakhalin and tried to collect Ainu language, but found it difficult to penetrate the Ainu society. One day, when he started sketching some children playing, the children came around and started saying something while pointing at the pictures. Kindaichi Kyosuke thought, "This is it," so he drew pictures and collected the Ainu language from the children.
I wanted to do the same thing as Kyosuke Kindaichi, so I drew human bodies and houses on construction paper, learned the Ainu language from my uncle, and created a picture dictionary of the Ainu language.
There is something I still can't forget. When I pointed to the ceiling and asked what it was called in Ainu, he said "nai" (not there). When I asked him what he meant by "not there" he said that Ainu houses don't have ceilings, so there is no word for it. This was an eye-opener, something that someone who only knows one culture would never think of. It is etched in my mind as a powerful intercultural experience.
At the start of the second semester, I submitted this as an independent study assignment, and my teacher praised me highly. One day, he gave me a rough explanation of the English language that you will learn when you enter junior high school. What surprised me at that time was the word order. I knew that the letters and pronunciation were different, but I was very interested in the fact that the word order was different, so when I entered the sixth grade, I asked my parents to let me attend an English cram school near my house. This was my first encounter with English.
When I entered junior high school, my English teacher recommended that I listen to the NHK radio language course "Basic English" in addition to my school studies. In fact, when I listened to the radio course, I found that it sounded much more authentic than the English I was listening to at school, with native speakers on the show. So I listened to NHK radio and TV language courses throughout junior high and high school. This allowed me to learn grammar and reading comprehension at school, and listening and speaking at home, giving me a well-balanced exposure to English. So, for the six years of junior high and high school, I was exposed to English through two channels. This built my foundation in English.
I studied Asia at university, and volunteered at a Laotian refugee camp in northeastern Thailand. After I entered the workforce, I worked for JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) for the first three years. You may wonder why I chose Asia after studying English, but this was heavily influenced by two of my mentors. One was Professor Kunihiro Masao, who was in charge of NHK's English TV program and led me to Sophia University, and the other was Professor Murai Yoshitaka, who was in charge of the Southeast Asia seminar at Sophia University.
Professor Kunihiro is famous as an English interpreter and is thought of as someone related to English, but he also had a great interest in Asia, having published a booklet called "Thinking about the New Japan-US and Japan-China" from Iwanami Shoten. He encouraged me to study Asia. I met Professor Murai at Sophia University, and decided to study Southeast Asia.
Getting to know Japanese-American actor Mako Iwamatsu
Kawai: It seems that you have always been interested in Japanese American culture and Asian American culture. What initially sparked your interest? And why did you become interested in these subjects?
Eiraku: As I just said, before I was interested in Japanese America or Asian America, I had a strong interest in Asia. After graduating from university, I worked for JICA, but I became interested in theater and rakugo, so I studied theater in Los Angeles from 1984 to 1985. Not academically, but acting.
That same year, the autobiography of Japanese-American actor Mako Iwamatsu was published in Japan: "Living in America: Breaking Through the Stereotyped Image of the Japanese" (Japan Translator Training Center). It was a stimulating book. I wanted to see a play by East West Players (EWP), a theater company he founded in Los Angeles, and this was the first step in my interest in Japanese-Americans and Asian-Americans. In fact, I was able to see many EWP plays in Los Angeles and get to know Japanese-American actors. However, Mako Iwamatsu had left the theater company at that time, so unfortunately I was not able to meet him.
I returned to Japan in 1985, and in the 1990s, I once again became very interested in Japanese American and Asian American films and plays, and I began to visit Los Angeles and San Francisco to watch Asian American films and plays. I also bought videos. Around that time, I met Mayumi Nakazawa, who wrote a biography of Yuri Kouchiyama, a Japanese American human rights activist, and we decided to hold a meeting in Japan to watch the videos I had acquired, which led to the founding of the Asian American Studies Association. This was in 1999.
Visiting my roots in Sakhalin
Kawai: I heard that you have roots in Sakhalin, but is there any connection to this? I heard that you've been to Sakhalin as well.
Eiraku: I think the reason I'm interested in immigrants, including Japanese immigrants and Asian immigrants, is because all of my father's family members were immigrants to Karafuto. My father never spoke much about Karafuto, and he passed away in 1992 at the age of 64. However, after his death, I found his notes and realized that he had been interested in his roots. So, in order to get to know my father, I researched various things about Karafuto.
My father's family all lived in a town called Konuma (now Novoaleksandrovka). My aunt, who lives in Konan City, Aichi Prefecture, told me about a group called the "Tokyo Konuma Association." I joined the group in 2001 and was introduced to people who lived in Konuma.
When the war ended, my aunt was already working at the Agricultural Experiment Station in Toyohara (now Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk), and she had a good memory, so I was able to hear a lot of stories from her. When I casually asked her, "How was Karafuto?", she gave the unexpected answer, "It was great." I assumed she would answer that it was cold and difficult. When I asked her what was so great about it, she said, "There was an abundance of seafood. We even threw away hairy crabs. Forestry was thriving, and we could get coal. In addition, the town where we lived, Konuma, was a prosperous area in Karafuto, and it was a wealthy region. Anything we lacked could be made up for by coming from the mainland (Hokkaido). We had to come back after we lost the war, but we didn't want to."
When I asked him more about fox farming, he said, "Many homes kept silver foxes, so when I came to Konuma from other places, I could smell the foxes. In spring, the foxes come into heat and become sensitive, and if a loud noise is made, the mother fox will bite and kill her baby. So in spring, when trains pass through Konuma, they turn their whistles down low." Listening to his story, it was like watching a scene from a beautiful movie. After all that, I gradually began to want to visit Konuma, where my father and aunt lived, and in 2014, I visited.
My uncle, who lives in the same city as my aunt, Konan, has a lot of documents about Karafuto, including a detailed map of Konuma from the time of Japanese rule. I tried to use the map to pinpoint where my father was. To my surprise, even though 70 years have passed since the end of the war, the map was quite useful. The locations of roads and schools had not changed. I was able to pinpoint where my father was, and stood at Konuma Station, thinking about my late father, who spent his time here until high school. The Suzuya River flows nearby. Interestingly, the name is also called Susuya River in Russian, and seems to have originated from an Ainu word.
Along the way, many Russians helped me with my solo journey. I also went to the place where a group of Japanese female telephone operators at the post office in Mooka (now Kholmsk) committed mass suicide at the end of the war. In 1977, the building was rebuilt as a bank called Belbank, but there was nothing left to show its history.
Kawai: In terms of Asian American culture, were there any people or works that you were particularly interested in?
Eiraku: I like film and theater, so I tend to lean towards those areas, but one of them is the Japanese-American actor Mako Iwamatsu, who I mentioned earlier. Brenda Aoki and Nobuko Miyamoto, who are still active as storytellers. Documentary film director Stephen Okazaki. Japanese-American playwrights Belina Hass Houston and Philip Gotanda. Poet and playwright Hiroshi Kashiwagi. Taiko drummer Kenny Endo. Chinese jazz musician Francis Wong. I was able to meet them in person and talk to them about various things.
I had the opportunity to meet Mako Iwamatsu when she came to Japan in October 2001 to direct the play "And the Heart Dances" (written by Wakako Yamauchi). The production was by the Teoriza theater company, and it was the first time that Japan and the US had joined hands to produce a play by a Japanese American. It was just after the terrorist attacks in New York, and Mako seemed to have been deeply shocked by it. This play premiered at EWP in Los Angeles in 1977, and was directed by Mako at that time, and was highly acclaimed. I think it was very moving for Mako to be able to direct the play in Japan. Mako was acting like a child as she fooled around during breaks in rehearsals.
Okazaki's Academy Award-winning film "Days of Waiting" is about a white woman who marries a Japanese-American, and I think it's an excellent film. Gotanda portrays first- and second-generation Japanese-Americans from the perspective of a third-generation Japanese-American. "Even for a third-generation Japanese-American like me, few people are interested in the history of Japanese-Americans. And when it comes to fourth- and fifth-generation Japanese-Americans, we're completely American," Gotanda said.
Houston is known for her play "Tea," based on her experience as a war bride, but she also writes plays on a variety of themes, including parent-child suicide and the atomic bomb. "Tea" was also performed in Japan in 1995 at Theater χ in Ryogoku. Brenda Aoki is a storyteller who tells her stories about her roots and Japanese folk tales, accompanied by her husband Mark. I hope to perform with Brenda someday.
Nobuko Miyamoto's performance is unique in that she holds a bowl she calls a "Singing Bowl," rubs it with a wooden stick to make a sound, and talks about her activities through song and dance. In 2021, she published "Not Yo' Butterfly" (Japanese translation: Nobuko Miyamoto Autobiography, translated by Izumi Masumi, Takanashi Shobo, 2023). She came to Doshisha University last year to give a lecture, so it was the first time we'd met in 20 years. She listened to my rakugo, and when I asked her what she thought of it, she commented that rakugo is a very delicate art.
Apart from Japanese people, there is Sandra Hsin Lau, a Chinese storyteller who talks about her life in the form of a one-person play. I think her "Aliens in America" is also an excellent piece. Alan Lao, also a Chinese poet, has published a collection of poems themed on his origins and the fresh food section of Uwajimaya in Seattle where he works, and he recites his own works. His recitations are very fascinating. Margaret Cho, a Korean stunned comedian, is a powerful comedian.
Kawai: Could you tell me more about the activities of the Asian American Studies Group?
Eiraku: It started with the idea of watching videos that I had collected in the United States, but we went beyond just watching the videos and invited guests to talk to us. The performers were Brenda Aoki, Megumi, Nobuko Miyamoto, Michelle Fujii, dancer Loco Kawai, poet Hiroshi Kashiwagi, and Chinese poet Alan Lao. They not only gave talks, but also performed.
Taiko performer Michelle Fujii captivated the audience with her powerful performance in which she sang a song while beating the Japanese drum hanging from her waist. Megumi, a third-generation Japanese-American, performed a performance in which she spoke about her experience of the internment of Japanese-Americans from the perspective of a first-generation Japanese-American and second-generation Japanese-American. Dancer Loco Kawai explored the intersection between traditional Japanese dance and contemporary dance. I remember well that Japanese dance is always about "keeping your mind down." It's not just dance, but also Japanese music such as 'Tenka' that is said to "keep your mind down." The same goes for Japanese drums. I think that "keeping your mind down" is at the core of Japanese performing arts.
Film directors include Anne Kaneko, whose "Overstay" depicts foreigners who are illegally overstaying their visas in Japan; Art Nomura, whose "Finding Home" depicts a Japanese American who chooses to live in Japan instead of America; and Rina Hoshino, whose "Caught in Between" compares the suffering suffered by Arab Americans since 9/11 with the discrimination suffered by Japanese Americans during the war. Filmmaker Chizu Omori, who made "Rabbit in the Moon," a film about the internment camps, also came to the event, screening her film and giving a talk.
Other people I remember vividly are Takeshita Yukio, who spent his childhood in the Tule Lake Internment Camp; Takako Day, who lives in the United States and wrote about the internment of Japanese Americans in her book We Can't Hit Japanese Soldiers (Fuyo Shobo Publishing, 2000); Murakami Yumiko, who gave a memorial lecture for Mako Iwamatsu; Kanda Minoru, who is knowledgeable about Asian American jazz; Awaya Nobuko, who introduced me to Gordon Hirabayashi, who opposed the Japanese internment camps during the war; and Kawai Ryusuke, who wrote a book about the Yamato Colony in Florida.
The study group continued from 1999 to 2011. It is currently on hiatus, but I believe the presence of Asian performers has had a major influence on me as a storyteller today.
Storytelling in English
Kawai: Mr. Hideraku, you seem to have been active as an independent researcher on Asian and Japanese American culture. I would like to hear your opinions on academic research in this field and how it is covered in journalism.
Eiraku: I was particularly interested in the films and plays that they produce. In 2010, I wrote a column about Japanese-American filmmakers and performers in Discover Nikkei called "From the Perspectives of Two Countries." Prior to that, I wrote a weekly column called "Flagbearers of Asian American Culture" in the San Francisco Mainichi Shimbun from 2001 to 2005, and a series called "A Stroll Through Asian Culture" from 2007 to 2008.
In addition to the entertainment industry, we also featured politician Daniel Inouye, business leader Glenn Fukushima, academics Yuji Ichioka and Harumi Befu, Korean literature researcher Elaine Kim, and Kiyoshi Okubo, publisher of the Hilo Times in Hilo, Hawaii, and founder of the Hawaii Island Japanese Immigration Museum. In total, we introduced nearly 200 Asian Americans. After Inouye passed away in 2012, a memorial exhibition was held in Japan, and I was surprised to see that the articles about Inouye that I serialized for the North American Mainichi Newspaper were on display at the exhibition.
In terms of how this field is covered in academia and journalism, especially in journalism, there is a Japanese perspective, but rarely an Asian perspective. In 2002, the Asahi Shimbun ran a series called "The Eagle and the Dragon," which focused on Chinese in America and Americans in China, and I think this was a groundbreaking series. Prior to that, in the mid-1990s, journalist Susumu Nomura interviewed Koreans around the world, including Koreans in America. This report was published in magazines by Kodansha and Bungeishunju, and later compiled as "A Korean World Journey" (Kodansha), which was also groundbreaking. The author himself said that through this series, the world began to look different. Japanese people tend to only be interested in Japan. There is no perspective of Japan within Asia. I think we should have a perspective that confirms Japan's position within the framework of Asia or Asians.
This summer, Kyoto International High School won the Koshien tournament. It seems that many people felt uncomfortable or rebellious towards the school song in Korean, but I think this shows a lack of Asian perspective and intercultural training.
Kawai: Through your activities thus far, including English Rakugo, what do you expect from Japanese American studies and cultural activities in the future? Also, what kind of activities will you yourself be involved in?
Eiraku: As an English storyteller, I am currently telling Japanese rakugo stories, but I am also thinking about creating stories about Japanese-Americans or Asian-Americans and telling them in the style of rakugo or kodan. However, I am unsure whether it is appropriate to talk about things that are not my roots. Would Japanese people be able to accept a Japanese person talking about the history and roots of Japanese-Americans? Shouldn't I talk about my roots in Karafuto (Sakhalin)? Or perhaps it would be better to portray a person who had a strong connection to Japan and other countries more broadly.
For example, the story of Sugihara Chiune, a Lithuanian diplomat, is one that both Japanese and Japanese-Americans can empathize with. John Manjiro, who served as an interpreter on the Kanrin Maru. Tsuda Umeko, whose portrait appears on the 5,000 yen note this year, and Nitobe Inazo, whose portrait was previously used on the 5,000 yen note. Other foreigners who were deeply involved with Japan include Lafcadio Hearn and the Englishman who became a rakugo performer, Kairakutei Black, aka Henry Black. His father, John Black, is said to be the father of Japanese journalism. Ernest Satow, who was a British diplomat during the late Edo period. I think it would be good to feature people like these.
"Stowaway in England," about the Choshu Five who studied in England at the end of the Edo period, is told in Japan as kodan, rokyoku, and rakugo, and I have already translated it into English and performed it in Japan, but I have not yet performed it overseas. I would like to perform this story in England someday.
© 2024 Ryusuke Kawai
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