Javier García Wong-Kit
@JaviernestoJavier García Wong-Kit is a journalist, professor, and director of Otros Tiempos magazine. Author of Tentaciones narrativas (Redactum, 2014) and De mis cuarenta (ebook, 2021), he writes for Kaikan, the magazine of the Japanese Peruvian Association.
Updated April 2022
Stories from This Author
Studying Japan from a Nikkei Artistic Perspective
April 24, 2025 • Javier García Wong-Kit
Behind all art is a science, a method, and a concept that helps us see the creator of a work. Often, this work responds to the personal, intimate, and instinctive impulses of that individual. But other times, it is a creative exercise, a reflective attempt, and a challenge to study something, someone, or a place. In 2024, a group of 25 Peruvians interested in Japan took a course with a clear goal: to produce artistic or intellectual content that would …
Seiji Arakaki: writing therapy
Feb. 25, 2025 • Javier García Wong-Kit
It is not common to find associations that, at first, seem logical, but that are sometimes hidden among the most visible. The relationship between literature and psychology is very fruitful, however, in Peru it does not have many declared exponents. Seiji Arakaki Hirano, a Nikkei clinical psychologist and psychotherapist, was interested in literature long before beginning his career, but it was driven by an experience that left its mark on him. At 37 years old, he says that his ancestors …
Jorge Malpartida Tabuchi: the narrative of origin
Jan. 13, 2025 • Javier García Wong-Kit
To write, you need very few things. Before, a pencil and paper. Now, a computer or smartphone. To be able to write, you need something that is as commonplace and elusive as that, the definition of that 'something'. Jorge Malpartida Tabuchi (Arequipa, 1990) has found in information and imagination the way to give meaning to that something that he turns into narratives. That 'something' is in his DNA, just like his Nikkei origin, which, in a certain way, also filters …
Nicolás Matayoshi at the service of the word
Nov. 25, 2024 • Javier García Wong-Kit
Since he was a child, Nicolás Matayoshi Matayoshi (Huancayo, 1949) related to the word as if he were making a toy that he wanted to understand in order to have more fun. The Nikkei writer says that in his hometown, in the mountains of Peru, social life It was not very intense, so devoting himself to literature did not seem feasible. He did not start out as a reader, but rather as a creator of texts, beginning with poems. “There …
Más allá del haiku: The Latin American Book of Nikkei Authors
Aug. 5, 2024 • Javier García Wong-Kit
Every writer aspires, in addition to winning prizes, to belong to a canon, a literary movement in which to be grouped like a school of fish in a river. In Latin America, there have been important groups of authors, among the most famous being modernist writers and members of the Boom, who have appeared in numerous collections and anthologies. Gathering writers into volumes that make sense seems like an arduous task, like fishing with a line. The Spaniard Ignacio López-Calvo …
Juan de la Fuente: Umetsu and the return to Tottori
June 11, 2024 • Javier García Wong-Kit
Every search is a navigation without a specific path, a constant back and forth between stories, myths and directions that divert us from what we think of as a destination. For the Peruvian Nikkei poet Juan de la Fuente Umetsu (Lima, 1963), his most recent poetic inquiry has taken him to the family niche, to the starting point of his Japanese origin: a surname that is his and that of his grandfather Makizo, who pays this poetic tribute. Umetsu, the …
Carlos Yushimito: The inevitable readings of a writer
April 9, 2024 • Javier García Wong-Kit
His days pass in the academic world, in Viña del Mar, a city in the interior of Chile where he leads a peaceful life and where the word writer sounds less than the word book or reading. This is the second migration of Carlos Yushimito (Lima, 1977), a Peruvian Nikkei recognized for his short story work who has recently presented The inevitable weight of pigeons (Seix Barral, 2023), ten stories that arrive after nearly ten years without publish, but who …
Nikkei and Japanese literature in Peru opens space
March 27, 2024 • Javier García Wong-Kit
At the risk of optimism being refuted with regional reading level indicators, some of the initiatives to promote reading in Peru show that there is an interest in the reading public that, however scarce, responds to the proposals that remain in some Lima spaces. This brief account of those that have made way for Nikkei literature can continue to grow with other individual projects or that cover other types of books. First of all, there must be, without a doubt, …
Aiko Yamada: Eisa to Remember Peru
Feb. 22, 2024 • Javier García Wong-Kit
Aiko Yamada Yoshimoto grew up in Lima, Peru, but her connection to traditional eisa dance of Okinawa became more important at a time when she lived far away from her country. She grew up in an artistic family. Her maternal grandparents are from Nago and in her house there were instruments such as the koto and sanshin that nobody played. “My great-grandmother played the koto, but no one else did. I was interested in music, so I started playing by …
Nikkei film audiovisual creators
Dec. 6, 2023 • Javier García Wong-Kit
Today's world is a movie. Everyone consumes, through cinema, digital platforms and other media, different videos and similar content that come from the most distant corners of the world through large and small screens. Many Nikkei are taking advantage of this resource to tell their stories, some linked to that origin from Japan, their Peruvian half or other identities. The stories of Kaori, Guillermo and Julio could be the first chapters of this account of creators. Kaori Flores, Japan and …
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