Nancy Matsumoto
@nmatsumotoNancy Matsumoto is a freelance writer and editor who covers agroecology, food and drink, the arts, and Japanese and Japanese American culture. She has been a contributor to The Wall Street Journal, Time, People, The Toronto Globe and Mail, Civil Eats, NPR’s The Salt, TheAtlantic.com, and the online Densho Encyclopedia of the Japanese American Incarceration, among other publications. Her book, Exploring the World of Japanese Craft Sake: Rice, Water, Earth, was published in May 2022. Another of her books, By the Shore of Lake Michigan, an English-language translation of Japanese tanka poetry written by her grandparents, is forthcoming from UCLA’s Asian American Studies Press. Twitter/Instagram: @nancymatsumoto
Updated August 2022
Stories from This Author
In Minamisanriku, Surveying the Aftermath of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake
Sept. 20, 2016 • Nancy Matsumoto
On my last day in Minamisanriku, a small group of us from World in Tohoku signed up for a tour of the town’s downtown coastal area, which was decimated by the earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011. Until then we had been immersed in brainstorming ways to grow the organizations of a group of dedicated and inspiring social entrepreneurs. They were so positive, and so alive that it was hard to viscerally grasp the scope of the natural disaster …
Growing Social Impact Ventures in Tohoku, Japan
Aug. 4, 2016 • Nancy Matsumoto
I’ve just returned from an eye-opening odyssey to the Tohoku region of Japan with the non-profit social entrepreneurship organization World in Tohoku (WIT). Through WIT I was able to meet some of the people behind the dynamic social ventures formed in the wake of the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster and learn how they are trying to improve social, environmental, and living conditions in the region. Located in the northeastern part of Japan, Tohoku is a beautiful region …
Revisiting Toyo Miyatake: Infinite Shades of Gray: An Interview with Robert Nakamura and Karen Ishizuka
May 6, 2016 • Nancy Matsumoto
Fifteen years after its 2001 release, the award-winning documentary film Toyo Miyatake: Infinite Shades of Gray will be screened at the Japanese American National Museum on May 14. A restrained, sensitive depiction of Miyatake as a major contributor to the vital Japanese American arts scene before World War II and the effect that the war had on his life and art, the film was called “eloquent and deeply moving” by The Los Angeles Times. Director Robert Nakamura and producer Karen …
JANM Photo Exhibition: Two Views: Photographs by Ansel Adams and Leonard Frank
Feb. 26, 2016 • Nancy Matsumoto
The 1942 incarceration of people of Japanese descent in America and Canada following the bombing of Pearl Harbor has been portrayed in scholarly histories, works of art, and the cinema. Yet comparisons of the Nikkei experiences in the two neighboring countries have been rare to non-existent. The upcoming exhibition at the Japanese American National Museum (JANM), Two Views: Photographs of Ansel Adams and Leonard Frank, will provide the context for just such a comparison. Ansel Adams, the widely revered photographer …
Bon Yagi: Emperor of New York’s Japanese East Village - Part 2
Nov. 6, 2015 • Nancy Matsumoto
Read Part 1 >> Family is important to Yagi, explains his daughter Sakura, because his own was fractured when he was very young. His father died when he was five, leaving his mother to raise Yagi and his four brothers on her own. Before his life was cut short, Yagi’s father, “had a vision of technology taking over the future” of Japan, recalls Yagi. Anticipating the change, he moved from selling fish by bicycle rickshaw to selling electrical lamps for …
Bon Yagi: Emperor of New York’s Japanese East Village - Part 1
Nov. 5, 2015 • Nancy Matsumoto
The first time I interviewed Bon Yagi, the New York City businessman who has built an empire of 13 Japanese specialty restaurants featuring everything from soba to sake, he tried to sell me something completely unexpected: a Toto Washlet toilet. Though the topic at hand was his sake specialty restaurant Sakagura, when I happened to mention I was in the midst of bathroom renovations at home he couldn’t resist the business opportunity. “Let me know if you’re interested in a …
A Mother's Farewell to Heart Mountain
Sept. 29, 2015 • Nancy Matsumoto
Late last month I attended a pilgrimage to Heart Mountain, Wyoming, the former U.S. Government concentration camp where my mother and her family were placed for three years during World War II. My mother had not been back to Heart Mountain for 70 years, since she left as a girl of 12. She wanted to go, she told us, to see the mountain the camp was named after one more time. Its iconic shape, more like the angled smokestack of …
Plumbing the Mystique of Washoku Traditional Japanese Cuisine
March 10, 2015 • Nancy Matsumoto
Kyoto—In a well-appointed kitchen at the La Carriere Cooking School in Kyoto, Japan, Hawaii-born chef Aaron Pate carefully assembled the dish he hoped would win him gold at the Washoku World Challenge 2015 (WWC). A chef at Seattle’s Shiro’s Sushi, his idea was a tonyu (soy milk) shabu-shabu, into which judges would dip and gently cook fresh oysters, king crab leg, salmon, wild yellowtail, and maitake mushrooms. As each judge’s individual hot pot simmered over a flame, a layer of …
The Nisei Project
July 3, 2014 • Nancy Matsumoto
The stories of the valiant all-Nisei 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Infantry Regiment of World War II have been told in art forms ranging from haiku to the graphic novel. But choreographer Marla Hirokawa may well be the first person to bring the tale of discrimination, imprisonment, and battlefield glory to life in the form of a ballet. Hirokawa, a Hawaiian-born Sansei and the artistic director of Covenant Ballet Theatre of Brooklyn and CBT Dance Academy, is readying her …
JAJA: A Home Away From Home for Japanese Americans and Japanese in New York
June 19, 2014 • Nancy Matsumoto
I lived in Manhattan for 13 years before I went to my first JAJA meeting. An acronym for Japanese Americans and Japanese in America, JAJA is an informal group that meets monthly in a large and accommodating loft space near Union Square. On my first visit, I exited the elevator on the third floor of a former commercial building and heard a muffled din coming from behind a door to my right. I opened it and entered a boisterous world …
