Kira Matsuno

Kira Matsuno is an undergrad business major at the University of California Riverside. She is a part of the Nikkei Community Internship (NCI) program with Kizuna as an intern and is involved with the Nikkei Student Union on her college campus. She was born and raised in Glendale California and is fourth generation Japanese American.

Updated July 2018

culture en

Representing a Community Through Art: Embodying Life in Little Tokyo

“I love stories. I love personal stories. I love life stories. Anybody. I don’t care what your background is. For me, it’s a personal love. I love hearing about the human journey. I don’t care what your journey’s been. I don’t care how plain or uninteresting you think it’s been. Everybody has amazing stories. Everybody has powerful stories. That has been my experience.” — Dan Kwong In 2018, The Little Tokyo Service Center started a program called the “+Lab Artist Residency Program” that provides the space and tools that a…

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community en

Nikkei Chronicles #7—Nikkei Roots: Digging into Our Cultural Heritage

Catching Nikkei

Rocking back and forth on top of rolling waves with a cool sea breeze, my arms are burning as I stumble about with my hands curled tightly around my fishing pole. I am being dragged across the boat by a fish on the other end of my line. I concentrate on not losing this fish, but it is pulling so hard that you would think it was a shark. Every time I gain some line on my reel the fish pulls more out to sea. After forty minutes of back and forth with this fish, I finally see it near the surface of the water. One of the crew members gaffs it and brings the fish up out of the water and onto the b…

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