Keiko Fukuda
@fukudaAfter graduating from International Christian University, Keiko Fukuda worked at a publishing company for an information magazine in Tokyo and moved to the U.S. in 1992. She served as Editor-in-Chief of a Japanese information magazine in Los Angeles until 2003 and transitioned to freelance work that same year. She conducted interviews with various people and reported on topics such as education in the U.S. and Japanese food culture. In 2024, she relocated her base to her hometown of Oita and has continued her reporting and writing online. Website: https://angeleno.net
Updated October 2024
Stories from This Author
Musician who played American anthems at NHL games – Toshi Yanagi – Part 2
Nov. 25, 2015 • Keiko Fukuda
Read Part 1 >> The Ultimate Optimist Toshi was suddenly forced to start over again when the music program he was a regular on suddenly came to an end, but he recalls that even at times like that, his fellow musicians gave him chances that allowed him to continue his activities. While I was doing this, the new show "Jimmy Kimmel Live," which I still perform on, was starting up, and I received an offer to become their exclusive guitarist. …
Musician who played American songs at NHL games - Toshi Yanagi - Part 1
Nov. 24, 2015 • Keiko Fukuda
"Is it okay for me to be Japanese?" On October 18, 2015, at Madison Square Garden in New York, Japanese guitarist Toshi Yanagi took to the stage to perform the national anthem before the NHL (National Hockey League) New York Rangers game. Many people will recognize him as a guitarist who appears on the nationally broadcast ABC show "Jimmy Kimmel Live." He has been a regular on the show for 13 years, since its inception. The American national anthem, sung …
Kensuke Ozaki: The Trader Who Worked Across Central America and the Caribbean Sea – Part 2
Oct. 28, 2015 • Keiko Fukuda
Read Part 1 >> Sales of home appliances in Puerto Rico; Starting restaurant business in Florida Tosna International S.A. is the name of the company that I started in Panama in 1967. Tosna derives from Tosa, where I come from. I worked with Nissho Iwai as an agent who’s in charge of business in the Caribbean Sea area in Central America and launched some projects: establishing refuse disposal facilities in Panama and Honduras, building a geothermal power plant in El …
Kensuke Ozaki: The Trader Who Worked Across Central America and the Caribbean Sea – Part 1
Oct. 27, 2015 • Keiko Fukuda
Solving conflicts in the Dominican Republic when working at a trading company I was born in 1938 (Showa 13), in Kochi Prefecture. Ryoma Sakamoto’s grave was in the mountain behind our house, and I grew up listening to his life stories. As for my roots, my ancestor is said to be a warrior with the last name Ozaki, who came with Kaneyoshi Ichijyo when he was sent to Shikoku. I didn’t have anything against foreign countries. When I was three …
Noah Freeman, founder of the Bilingual Students Organization
Aug. 6, 2015 • Keiko Fukuda
A childhood spent traveling back and forth between Japan and the US "I've never thought of myself as Japanese American. I see myself as Japanese and American at the same time," said Noah Freeman (19), a student at UC Riverside. Noah was born in 1995 to his Japanese mother, who was studying English in Colorado, and his American father, who was a student at the time. However, his father decided to join him after graduating from college, and his mother …
Franci: Nisei Musician in Brazil, America, and Japan—“Music is my language”
April 30, 2015 • Keiko Fukuda
Conversation with father was in Japanese “I was a timid child and did not like to stand in front of people.” Currently working as a musician who performs on stage with her angelic voice, Franci looks back on her childhood and says that she was the “ugly duckling.” Born and raised in São Paulo as a Brazilian Nisei, she is the middle of three sisters. Her father is from the Miyazaki prefecture, and he moved to Brazil when he was …
Dedicating His Life to Art and Community Service - Artist: Richard Yutaka Fukuhara - Part 2
March 6, 2015 • Keiko Fukuda
Read Part 1 >> Passing on History On artist Richard Fukuhara’s business card, 18th century political theorist and philosopher Edmond Burke’s famous phrase is written: “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.” This phrase summarizes the reason why Richard created “Shadows For Peace: For the Sake of the Children.” Richard hopes that by conveying the horrors that the victims of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki experienced through his artwork that one day, there will be …
Dedicating His Life to Art and Community Service - Artist Richard Yutaka Fukuhara - Part 1
March 5, 2015 • Keiko Fukuda
Pride of Being Japanese When I first met Richard Fukuhara—a third generation Japanese American artist who’s known for his unique photographs—for the first time, he told me, “I am proud of being Japanese.” Prior to meeting Richard, I’d read an article about him and knew that he was born in a Japanese American concentration camp in Minidoka County, Idaho. He returned to Los Angeles after the war was over, but he and his family didn’t have a home in which …
The New Year’s Holidays Defined by Mother’s Homemade Osechi Dishes
Jan. 1, 2015 • Keiko Fukuda
In Japan, I grew up in a so-called “nuclear family”—a family that consisted of a father and a mother and me, their only child. Both of my grandfathers had already passed away when I was born, and my grandmothers were in places more than an hour drive away from where we lived. What I remember from the New Year’s holidays in Japan is the osechi dishes and the ozoni soup (a soup with rice cake) that my mother made. She …
Conveying the spirit of Okinawa through dance: Makinami Honryu Ryubu Dojo Aigen-kai ~Director Makinami Aiko~
Dec. 17, 2014 • Keiko Fukuda
From Los Angeles to Hawaii to train in dance On November 2, 2014, a Ryukyu dance performance titled "Nou Gukuru" was held at the Aratani Theater in Los Angeles. The organizer of this performance, Aiko Majikina, is a central figure in the performing arts department of the Okinawan Association of North America, as well as a dancer and instructor of Ryukyu dance. Her first encounter with dance dates back to her childhood in Chinen Village, in the southern part of …
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