Artist Erica Kaminishi, born and raised in Mato Gross, Brazil, is one of the hundreds of thousands of Nikkei Brazilian dekasegi who have migrated to Japan to work or study, a hundred years after their ancestors immigrated. Over a span of ten years, she worked, studied pottery, and attended a …
When the phone rang unexpectedly early one morning in 2009, I couldn’t believe it, but it was Albert Saijo on the line, calling me from the rainforests of Hawai‘i. It seemed serendipitious. His book, Outspeaks: A Rhapsody, not only lay on the kitchen table, but I had engaged in conversation …
It is no great surprise that Eric Saijo’s home is surrounded by a profusion of California native plants—ceanothus, manzanita, redbud—and the interior is richly punctuated with bronze bells and whimsical sculptures of turtles and owls.
In July 1932, on the occasion of the Los Angeles Olympic Games, The Kashu Mainichi ran an article welcoming the Japanese athletes, written by an unlikely writer who called herself an “obasan farmer living in southern California.” The author was a remarkable Issei whose progressive, feminist perspective graced the pages …
“Weddings are the most superstitious of holidays. And the cake? Well it’s like any marriage, right? I won’t say the cake is human, but the cake is something special.”
Before the advent of the offset printing process, The Rafu Shimpo handset every word, every comma, every dingbat and ornamental header, utilizing drawers of lead type. In the case of the Rafu, the metal kanji used to compose each page must have been imported from Japan and cost a fortune, …
Renowned portrait artist Steve Pyke has said that he is interested in the story each face has to tell, the story that is etched into the landscape of our faces. In 2011 the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC debuted its first Asian American exhibition, Portraiture Now: Asian American …
Last week, Patricia Wakida wrote a profile on translator Andrew Leong on his upcoming book, Lament in the Night, a collection of two novellas by previously forgotten Issei writer, Nagahara Shoson. She also had an opportunity to join Kaya Press staff to interview Andrew about the project. Here is an …
The Tale of Osato is an astonishing fable of pre-war Los Angeles, whose protagonist is a determined young Issei who works herself to the point of collapse every night in a Little Tokyo restaurant to support herself and her infant son. In a particularly harrowing passage, Osato places her son …
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