Interviews
Food preparations for Keirokai
They have months planning of it, and they say to the smallest details who's going to decorate the room, and for example, they serve an ozoni, or some soup. I think maybe it's miso, maybe it's just miso but it has what they call a mitsuba that they put a little leaf that has the three petals, there are three leaves, and they have to be tied in a ribbon. And so before... I think it needs to be planted, or trimmed, I don't know 15 days before so when the leaves are the right size to be harvested, and served in the soup.
So stuff like that logistically, they've been working about who's buying the shiitake that goes in the stew, or the seaweed for the wraps, whatever it is they work months, and they have a spreadsheet already, and the list of tasks, and everything. But that is usually organized, the food is cooked by the fujin-bu, it's a group of females. And that's what they pride themselves that they're serving them food that specially all Japanese, or as Japanese as we can make it with whatever we have available in Colombia.
Date: September 22, 2019
Location: California, US
Interviewer: Yoko Nishimura
Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum
Explore More Videos
Symbolic New Year’s foods prepared from scratch
(1925 - 2018) Nisei educator from Hawai‘i
Japanese community in Mission
(b. 1922) Canadian Nisei who was unable to return to Canada from Japan until 1952
Learning American cooking
(b.1909) Nisei from Washington. Incarcerated at Tule Lake and Minidoka during WWII. Resettled in Chicago after WWII
Parents in Utah
(b. 1939) a businesswoman whose family volunterily moved to Salt Lake City in Utah during the war.
Not bringing shame to family
(1926 - 2012) Scholar and professor of anthropology. Leader in the establishment of ethnic studies as an academic discipline
Role of the Japanese American National Museum
(1926 - 2012) Scholar and professor of anthropology. Leader in the establishment of ethnic studies as an academic discipline
Food growing up
(b.1948) Nikkei from Southern California living in Japan.
Japanese American community life
(b. 1939) Japanese American painter, printmaker & professor
Her early life in Canada
(b.1912) Japanese Canadian Issei. Immigrated with husband to Canada in 1931
Taiko as self-expression
Co-founder and creative director of San Jose Taiko
A “principally-based” taiko group in England creating a global taiko community
Co-founder and creative director of San Jose Taiko
Little contact with Asians growing up on the east coast
Japanese American Creative designer living in Japan
The various realities of Nikkei in Latin America (Spanish)
(b. 1950) Nisei Chilean, Businessman
The importance of Japanese American role models in childhood community
(b. 1955) Lawyer
Recognizing issues of dual identity in the nisei generation
(b. 1955) Lawyer