Nikkei Chronicles #7—Nikkei Roots: Digging into Our Cultural Heritage
Stories in the Nikkei Chronicles series have explored many of the ways that Nikkei express their unique culture, whether through food, language, family, or tradition. For this edition, we are digging deeper—all the way down to our roots!
We solicited stories from May to September of 2018 and received 35 stories (22 English; 1 Japanese; 8 Spanish; and 4 Portuguese) from individuals in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Cuba, Japan, Mexico, Peru, and the United States. For this series, we asked our Nima-kai community to vote for their favorite stories and an editorial committee to pick their favorites. In total, four favorite stories were selected.
Here are the selected favorite stories.
Editorial Committee’s Selections:
- ENGLISH:
Sharing Heart Beats
By Mori Walts
- JAPANESE:
The Tea of Soul from Aizuwakamatsu Revived After 150 Years
By Nao Magami
- SPANISH:
The Japan Inside Me
By Akemi Figueredo Imamura
- PORTUGUESE:
Crossing the World
By Heriete Setsuko Shimabukuro Takeda
Nima-kai selection:
- 27 stars:
The Mochitsuki Tradition in the Hikari Group of Londrina, Paraná
By Alba Shioco Hino, Nilza Matiko Iwakura Okano, Kiyomi Nakanishi Yamada
Stories from this series
Catching Nikkei
July 10, 2018 • Kira Matsuno
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 …
Chinese Food
July 2, 2018 • Marta Marenco
My father arrived from the East to Argentina, in the first decade of the 20th century. At that time, Japan did not stand out as the world power it is now. He was a poor immigrant, fleeing a country at constant war, expansionist, dominated by feudal lords who ignored the lower classes. That may be why he fell so spontaneously in love with our country, so generous and, even in those times, so open to immigration. When my father married …
The Mochitsuki Tradition in the Hikari Group of Londrina, Paraná
June 25, 2018 • Alba Shioco Hino , Nilza Matiko Iwakura Okano , Kiyomi Nakanishi Yamada
In Brazil, mochi – little cakes made with a glutinous Japanese rice known as mochigome – are easily found in supermarkets, street markets, and specialized grocery stores in areas with a large concentration of Japanese immigrants and their descendants. Most of those who see this product stocked on supermarket shelves are unaware of its origins and meaning in Japanese culture. In the past, the mochitsuki – pounding mochi – was a more laborious process as the cakes were made in artisanal …
Giancarlo Shibayama: Tribute to the Japanese grandfather
June 13, 2018 • Javier García Wong-Kit , Asociación Peruano Japonesa
Memory is everywhere, in the drawer of a family piece of furniture, in a portrait and even in the imagination. When Giancarlo Shibayama's grandfather, Sakae, passed away, his relatives performed a very peculiar ritual. They opened the photo albums and tore out the ones in which someone appeared with the ojiisan to take them, leaving a mark that had an effect on Giancarlo, who after years working as a photographer and graphic editor at El Comercio wanted to start a …
Tule Lake Stockade Diary: A Story of Survival
June 8, 2018 • Nancy Kyoko Oda
Forty five years ago, my father, Tatsuo Inouye, and I sat in the family kitchen to transcribe his Tule Lake Stockade Diary. My two little boys were sleeping in the back room while we cranked it out night after night in a smoky room until I had a paper for my class at UCLA. It was not just an assignment; it is our family story, our voice, and our stamp on America. As a Sansei born at the end of …