culture en

Nikkei Uncovered: a poetry column

Location

For the column’s inaugural post, we wanted to begin with the theme of place, location, and community and to highlight two veteran poets—Hiroshi ...

community en

My Name is Neal

Journal entry #15 Days Away: “No Snowmen Here...”

A weekly visual journal/cartoon about an easily-annoyed fourth generation American of Japanese descent. This week, “Christmas in Los Angeles…” Check back every weekend for ...

community en

Little Tokyo’s Significance - Part 2

Read Part 1 >> When the Sansei went to college, they found a way to understand these contradictions through Ethnic Studies. Their fight for Ethnic Studies ...

community en

Little Tokyo’s Significance - Part 1

I once heard an apocryphal story from a community activist who had worked in Little Tokyo for a long time. It went something like this ...

community en

Imagine Little Tokyo Short Story Contest III

“MERRY CHRISTMAS, MARIO-SAN”

Little Tokyo, 1989 One night, Mario Martinez, a struggling musician from Boyle Heights, was sitting in a booth at the Atomic Café in Little Tokyo ...

identity en

Nikkei Chronicles #5 — Nikkei-go: The Language of Family, Community, and Culture

Made in Japan

This familiar phrase, “made in Japan” (Nihon-sei) reminds me of my mother, Yaeko. She was born in Gunma, Japan, on March 7, 1927. Her parents ...

identity en

Something About My Great-Grandmother

Born in 1896, in 1919 my great‐grandmother Sueno Matsunaga (née Motoshima) of Shimomashiki‐gun, Kumamoto prefecture, Japan, immigrated to the U.S. as ...

community en ja

Voices of the Volunteers: The Building Blocks of the Japanese American National Museum

James Michiya Yoshinaga

James Yoshinaga was born in 1929 in downtown Los Angeles as the eldest son of a mother from Fukuoka and a father from Kagoshima. His ...

community en ja

Voices of the Volunteers: The Building Blocks of the Japanese American National Museum

William “Bill” Hiroshi Shishima

Bill Shishima grew up eating gohan along with lingua (tongue), seso (brain), and menudo (tripe soup). His father ran a grocery store near Olvera Street ...

community en ja

Voices of the Volunteers: The Building Blocks of the Japanese American National Museum

Gary Ono

Gary Ono’s sunny Little Tokyo apartment is a monument to the things he loves. Behind his dining room table hangs a Japanese illustrative scroll ...