Javier García Wong-Kit
@JaviernestoJavier García Wong-Kit is a journalist, professor, and director of Otros Tiempos magazine. Author of Tentaciones narrativas (Redactum, 2014) and De mis cuarenta (ebook, 2021), he writes for Kaikan, the magazine of the Japanese Peruvian Association.
Updated April 2022
Stories from This Author
Carlos Yushimito: The inevitable readings of a writer
April 9, 2024 • Javier García Wong-Kit
His days pass in the academic world, in Viña del Mar, a city in the interior of Chile where he leads a peaceful life and where the word writer sounds less than the word book or reading. This is the second migration of Carlos Yushimito (Lima, 1977), a Peruvian Nikkei recognized for his short story work who has recently presented The inevitable weight of pigeons (Seix Barral, 2023), ten stories that arrive after nearly ten years without publish, but who …
Nikkei and Japanese literature in Peru opens space
March 27, 2024 • Javier García Wong-Kit
At the risk of optimism being refuted with regional reading level indicators, some of the initiatives to promote reading in Peru show that there is an interest in the reading public that, however scarce, responds to the proposals that remain in some Lima spaces. This brief account of those that have made way for Nikkei literature can continue to grow with other individual projects or that cover other types of books. First of all, there must be, without a doubt, …
Aiko Yamada: Eisa to Remember Peru
Feb. 22, 2024 • Javier García Wong-Kit
Aiko Yamada Yoshimoto grew up in Lima, Peru, but her connection to traditional eisa dance of Okinawa became more important at a time when she lived far away from her country. She grew up in an artistic family. Her maternal grandparents are from Nago and in her house there were instruments such as the koto and sanshin that nobody played. “My great-grandmother played the koto, but no one else did. I was interested in music, so I started playing by …
Nikkei film audiovisual creators
Dec. 6, 2023 • Javier García Wong-Kit
Today's world is a movie. Everyone consumes, through cinema, digital platforms and other media, different videos and similar content that come from the most distant corners of the world through large and small screens. Many Nikkei are taking advantage of this resource to tell their stories, some linked to that origin from Japan, their Peruvian half or other identities. The stories of Kaori, Guillermo and Julio could be the first chapters of this account of creators. Kaori Flores, Japan and …
Raymi Kamishibai, the first Kamishibai school and library in Peru
Oct. 18, 2023 • Javier García Wong-Kit
There are initiatives that start with a name, with a man. Raymi Kamishibai is the first school and library for kamishibai, Japanese paper theater, directed by Pepe Cabana Kojachi, a Peruvian Nikkei of Ayacucho and Okinawan descent who mixed this technique in his art to tell stories for children with the aesthetic element of altarpieces, a type of wooden chest that brings together characters that stage a tradition from Andean Peru, to spread the work of their proposal “Mukashi, Mukashi” …
Reiwa Izakaya: Japanese taste in Peru
Sept. 11, 2023 • Javier García Wong-Kit
Nikkei fusion has been the main way in which Peruvians have learned about the benefits of Japanese cuisine. The wide variety of local ingredients has made most restaurants opt for a combination that has conquered palates around the world. Therefore, the commitment to open a traditional Japanese bar that serves typical, quality cuisine at an affordable price seems like a challenge of great proportions. Arturo Uchima and Julio Haruyama are the young people who created Reiwa Izakaya, the Japanese cuisine …
German Chinen Murata: The secret artist
July 24, 2023 • Javier García Wong-Kit
The story of German Chinen Murata (Lima, 1967) can be told as if it were a comic strip. The synopsis would be: a Peruvian Nikkei pursues his dream of being a cartoonist, but along the way he must travel to Japan to work, returning to his country to be a drawing teacher until one day he manages to have his own individual exhibition. His superpower? The persistence. Despite being a secret artist for many years, he maintained his dream of …
Breve y reciente historia del haiku en Perú
June 26, 2023 • Javier García Wong-Kit
El Perú parece tener sus propias corrientes literarias entre las que el haiku sopla como una ventisca refrescante en el aliento de autores de distinta índole. Esta forma poética japonesa ha sido cultivada por varios escritores peruanos, desde José Watanabe y Javier Sologuren, pasando por Alberto Guillén y Arturo Corcuera, hasta otras plumas contemporáneas, como Alonso Belaunde y Gonzalo Marquina, impulsores de este estilo poético que han cultivado en sendas obras. “Desde la lectura del diario de viaje de Bashō, …
“Nikkei postcards”: generational correspondence
June 2, 2023 • Javier García Wong-Kit
It began as a play and then became an intergenerational manifesto through the “Nikkei Letters of the Bicentennial” contest, whose objective was to document the feelings of the members of the Peruvian-Japanese community about the 200 years of the Independence of Peru. One of its youngest members, the Nikkei playwright Daniel Goya, had had a predecessor idea that he turned into the staging “ Letters from the Bicentennial ,” presented at the National Library of Peru. Subtitled “Theatrical scenes and …
The Uechi: brothers of Comadre and Compadre
March 27, 2023 • Javier García Wong-Kit
The Uechi brothers have a very fraternal relationship with entrepreneurship and gastronomy. Carolina's story begins in 2012, when she opened her restaurant “La Cocina de Caro”, 1 where her father and uncles were her first partners, and a couple of years later in Kilo, a different steakhouse that has given her prestige within of Peruvian cuisine. Pepe Uechi's story is different, it began on a soccer field and continued on another green field: the Peruvian jungle. “I studied at La …
