Naomi Hirahara
@gasagasagirlNaomi Hirahara is the author of the Edgar Award-winning Mas Arai mystery series, which features a Kibei Nisei gardener and atomic-bomb survivor who solves crimes, Officer Ellie Rush series, and now the new Leilani Santiago mysteries. A former editor of The Rafu Shimpo, she has written a number of nonfiction books on the Japanese American experience and several 12-part serials for Discover Nikkei.
Updated October 2019
Stories from This Author
Chapter Twelve—Get Back in There
Aug. 4, 2017 • Naomi Hirahara
Six months later In Japan, it was all about family and your family name. That’s why men were adopted into families that had no sons. So the family name could continue. For the past six months, I’ve been thinking a lot about family—in general and about my specific one. But the Time Out New York reporter’s question still throws me off. “So, Kaori, tell me about your family restaurant back in Hiroshima. It’s called Aka Okonomiyaki, right?” The reporter has …
Chapter Eleven—Hiroshima World
July 4, 2017 • Naomi Hirahara
We have only forty-eight hours to bring Hiroshima World to Manhattan. I take that back. Now forty-seven hours. We’re turning our apartment—well, our apartment for the next forty-seven hours—into a most magical traveling adventure to our hometown, Hiroshima. My best friend Risa has hand drawn the invitations and used her department’s photocopy machine to do some guerrilla printing. (Not that easy because she needed to steal the code.) She’s taken photos of the invitation with her phone and posted it …
Chapter Ten—Kappa Power
June 4, 2017 • Naomi Hirahara
I saw my first homeless person in Japan when I was visiting Tokyo. Actually there were a whole group of them on the lower level of a train station. It was winter and snow was on the ground outside. Hiroshima, though, not so much. I am, however, on my way to be the first homeless Hiroshima person outside the country. And my best friend and present roommate, Risa, is going to be the second. I’ve had a place to live …
Chapter Nine—Clipped
May 4, 2017 • Naomi Hirahara
In Japanese folktales, old women are sometimes cast as the “bad guys.” You see it in “Tongue-Cut Sparrow,” in which an elderly lady clips the tongue of a sparrow who snacks on some rice starch for clothes hanging to dry outside. This mean, greedy woman then pushes her way into the Sparrow World and is offered two gifts—one heavy and the other small. Of course, she selects the big one and is terrorized by some demons who are hidden inside. …
Chapter Eight—Turning Japanese
April 4, 2017 • Naomi Hirahara
It takes Gen some time to calm Tom down. After all, I, his enemy, have taken over his grill. It doesn’t matter whether you are from Hiroshima, Japan, or Harlem, New York City. No chef should invade another chef’s cooking space, even if it’s outdoors in the middle of a food festival. “Maybe I should stop,” I say to Risa, as I flip over another okonomiyaki. “Are you kidding me? Look at the line. If you don’t give these people …
Chapter Seven—Food Fight
March 4, 2017 • Naomi Hirahara
After I was used by Morgan Taketa, I stay in my bed of Amazon packaging and bubble wrap for almost two weeks straight. Unfortunately for my roommate Risa, whose Manhattan apartment I’m staying in, my bed is in the middle of her studio. Risa is the most kind-hearted person I know, but even she is getting tired of it. Her cat, Tamago, less kind-hearted, just hisses at me from the other side of the room. “Kao-chan, this cannot continue,” she …
Nikkei Oshogatsu Stories 2017 - Part 1
March 2, 2017 • Naomi Hirahara , Laura Honda-Hasegawa
In our January e-newsletter, Discover Nikkei put out a call for Oshogatsu stories. We asked our Nikkei readers from around the world to show us, through photos and words, how they welcomed the New Year. We received several stories written in English, Japanese, and Portuguese. One story, by Justin Inahara, was so long that we had to publish it separately. The rest are gathered below for your reading pleasure. Enjoy! * * * * * Desperate Measures of Un-Chanto Woman …
Chapter Six—“We Believe in America”
Feb. 4, 2017 • Naomi Hirahara
We are sitting in a restaurant in Battery Park, which is on the south side of the island of Manhattan. Morgan tells me that it is a new restaurant that opened a few months ago. Apparently restaurants open and close in America all the time. I don’t know if he’s telling me this as a cautionary tale. But I won’t be discouraged. Red Okonomiyaki and I will make it in New York City. I try to order modestly. Yes, I’m …
Chapter Five—Death by Yelp
Jan. 4, 2017 • Naomi Hirahara
“This was just amazing.” Morgan Taketa says after wiping his lips with a cloth napkin that was hand-sewn by my best friend, Risa. He still has a bit of brown okonomiyaki sauce in the corner of his mouth, but I am not going to say anything. Morgan the banker can make my restaurant dreams come true in New York City. He could have come dressed to dinner as the Kentucky Fried Chicken ojiisan and I would have treated him like …
Chapter Four—Deep Like the Rivers
Dec. 4, 2016 • Naomi Hirahara
Deep’s Butcher Shop in East Harlem is nothing like the ones I’ve seen in other parts of New York City. Yes, there’s a large refrigerated case of meats, but the walls, for the most part, have cases of books. And not cookbooks, but books of poetry and classics, ones that I attempted to read in translation in high school in Japan. I never was good in literature. Through two small speakers mounted on the ceiling sounds Bob Marley. I know …
