Kizuna 2020: Nikkei Kindness and Solidarity During the COVID-19 Pandemic
In Japanese, kizuna means strong emotional bonds. In 2011, we invited our global Nikkei community to contribute to a special series about how Nikkei communities reacted to and supported Japan following the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Now, we would like to bring together stories about how Nikkei families and communities are being impacted by, and responding and adjusting to this world crisis.
If you would like to participate, please see our submission guidelines. We welcome submissions in English, Japanese, Spanish, and/or Portuguese, and are seeking diverse stories from around the world. We hope that these stories will help to connect us, creating a time capsule of responses and perspectives from our global Nima-kai community for the future.
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Although many events around the world have been cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have noticed that many new online only events are being organized. Since they are online, anyone can participate from anywhere in the world. If your Nikkei organization is planning a virtual event, please post it on Discover Nikkei’s Events section! We will also share the events via Twitter @discovernikkei. Hopefully, it will help to connect us in new ways, even as we are all isolated in our homes.
Stories from this series
One Of Our Own
May 26, 2020 • Warren Furutani
Many of us have spent time with folks who have gone through some catastrophic events in their lives. Hearing their stories is humbling, but now we have one of our own. At one of our last Furutani family dinners before the “stay at home” quarantine, we went around the dinner table to recount any such events in our collective experiences and lives. I remember as kids we had the “drop drills” and “yellow” and “red” alerts. All were related to …
COVID-19 and its impact on the lives of Brazilian Nikkei
May 25, 2020 • Katsuo Higuchi
As has happened in other countries, Covid-19 hit Brazil in a devastating way, showing those who did not believe in it, its lethal malignancy. On May 9, more than 10,000 deaths had already been recorded, with catastrophic numbers expected to reach in the coming months, despite the containment measures taken by the country's health authorities. Horizontal quarantine was adopted to try to combat evil. With this, the doors of commerce and industry were closed; the movement of people was prohibited. …
Art always unites: illustrating about the coronavirus — the “Distancia” project
May 13, 2020 • Javier García Wong-Kit
At first, the first social reaction promoted by the Peruvian government due to the health emergency caused by the covid-19 virus was to comply with a strict quarantine to avoid contagion that has become a catastrophic pandemic. It seemed peculiar to many to see the empty streets, but soon this isolation unleashed different manifestations (creativity, solidarity and also chaos and health, economic and educational crises), which have become noticeable during all these weeks. The quarantine has caused lethal effects, but …
Hiroaki Takamatsu continues to spread messages about the coronavirus pandemic
May 11, 2020 • Keiko Fukuda
I want Japan to notice me Hiroaki Takamatsu is a development manager at Tableau Software, an IT company headquartered in the suburbs of Seattle, who also serves as an outside director for several other companies and has even published a book called "Rules for Raising Children at Global Standards." I've interviewed the multifaceted Takamatsu several times in the past and have been connected with him on Facebook. I think it was around mid-March that Takamatsu's posts started to focus on …
A quarantine blog
May 6, 2020 • Milagros Tsukayama Shinzato
Until May 10, Peru will remain in quarantine. I was anxiously waiting for it to end on April 26 as scheduled, but the virus is still on the streets. As soon as this confinement ends, the first thing I'm going to do is go to the shopping center, eat in a restaurant and everything that we can't do now. But what I want most is to see people without masks and now hiding their faces. It is not the same …
Quarantine in Camp: Stories of Other Pandemics
May 5, 2020 • Jonathan van Harmelen
Shortly after leaving Topaz to attend the University of Montana, Missoula, Miyeko Taketa received a letter from her friend Pearl Nugent in February 1944. Nugent, the wife of Reverend Carl Nugent of Topaz’s Protestant Church, shared one interesting story that might interest readers today: “Yesterday our seven week scarlet fever quarantine came to an end and I went shopping, free as the air, the first time I’ve been out since we returned from Topaz on Christmas afternoon.”1 While Pearl Nugent …