コウジのコラム
「コウジのコラム」は、全米日系人博物館スタッフのコウジ・スティーブン・サカイ氏によるコラムシリーズです。このコラムでは、南カリフォルニア出身の日系二世であり四世で、アメリカ的アメリカ人男性の視点から、ニッケイ・アイデンティティや文化について探ります。
このシリーズのストーリー
Why Are Asians Yellow?
2011年12月9日 • コウジ・スティーブン・サカイ
African Americans are black. Caucasians are white. Latinos are brown. But why are Asians yellow? When I look at my skin, it doesn’t look yellow to me. If anything, it looks olive and if I’ve been in the sun at all, it’s brown. So if I’m not yellow-skinned, where does that idea come from? Because I’m constantly interested in racial stereotypes, I decided to do some Internet research on the origins of skin color, specifically the idea that Asians have …
My Mother, My Anchor
2011年5月8日 • コウジ・スティーブン・サカイ
My father died in my early twenties. His death devastated me in ways that I am still dealing with today—more than 13 years later. At his funeral, I read his eulogy and told him how much I loved/admired him but the hardest part of it all was that he would never get to hear my letter. I don’t want to make that same mistake with my mother, so this is my attempt to write her eulogy while she can still …
What Would You Do?
2009年5月7日 • コウジ・スティーブン・サカイ
I am a coward. It’s easy to fight racism when it’s in the abstract, but it’s so much harder to do it when it smacks you in the face. I was smacked and didn’t do anything. Actually, I just ran away. Okay, let me explain. I recently had a phone meeting with a person who wanted to represent my writing. It was the opportunity that I had been waiting for for a long time. It was going to be my …
We All Look Alike
2009年4月2日 • コウジ・スティーブン・サカイ
Do all Asians look alike? Where does such a stereotype come from? I’ve recently spent a lot of time studying other Asian folks—especially Japanese people—to see if there are any similarities between them and me. Personally, I think I look pretty damn unique—and handsome. My mother always tells me so at least! The other day I decided to look into this. A quick Google search brought me to a lot of sites. My favorite was a Yahoo Answers webpage where …
Embarrassment
2009年2月27日 • コウジ・スティーブン・サカイ
I admit that I cringe whenever I see or hear of an Asian American or Japanese American doing something stupid, embarrassing, or downright immoral and unlawful. I always feel as though it reflects badly on myself. Like when that crazy Asian American kid shot up his college in Virginia. Or that Japanese American guy that was involved in the Barry Bonds homerun baseball lawsuit. Or even something smaller, the bad Asian driver or the Japanese tourist taking photos of everything. …
Names & Inaugurations
2009年1月20日 • コウジ・スティーブン・サカイ
Names have power. Names convey a message about who you are, where you come from, and has at times in our history meant that you were either on our side or “theirs.” My name is Koji Steven Sakai, what does that say about me? Like a lot of kids, I dreamed of one day becoming President and ruling the country and all my minions with an iron fist. But I wasn’t a stupid kid. I knew my foreign sounding first …
