Material contribuído por Greg
Ruth Sato Reinhardt: From Chorus Girl to Jazz Momma - Part 1
Greg Robinson
Recently I did a column for Discover Nikkei on Marion Saki, the hapa Japanese American modern dancer and stage performer of the early 20th century. During the 1920s, Marion Saki achieved renown in musical shows on Broadway and on road tours, where she was able to play non-Asian roles even …
Hidden in Plain Sight: Rediscovering the Life and Art of Bumpei Usui
Greg Robinson
On my refrigerator is a magnet with a reproduction of a painting called 14th Street, a colorful, angular cityscape with a view dominated by a skyscraper. I found it some time ago at the shops of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. At the time I bought the magnet, the …
William Castle: An Exceptional Supporter of Japanese Americans
Greg Robinson
Some years ago, I had a chance to spend a month doing extended research in the rare books and manuscripts collections of the Houghton Library at Harvard University. It was there that I came across the typescript diaries of William R. Castle, a leading American diplomat and public figure, the …
Tokyo Rose: The Making of a Hollywood Myth
Greg Robinson
During the latter stages of World War II, Hollywood studios produced a number of war movies dealing with Japan, including Destination Tokyo (1943), starring Cary Grant; Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), with Spencer Tracy; and James Cagney’s Blood on the Sun (1945). These films, generally dismissed as wartime propaganda, have been all but forgotten in cinema …
Lotus Long: The Short Career of a Screen Siren
Greg Robinson
Ryan Murphy’s recent Netflix miniseries Hollywood uses counterfactual history to tell some real-life stories of Hollywood. Among them is the sad tale of Anna May Wong (played by Michelle Krusiec), the brilliant film actress of the 1930s who faced typecasting due to her Asian ancestry. Relegated to stereotypical “dragon lady” …
Toge Fujihira: Master Photographer and World Traveler - Part 2
Greg Robinson, Jonathan van Harmelen
Read Part 1 >>
Toge Fujihira: Master Photographer and World Traveler - Part 1
Greg Robinson, Jonathan van Harmelen
Toge Fujihira (whose family name was sometimes reported as Fujihara) left the West Coast in the years before World War II and settled in New York, where he distinguished himself as a photographer and documentary filmmaker. During the postwar era, he established himself as a professional cameraman and photographer, capturing …
The N-Word and the Japanese American Press
Jonathan van Harmelen, Greg Robinson
In the wide world of American racial epithets, one word seems to stand apart as uniquely hateful and wounding: the term euphemized as the “N-word.” Applied to African Americans, it is a corruption of the term Negro—a term that has gone through its own complex history. Like the Nazi swastika, …
Kenji Toda: Groundbreaking Artist and Scholar
Greg Robinson
Not long ago I did a Discover Nikkei piece on the artist Bunji Tagawa, who made a career of scientific drawing for Scientific American, and who was lauded for the artistry of his technical work. I later discovered that Tagawa was preceded in the field by another prodigious Japanese artist-turned-scientific …