Interviews

1. The origin of name Kishi Bashi

2. His Shin-Issei parents

3. On being Japanese and American

4. On his songfilm Omoiyari

5. The reason for creating the songflim Omoiyari

6. On music

Bashi,Kishi

(b. 1975) Musician, composer, and songwriter

On being Japanese and American

I speak Japanese and I go to Japan a lot so I kind of identify both as Japanese and then American and I’m still trying to figure out this, what it is to be Japanese American.

I definitely see myself as different, cause my upbringing is different than west coast Japanese Americans, but there’s a commonality in that, like the history really affects me, probably in a very similar way.

I never felt…either I masked it very well, in that whatever prejudices were around me, but I had friends and I…since I played music, music is a very kind of colorblind art form I think. So…a lot of art is.

identity Japanese Japanese Americans music

Date: August 21, 2018

Location: California, US

Interviewer: Sharon Yamato

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

Interviewee Bio

Kaoru Ishibashi, who performs as Kishi Bashi, is a Shin-Nisei musician, composer, and songwriter, born in Seattle, Washington and grew up in Norfolk, Virginia. He attended Berklee College of Music and became a renowned violinist.

His film project, Omoiyari (Empathy), led him to places such as Manzanar, Tule Lake, the Japanese American National Museum, and Japan to learn about Japanese American and Japanese World War II history. Omoiyari explores how empathy and the lack of it has played key roles in our modern quest for social equality. (March 2019)