ポップカルチャーや政治についてアジア系・日系アメリカ人の視点でブログ(www.nikkeiview.com)を書いている。また、パートナーと共に www.visualizAsian.com を立ち上げ、著名なアジア系・太平洋諸島系アメリカ人へのライブインタビューを行っている。著書には『Being Japanese American』(2004年ストーンブリッジプレス)があり、JACL理事としてパシフィック・シチズン紙の編集委員長を7年間務めた。
(2009年11月 更新)
この執筆者によるストーリー
Happy New Year, Japanese-style
2011年1月1日 • ギル・アサカワ
Unlike other Asian cultures, the Japanese don’t celebrate Lunar New Year. Instead, they celebrate the Western calendar New Year, January 1, and some of the special holiday traditions have been handed down to Japanese Americans over the past century. Japanese New Year’s traditions are different from Western (or at least, American) ones: First of all, New Year’s Eve isn’t the big holiday, and the focus isn’t on partying and waiting until midnight on Dec. 31 to watch the Times Square …
Memorial for Colo. Gov. Ralph Carr dedicated
2010年12月30日 • ギル・アサカワ
Ralph Carr, the man who served as governor of Colorado at the start of World War II, had been largely forgotten for decades. But thanks to an effort by the Asian Pacific Bar Association (APABA) and a biography by journalist Adam Schrager, Carr’s making a comeback in Colorado, and his legacy is finally getting its due, with a fine biography, a stretch of Highway 285 named in his honor, and now, a memorial to Carr’s legacy at Kenosha Pass. On …
History in the Northwest
2010年11月23日 • ギル・アサカワ
11:00 a.m.Here I sit in my rental car, mere yards from the water. I’m waiting for the Bainbridge Island Ferry in Seattle—I missed the last one by just seconds and the next one leaves in an hour. Bainbridge Island is the place captured poetically in the book and movie, “Snow Falling on Cedars” (which means, come to think of it, that it snows in Seattle, at least sometimes). A generation of Japanese Americans settled there in the early part of …
Reiko Rizzuto’s “Hiroshima in the Morning” is a powerful memoir - Part 2
2010年10月21日 • ギル・アサカワ
>> Part 1I emailed Rizzuto, who’s now a teacher at Goddard College in Vermont, where she teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing program, to see if I could ask several questions about her and the book. Here are excerpts from her responses: 1. Are you going by Reiko now instead of Rahna? (I noticed that in some places she’s called “Reiko” where in the past she’d gone by “Rahna”) The name change, though it suits me and I am …
Reiko Rizzuto’s “Hiroshima in the Morning” is a powerful memoir - Part 1
2010年10月14日 • ギル・アサカワ
The media are reporting on how Muslim Americans are braced for attacks this weekend, because of the 9/11 anniversary. I know what that’s like, unfortunately, though not on the scale of violence and hatred Muslims are facing today. It’s a sad commentary on the state of American “patriotism” that Japanese Americans still get nervous every December 7 because we grew up with racial slurs of “go home, Japs” and “Remember Pearl Harbor!” Such are the deep emotional scars that form …
RIP Kyoko Kita – Denver’s Japanese community loses a cultural giant
2010年9月28日 • ギル・アサカワ
Tonight Erin and I heard some sad and shocking news. Kyoko Kita, a sensei, or teacher, of almost any traditional Japanese art or cultural tradition, died this morning of a massive heart attack while driving her sister and cousin back to Denver International Airport for their return to Japan. When she felt chest pains, Kita Sensei pulled off I-70 and saved her guests’ lives before dying. It’s a symbolically fitting, though incredibly sad, end to a rich and incredibly influential …
Margaret Kasahara’s pop art pokes at Asian stereotypes
2010年5月25日 • ギル・アサカワ
Margaret Kasahara was almost half an hour late to the opening reception of her first Denver solo exhibit, at the Sandra Phillips Gallery along the Arts District on Santa Fe Drive. Her fans, friends and collectors milled around soaking in the art on the wall, and made chit-chat until she entered, flustered from being stuck in traffic on this rainy spring evening. The Colorado Springs-based painter began making the rounds, and one acquaintance made slight of the fact that she …
“Ninja Assassin” updates the ninja image for the 21st century
2009年12月30日 • ギル・アサカワ
The new movie “Ninja Assassin” just might spark a new wave of fascination with Asian martial arts, but instead of kung fu, the fad will be for ninjutsu, the art of the ninja warrior. The film updates the image of the silent, stealthy assassins from Japanese history, and suggests that ninja clans still exist, sending out mercenaries all over the world to kill off targets for gold. It’s an enticing concept, and one that’s in line with the tradition of …
In praise of San Jose’s Japantown — the JA Mayberry
2009年12月3日 • ギル・アサカワ
Unlike the many Chinatowns that serve as ethnic cultural enclaves in many American cities from coast to coast, and the increasing numbers of districts variously called “Koreatowns” and “Little Saigons,” you won’t find many Nihonmachi , or Japantowns. There are lots of reasons for this, but the main one is probably the Japanese American community’s need to assimilate into mainstream America after the shame and humiliation of being imprisoned in internment camps during World War II. In the 1950s and …