2013 Nisei Week Grand Parade and Ondo & Closing Ceremony

This year the Nisei Week Grand Parade took place on Sunday, August 11th. Dances, songs, and performers traveled throughout Downtown Los Angeles in the Little Tokyo District, filling the streets with Japanese and Japanese American culture and tradition. Once again, the Japanese American National Museum was proud to be a part of this year’s Grand Parade, and also proud to be a part of the Ondo & Closing Ceremony on Sunday, August 18th.

Here are some photos from the Japanese American National Museums’ participation in both the Grand Parade and the Ondo & Closing Ceremony! A big “thank you” to the National Museums’ staff members, volunteers, and friends for being a part of the Grand Parade, and for your hours of practice in preparation for the Ondo & Closing Ceremony!

Click on the photos to see the full images.

 

 

To learn more about Nisei Week: www.niseiweek.org

Photos by: Daryl Kobayashi, Richard Murakami, Richard Watanabe, and Russell Kitagawa

JABA & JANM: A Great Collaboration

Sean with his JABA/JANM supervisors at the NCI Opening Luncheon
Sean with his JABA/JANM supervisors at the NCI Opening Luncheon

 

This summer we were lucky enough to host Sean Hamamoto, our second Nikkei Community Intern in collaboration with the Japanese American Bar Association (JABA)! We had a great time getting to know Sean, a rising sophomore Politics major at the University of Pennsylvania.

The Nikkei Community Internship is an eight-week program that places college students at various Japanese American organizations across California. Interns get a taste of working life at their placements for four days of the week, then spend the remaining day on leadership development and community training. For the internship, JANM shared an intern with JABA to work on joint Discover Nikkei projects.

As our Discover Nikkei intern, Sean contributed to every section of the site by adding albums, events, and articles. He even contributed a fantastic article to our (ongoing!) Nikkei+ competition (deadline for submissions: September 30, 2013). In “4-Sei What? That’s Mixed Up,” Sean talked about why he considers himself a Yonsei with an Issei mother and Sansei father. (If you really liked his entry, don’t forget to make a Discover Nikkei account and vote for it!)

With JABA, Sean worked on the Legacy Project: Legal Legends in the Nikkei Community, which seeks to record profiles of Japanese American legal leaders. He interviewed Los Angeles County Alternate Public Defender Janice Fukai and attorney/civil rights activist Rose Ochi about their life and work. In addition to these profiles, Sean got to put his Japanese skills to good use at JABA’s free legal clinic, where he registered clients.

You can read Sean’s reflection of his eight weeks with JANM and JABA here. Sean’s passions for law and Japanese culture were huge assets to both his work at JANM and JABA. We hope he’ll remain a frequent visitor to JANM!

Our American Voice

Our American Voice program coverJoin us every Saturday at 1 p.m. for Our American Voice, a two-person show exploring six diverse stories of Asian Pacific Americans, held every Saturday at 1pm in the gallery.

Created in partnership with East West Players for our new exhibition I Want the Wide American Earth: An Asian Pacific American Story, the performance is directed by Jennifer Chang and features Traci Kato-Kiriyama and Johnny Kwon in the six pieces written by D’Lo, Vivian Keh-Hue, Giovanni Ortega, Jeanne Sakata and Ova Saopeng, and Judy Soo Hoo.

Each piece is a slice in the life of an Asian Pacific American. Overall, they come together to form a larger picture representing the worlds of vastly different people, spanning decades and ethnicities, but ultimately united by their experience of being Asian in America. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to see the work of talented writers and actors come alive in an intimate setting!

Here are brief synopsis for the 6 pieces:

TAKING FLIGHT (excerpt) by Judy Soo hoo
Katherine Cheung defied family tradition and crossed racial lines to become the first licensed Asian American female aviator in 1932. During the 1930s, Cheung barnstormed across California, and her fame as a stunt pilot led to an invitation to join Amelia Earhart’s Ninety-Nines, an all-female flying club.

FORGOTTEN HOMELAND by Ova Saopeng
Lao-American siblings Soukki and Joy, refugees from the Vietnam War Era, must confront each other about a return trip to their homeland of Laos. How will they reconnect with a homeland that has long been forgotten and is so far away?

ALLOS (excerpt) by Giovanni Ortega
When young ALLOS arrives in the United States we witness his journey to find employment as well as acceptance amid the hardships of the Great Depression and bigotry of our past.

DYING FOR LOVE by D’Lo
An immigrant Sri Lankan nurse shares her conclusions on love and loneliness in America.

HOLD THESE TRUTHS (excerpt) by Jeanne Sakata
At Seattle’s University of Washington during WWII, following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a curfew is announced for all people of Japanese ancestry requiring them to be in their homes by 8PM. Gordon Hirabayashi, a Nisei student at the University, reluctantly obeys the order until one night when he rushes back to his YMCA dorm—and suddenly has an epiphany that stops him in his tracks.

DUTY AND DESIRE by Vivian Keh-Hue
In the midst of the trendy Koreatown club scene, an unexpected reunion occurs between childhood friends Penelope and Chester. While quick to judge one another regarding their choices in life, both characters find themselves driven by values common to the Korean American experience, having to navigate the rift between duty and desire.

Performance Dates:

Premiere at the I Want the Wide American Earth Opening Party
Friday, September 13, 2013 • 6:30PM – 10:30PM

Performances held in the exhibition gallery at 1PM each Saturday:
September 14 • September 21 • September 28
• October 5 • October 12 • October 19 • October 26

I Want the Wide American Earth tells the story of Asian and Pacific islanders in America through a series of 30 evocative banners accompanied by a selection of artifacts chosen from the collections of the Japanese American National Museum and the Riverside Metropolitan Museum. I Want the Wide American Earth runs from September 14 to October 27, 2013.

For more information about the exhibition, visit janm.org/wide-american-earth

CALL FOR ENTRIES: “Marvels & Monsters: Unbound” monologue/short scene showcase—DEADLINE: September 15

ALIENS, KAMIKAZES, AND GURUS—OH MY!

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Write an original monologue or short performance piece for a chance to be included in JANM’s October 10 “MARVELS & MONSTERS” SHOWCASE!

Throughout our nation’s history, Asians have been depicted as a set of distorted archetypes—the eternal foreigner, the sexless nerd, the brutal thug, the mystical wise man, the suicidal fanatic, the perpetual victim, the exotic seductress, and the conniving mastermind.

Now we’re looking for you to help shatter those images—with short original works of your own.

To commemorate the Japanese American National Museum’s West Coast premiere of MARVELS & MONSTERS: Unmasking Asian Images in U.S. Comics, 1942-1986, we’re looking for you to submit monologues or short performance works that rethink, subvert, deconstruct, or satirize the eight Asian pop-culture archetypes depicted in this exhibition, which draws from science fiction author William F. Wu’s extensive collection of comic books featuring Asian and Asian American characters—widely considered to be the largest in the world.

The archetypes are:

    THE ALIEN: The perpetual foreigner; the enigmatic, inscrutable, unassimilable outsider in our midst. His customs are peculiar, his beliefs heathen, his agenda secret; never fully understood, and so never fully trusted, he is best regarded from a distance with a mix of curiosity, revulsion and fear.
    THE BRAIN: The hyperintelligent mind without a body; sexless, heartless, friendless, a self-hating prodigy more comfortable interacting with machines than people. The math nerd and mad scientist, the otaku and outcast: He may rule the world, but will he ever get the girl?
    THE BRUTE: The gangster, the thug, the minion, the martial arts master—the Brute may be a staggering physical specimen, but he is a nameless and voiceless one; his is not to wonder why—his is merely to do, and more often than not, die, without complaint or commemoration. Stoic in his suffering, silent in his rage, he is infinitely interchangeable, eternally anonymous, limited in language to gestures of deference and the vocabulary of violence.
    THE GURU: The mystical wise one, whose inscrutable ways disguise the ancient, awesome truths he holds within his soul. Aged and wizened, he speaks in vague riddles and impenetrable allegories, appearing at first glance to be mad, senescent, or both. Yet to the right individual, the apprentice who is destined to inherit the Guru’s secrets, he is a gatekeeper to limitless power.
    THE KAMIKAZE: Human missiles screaming a lingering cry of “Banzai!!!!” as they plummet toward enemy forces; insurgents wired with explosives, eager to martyr themselves to earn vengeance and a reward in Heaven; nameless soldiers scrambling over the corpses of their fellows only to be mowed down in turn. The Kamikaze has many faces, but all are mindlessly self-sacrificing, zealously loyal, feverishly patriotic, and utterly dismissive of the value of human life.
    THE LOTUS BLOSSOM: The long-suffering wife, the left-behind lover; the hostage, the victim, the betrayed and forgotten. The Lotus Blossom is patient in her doomed love and passive to her predestined fate—which is to be abused, abased, exploited, and ultimately destroyed by or sacrificed for the man she loves and serves.
    THE TEMPTRESS: The exotic seductress, who uses her feminine wiles and sexual prowess to enthrall and ultimately, betray—lush of body, false of heart, her mocking laughter and the sharp rake of her clawed fingers may well be the last thing you’ll ever experience.
    THE MANIPULATOR: The evil controller, the shadowy mastermind, the megalomaniacal puppeteer seeking conquest through nefarious intrigue; brilliant, yes, but twisted by an insatiable lust for wealth, power, and control—hoping, perhaps, that world domination might fill the dark and hollow void of his soul.

Eight winning pieces will be selected by a jury that includes exhibition curator Jeff Yang; winning authors will receive widespread public acclaim and admiration, a $100 honorarium, and the opportunity to present their pieces as staged readings at JANM’s “Marvels & Monsters: Unbound” Short Works Showcase on October 10, 2013.

Unleash your creative potential. Submit your entries today!

Entries must be emailed to mm@janm.org as file attachments (.DOC, .TXT, or .RTF filetypes accepted; email above if alternate filetype is preferred). You will receive an emailed confirmation of your submission.

RULES:

1. Entries must be received by no later than 5PM PT on September 15, 2013 to be considered. Winners will be notified by 5PM PT on September 18.

2. The competition is open to all individuals, amateur or professional.

3. Entries should be no more than five minutes long in total.

4. All types and genres of work that can be performed live are eligible, including musical and solo performance pieces. Any instruments, props, or media utilized in a presentation must be provided by and are the sole responsibility of the submitter.

5. Works will be judged on their originality and quality, as well as their complementarity with other selected works and their relevance to the ideas and images depicted in the exhibition.

6. Winning submitters will be responsible for casting, staging, and directing their own presentations. JANM will provide space for one dress rehearsal before the showcase.

7. Authors retain all rights to their submissions. However, by submitting, authors agree to present their work at JANM on October 10, and to allow presentations to be taped for possible inclusion in the Marvels & Monsters exhibition and in documentary and video materials related to the exhibition.