Two years ago, the Japan America Society began a project with support from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage that sought to deepen relationships with and connections between Asian American and African American communities by reimagining the Japanese cultural programs at Shofuso to be more inclusive of West Philly residents. As the formal project timeline comes to an end, our work with the Parkside neighborhood is just getting started in many ways, but we wanted to take stock of what has been accomplished during these past two years.

Philadelphia is the sixth largest city in the US, but our Japanese American population numbers under 3,000. With this in mind, I have long sought the opportunity to present a public exhibition related to Japanese American history in our local region to educate Philadelphians about topics they might otherwise be unfamiliar with. This recently materialized as the new exhibit that opened on August 12, 2023 titled, Okaeri (Welcome Home): The Nisei Legacy at Shofuso.

As the Japanese American community continues to diversify through inter-ethnic and interracial marriages, this raises questions about whether a community that was once thought to be culturally homogenous will continue to practice Japanese traditions at all. If so, what do those traditions look like today, and what might they look like in the future?

What does the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans have to do with a collection of Japanese ukiyo-e prints housed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art? Quite a bit, if you were to ask the late Mary Ishimoto Watanabe, who together with her husband Warren donated a collection of nearly fifty woodcut prints from the 1850s to 1970s.

On January 31, 2023 the Berks County Residential Center (otherwise known as Berks Detention Center) has finally closed its doors.

With so many resources available it is easier than ever before to get involved in US-Japan relations. It is deeply satisfying to be involved in this work, and I encourage others within our Japanese American community to seriously consider how they might become more involved in strengthening and maintaining this critical relationship over generations to come.

Over the weekend of September 24 I had the opportunity to participate in an event held at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles that commemorated each of the individuals who experienced the Japanese American wartime incarceration. Known as Irei or the National Monument for the World War II Japanese American Incarceration, the event was the culmination of several years of arduous labor by Buddhist scholar, Duncan Ryuken Williams, who serves as Director of the Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture at University of Southern California. 

In the past nine months while working for Japan America Society of Greater Philadelphia, I have had the opportunity to ponder at great length the ways in which public programming that is meant to celebrate Japanese culture while also strengthening US-Japan relations can both cater to the specific interests of a localized audience and also retain the spirit of Japanese culture. As a result, this year’s Shofuso Cherry Blossom Festival of Philadelphia looked a great deal different from previous years, as we highlighted the overlap among Japanese and African American musical cultures.

In May 2020, PBS broadcast a groundbreaking five-part documentary series called Asian Americans that chronicled the contributions and challenges of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) throughout our nation’s history. This was a significant milestone for AAPI representation in public television and an excellent educational resource unto itself. Acknowledging the rich untold AAPI history in Philadelphia, WHYY then began work on a local series – Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders: A Philadelphia Story. 

From the initial research stage, Japanese American media scholar and historian Rob Buscher was brought into the series as a consultant. To help guide the series production team as they developed episodes with thematic correlations across time periods and communities, Rob compiled a consolidated historical timeline from various community history sources in the Greater Philadelphia region. The timeline is a good resource for general education on these subjects, and makes an excellent companion piece to the series by providing context and granular detail on specific events referenced in each episode.  

This is the second in a series of articles related to the many shared connections among the African American and Japanese American communities that are being explored through Japan America Society of Greater Philadelphia’s Reimagining Recovery Project.

This is the first of several articles for The Parkside Journal about the many shared connections among the African American and Japanese American communities that are being explored through Japan America Society of Greater Philadelphia’s Reimagining Recovery Project.

Culture is a powerful tool when used to build empathy among diverse communities. This is particularly effective in regions like Philadelphia where we do not have a large Japanese American population. For that reason, it is important for Japanese Americans to have a say in how Japan is being represented, and this project is our opportunity to reclaim the narrative in a way that is inclusive of both overseas Japanese and multigenerational Japanese American perspectives.

If ever there was a moment to join together and build a truly inclusive movement among our peoples this is it. Only together will we be able to overcome the many challenges our communities face.

In the aftermath of the Atlanta Spa Shootings, there has been a renewed interest in the role that Hollywood movies and other popular media portrayals of Asian Americans have in reinforcing negative stereotypes pertaining to sexuality and gender. Although cinema and new media have an undeniable impact on racial stereotyping, Western fascination with the exotic (and often erotic) East is nothing new, given the long history of literary orientalism that extends back to the earliest encounters with the West.

For the first time after the deadly Atlanta shootings I breathed a breath of collective release alongside hundreds of anti-racism activists who took the streets of Philadelphia during the Philly Rally for Solidarity that took place on March 25, 2021. In the decade-plus that I have been organizing in Philly’s Pan-Asian American space, this was by far the largest turnout of AAPIs I have seen at a protest.

Over the past couple weeks since the estate of children’s author Theodore Seuss Geisel announced they would be retiring six of his early titles from publication, the media has been awash with opinion pieces on the subject. At face value, this is an admirable move worthy of the celebrated children’s author’s legacy, but one has to wonder how much of the decision is driven by profit?

When I first visited Heart Mountain during the annual pilgrimage in the summer of 2018, I would not have guessed that several years later, I would be given the opportunity to produce a podcast series about the camp. Then again, so much of the last year has become unpredictable with the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, which resulted in both a spike in anti-Asian violence and civil unrest in our country. This post offers a behind-the-scenes look at the making of this 10-part podcast series.

This post explores the similarities between 19th century Yellow Peril disease-scapegoating and the rise of anti-Asian violence during the COVID pandemic.

The late-Ruth Asawa’s legacy as an artist and arts education advocate is revisited as her works are a testament to the importance of art benefitting the greater good. This post takes stock of the posthumous celebration of Asawa’s work that was epitomized by the USPS stamp release featuring her sculpture works in Summer 2020.

At a time when disease runs rampant throughout most of the country without any clear plan for curtailing the current COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. has seemingly vacated its status as world leader. It is in this unique moment that we commemorate the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945, respectively. As Japanese Americans we must interrogate the extraordinary cruelty and blatant disregard for human life that the atomic bombings represent if we are to guarantee that they are never again used in war.