J-Sei At the Movies: Sessue Hayakawa — Hollywood’s First Asian Superstar

A Live Watch Party, followed by discussion with film scholar Daisuke Miyao

Friday, February 12, 6:30 pm

Movie fans might be amazed to learn that a Japanese man was one of the biggest stars of Hollywood’s silent film era of the 1910s and early 1920s. Several years before Rudolph Valentino made his film debut, Sessue Hayakawa was the highest-paid performer of his day and rivaled other stars such as Charlie Chaplin in popularity with audiences — particularly white women, who screamed and swooned over his smoldering screen presence. In addition, his acting performances stood out for their sensitivity and restraint compared to the hammy overacting of the day. More than 100 years later, Sessue Hayakawa’s stardom at his peak remains unprecedented.

Yet, Hayakawa also had to deal on- and off-screen with racial prejudice and stereotypes at a time of extreme anti-Asian discrimination and growing anti-Japanese sentiment. Reactions from Japanese American communities and movie audiences in Japan were mixed as well, due to the limited and problematic types of roles that he was allowed to play.

Join us to watch a Sessue Hayakawa movie together (silent film with English intertitles; about one hour long), followed by a discussion with noted scholar and expert Professor Daisuke Miyao.

RSVP with “Feb Movie Night” in the subject line.

Daisuke Miyao is Professor and Hajime Mori Chair in Japanese Language and Literature at U.C. San Diego. He is the author of Sessue Hayakawa: Silent Cinema and Transnational Stardom (2007), which won the Book Award in History from the Assoc. of Asian American Studies and the John Hope Franklin Book Award from Duke University. His most recent book is Japonisme and the Birth of Cinema (Duke Univ. Press 2020).

J-Sei Movie Night Bento

For movie night, you can order a specially made obento from My Friend Yuji.
This month’s offering is:
Wafu Miso Beef Curry
(Japanese-style miso curry with braised beef, mixed vegetables and homemade pickles)

Click on the button below to place your order. The price is $18 per bento. Please order early; quantities are limited.

To order: When you click on the button below, it will take you directly to a pop-up order form on the My Friend Yuji webpage, where you first select a pickup time. The next window will allow you to select the number of bento (click the “plus” sign to increase the number), and select your pick-up time, then click the “View order” bar at the bottom to complete your order and pay.

You can pick up your bento at the selected pick up time at J-Sei on Friday, Feb. 12. Please remember to wear a mask and observe social distance protocol.  Thank you!

J-Sei At the Movies: An Evening with Kimi Takesue

95 and 6 To Go, a film documentary

Friday, January 15

In “95 and 6 To Go” filmmaker Kimi Takesue captures the cadence of daily life for Grandpa Tom, a retired postal worker born to Japanese immigrants to Hawai’i in the 1910’s. Amidst the solitude of his home routines – coupon clipping, rigging an improvised barbecue, lighting firecrackers on the New Year – we glimpse an unexpectedly rich inner life. As his granddaughter queries his history of love and loss, a stalled film project becomes a collaborative inquiry into mortality and how one constructs a personal narrative with memories that span almost a century.

Shot over six years in Honolulu, this intimate meditation on absence and family expands the vernacular of the “home movie” to consider how history is accumulated in the everyday and how sparks of humor and creativity can animate an ordinary life.

Kimi Takesue is an award-winning filmmaker working in documentary, narrative, and experimental genres. She is the recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in Film. Takesue’s documentary 95 AND 6 TO GO (2016) was nominated for the prestigious 2017 European Doc Alliance Award. The film screened at over twenty-five international festivals.

RSVP with “At The Movies Jan 15” in memo line  to receive the link to view the film and join the discussion.