by Kathy Hashimoto | Feb 2, 2021 | Classes & Events
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!
Support J-Sei At the Movies
Thanks to you, J-Sei At the Movies recently celebrated its third anniversary! We look forward to more creative programming with educational and inspiring Japanese and Japanese American films. We are especially grateful for the up close and personal chats with filmmakers as we learn so much from the exchange.
We love having a growing and enthusiastic audience. You are the best! We welcome any donations to help us offset costs for Movie Night. Thanks for considering this.
by Jill Shiraki | Jan 11, 2021 | Classes & Events, Other News
Oshogatsu Celebration – Friday, January 29th, 2 pm
In our virtual landscape, we are discovering ways to connect and celebrate in community. Join us for our Japanese New Year’s celebration, an auspicious occasion to ensure hope and goodwill upon the year ahead. Celebrate with us the new year of 2021, the year of the Ox
Honor our aging elders and celebrate 90+ years of living with a sweet tribute.
Experience Japanese cultural traditions through music and dance by Minyo artists Keiko Allen and Kimie Hoshi.
Special guest Kimi Takesue, filmmaker of “95 and 6 To Go” will share a short clip from the film and a reflection on what it was like to capture her grandfather Tom in his nineties for the film.
“’95 and 6 To Go’ is a funny, imaginative and warm film about the close relationship – and creative collaboration! – between grandfather and grandchild. Takesue’s film is a personal ‘home movie’ of the rare kind.” – CPH:DOX Film Festival
While we cannot be together for a special luncheon, we are offering a chirashi bento by Chef Yuji for pick-up. More details below.
RSVP for the Oshogatsu Celebration on 1/29.
Oshogatsu Bento
We do miss dining with you.
Although we cannot be together in person, we are offering a limited number of chirashi bento by Chef Yuji for a $12 donation. The bento pick up times on Jan 29 will be assigned for 12 or 12:30 to maintain social distancing protocol.
Please complete your order here. Enter the amount of your donation. Choose from bento, bento + donation, or donation only. You can indicate the number of bento you are ordering by clicking on the comment box and adding a note to us. If you have any questions, please contact Jill Shiraki at jill@j-sei.org
We are SOLD OUT for bento orders, however you are welcome to join us for the virtual program.
RSVP for ZOOM link to jill@j-sei.org with Oshogatsu 1/29.
by Kathy Hashimoto | Jan 4, 2021 | Classes & Events, JSei Book Club, Lament in the Night
Meet Translator Andrew Way Leong
On Wednesday, January 13, at 4:00pm, Professor Andrew Way Leong, translator of Lament in the Night, will visit with us live on Zoom to launch this season’s Book Club. Prof. Leong will introduce Nagahara’s work and describe how he came to discover and translate this buried literary treasure. RSVP with “Book Club – Leong” in the subject line to receive the Zoom link. Please join us!
“Lament in the Night is a heartrending gift from the past… Little Tokyo in the 1920s—its bars, gambling, and social exchanges in an era of Prohibition—comes vividly to life in these stories, revealing the real and psychic underbelly of daily lives that have been erased and forgotten.
Andrew Leong’s patient and careful translation makes a lost world known to us again.”
— Karen Tei Yamashita, author of I-Hotel and Sansei and Sensibility
Join the Club, Buy the Book
Happy new year! The J-Sei Virtual Book Club continues in 2021 with another discussion-worthy selection. Book Club Format: We’ll follow a suggested reading schedule, although of course you are welcome to read at whatever pace works best for you. On the secure J-Sei Book Club webpage we’ll have weekly postings and encourage you to contribute your own thoughts about the reading. Also scheduled will be online guest appearances and a live Zoom meeting so we can get together to discuss the book. Sign up for the Book Club and be added to the Book Club mailing list.
J-Sei Book Club Pick: Lament in the Night by Nagahara Shoson
Our latest book actually consists of two novellas, originally published in 1925, presented together in one volume. The first, titled “Lament in the Night,” follows a migrant worker who wanders the streets of an unnamed city in search of food, work, and self-worth. The second and longer novella, “The Tale of Osato,” portrays a young woman struggling to survive a series of hardships after marrying and moving to California. Both works are remarkable in showing the seamy, hardscrabble life of Japanese immigrants in early 20th-century America. Nagahara’s works languished in obscurity until uncovered by scholar Andrew Way Leong, who translated them from their original Japanese into English while working on his Ph.D. The resulting translation was published by Kaya Press in 2012 and includes notes, background, and supplemental information as well as illuminating historical photographs.
Join J-Sei’s Book Club and connect with fellow book lovers as we explore this major achievement in Japanese American literature.
Nagahara Shōson was the pen name of Nagahara Hideaki, who was born in 1901 in a small village in the northeastern corner of Hiroshima Prefecture. In 1918, he emigrated to the United States at age 17. In 1920, Nagahara resided in a boarding house in Los Angeles and listed his occupation as “railroad worker,” but he also published several novels, stories, and plays in the Los Angeles area, though not all his works have survived. Nagahara may have returned to Japan in late 1927 or early 1928. The date and location of his death are currently unknown.
Andrew Way Leong is Assistant Professor of English at U.C. Berkeley, where he received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature. Prior to joining the Berkeley faculty, Prof. Leong was an assistant professor at Northwestern University. In addition to translating Lament in the Night, which won the 2014 Outstanding Book Award—Creative Writing, Assoc. of Asian American Studies, he is presently completing a book manuscript entitled A Queer, Queer Race: Origins for Japanese/American Literature.
Photo: Yanina Gotsulsky
by Jill Shiraki | Dec 22, 2020 | Classes & Events
Simple Japanese Cooking
Thursday, October 22 & Thursday, Nov 19, 3 pm
Azusa Oda, author of Japanese Cookbook for Beginners, will continue to cultivate our skills to bring delicious and satisfying Japanese meals to the table. In October, the class will feature a family favorite Super Simple Ramen and Pork and Cabbage Gyoza. To prepare for family gatherings, learn to prepare a colorful Chirashi dish and delectable Chawan Mushi in the November class and you are sure to impress your guests for the holidays. Azusa Oda is an avid home cook, food blogger of HumbleBeanBlog.com and designer. RSVP for the class.
by Jill Shiraki | Dec 22, 2020 | Classes & Events
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.
J-Sei At the Movies
Congratulations on the third anniversary of J-Sei At the Movies! We look forward to more creative programming with educational and inspiring Japanese and Japanese American films. We are especially grateful for the up close and personal chats with filmmakers as we learn so much from the exchange.
We love to have a growing and captive audience. You are the best! We welcome any donations to help us offset costs for Movie Night. Thanks for considering this.
by Jill Shiraki | Dec 9, 2020 | Classes & Events
Thursday, December 10th – 6:30 pm
In Conversation with Nina Revoyr
Author of six novels including Southland
Join us for this special honor to meet with Nina Revoyr, notable author. While the dialogue will begin with a focus on Southland, J-Sei’s Book Club recent pick, the conversation will expand to touch on Japanese American community, race relations, neighborhood, and family dynamics through an expanse of time. It’s really a rare opportunity for us to speak with Nina directly. And it turns out that we are ahead of the curve, as Nina and SOUTHLAND are receiving renewed attention in the current context of racial justice and allyship. The online literary journal Alta has just announced SOUTHLAND as one of its California Book Club selections in early 2021.
Though Southland has some of the characteristics of a detective novel, Revoyr said: “I didn’t really conceive of it as a mystery, although I’m delighted that people are embracing that aspect of it…. But this situation … was the mechanism through which [the female character] was going to go back and discover all of these things about her and her family’s past. What I was very intrigued by was … what were the dynamics of the Crenshaw district, and interracial relations, and economics in Los Angeles that could have caused the riots to have happened in the first place…. The real revelation … has to do with some of the relationships between the people in the past; that was always where I was trying to get to.” [Excerpt from Book Sense “Nina Revoyr’s Southland Stakes Out A Different Los Angeles”}
Southland explores the fragile understandings and sometimes painful misunderstandings that occur across the lines of race and culture. It is also the story of an ever-changing city. Moving in and out of the past, from the shipping yards and internment camps of World War II; to the barley fields of the Crenshaw District in the 1930s; to the means streets of Watts in the 1960s; to the night spots and garment factories of the 1990s, Southland weaves a tale of Los Angeles in all of its faces and forms.
NINA REVOYR is the author of six novels, including A Student of History; Lost Canyon; The Age of Dreaming, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Southland, a Los Angeles Times best seller and “Best Book” of 2003; The Necessary Hunger; and Wingshooters, which won an Indie Booksellers Choice Award and was selected by O, The Oprah Magazine as one of “10 Titles to Pick Up Now.” Revoyr lives and works in Los Angeles.
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