Brain, Balance & Body Work – new class

Mondays, 10-11 am, Free trial classes in March

Brain, Balance & Body Work promotes senior wellness by integrating balance awareness, brain stimulation, cardiovascular exercise, and strength training.  In each session, participants move their whole body to visual and auditory cues, connect internal and external sensory input, and maintain muscle mass and heart health by using walls, chairs and body weight.

Midori is a certified personal trainer and a coach, who has been training people of all ages and abilities from young athletes to young at heart.  She has been involved with the J-Sei through lunch service and special event photography.  Midori is excited to introduce a new wellness program to J-Sei community members.

Reserve your space by emailing jill@j-sei.org with BBBW in memo.

TOPAZ COLLAGES: One Family’s Experience

By Jeanie Kashima

Exhibit Dates: January 22 to March 30, 2024

J-Sei Gallery Hours: MWF 10-1, TuTh 1-5

A series of collages emerged from family photos as artist Jeanie Kashima reflected on her early years, born in the Topaz concentration camp in Utah. After her mother Amy Takaki passed away at the age of 104 years, Kashima began work on her collages. While many do not have photos from their early years behind barbed wire, the Takaki family has a set of photos that document their journey and inspired the new work. 

In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which ordered 120,000 Japanese Americans to be forcibly removed from their homes to the interior of the United States. Taken from their spacious and comfortable home in Berkeley, the Takaki family was forced to adapt to living in horse stalls at the Tanforan Race Track. After several months, they were taken by train to Delta, Utah. Jeanie Takaki was the first baby born in the Topaz concentration camp and spent her formative years living with her family in the arid desert until 1945.

Topaz Collages provide a visceral landscape of one family’s experience of wartime incarceration.

ARTIST TALK with Jeanie Kashima – Sat, March 16, 2 pm

Hear from textile artist Jeanie Kashima on her inspiration and creative process in making Topaz Collages.  Enjoy refreshments and celebrate this moving and captivating story and visual expression.  RSVP for artist talk.

Book Launch: The Poet and the Silk Girl, a memoir by Satsuki Ina

Sunday, March 24, 2 pm (Hybrid)

The Poet and the Silk Girl follows the harrowing journey of the Ina family through wartime race-based incarceration and traces the echoes of trauma across generations. Join us for this book launch with filmmaker, activist, and psychotherapist Satsuki Ina in conversation with her son cartoonist and illustrator Adrian Tomine.

The Poet and the Silk Girl illustrates through one family’s saga the generational struggle of Japanese Americans who resisted racist oppression, fought for the restoration of their rights, and clung to their full humanity in the face of adversity.

In 1942 newlyweds Itaru and Shizuko Ina were settling into married life when the United States government upended their world. They were forcibly removed from their home and incarcerated in wartime American concentration camps solely on account of their Japanese ancestry. When the Inas, under duress, renounced their American citizenship, the War Department branded them enemy aliens and scattered their family across the U.S. interior.

Born to Itaru and Shizuko during their imprisonment, psychotherapist and activist Satsuki Ina weaves their story together in this moving mosaic. Through diary entries, photographs, clandestine letters, and heart-wrenching haiku, she reveals how this intrepid young couple navigated life, love, loss, and loyalty tests in the welter of World War II-era hysteria.

With psychological insight, Ina excavates the unmentionable, recovering a chronicle of resilience amidst one of the severest blows to American civil liberties. As she traces the legacies of trauma, she connects her family’s ordeal to modern-day mass incarceration at the U.S.-Mexico border. Lyrical and gripping, this cautionary tale implores us to prevent the repetition of atrocity, pairing healing and protest with galvanizing power.

Renowned cartoonist, Adrian Tomine, son of the author will join the event to be in conversation with his mother and together explore the intergenerational impact of the family’s wartime experience on identity and literary expression. Adrian published his comic book series at the age of 16, and he has since illustrated highly touted covers for The New Yorker magazine. His graphic novel Shortcomings, named a New York Times Notable Books of the year, was adapted for film and released in 2023.

“A powerful quilt work of memory, The Poet and the Silk Girl sutures the traumatic wounds of Japanese American incarceration with care for the past and struggle for the future.”Andrew Leong, author of Lament in the Night

Published by Heyday Books, Hardcover, 6 x 9, 312 pages

Book sales & signing to follow. Light reception.

RSVP for free event, in-person or online. Limited space available.

SPEAKER BIOS

Adrian Tomine began self-publishing his comic book series Optic Nerve when he was sixteen, and in 1994 he received an offer to publish from Drawn & Quarterly. His comics have been anthologized in publications such as McSweeney’s, Best American Comics, and Best American Nonrequired Reading. Both his graphic novel Shortcomings and his memoir The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist were named New York Times Notable Books of the year. Since 1999, Tomine has been a regular contributor to the New Yorker. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughters.

Where’s the Cat: The End of a Quilt Journey

by Carolyn Hayashida

November 20, 2023 to January 12, 2024

Never claiming to be a quilter, Carolyn Hayashida has found her quilt journey’s end. From a young age, she was drawn to sewing and studied art and fashion design. Her first quilt was a gift to her husband for his 50th birthday, the Family Kamon quilt. 

She was invited to JASEB (now J-Sei) through Bess Kawachi Chin who invited her to share her Sashiko designs in her clothing creations. She later frequented JASEB when her mother was active. She was later asked to coordinate the JASEB Quilting Class. She learned from the talented quilters and began to incorporate her unique designs into her quilting projects. Carolyn has a keen eye for combining fabrics and personalizing each creation with her stitching talents.  Come visit the gallery to find the cat, rabbits, and to discover an array of Japanese cultural motifs in her work. Gallery Hours:  MWF 10-1, TuTh 1-5

Carolyn Hayashida will be at the J-Sei Artisan Faire: Sunday, December 3rd, 11 am to 4 pm.  Stop in to see her at the faire, then go upstairs to the gallery at J-Sei to see the quilt show.