Stubborn Twig and Mochitsuki

It’s been quite a week for Japanese-American culture in Portland.

On January 15th, I went to a reading/talk by Lauren Kessler, the local author of Stubborn Twig, the selection for the Oregon Reads 2009 program. The idea is that people across the state will read this book over the next several months. Because of the subject matter — “Three Generations in the Life of a Japanese American Family,” the book cover says — I’d decided I better participate in this program and had picked up the book earlier in the week (with a Barnes&Noble gift certificate that was gathering dust!).

Lauren Kessler proved to be charming and smart. She read some passages from the book, yes, but she went beyond what most authors do at these readings and took some time to just talk, about the members of the Yasui family who are the subject of her book, about the immigrant experience, and about what it means to be an American. To be honest, I started out slightly skeptical of a white author writing about a Japanese-American family, but that seems to have been a result of my own prejudice. It’s obvious that Lauren Kessler, this woman of third-generation European descent, fully immersed herself into all aspects of this book, cares about the Yasui family and others like them, and has given a lot of deep thought into the nature of this Nation of Immigrants.

Over and over, I found myself mentally nodding at what she was saying. To grossly paraphrase, she talked about how America is a “patchwork quilt” and not a “melting pot,” that we can celebrate our differences and not become all the same while still being a cohesive unit, how there are some aspects to the immigrant experience that are universal no matter where you came from, and yet how in other ways things are different for a descendant of a Japanese immigrant versus a descendant of a European immigrant because some of us “wear our foreignness on our faces.”

One thing I found particularly insightful is when she said that it “takes the third generation” to want to recapture their grandparents’ culture and reconcile it with their own, after the first generation tends to cling on to their home country’s culture and the second generation tries to eschew their parents’ foreignness. I find that that’s very true despite the fact that it doesn’t directly apply to myself. But I’m neither first nor second generation, but an in-between “1.5 generation” as I’ve heard it called. Having been born in Japan and spending a short few years there (which makes me technically first generation) and then growing up in the United States (which also makes me have much in common with the second generation), I seem to have somehow gone through and transcended all three of these steps that Lauren Kessler talked about.

So now I go to events like Mochitsuki.

(Picture “stolen” from the Mochitsuki website, since my camera broke in Japan)

This year’s annual Japanese-American New Year’s celebration took place yesterday, January 17th at Portland Community College’s Sylvania campus.

There was the Cultural Fair with booths, an ice-carving demonstration through the Portland-Sapporo Sister City Association (it was definitely COLD enough outside!), and yes, mochi-pounding and mochi-eating. But the big event was the show that occurred in the Performing Arts Center.

And as with last year, the highlights for me were the performances by Portland Taiko. I love these guys. They’re imaginative, loud, and lots of fun. I love their bits of choreography and their powerful sound, and I love that they really have a modern sensibility that works. I actually took a class with them a year ago and thoroughly enjoyed it (I’ve always wanted to be a drummer, too!) but haven’t “gotten around” to continuing to take any more. I feel inspired…I wonder if they have spots left for the next class?

…And if you have no idea what I’m talking about with this taiko, go look it up! There’s other ensembles elsewhere in the country, particularly if you’re on the West Coast.

Film: Sukiyaki Western Django

Director: Takashi Miike
Runtime: 121 min./98 min.

This is the kind of post-modern, genre-mashing film I would have loved to write a paper about back in film school. I came out of the movie wondering if this is supposed to be a parody or an homage. Or maybe both?

It’s a Japanese Western with a Japanese cast speaking various levels of bad English, samurai swords and cowboy guns, and a cameo by Quentin Tarantino. I’m sure it’s a role he was thrilled to do, as there’s definitely something Tarantino-esque about this movie. I think it’s mainly in the grotesque humor derived from the sometimes-graphic-yet-cartoonish violence: in one scene, an arrow shoots through a man’s (so-fresh-he’s-still-standing!) bullet-hole wound, killing the guy standing directly behind him.

Most of it doesn’t make any sense, partially because the English is so terrible (I can understand English or Japanese, but not this), and partially because the movie is just too damn crazy. It has something to do with treasure and warring clans (the film heavily references the War of the Roses), and makes sure to include just about every kind of stereotypical image/shot/dialogue that would be in a western while knocking you off-balance with the Japanese actors, Japanese writing, Japanese-style buildings, and other such bits of Japanese culture. Sure there’s been the Italian spaghetti westerns, but this goes beyond spaghetti — it’s…sukiyaki?

Maybe this isn’t a great movie, and it’s a bit awkward, particularly when there’s times when you can’t tell if something is supposed to be funny or not. But I’d recommend it if you’re in the mood for something different and completely bizarre.

Currently playing in Portland at the Clinton Street Theater.
Available on DVD.