Portland Taiko – Oregon Lost & Found

Something was going to inspire me to finally write in this blog again after months of making excuses to myself.

I’ve just come back from Portland Taiko’s culminating show of the season, Oregon Lost & Found. I often catch myself overusing the word “awesome” (my California upbringing, maybe?), but Portland Taiko is, in the true sense of the word, awesome. Sometimes tears well up in my eyes when I see a really good live performance, not for any particular nameable emotion, but just because I feel so swept off my feet I feel like I’m somehow inside the performance. This was one of those times.

This show featured Ann Ishimaru and Zack Semke, founding Portland Taiko members who had left the group but is back to perform for the 15th anniversary season. They’d left before I was introduced to the group, so I wasn’t familiar with them before. According to the program notes “a past PT favorite,” they did an impressive duet using five drums between the two of them.

In general, the show was full of clever conceits, some I’d seen them do before, others I hadn’t. Relatively new performing member Keiko Araki, whose day job is as a violinist for the Oregon Symphony, continues to lend her string skills in addition to her taiko-playing, which is an interesting and welcome addition to the Portland Taiko repertoire. Michelle Fujii and Toru Watanabe have apparently been doing a lot of sharing of their dance background with the others, as there were even more choreography and visuals than usual. Guest artist Rick Bartow, a Native American artist, did a painting on stage. There was storytelling and acting. There were costumes and props. There was singing. There was humor. They made instruments of phone books, a tire, bamboo, and paper. Yes, plain pieces of paper — which for me, being a lover of musicals, reminded me a bit of Gene Kelly tap-dancing with a newspaper in Summer Stock.

All this might seem gimmicky if it weren’t so perfectly executed, with the rare combination of wild-abandon earnestness and confident gracefulness. Above all, what really comes through and makes them extraordinary is personality. The major innovation in the history of contemporary taiko is when jazz drummer Daihachi Oguchi decided that it would be a good idea to combine multiple taiko drums to form an ensemble. Portland Taiko really embraces this seemingly basic concept when they write and perform pieces that force the players to act as a team, giving us wonderful rhythms that syncopate, start, stop, merge, complement, divide, give, and take, each part doing something different but contributing to the whole to create a single song.

People who know me well know that I like rhythm, and I also like the loud, exuberant, and big. Portland Taiko emanates energy and joy. I feel so grateful to have become acquainted with you — thank you so much, Portland Taiko!

Check them out on their website: http://www.portlandtaiko.org/

Up

Up is a great movie in every way. It manages to be mature and genuinely touching while not skimping on silly fun, and is of course delivered in beautiful Pixar animation. I’m still not sure anything can quite live up to the perfection that is The Incredibles, but it beats WALL-E by far.

And…one of the main protagonists is Asian. Even better, he just happens to be Asian; no stereotypes, no accents, or even any mention of cultural background. Russell is just an overweight, bit annoying all-American kid, a “Wilderness Explorer” preoccupied with earning his last merit badge. He’s even voiced by Japanese-American Jordan Nagai. I love it.

Interestingly enough, the trailer for The Princess and the Frog came before this film, which seemed to be of dubious racial sensitivity…

Sister Cities

For the most eventful part of that weekend for me, see previous post.

June 5 — After the re-signing ceremony and reception, I was finally off the hook. I wandered over to Pioneer Place mall with some of the Sapporo delegation. (I think we did lose some people, but I don’t blame them; they’d just gotten off the plane from Japan that morning, and this was the longest flight some of them had ever taken.)

Now it was time for the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the children’s art exhibit that was in place in the mall atrium. There were more speeches — Mayor Fumio Ueda and former Portland Mayor Tom Potter. The English to Japanese translator for this event seemed much more at ease in her formal Japanese than I was — I’m guessing she’d spent much longer than my own 4 years in Japan — though at one point, she did get carried away and read her translation ahead of what Tom Potter was saying…again, translating is hard.

The children’s art from Sapporo was actually fairly intriguing. They seemed to be in two categories: features of Sapporo (snow, landmarks such as the government building and the clock tower, etc.), and — strangely enough for June — explanations of New Year’s in Japan. Mostly by fourth and fifth graders, they were a hell of a lot better than anything I could draw at that age, or even now, for that matter.

June 6 — I participated in the Grand Floral Walk, which kicks off the Grand Floral Parade, the main event of the Portland Rose Festival. I’d volunteered to help carry the banner for a Sapporo-related youth group, which I didn’t know anything about until I talked to some people that day. Apparently there’s an international youth summit that takes place in Sapporo, and this was a reunion of sorts for former participants.
Afterward, they kindly treated us to lunch at Todai, where I stuffed myself with sushi and those cute little cakes I love so much there.

June 7 — A light day for me in terms of Sister City involvement. I sat at the hospitality desk at the Benson Hotel for just a couple hours. There wasn’t a lot for me to do, since people were mostly getting ready to go to the “Sayonara Party” at the Japanese Garden that evening. I think the most significant thing I did was direct a woman to the Bath & Body Works for nice-smelling bathroom stuff. I mostly chatted up the other volunteer working the desk with me, a white American who’d lived in Japan for several years and spoke pretty good Japanese.
I didn’t attend the Sayonara Party because, well, the weather wasn’t looking so great and I was feeling pretty exhausted after a busy weekend.

I wish I could have done some of the tour group outings, or the dinners that people in the area were hosting in their homes. But I guess I can’t do everything.

Here’s what I took away from the weekend of sister city activity:
- Portland and Sapporo have an active, committed sister city relationship unlike — from the impression I get — many other sister cities.
- Both cities like to emphasize their shared love of: nature, environmentalism, and of course, beer.
- Best moment with the two mayors: During the signing, Fumio Ueda went straight to signing the document. Sam Adams looked up and held his pen up with a cheesy smile at the flashing cameras. Mayor Ueda figured out what was going on and did the same.
- It’s great that I got to do it, but I don’t think I want to do formal interpretation again.
- …but I would love to work with Japanese visitors more.

A Feature and a Short Film: Tokyo Sonata and Le Maison en Petits Cubes

Somewhere in my ridiculously busy schedule this month, I’ve been trying to keep up on special film events. The Northwest Film Center’s Portland International Film Festival is happening right now (through February 22nd), and the Hollywood Theatre is showing Academy Award-nominated short films.

(Mild Spoilers)
Tokyo Sonata is about a family whose patriarch gets laid off, exposing problems in the family dynamics, and eventually causes things to spiral out of control. Something I think is interesting about this film is that this is a Japanese film by Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, but has an Australian co-writer (Max Mannix). I was reading this interview with Mannix, and he seems slightly defensive about how the director thought that his original script was “somewhat stereotypical.” In a way, it still is, but not in a way that is detrimental. It may be that Max Mannix has unique insight into contemporary Japanese life, precisely as an “outsider” who spent many years in Japan. Tokyo Sonata struck me as simple yet truthful. (Isn’t that what movies often do, simplifying into a story the chaos of life?) This film reminded me a bit of American Beauty, not in style or tone (I hope I don’t scare away people who aren’t fans of American Beauty), but in the way it looks at how your “nice, average family” breaks down if you “look closer,” or when something changes that upsets the delicate balance of the family.

To me, the most interesting character was the mother. At first, we only see her as the dutiful housewife (although we do see her looking out at the rain in the opening credits, which gives us a glimpse of the person we later see): always home to greet the father and sons with their meals, generally devoting herself to the well-being of the family, and speaking in that measured, soft tone of a stereotypical mother. When we begin to see her as a real person, it’s jarring.

I haven’t seen any of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s other films, but he’s known for his horror films, and I saw some of that element used effectively in Tokyo Sonata. Japanese horror relies less on jump-out-of-your-seat surprise and more on unsettling tone, and there’s plenty of anxiety in Tokyo Sonata as every member of the family holds secrets, unwilling to communicate with each other until they all hit rock bottom.

In some reviews I’ve read, people are turned off of the rather bizarre turn the film takes as all the characters simultaneously reach the point of complete unraveling, and then rather inexplicably, things get better and there is a happy ending. I think you just need to trust this film and “go with it,” and accept it as a modern fable of sorts. Also, it’s rather refreshing that everything gets better not because of a stroke of luck (actually, the element of good luck is literally thrown away) or of some force coming to save the day, but because each character decides to just deal with the way things are. In this sense, there’s a lot of realism.

The film ends with the youngest son at a music school audition, playing Debussy’s Clair de Lune. This could be overly sentimental, perhaps, but the scene said a lot with no words, and it was a rather beautiful end to the film.

(On a completely random personal note, by complete coincidence, I had a ticket for 2 days later to the play Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune at the local CoHo Theater, in which the music is used in the play and figures into the story. Not only that, I also happened to have run into the Operations Manager of this said theater on the bus on my way to see…Tokyo Sonata.)

Le Maison en Petits Cubes is a film from Japan with an Oscar nomination this year in the Animated Short Film category. It is by far the best of the nominees, and I would say that it would be a shoo-in win if it wasn’t for the fact that a Pixar film is also nominated.
True to the title, this film has a European flavor to its hand-drawn animation style (The Triplets of Belleville is coming to mind). It is about an old man who, in a world where the water level is constantly rising (and I appreciate the possible subtle environmental theme here, something the film thankfully does not dwell on), continually builds on to the top of his house as a matter of fact. One day, he drops his pipe into the water, and he literally dives through his memories through the forgotten floors of his house. It’s a sweet, sad, meditation on life and the passage of time.
I found a short clip of it on YouTube here.

Thank you, pioneers

I was going to post more pictures from my San Francisco trip back in November, but I somehow never got around to it.

But right now, I feel inspired. Today, between going to my taiko class, almost being done reading Stubborn Twig, and conversing at length about being a Japanese-American, I thought of these photos I took in San Francisco…

In Golden Gate Park, just outside of the Japanese Tea Garden, was this:

It’d be a huge understatement to say that life was tough for these pioneering immigrants. Thank you, thank you, and thank you for “leading the way.”

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.

Film: On Paper Wings

Director: Ilana Sol
Runtime: 67 min.

I saw this film last night as part of the Northwest Film Center’s 35th Northwest Film & Video Festival

It’s a documentary about the only World War II casualties to occur on the continental U.S.: in 1945, a Japanese balloon bomb killed five children and their pregnant Sunday school teacher outside of the small town of Bly, Oregon.

It’s something I’d heard about but had filed away in my mind under “World War II trivia,” a mere footnote in a large-scale, global war.

On Paper Wings packs a lot in its relatively short running time, bringing a real, human story into this “minor” incident. It includes extensive interviews: with the women that made these balloon bombs as schoolgirls who at the time did not even think to question their patriotic duty, with the siblings and neighbors of the six people killed by one of their creations, and with the Japanese-American man — interned in Tule Lake during the war — who in 1996 brought them together.

At one point in the film, one of the Japanese women says that because she always thought of the Japanese as victims, she did not feel anything for those six Americans that died in Oregon — until her Japanese-American friend, now a professor in Michigan, wrote her the names and ages of the people that were killed.

I believe this film has that purpose, of telling us why we should care, and illustrating through a story of two small towns the broader implications of war…and peace.

This film is by a local filmmaker and is not in wide release, but go to her website for more information and screening dates.

Racism (or not?) in The Manchurian Candidate

I recently re-visited the 1962 version of the film The Manchurian Candidate, which I hadn’t seen in a while.

Just to be clear, it’s a great film — eerie and suspenseful, well-written, and has some wonderful performances. The disturbing “dream” sequence described nicely here (scroll down a bit) is quite possibly the greatest example of inspired film editing ever.

That said, AsianWeek agreed with me in that the film’s big flaw is the use of “yellow face” in Chunjin, a Korean character played by an actor who doesn’t even look remotely Asian. I was actually confused when he first appeared on the screen, as it took me a moment to realize that he’s supposed to be Korean. And…he does martial arts! Of course!

I don’t find much to object to in the politics of the film, however. I could see what people are getting at — the title of the film admittedly has “Yellow Peril” written on it — but I see the film as an accurate representation of the fear and paranoia surrounding the Cold War. There’s an interesting discussion in a college course message board regarding the film and (presumably) the book What Have They Built You to Do?: The Manchurian Candidate and Cold War America. I haven’t read the book (I’m not sure about a 288 page analysis on one movie), but if anything, I think The Manchurian Candidate is even a bit subversive how it turns out that the real sneaky villain that’s infiltrated American politics is a white woman, in a “you-didn’t-see-that-coming-didja?” plot twist. (Hopefully nobody’s mad at me for spoilers on a popular 40+ year old movie.)

So I cringe through the scenes with Chunjin and enjoy the film.

Film: 人間の條件 (The Human Condition), Part 1

Director: Masaki Kobayashi
First Released: 1959
Runtime: 208 min.

I went to see this film at the Northwest Film Center on Friday night.

Set during World War II, Tatsuya Nakadai plays Kaji, a “bleeding heart” who, ironically, accepts a job as the supervisor for a large group of Chinese prisoners forced into hard labor at a Manchurian mine. As he works to better the conditions of the laborers and actually treats them as human beings, he faces both distrust from the very Chinese people he’s trying to help (“Japanese devil!” they shout), and harsh repercussions from his superiors at the mining company and from the ever-menacing kempeitai (the military police at the time).

Audiences who may not be accustomed to “foreign” films need not worry much. Despite the heavy themes and historical/geographical context, the film is quite accessible and will seem familiar to anyone that watches old Hollywood films (the sweeping, dramatic music particularly reminded me of classic Hollywood epics). I was watching the movie thinking the main character could be Jimmy Stewart, and the New York Times did me one better by comparing him to Gregory Peck.

Either way, Kaji is a somewhat unwitting yet tireless hero, fighting from within the system against a war-driven, ethnocentric Japan. The things he fights for feel timelessly relevant: that the ends do not necessarily justify the means, that we should not dehumanize even our war enemies, and thus we must not lose our humanity.

Kaji is most flawed when it comes to his relationship with his wife, Michiko (Michiyo Aratama). Believing that she would not understand and wanting to shield her from the horrors of his work, Kaji through most of the film stays stubbornly distant. They reconcile their differences at the end of the film, but now Kaji is to be drafted into war (under suspicious circumstances).

Part 2 screens at the Northwest Film Center on September 27th and 28th, and Part 3 screens on the 27th and 29th.

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make it to Part 2 (1959, 181 min.) and probably won’t make it to Part 3 (1961, 190 min.) (depending on whether I decide I can sacrifice sleep on a Monday night).

Go to the Janus Films website to check for screenings in other parts of the country.