a mixed plate of Japanese American news and culture
On a Saturday afternoon, in a classroom on the second floor of the Buchanan YMCA, a small group of women are contemplating flowers. Their teacher, Julie Nakatani, circulates among them, advising in English and Japanese and offering additions from two huge white buckets of flowers and a giant pile of quince branches. “Make it look [...]
Every year, one of the Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival’s biggest highlights is the taru mikoshi, one of the entrants in the Grand Parade. The mikoshi is a portable Shinto shrine, which a deity is believed to inhabit. Legend has it that shaking the shrine spreads its blessing. The San Francisco Taru Mikoshi Ren leads [...]
“How useful is a Japanese sword in 2012? If anyone says it’s of practical use, then they really need to get themselves checked,” says Andrej Diamantstein. Instead of personal defense, Diamantstein, the head of the Nishi Kaigan Iaido Dojo, describes iaido, the art of drawing a sword to defend against a surprise attack, as a [...]
What drove Binh Thai Luc, 35, to be charged on March 27 with slaying five people in a San Francisco home on March 23? The grisly murders have rocked the city and left investigators and the public searching for a motive. “We’re not discussing any potential motive for these killings,” stated Omid Talai, spokesman for [...]
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Department of the Interior on March 22 announced that the National Park Service is awarding funding to help preserve and interpret the U.S. confinement sites where more than 120,000 persons of Japanese descent — most of whom were American citizens — were detained during World War II. The 17 grants, totaling [...]
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — The award-winning team behind “Mixed Match,” a feature-length documentary about the difficulties multiethnic patients with deadly blood diseases face when searching for bone marrow donors, has launched an online fundraising campaign to raise $25,000 to support its production and post-production work. Jeff Chiba Stearns is the director and executive producer of [...]
SAN JOSE — It was moving. It was emotional. It was long overdue and yet so deserving when U.S. Congressional leaders awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to Japanese American World War II veterans of the 100th Battalion, 442nd Regimental Combat Team and the Military Intelligence Service. Almost 800 people filled the San Jose Buddhist Church [...]
When a Sikh family in Sterling, Va. received a death threat in the form of a letter addressed to “Turban family,” on Feb. 28, it was not the family’s first experience with religiously motivated threats to their safety. They had seen a hate letter of this kind, demanding that the family leave the country or [...]
Every 10 years, the federal government conducts the national census. Once it has been completed, the San Francisco Director of Elections must determine whether the existing supervisorial districts meet the legal requirements. If the existing districts no longer comply with these legal requirements, the Redistricting Task Force (RTF) must redraw the 11 supervisorial district lines. [...]
The Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival unveiled its 2012 Queen candidates and presented a festival preview at San Francisco’s Japantown on March 10. The yearly event, set to take place over two weekends in April, will crown the new queen on April 14 at the annual Queen Program. Benh Nakajo, program chairperson, called the introduction [...]
Connect & Share