Gil Asakawa's Nikkei View | All Posts
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July 4, 2009

Robert Vaughn as Napoleon Solo and David McCallum as Illya Kuryakin were the top TV spies in the 1960s.Last year I received one of the coolest gifts ever -- a 41-DVD boxed set of "The Man from U.N.C.L.E.," the TV spy series that ran from 1964-'68. The set came in a package that looks like a secret agent's briefcase, and includes all 105 episodes of the program, plus a ton of extras such as documentaries and commentary by the show's stars, Robert Vaughn and David McCallum. I'm still sifting through this pop-culture treasure chest, and having a blast. The series was my favorite TV show from my childhood -- I had a bunch of toys related to the show, and I read and collected books, gadgets, magazines -- anything to do with U.N.C.L.E. I've been struck by a few observations about the show, in light of 40 years of being a fan, and then suddenly being able to see every episode on DVD. First (and relevant to this blog), I'm surprised at how many Asian Americans were cast in the show as guest stars. There were some episodes set in Asia, like one that takes place in Japan, and that's kinda hokey since all the sets and scenes are actually shot in Hollywood. But in many episodes, the requisite woman who's an innocent bystander but gets dragged into the plot as a sidekick is Asian American, and I mean Asian American as in, no phony accents. They're Asian American actors cast in American roles, which is nice. Second, they had some big name guest stars. I just watched a goofy one from the third season (of the four, the third was the one where the show got silly, comedic and unbelievable) titled "The Hot Number" that featured Sonny and Cher. Cher was a snooty fashion model (not a stretch) and Sonny was a bumbling fashion designer. The episode also featured Sonny and Cher's music, which was a neat cross-marketing gimmick. Third, a lot of the episodes are slight to the point of being anemic. The story lines are sometimes clunky and the writing often forced. And little of the acting, even from Vaughn and McCallum, is Brandoesque. It's more like Shatneresque. But then, the artifice is actually part of the charm of "The Man from U.N.C.L.E."
July 1, 2009

Euna Lee (left) and Laura Ling, Asian American journalists, were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor in North Korea. Journalism can be a dangerous business. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 735 have been killed so far since Jan. 1, 1992 when the organization began keeping track. Many others are kidnapped or imprisoned while they do their work, covering conflicts and uncovering injustices all over the world. Sometimes, like in the case of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal South Asia bureau chief who was abducted and killed in Pakistan in 2002, the story has a tragic ending. Sometimes, like with Iranian American reporter Roxana Saberi's arrest and later release by the Iranian government, the story ends well. We can only hope that Euna Lee and Laura Ling, two Asian American journalists who were arrested and charged with espionage by North Korea back in March and then sentenced to 12 years of hard labor last month, will see a happy ending to their story. The Denver chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association is hosting a candlelight vigil to support Lee and Ling, and to urge the U.S. government to do everything possible to secure their freedom. The vigil is set for 8:30 pm Friday, July 3 at Civic Center Park, Colfax and Broadway in downtown Denver.
June 28, 2009

Minnesota State Senator Mee Moua is the first Hmong elected official in the U.S.A couple of months ago, when Erin gave a training workshop for young Asian Americans at the Rise Conference in Denver, she asked the assembled youths their ethnic backgrounds. One woman stod up and said she was Hmong. She said all hger life, she's had to explain her heritage when people ask "What's a Hmong? There's no country called Hmong!" But now, she said, "I just tell people, H-M-O-N-G. Google it." That got a big laugh out of the crowd, most of whom were familiar with the history of the Hmong. But most people in the U.S. are woefully unaware of the Hmong. Clint Eastwood's mostly terrific movie from earlier this year, "Gran Torino," exposed more people than ever before to the history of the mountain tribe of Southeast Asia, and how the CIA recruited them to fight a shadow front out of Laos during the Vietnam War. When the US pulled out of Vietnam, we left the Hmong hanging, and the Communist Pathet Lao government rained retribution on the Hmong. Although we've relocated many Hmong refugees in various communities in America, thousands are still trapped in refugee camps in neighboring Thailand where they escaped from Laos. The communities are where the US government resettled the Hmong include Michigan, where "Gran Torino" takes place, California, Texas, Colorado (we have a thriving Hmong population in the Denver area) and Minnesota, where the first-ever Hmong American elected to office is a state senator. So, Erin and I are thrilled to announce the next guest on visualizAsian.com’s AAPI Empowerment Series: Minnesota State Senator Mee Moua. The interview will be held Tuesday, July 7 at 6 pm PDT (9 pm EDT).
June 26, 2009

Here's a video that was coincidentally uploaded to YouTube by singer-songwriter David Choi, whose stuff I like very much, on June 23, just two days before Michael Jackson, the "King of Pop" suddenly and shockingly died. (It's the third-listed link on You Tube when you search for "Michael Jackson.") "Ben" is an unusual choice for a Michael Jackson cover -- a moody, plodding story-song that makes sense as a story only if you know it as the title song from a 1972 horror B-movie about a boy (not the young MJ) who befriends a pet rat named "Ben" who leads a pack of vicious killer rats. It was the sequel to the equally cheesy (no pun intended, honest) 1971 movie, "Willard." Choi posted his thoughts on Jackson's death on his blog, and like many others, he admits he sees Jackson's influence more clearly now that the man is gone.
June 19, 2009

Vincent Chin was murdered in 1982 by out-of-work auto workers in Detroit. His death marked the emergence of the pan-Asian community as a political force.Vincent Chin was beaten with a baseball bat 27 years ago today in a Detroit suburb, and died four days later. At the time, I was three years out of art school, managing a paint store, and was a budding young rock critic writing for Denver's alternative newspaper, Westword. I didn't follow any news coverage about the attack on Vincent Chin, and I was clueless about the importance of his tragic death. I was still a "banana" -- yellow on the outside, but white on the inside. Like the name of the 2008 documentary film about the impact of Chin's murder on the Asian American community, if you had asked me then about him, I would have said, "Vincent who?" Today, Vincent Chin is very much on my mind. I haven't seen director Tony Lam's "Vincent Who?" yet, but I definitely feel I'm a part of Chin's legacy. In the decades since, I've become aware and much more appreciative of my ethnic roots, culture and history as a Japanese American, which I used to take for granted. I've also become much more aware of my place in the much larger Asian American community.
June 10, 2009

Author and activist Phoebe EngErin Yoshimura and I started visualizAsian.com to interview Asian American Pacific Islander leaders and tell their stories to empower other AAPIs to follow in their footsteps. So far, it's been an absolute blast. The website launched with a conversation with former Secretary of Transportation Norm Mineta on May 21, and this week we spoke with Yul Kwon, the hunky winner of "Survivor: Cook Islands." Both men told powerful stories about the challenges they faced as Asian Americans, and the stereotypes that had to battle. The next guest on visualizAsian.com's AAPI Empowerment Series is social activist and author Phoebe Eng. The interview will be held Tuesday, June 23 at 6 pm PDT (9 pm EDT). I met Eng when that book came out, a decade ago, and she was in Denver for a book reading and signing. She was a great speaker, and as inspiring in person as she is in the prose of her book, which is in part an autobiography of her search for identity as an Asian American and as a woman, a double-whammy of identity-politics.
June 6, 2009

Coca Cola just introduced Coke with Green Tea in Japan.Consumer culture in Japan is where you'll see the collision of Asian and American tastes. More than in the U.S., Japan is where East mashes West. You can get shrimp Filet-o-Fish sandwiches at McDonald's, or pizza with seaweed or squid, and spaghetti with salty plum sauce. So I supposes I shouldn't be dismayed at the new Coca-Cola flavor, Green Tea Coke. After all, here in the states there seems to be a growiing market for almost anything with green tea added, from soap and shampoos to Lipton Ice Tea and Starbucks' Matcha Latte. But Coke with green tea? I'm not much of a Coke fan (Pepsi's the choice if I have a cola at all), so I don't care that much about the purity of the soft drink. But it seems heresy to put green tea into the syrupy sweetness. Can you even taste the subtle bitterness? This fits right in with conversations I've had recently with (non-Asian) co-workers about Lipton's green tea flavored ice tea. I pointed out that Asians don't sweeten their tea.
June 5, 2009

The Asakawa family circa 1960 in Hokkaido, Japan: (from left) George, Gary, Gil and Junko (stranger in front). I was born in Japan, so I can say this with a straight face: I'm becoming a born-again Japanese, and it's kinda fun. For years now, Erin and I have thought of ourselves as Asian American first, and Japanese American second. Mostly, it's because we're interested in and feel a kinship with other Asian Americans, whether their heritage is Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Thai, Hmong, Indian, Filipino, whatever. We certainly have immersed ourselves in the local Asian American Pacific Islander community, through being involved in events such as the Colorado Dragon Boat Festival, the AAPI Heritage Month Community celebration, the (now defunct) Aurora Asian Film Festival, Miss Asian American Colorado Leadership Program, Asian American Journalists Association and others. Erin spent six months last year serving as editor of the feisty little local pan-Asian magazine, Asian Avenue. It's wonderful to feel a part of a larger community within which we share lots of cultural values and appreciate the various cuisines. We've become friends with and learned about Asians across many borders, and generations from immigrant gens to very Americanized. It's also partly because the Japanese community in Denver is small, and insular, and tribal, and ... well, small. It's not like LA or San Francisco or Seattle or New York, where there are lots and lots of JAs to hang with, as well as tons more AAPIs in general. We just felt too constricted sometimes by the local community. But lately, I've found myself being among Japanese, and enjoying it.