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December 11, 2009

The cast of the Fox TV series "Glee." Erin and I have come to love "Glee!," the Fox TV series about a group of outcast students who join their high school glee club (remember how glee club people were always the nerds?). We enjoyed the sneak preview premier, which was shown last fall, and then waited with great anticipation for the season to start this spring. After several shows, though, we started to tune out the outrageous stupidity of some of the characters (faking a pregnancy to hold on to a husband; lying about the father of a pregnancy to hold on to a boyfriend) even though we really liked the dancing and singing, which are top-notch every week. So we blew it off for a few weeks, then came back to it again one week and got re-hooked by the musical numbers all over again. The first season just ended and did a pretty good job of tying up loose ends, we thought. It also left unresolved the plotline of the evil cheerleader's coach who wants to get the teacher who's the glee club sponsor fired. I just read a very good, thoughtful and laser-focused essay by Sylvie Kim of The Antisocial Ladder, which was also re-posted on Hyphen's excellent blog, that I think everyone should read.
December 8, 2009

South Philadelphia High School My friends at sites such as Angry Asian Man, 8 Asians and Slant Eye for the Round Eye have already posted this but I want to bring attention to it too: Asian students are being singled out and viciously beaten at South Philadelphia High School. Now, the students are protesting the lack of response by school officials over the continuing attacks. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer:
More than 50 Asian students stayed away from South Philadelphia High yesterday, as they will all week - a boycott, they said, of the school's unsafe conditions and the district's failure to deal with long-standing violence between racial groups. School district officials, the students say, are downplaying attacks last week on about 30 Asian students and aren't taking the problem seriously.
Having 30 students of one ethnic group attacked should be cause for alarm, but the Asian students feel the school district isn't taking the problem seriously. The Inquirer continues:
December 8, 2009

Graphic from the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun, showing how the victim was forced off her motorbike by a rope strung across the road. I should just shake my head and mutter, "Kids these days, what were they thinking." But I have deeper feelings than that, and I'm terribly saddened by the ongoing news coverage out of Japan, where four teen-aged dependents of U.S. military personnel were arrested over the weekend for attempted murder. The three boys and a girl, aged 15 to 18, are charged with an August attack in Tokyo, when a woman was knocked off her motorbike when she ran into a rope that had been tied across the road, and fractured her skull and broke her neck, leaving her hospitalized for three months. The rope was moved from its position across the driveway entrance to a business, and re-tied to a post across the road. The graphic above from the Yomiuri Shimbun, one of Japan's huge national daily newspapers, illustrates what happened. After the woman crashed, one of the assailants reportedly flagged down a passing motorist and asked the person to call for an ambulance, then the attackers fled the scene.Police questioned the teens after viewing footage from a nearby security camera. The arrests came Saturday, aftr negotiating with U.S. officials. Two of the teens live on Yokota Air Base, an American Air Force facility, close by in Tokyo; the other two live off-base with their families. This attack, or prank, or stupid act, whatever it turns out to be, if it was committed by teenagers, would make the news in the U.S., but it's especially grabbing attention in Japan because there's an ongoing debate within that country about the need for, and level of, U.S. military presence there.
December 5, 2009

http://discovernikkei.org http://iamkoreanamerican.com/ Every once in a while, people ask me about the name of my blog, because they only hear the word "Nikkei" when it's used for the Japanese stock exchange. "Nikkei" is also so the word used to describe people of Japanese ancestry outside of Japan. I'm a Nikkei-jin, or Nikkei person. When my blog first started out in the 1990s as a column in Denver's weekly Japanese community newspaper, the Rocky Mountain Jiho, its publishers, Eiichi and Yoriko Imada, suggested I call the column "Nikkei View" since it reflected my perspective on pop culture and politics. The name stuck. In the years since, I've come across "Nikkei" a few times as a term for who I am -- mostly on research projects such as the International Nikkei Research Project, a three-year collaborative project involving more than 100 scholars from 10 countries and 14 participating institutions including the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) in LA. There are organizations that use the term, such as the Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center, and the blog "Nikkei Ancestry." Now there's another "Nikkei" site, which is republishing some of my babbling from this blog. In 2005, JANM launched Discover Nikkei, which is a gathering place for stories about Nikkei-jin from all over the globe, not just Japanese Americans but also Japanese Peruvians and Japanese Brazilians (two countries that have very large Nikkei populations), and every other country, as well as mixed-race people of Japanese ancestry.
December 4, 2009

The bow seen We attended a birthday party of sorts last night, except there was no cake. Ever since Japan stationed a Consulate General in Denver, there has been an annual gathering of invited guests to mark the birthday of Akihito, the current Emperor of Japan. Royal birthdays are probably celebrated in the few countries that still have a monarch. For instance, the Queen of England's birthday is April 21 and it's officially celebrated on the third Saturday of June. But Japan is the only country in the world that has an Emperor as its titular head of state. The role of Emperor is hugely important in Japan -- so much so that after World War II, when many wanted to prosecute then-emperor Hirohito, the Allied Occupation Forces led by U.S. General Douglas MacArthur, who's still fondly remembered by many Japanese as the "Gaijin (Foreigner) Emperor," decided to allow Hirohito to remain in power even though the country was drafting a new, democratic constitution. Abolishing the royal structure and prosecuting Hirohito would have been too deep a disruption of Japanese society at a time when they needed to unite and pull the country out of the postwar ruins. So the Emperor became a symbolic head of state, with no actual ruling power. That's in the hands of the Diet, or parliament, and the prime minister. Hirohito died in 1989, and Akihito, his son, succeeded to the throne the same year. Japan's Imperial Household is the oldest continuing hereditary monarchy in the world, with a straight line drawn from Emperor Jimmu in 660 AD to Akihito today.
December 3, 2009

Michael Paul and Jennifer are hoping to win the Ultimate Thailand Explorers contest.Last time we checked in on the smart promotion sponsored by the Thai government, "The Ultimate Thailand Explorers Contest," we were rooting for one couple to win. Unfortunately, Lori Fujikawa-Choy and Jackson Choy, newlyweds from Long Beach, California, didn't make it to the finals. But we now have a Filipino couple we can help, who did make it to the contest's finals. Michael Paul and Jennifer are newlyweds who live in the Philippines. She's a TV and magazine journalist; he's a travel agent, and they're trying to win a trip to Koh Samui, Thailand’s second most popular island destination. They sound like a natural for taking the big prize, because they can create a travelogue and book travel to Thailand. In fact, they're sharing their visit to Koh Samui on a contest blog and doing a great job. You can follow their adventures on the blog, but the most important way you can support them is to register on the site and vote for them (you can vote once every day). The public's votes will determine the grand prize winners, who will receive:
December 2, 2009

Dawen, LA-based Asian American R&B singer-songwriter The first single from Dawen's debut album, "American Me,"which was released back in September, wastes no time stating his passion for Asian American identity. "Flip through the paper, turn on the telly, go to a movie," he croons in his supple, silky soprano. Then he slips into the first verse:
Just because you saw the movie Crouching Tiger Doesn’t mean that I know kung-fu And just because Mr. Yan has an accent Doesn’t mean that I’ve got one too People tell me I “speak good English” Or that I’m “too thin to be Bruce Lee” Where do they get their preconceptions Of what I’m supposed to be?
That's his first single, but the first track on the album, is more blunt in addressing the inequities of many immigrants of color to the U.S.:
Welcome to the USA Freedom is your right Land of opportunity Only if you’re white Welcome to the USA Sea to shining sea I give my money, give my life Still they stare at me Welcome, Welcome, hey…
On the third track, "Ku Li," Dawen weaves in the lyrics from the folk song, "I've been working on the railroad," into a stunning statement about how Chinese immigrants were treated as slave labor during the taming of the American West. Dawen What's amazing, despite such in-your-face lyrics, is that Dawen wraps his message in an incredible wealth of warm musicality, starting with his soulful R&B vocals to his must-be-classically-and-jazz-trained keyboards and his guitar work, and his hooky instincts for get-in-your-head melodies and late-night funk bedrock rhythms. The album is a mellow, low-key wonder that can play in the background or zoom into the foreground with the sharply-observed social activism of the first eight tracks.
December 2, 2009

I've avoided the media feeding frenzy over Tiger Woods because it just didn't seem that big a deal. I was concerned when the first reports of his accident came out and some media outlets reported he was seriously injured, but that turned out to be incorrect. When he was released with minor injuries, I decided it was a minor story. Then the story grew legs -- female legs. Tiger's life is primarily lived on the golf course. He'll go down in history as an incredible athlete, maybe the best ever in golf. He'll also be revered as both the first and greatest African American and Asian American in golf (like Barack Obama, he's claimed by both communities with equal adoration). His private life makes headlines too, sure. But he doesn't live in a 24/7 media bubble like, say, Jon and Kate Gosselin (oops, I didn't mean to ever mention that Fallen Asian American Dude ever again...). Tiger has taken care to keep his private life, well, private. So it saddened me to see the media circus that exploded over his accident, and the reports of his having an affair. It cheapens his stature as an athlete, and whatever his private screw-ups, they weren't related to his sport, like Michael Jordan or Pete Rose's problems with gambling. And he wasn't smearing his romantic dalliances in the tabloid media's lenses like that Fallen Asian American Dude, for the sake of an extra 15 minutes of fame. Tiger doesn't need a mere 15 minutes -- his accomplishments will shine for a damned long time. I was also saddened that he didn't respond in a very smart way. Some experts started whispering that he's damaging his mega-profitable brand by not speaking to the police and the media about the accident.