Monthly Archives: May 2009

Cherry blossom time in Japan

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Sakura in Tokyo byJames T. Kirk on Vimeo.

No doubt about it, the springtime blooming of sakura, or cherry blossoms, in Japan is one reason the country is special. The Japanese treat the season with wonder, with weather forecasts about the optimal blooming days and following the cherry blossoms from the warmer southern climate all the way up to Hokkaido, the northernmost island, where the sakura bloom late.

The Japanese even have a name for cherry-blossom viewing parties and picnics, “hanami,” when entire families might sit under the falling flowers to enjoy the fleeting beauty of nature. In this video, some of the parks packed with hanami-enjoying folks look like the crowds on a typical August day at Coney Island beach in New York City.

I had to share this video, created by someone calling himself “James T Kirk” on Vimeo. It was posted by Alexandre Gervais, a Japanophile who seems to find lots of cool videos of Japan and shoots some nice photos. I’ve added him to my list of websites that cover Japan….

Yul Kwon, winner of “Survivor: Cook Island” comes to Denver to celebrate APA Heritage Month

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Yul Kwon, winner of Survivor: Cook Island, told stories about the show when he spoke at the Coors APA Heritage Month event.
Call him Cool Yul. If you’re a fan of “Survivor,” you know who Yul Kwon is. He’s the Korean American attorney who won the “Cook Island” season (season 13), helping to chip away at the myth that Asian men are meek and mild-mannered geeks. He was a good student, all right, and he works hard, so he fulfills the “model minority” stereotype in those ways. But he’s also buff, handsome, an eloquent speaker (even though he says he hates public speaking) an Asian American activist and just plain cool.

Kwon was in Colorado yesterday, as the main speaker for an APA Heritage Month celebration organized by the MillerCoors Asian Network, the beer-maker based in Golden just west of Denver. Also on the bill were traditional Filipino dances by members of the Filipino American Community of Colorado, and terrific Filipino food by local chef Leah Eveleigh’s Tropical Grill Catering. The turnout was smaller than it should have been — shame on the local Asian American community for not coming out to support this kind of event, which was free of charge and featured a nationally-known celebrity as a draw. But the crowd that was there about half Asian descent, and mostly curious Coors employees and their families, was appreciative of Kwon’s speech, and the performances and food.

I thought Kwon’s speech was especially notable. He’d been to Denver before, last year during the Democratic National Convention, to urge Asian Americans to register to vote. He’s still passionate about having AAPIs involved in politics, but he’s not so interested in running for office himself, as he explained to a fan who asked. But his speech was all about his experiences growing up Asian in America, and how important it is for our future to have AAPIs to look up to as role models.

He explained how he grew up without seeing anyone who looked like him on TV or in movies, except people who were subservient, foreign and exotic, or at the other end of the scale, martial arts masters.
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Update: 15-year-old Korean Canadian reinstated at school after being charge w/ assault; bully apologizes

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The Korean Canadian teen who fought back against a bully and won the support of his classmates has been allowed back in school.

Last week I wrote about the 15-year-old, who was suspended from school and charged with assault by the York Regional Police in a town north of Toronto, for breaking the nose of another student. The other student had been bullying him, and called him a “fucking Chinese” before hitting the boy. Unfortunately for the bully, the Korean kid (his ethnicity wasn’t identified in the earlier story) is a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, the Korean martial art (his father is a master), and he defended himself with his weaker left hand, but still broke the bully’s nose.

Because the bully wasn’t initially charged (both were suspended form school however), 400 students at Keswick High School protested last week to point out the injustice. A racial bias investigation was kicked off (no word on what happened to that).

Although the school board initially recommended expulsion and blocking the Korean Canadian student from any of the district’s schools (seem pretty harsh to me — any racial bias there on the part of the administration?), they changed their minds since last week.
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Google runs into Japan’s historical prejudice over burakumin

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Google ran into trouble in japan over the use of historical maps of Tokyo that showed areas where burakumin, or the lowest caste, used to live.

Poor Google. They’re in a tough spot this time. The Internet giant has hit some cultural snags in Japan before, over how it rolled out its products in the Land of the Rising Sun. This time, they’re in trouble because Google used publicly available historical maps of Tokyo and Osaka in an overlay for its popular (and amazing) Google Earth program.

The problem is, the maps showed the locations of former villages where the “burakumin” used to live in feudal times. The locations have long since been developed with the concrete, steel and glass of modern Tokyo, but the antique map has dredged up centuries and shame, and a fresh spate of anger from the descendants of burakumin as well as government officials who’d just as soon forget that such prejudice ever existed — and apparently still exists.
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Is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month a bad idea?

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A Japanese American festival in Seabrook, NJ where the community performs a traditional Japanese obon dance

It’s May. Happy Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. I wonder, though, if this celebration of our heritage is an idea whose time has passed. I’m glad that we have our month every year, but I’m worried that we’re emphasizing the wrong things year after year.

Erin and I are starting to feel that APA Heritage Month may be counter-productive. The Pacific Citizen published a well-written piece last week, “Time to Rethink Asian Pacific American Heritage Month?” and I agree, it’s time to re-think the tradition even though it’s only 31 years old.

Last year, I wrote about how a 10-year-old Denver event, an Asian community celebration held in downtown Denver every May, needed to evolve from just Asians performing for other Asians.

It was a useful educational display back when our many communities stayed cloistered and Japanese didn’t know much about Vietnamese, and Vietnamese didn’t know much about Filipinos, and Filipinos didn’t know much about Cambodians and Cambodians didn’t know much about Koreans… you get the idea. But today, with especially young people mixing a lot more outside their own communities, it seems like a closed celebration, like preaching to the choir about the richness of our heritage. If you attend the annual event, you’ve seen many of the same performers year after year.

Even if the audience was expanded outside the Asian community, though, to the wider non-Asian population, I wonder if that would be good or bad for Asian Americans.
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