Gil Asakawa's Nikkei View | asian american
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March 17, 2009

Woodblock illustration of hara kiri, or the ritual suicide practiced in feudal Japan.The furor over bonuses given by AIG to employees after taking more than $170 billion in bailout money from the U.S. government is made all the more furious because of the sheer breathtaking scale of the cash flow. AIG paid 73 staffers more than $1 million, with one getting $6.4 and seven more getting $4. Those amounts seem so out of kilter with the state of the economy, and the fact that just months ago, the giant company was about to crash without a hand up from the government -- from us -- that it's not surprising that citizens as well as lawmakers are screaming bloody murder. But one lawmaker is screaming bloody suicide. The Washington Post (among other media) reported that Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) wanted AIG execs to commit hara kiri, or seppuku -- the traditional Japanese ritual suicide often depicted as an honorable course of action from samurai times.
Sen. Charles Grassley suggested in an Iowa City radio interview on Monday that AIG executives should take a Japanese approach toward accepting responsibility by resigning or killing themselves. "Obviously, maybe they ought to be removed," the Iowa Republican said. "But I would suggest the first thing that would make me feel a little bit better toward them if they'd follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say, I'm sorry, and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide." Grassley spokesman Casey Mills said the senator wasn't calling for AIG executives to kill themselves, but said those who accept tax dollars and spend them on travel and bonuses do so irresponsibly.
When I first heard about this, my jaw clenched but I let it pass. Seppuku was a historical reality for centuries, after all, and it's depicted in lots of Japanese pop culture, including movies and books. It's been documented as a reflection of one of Japan's driving cultural values, shame.
March 1, 2009

Kalua Pork and Lau Lau dinners, with a bowl of saimin on the side to share, at Okole Maluna, a great little Hawai We drove an hour north from our house last night, to dine in Hawai'i. Well, not exactly Hawai'i, but an outpost of Hawai'i, in the most unlikely place: On a quiet Main Street corner in Windsor, a typical small, old-fashioned mid-western town on the plains of northern Colorado. Definitely not a tropical paradise, although inside the clean modern restaurant, you might as well be along Oahu's North Shore, or somewhere in Kauai. But Okole Maluna (Bottoms Up) isn't in the islands. The intimate restaurant is in Windsor. Erin and I love Hawai'ian food and seek it out in the few places where it's available in Colorado. Most often, we find ourselves at L&L Hawai'ian Barbecue, a Hawai'i-based fast-food chain with a franchise in the eastern Denver suburb of Aurora. We think it's a bit pricey for what you get, as well as being entirely too generous with salt on everything they serve (maybe it's needed in hot humid Hawai'i, but our palates don't require so much sodium). We've also tried 8 Island Hawai'ian BBQ in Boulder and were disappointed both by the food and the service -- especially when the staff made a bog deal of charging us 75 cents extra for a little dollop when we changed our mind on the kind of sauce we wanted on a dish. Come on, that's like charging for ketchup and mustard! And more recently, we had a very fine meal for my mom's birthday at Iwayama Sushi and Da Big Kahuna Bistro, which is as known for its sushi as for its Island vittles. Iwayama's fun, and closer. But I'd make the hour drive any day for the Kalua pork at Okole Maluna. Its deep smoky flavor is tantalizing, and it's not overly salty (hooray). It's served with two mounds of rice (for the full portion), a side of creamy Hawai'ian macaroni salad, a little bowl of Lomi Lomi salmon, which is like pico de gallo with bits of salmon mixed in, and a little serving of haupia, a conconut custard. In fact, overall, Okole Maluna is the best place in the state we've found for Hawai'ian food.
February 4, 2009

I grew up in an era before political correctness, when racial jokes were a staple of standup comedy. I'm talking jokes by white comics about minorities. It took until the '70s when black comics like Richard Pryor started turning racial humor on its head, making fun of white people as well as blacks. These days, there are Asian American standups who tell some hilarious jokes about AAPIs, and our sometimes peculiar cultural values and traditions. But it's been a long time since I heard a joke about Asians told by a white person. So imagine my bemusement when a co-worker whom I'm friendly with (as opposed to a friend with whom I might socialize), came up to me in the office kitchen today. "I'm sure you heard this, but I'm going to tell it anyway," he said excitedly, chuckling to himself. "So this Oriental man goes to the doctor (first wince) to have his eyes looked at (second wince, since I just heard about Miley Cyrus' 'chinky-eyed' photo). The doctor looks at him and says, 'I have some bad news... you have a cataract.' 'I don't have a cataract,' the man replies. 'I have a rincon continentaru.'" Ba-da-boom. Big wince. And, a laugh. Or two.
February 4, 2009

Singer and actress Miley Cyrus with friends in a racist "chink-eye" pose. The photo is making the rounds on the Internet. From Angry Asian Man: Miley Cyrus, the super popular teen pop star for her Hannah Montana song-and-dance act (she's also the daughter of country singer Billy Ray "Achy Breaky Heart" Cyrus), is shown with a group of friends in a photo making the rounds online, pulling back her eyes in a "chinky" or "slanty-eye" pose. It's clearly a racial stereotype, the same kind of stupidity practiced in photos last year by the Spanish Olympic basketball team and the Spanish national tennis team team. What kind of role model is that for young girls? What's a young Asian American girl supposed to think when she sees the photo? That she deserves to be the butt of racial stereotypes? Or a young European American girl? That it's perfectly fine to make fun of people who don't look like you?
February 3, 2009

I had an interesting thread of conversation the other day on Facebook, after someone sent me a friend request that ended with the person (he's Caucasian) calling me "Gil-san." He wrote this in good cheer and good faith, and as a sign of collegial respect. I know that. But it struck me odd somehow, that non-Japanese people (usually Caucasians) throughout my life have assumed that it's perfectly normal to call me "Gil-san," or to say "konnichiwa" ("hello") or "sayonara," as if I speak Japanese, or better yet, that I appreciate someoe else assuming that I speak Japanese. I do -- a little. But I'm not Japanese, and the only time I try to mumble and stumble my way through a conversation in Japanese is when I'm trying to speak to Japanese people... from Japan. So I posted this on Facebook and Twitter: "Is it culturally sensitive, condescending or just plain goofy for a Euro-American to call me 'Gil-san'? I'm Japanese American, not Japanese." As is often the case, I got a flurry of responses right away on Facebook. Interestingly, Japanese Americans and other Asian Americans, as well as European Americans, had different perspectives on this topic.
January 23, 2009

The British film "Slumdog Millionaire," a rags-to-riches story about an orphaned child in Mumbai, India, has been nominated for ten Academy Awards. On the eve of its release today in India, the British independent film "Slumdog Millionaire" was nominated for 10 Academy Awards. It's already won four Golden Globes: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Score. The movie's up for all of those categories at the Oscars, and may well win some if not all of them, and then some. We saw the film just last weekend and I was stunned by its power and eloquence, and for me, its sheer entertainment value in spite of the grimness of the life it portrays. It deserves its kudos. If you haven't heard of it, it's the story of a two orphaned brothers from the slums of Bombay -- now Mumbai -- and their relationship as they survive their childhood and grow into their destinies. One, Jamal, played as an adult by the boyish Dev Patel, falls in love with an orphaned girl, Latika (luminously played as an adult by Freida Pinto). Poster for "Slumdog Millionaire"Jamal's devotion to Latika, even though they're repeatedly separated, sometimes for years, and his dedication to finding her again, is the film's narrative thread. But "Slumdog"'s visual leitmotif is the chaotic and tragic backdrop of modern Indian life. The story follows the characters from childhood through their teen years and into adulthood, in and out of the utter poverty that pervades the teeming slums. It's structured as a series of flashbacks with Jamal, who's been arrested for suspicion of cheating after winning 10 million rupees on India's version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," explaining to a detective how he came to know all the answers he was asked on the show. His life experiences coincidentally gave him the knowledge and prepared him to reach the next day's final question, for a possible payoff of 20 million rupees. Almost immediately, viewers are taken on a breathless tour of the shantytown as a group of kids are chased by police, the camera moving as if the audience is one of the fleeing kids, looking for the next escape route. Then the view shifts to the cops' perspective, or others in the alleys, even a sleeping dog who's not the slightest bit fazed by all the commotion. The colors, the clatter and closed-in settings convey claustrophia ... and incredible excitement. The movie opens up visually and feels pastoral only when the brothers get out of town atop a train and live like hobos, then spend some time scamming tourists at the Taj Mahal, and in one striking scene where the grownup Jamal meets up with his brother Salim (played by Madhur Mittal), now a low-level gangster, in a skyscraper construction site high above where their shantytown had been located. Modern Mumbai's financial wealth has paved over the poverty and pushed the poor elsewhere.
January 14, 2009

I missed this column by Howard Kurtz the other day in the Washington Post: "Little Diversity at White House." The first part of the column is about the lack of journalists of color in the White House Press Corps, and focuses on TV and newspaper reporters assigned to cover the presidential beat. It's an important topic, but it saddens me that as usual, the dialogue about race in America is all about black and white. No Hispanics, no Asians, no Native Americans -- the spectrum that's included in the mission of Unity, the uber-organization of Journalists of Color, which just last summer was graced at its convention by a visit by then-candidate Barack Obama. I understand the point is that we now have a black president and there could be more black reporters covering the White House. That's fine for the members of the National Association of Black Journalists, who are probably happy to have gotten their perspective in with Kurtz. But Kurtz dances around the topic of other minorities, hinting at a broader color spectrum but never taking the time to call and quote someone from the Asian American Journalists Association or National Association of Hispanic Journalists or the Native American Journalists Association.
January 10, 2009

Bento Zanmai on the Hill in Boulder serves up tasty real ramen. We returned to Bento Zanmai today and got some good news: the shop, which operates out of a tiny food court on The Hill in Boulder, just across the University of Colorado campus at 13th and College, has extended its hours. The joint used to close up at 6 on weekdays and 3 on Saturdays. It unfortunately still closes at 3 on Saturdays (we got there just in time after seeing an early -- and cheap -- showing of Clint Eastwood's "Gran Torino" movie, a post to come). But it now stays open until 8 pm on weekdays. Joe Simonet, the affable young hapa who's a corporate officer of the Sushi Zanmai restaurant corporation that owns Bento Zanmai as well as Amu, the izakaya next door to Sushi Zanmai that's currently our favorite Japanese restaurant in the region, chatted with us about Bento Z.