Gil Asakawa's Nikkei View | Perspectives on Asian-American culture through the lens of identity, history, and experience
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Takashi Murakami It was a surreal moment, when I looked up at the TV this morning and saw Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieria nattering on about Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, and how cute his artwork is. The camera switched to the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade  (yeah, it was on -- what's it to ya?) and there was Murakami, bundled up in a fluffy costume that he must have created, designed to look like some indeterminate animal/plant hybrid species. He was bopping up and down and grinning like a mad-man, loving every moment of his nationwide exposure. I did a double take, because Murakami's pop art can be very cute, but he also makes art that is very sexual and fetishistic. He makes life-sized figures of manga-like characters in sexual poses. And, he's created striking, powerful paintings and sculptures that depict the atomic bomb mushroom cloud -- it's a recurring motif in his work.
25 November, 2010
It seems every time Mudra Dance Studio mounts one of its big productions -- it's been every two years for the last three shows -- it's worth the wait because the troupe's founder, Namita Khanna Nariani, adds something new and incredible to the mix. We've seen the Mudra troupe perform at all but one Colorado Dragon Boat Festival, so we're not strangers to the talent of this remarkable South Asian organization, and to Nariani's determination to stretch the artistic limits of traditional, classical Indian dance with contemporary aesthetics that rise above ripping off the hipness factor of Bollywood musicals with some shallow syncopated moves. but to see the Mudras dance a 30-minute set is one thing. The three-hour artistic tour-de-force that is their big blowout performances is something else entirely.
24 November, 2010

This has been an exciting year for Asian American music fans. Taking off above a bubbling community of AAPI singer-songwriters and individual performers, we've seen Bruno Mars, who's of Filipino and Puerto Rican descent (and born and raised in Hawai'i) hit the top of the charts with "Just the Way You Are," and Far East Movement, the first-ever all...

23 November, 2010
First of all, I can now see that there's some comedic logic to casting Seth Rogan as the Green Hornet (and his alter-ego Britt Reid), and that he may be able to pull off a superhero vibe after all. Second, I can hardly wait to see the movie to enjoy Jay Chou as Kato, and the fact that he's really the superhero of the story, building the "Black Beauty" limo and kicking serious butt with his martial arts skills. Oh yeah, he's the valet/chauffeur, all right... but so much more. It'll be interesting to see if the movie explores Kato's ethnicity.
20 November, 2010
I came across this story on Reappropriate, a great blog about race and identity: New York restaurant owner Eddie Huang responds to a lukewarm NYT review of his Lower East Side joint Xiao Ye on his very unapologetic and in-your-face Asian AMERICAN blog, "Fresh off the Boat" and follows up by posting his mother's rather FoB-y note to him saying essentially, see? You deserve your bad review for not listening to me! Then CNN catches wind of the flap and interviews him. This is interesting to me on a couple of levels.
20 November, 2010
Hyphen magazine: Asian America UnabridgedWe've scheduled one more visualizAsian call before the end of the year, with publisher Lisa Lee and editor-in-chief Harry Mok of Hyphen magazine! If you're not familiar with Hyphen, it's the 7-and-a-half-year-old magazine that offers, as it says on the cover, "Asian America Unabridged." It's not only a fine, high-quality publication featuring strong writing and editing and graphics, it's one of the few national print media outlets that covers Asian American issues and pop culture, and it follows in the footsteps of many now-gone magazines, starting with the late, great A magazine and including such titles as TransPacific and East-West. Other mags currently being produced include KoreAm and Giant Robot, whose editor, Eric Nakamura, we spoke to earlier this year. Our conversation with Lisa and Harry about Hyphen will be at 7 pm PT (10 pm ET) on Wednesday, December 8. Register here if you're new to visualizAsian (if you've registered before you'll receive an email with the phone and webcast information; you don't need to register again). Like many magazines for Asian Americans, Hyphen is struggling financially, but the quality of its stories is never in question. We'll speak with Lee and Mok about the successes and challenges of creating Hyphen. They both have a lot to say about why they're committed to Hyphen. Here are their bios:
19 November, 2010
Mudra Dance Studio Mudra Dance Studio has been celebrating the dynamic traditions of classical Indian dance, and putting a contemporary spin on it, since long before Bollywood films became a popular genre here in the US with non-Indians. Namita Khanna Nariani, a brilliant, energetic dynamo of a teacher and choreographer, founded the troupe 17 years ago and turned it into a non-profit organization eight years ago -- all while raising a family and maintaining a career as an architect. We first met Namita in the second year of the Colorado Dragon Boat Festival (the photo above is from this summer's festival), and she's been a regular every year since, closing out the festival with a one-two punch of her Mudras followed by the very popular Denver Taiko Japanese drummers. Starting the third year, at Erin's suggestion, the Mudras started collaborating with Denver Taiko and now that's become a regular cross-cultural highlight of the event. The powerful Japanese drums have come to fit so well in Namita's South Asian vision of cultural fusion, in fact, that Mudra Dance Studio now incorporates a taiko drummer, Thomas Knight, as a regular part of its exciting annual performances. ILLhamThis year's performance, ILLham, opens this Sunday at 2 pm, and then repeats Saturday, Nov. 20 at 5 pm and Sunday, Nov 21 at 2 pm, at the Lakewood Cultural Center. Tickets are available online at the Mudra website. Each of the annual Mudra shows are carefully structured to be showcases not only of fabulous dance, music and multimedia, but also of an innate spirituality that is a part of the Mudra lifestyle. All its members seem imbued with this spirituality, because it flows down from Nariani herself. She explains the idea of ILLhaam, which is about cycles:
12 November, 2010
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Perspectives on Asian-American culture through the lens of identity, history, and experience

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Being Japanese American

“A must-read book that will delight you with its humor and amuse you with its insights; for non-Asian, a must-read book if you’re curious about what makes Japanese Americans tick.”

— John Tateishi, National Executive Director, Japanese American Citizens League