Gil Asakawa's Nikkei View | asian american
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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.
May 31, 2009

Erika Tanaka won the crown as Miss Asian American Colorado 2009.Congratulations to Erika Tanaka, the young Japanese and Vietnamese American woman who won the second annual Miss Asian American Colorado Leadership Program's Finale Show last night. The tiara was there, along with the glitz and glamor. But there was no swimsuit competition, and no one mentioned "world peace." This is no ordinary beauty pageant. The program is all about leadership and community service -- the inner beauty that the 17 contestants all displayed on the stage (yes, it's a cliche, but these woman all have inner beauty, in spades). Erin and I were impressed with all of the contestants when they shared their community service projects, and also impressed with many of their talent segments. Our favorites included what might be expected performances for this kind of event: Abhinetri Ramaswani's singing on a lovely, hypnotic Indian classical song, accompanied by a musician on tablas; Lana Nguyen's performance of a melancholy Vietnamese folksong. But we also enjoyed the performances that showed the "American" side of these Asian American women: Giane Morris' self-penned rock song (complete with a full electric band backing her) about the death of her brother; several spoken word performances including Nguyen Nguyen's passionate poem about her identity, "Beautiful Things"; and several hip-hop dance routines, including a very cool, intricately choreographed duet by Laila Nguyen. There were several non-traditional talents displayed in an entertaining way, including cooking pad Thai, making lotus flowers out of colored napkins, and most notably, a demonstration of the sport of curling (really).
May 30, 2009

The character of Russell in the movie "Up" is Asian American!From Channel APA: This one snuck up on me, but the new Disney-Pixar animated feature, "Up," stars an Asian American character, voiced by an Asian American kid. The part of Russell, the young scout who gloms onto the grumpy old man Carl just as the two take off on a crazy adventure, is read by Jordan Nagai, a Japanese American young man who was 7 when the movie was made. How cool is that? But wait, there's more: The Russell character itself was modeled on an Asian American animator at Pixar, Peter Sohn.
May 29, 2009

Yul Kwon is the first Asian American to win one of the seasons of "Survivor." He won the "Cook Islands" season in 2006.The second interview lined up for visualizAsian.com's AAPI Empowerment Series is with Korean American attorney-turned-TV celebrity Yul Kwon. The interview will be held Tuesday, June 9 at 6 pm PDT (9 pm EDT). Erin and I were fortunate to see Yul speak during last year's Democratic National Convention in Denver, and more recently during Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month at an event in Denver. He's a great role model because of his accomplishments, and because he's on a mission to dispel myths and stereotypes about Asian American Pacific Islanders, and to urge AAPIs to enter the political process. Kwon has a diverse background in law, politics, technology, business, and media -- except for his exceptional "Survivor" victory, he's almost a model for the "model minority" myth!
May 29, 2009

"Lumina" is an online-only series, an independently-filmed thriller written and produced by Asian American Jennifer Thym in Hong Kong. You've gotta love the Internet. I was contacted some weeks back by Jennifer Thym, the Asian American writer and director of "Lumina," a new online-only thriller serial debuting this summer. The movie project features an Asian American lead as well as Asian Canadian actors, and the whole thing is filmed in Hong Kong, where Thym has lived for the past two years. The trailer certainly is cool and mysterious and makes me want to see the series kick off (I subscribed to the email alerts from YouTube whenever a new installment is posted): Here's what she says about the project on her Rock Ginger blog:
April 2, 2009

Musical interlude: I saw on Facebook that Kinna Grannis had posted a video of herself with David Choi, sittin' on a couch and humming and strumming the pop standard, "What a Wonderful World." It's a very sweet version, and the two harmonize beautifully together. I blogged about Grannis a few months ago when I stumbled across her version of "Sukiyaki."...

December 12, 2008

Clint Eastwood in a scene from his new movie, "Gran Torino." Clint Eastwood, who looked at one of the most famous battles of World War II through the eyes of doomed Japanese soldiers in the 2006 film, "Letters from Iwo Jima," is now lookng at Asian Americans and racism in an upcoming movie, "Gran Torino." Eastwood plays a racist Korean War veteran and retired Ford factory employee, Walt Kowalski, who's been beaten down by life. The only two steadfast things in his life are his 1972 Gran Torino, an artifact from the glory days of Ford muscle, and his M-1 rifle, an artifact from the glory days of American muscle. Everything else around him is going to hell: his wife has recently died, he's estranged from his grown kids, and to his dismay, his rundown neighborhood is becoming over-run by Asians. The incoming foreigners are Hmong, not Korean. Eastwood's character gets to know the Hmong family that moves in next door after their 16-year-old son tries to steal his Gran Torino as part of a gang initiation. Predictably, Eastwood at first hates them but then grows close, and protects them against the gang. The movie's trailer shows some typical interactions between a cranky white man and black neighborhood punks and scary-looking Asian gang members. Knowing Eastwood, I bet the plot is more complicated than the predictable scenes in the trailer, though. This is the first time a Hollywood movie has taken a deep dive into the Hmong community, so it's an opportunity to teach Americans about their history and culture, and of the AAPI culture of second generation Hmong Americans. Besides Eastwood, the movie stars a group of first-time actors, most if not all Hmong (no hiring of non-ethnically accurate actors just for the right "talent" or "star power" a la "Memoirs of a Geisha"), and the casting was featured in a series of interviews in a Hmong news site, Suab Hmong Radio:
December 7, 2008

Retired Army General Eric Shinseki was named by Obama to be Secretary of Veterans Affairs Back on Veterans Day I posted an article about how Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have been heroes for generations in the U.S. military, and ended the article with a note about retired Four-Star Gen. Eric Shinseki, former Army Chief of Staff and the highest-ranked AAPI in the military. Today, NBC released an excerpt of an interview with Barack Obama to air on tomorrow's "Meet the Press" program, during which the President-elect tells Tom Brokaw that he's naming Shinseki as Secretary of Veterans Affairs. The timing of the announcement isn't coincidental. Tomorrow is Sunday, December 7, the 67th anniversary of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. Shinseki is Japanese American, and he was born in Hawai'i on November, 28, 1942. He and Barack Obama both have childhood roots in Hawai'i. Shinseki is a Vietnam veteran, who lost part of a foot from stepping on a land mine. He was named Army Chief of Staff in 1999 and retired in 2003... many thought, under duress from the Bush administration for his views which contradicted the official one on the war against Iraq. On February 25, 2003, a few months before the end of his appointment and the start of his retirement, Shinseki testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee that he thought an occupying force of several hundred thousand men would be needed to stabilize postwar Iraq. His analysis was bluntly dismissed by the Bush administration. Here's part of a transcript of the proceedings: