Gil Asakawa's Nikkei View | japan & asia
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June 6, 2009

Coca Cola just introduced Coke with Green Tea in Japan.Consumer culture in Japan is where you'll see the collision of Asian and American tastes. More than in the U.S., Japan is where East mashes West. You can get shrimp Filet-o-Fish sandwiches at McDonald's, or pizza with seaweed or squid, and spaghetti with salty plum sauce. So I supposes I shouldn't be dismayed at the new Coca-Cola flavor, Green Tea Coke. After all, here in the states there seems to be a growiing market for almost anything with green tea added, from soap and shampoos to Lipton Ice Tea and Starbucks' Matcha Latte. But Coke with green tea? I'm not much of a Coke fan (Pepsi's the choice if I have a cola at all), so I don't care that much about the purity of the soft drink. But it seems heresy to put green tea into the syrupy sweetness. Can you even taste the subtle bitterness? This fits right in with conversations I've had recently with (non-Asian) co-workers about Lipton's green tea flavored ice tea. I pointed out that Asians don't sweeten their tea.
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 16, 2009

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...

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.
December 31, 2008

Jero, the first African American Enka singer in Japan, learned the musical style from his Japanese grandmother.Enka music is often referred to as "Japanese blues." The comparison is apt for a couple of reasons: the music is almost always about heartbreak and inconsolable loss. You can hear it in the singing. And, enka singing relies a lot on vocal inflections that are also common to American blues and gospel music: vibrato and melisma (the bending of notes to show emotion). But fans of Enka in Japan probably never expected to see and hear an African American from Pittsburgh, PA make a name for himself as a rising star in the genre. (UPDATED: See bottom of this post for a video of Jero's historic New Year's Eve performance) Jerome Charles White, Jr. (coincidentally a name that would sound cool for a blues musician), who goes by the stage name Jero, is unique among Japanese pop stars, in that he's young (27), gifted, mixed-race black and American. He sings (and speaks) in perfect Japanese, and more important -- and more unusual -- he sings a style of Japanese pop music that many consider to be "old-fashioned." Enka music isn't quite blues -- aside from some of the vocal inflections and the sad subject matter, it's not a rhythmic style. It has roots in folk music like blues, but it's always presented in slick, orchestrated (stagey and theatrical) arrangements. Young Japanese have drfited away from this style and seem to prefer more modern genres like R&B, rock, disco and rap.
July 1, 2008

Considering that many -- if not most -- Asians are allergic to alcohol, it's amazing how much the culture of alcohol is part of society in Japan. I guess it's the same all over the world, but since I'm very allergic to alcohol, I'm just out of the loop when it comes to booze. You're probably familiar with the nightly practice of businessmen going out with their fellow "salarymen" after work and dining and drinking themselves into a stupor before trudging home to the families they hardly see. I can sip half a glass of beer and I turn bright red and splotchy, my eyes glow in the dark and I get dizzy as hell. It was hard to go out drinking in high school when my face gave myself away whenever I stumbled home and mom was up waiting for me. I guess if I were with co-workers who were all equally red, I wouldn't have been so self-conscious. Anyway, I recently came across what looked like a cool soft drink at Pacific Mercantile, the Japanese grocery store in downtown Denver, and I realized that Japan's alcohol culture starts earlier than I thought, and in insidious ways. I saw a display for bottles of a drink called "Kodomo no Nomimono," with a cute retro 1930s illustration of a child on the label, and the words, which translate as "Children's Drink" written out in hiragana, the simplified alphabet that's familiar to Japanese school kids. The bottles were on sale -- buy one, get one free -- so I bought one to try, and got one for my friend Jordan, the "Energy Examiner" for Examiner.com. He wrote about Kodomo no Nomimono, and found to his shock that the stuff is marketed as a beer for kids by its manufacturer, Sangaria, the makers of the popular lemonade-flavored pop, Ramune.
April 20, 2008

Iroha ramen and gyoza I just had a great meal at our favorite restaurant in San Francisco's Japantown, Iroha. It's a noodle house that serves up a great deal: A lunch combination special of ramen topped with a couple slices of pork, and gyoza dumplings on the side. The restaurant is more crowded than usual, and filled with lots of non-Japanese who are here for the first time. That's because J-Town in general is hopping this weekend. It's the second weekend of the annual Cherry Blossom Festival, or Sakura Matsuri. There are vendors with booths selling everything from junky trinkets to high-class jewelry, lots of food and stages of performers and martial arts demonstrations, all with a Japanese focus. But there's also a Japanese American undercurrent, with young people flocking to stores that specialize in anime and Jpop music. It's a cool mix of traditional and contemporary -- much like J-Town itself.
June 26, 2007

We spent some time at the Sakura Matsuri, or Cherry Blossom Festival, in downtown Denver's Sakura Square this past weekend. It was a good chance to catch up with old friends and we ended up filling a long table with extended family members. I was there to do a booksigning for a vendor, Heritage Source, a family-run business based out of LA, which sells books online and at events like Sakura Matsuri. Carolyn Sanwo brought her husband and two daughters along to help run the booth all weekend, and I sat there for a few hours on Saturday and chatted with folks and signed copies of "Being Japanese American." Erin spent the time volunteering inside the Tri-State Buddhist Temple's gym, selling manju pastries to the hungry throngs. It was hot but crowded. And, among the crowd were a surprising number of non-Asian kids, dressed in shabby faux-kimonos, looking as if they were homeless urchins. What was I to make of this new trend?