Nikkei Heritage

What's Nikkei? The concept changes with each generation. A century ago, we moved like traffic on a homogenous cultural highway, united by language, ambition and gohan. The moment we got a taste of jazz, hot dogs and the First Amendment, we began drawing a new map for ourselves, full of detours and off-road explorations. Today we can count nearly six generations in this country, and we're expressing every variation and nuance of our history as Americans of Japanese descent. "Nikkei" can't be defined by convenient ethic markers; the landscape's changed, and so have we.

For some, that's cause for lament. There's been plenty of complaints lately that Yonsei and Gosei don't know anything about their culture, that our venerable civil rights institutions are withering due to lack of interest, that as a people, we're fragmented and disappearing. In this issue of Nikkei Heritage, we look at the landscape from another point of view. Perhaps JA culture isn't embedded just in tea ceremony or Saturday nihongo school; it's reflected in a thousand shades of attitude and exploration and a willingness to meld our Asian and American experience in ways that may not look Japanese, but that are true to our resilient souls.

This issue introduces you to artists, musicians, writers and performers who are deconstructing notions of Nikkei culture and demonstrating that tradition thrives in unlikely guises. At the very beginning of our history, pioneers such as Michio Ito and Isamu Noguchi applied a love of minimal line and gesture to Western narrative. A generation later, June Watanabe used noh drama to transform modern dance. JAs are leaving an imprint on rock music, spoken word, standup comedy and graphic art, transforming apparently American art forms by benefit of our unique experiences, viewpoints and inner rhythms.

Many of our contributors reflect similar attitudes of curiousity and exploration. Judith Kajiwara, long respected in the performace community, shares her experiences in modern butoh; Tracy Fugami founded and managed a gallery in Seattle, WA that exhibited local Asian and Asian America artists. and like her subjects is expertly combining the perspectives of East and West coasts in a new setting somewhere in the middle-in this case, Wisconsin. NJAHS' own exhibition designer, Kenji Liu, is also an accomplished poet that brings that sensibility to his interview with Taiyo Takeda. Clearly, we have much to celebrate. Rather than diminishing, Nikkei culture is simply morphing into something new, complex and diverse as we are.

- Chiori Santiago, Editor