John Endo Greenaway

John Endo Greenaway

  • Joined: January 22, 2008
  • Articles: 573
  • Comments: 1

in conversation w/ Hiromoto Ida

The first thing I thought when I held my baby in my arms was “now there is a possibility that when I die, this person will hold me and watch me die.” That had a very strong impact on me as a performer. Raising kids is a continual series of small (sometimes painful, sometimes joyful) details. But I get to practice my patience every day for 14 years! That skill is very helpful when you try to create anything from zero. I have these things about family and art. When I young in my own family I always thought there is no ART in here. Good art is in the quiet museums, nice cool-looking theatres, smoky cafés, or maybe eccentric crazy studios. Usually the places families go are noisy, crowded, sometime smelly, dirty, everyday life places. Since I have a family of my own I have to go to those places, far from the cool arts scene. But I started finding great art hiding in all of this ordinary, boring, everyday stuff.

HASTINGS PARK update

Interpretive programming can start in the initial phase of implementing the Hastings Park Plan. As the Park commences its development, signage is a priority and covers a number of purposes such as direction signage, building name signage, location signage . . .

Editorial: The New Normal

First, some statistics courtesy of the Canadian Cancer Society: Breast cancer is the most common cancer among Canadian women (excluding non-melanoma skin cancer). In 2010: • An estimated 23,200 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer and 5,300 will die…

Untold Stories of Powell Street

Did your family live or work in the Powell Street area before the war? The Japanese Canadian community has made important contributions to the history of Vancouver since the 1880s—before the city was formally established. To help celebrate Vancouver’s 125th…

inReview: Kodo January 28, 2011, Queen Elizabeth Theatre

My own experience of any given Kodo concert will forever be coloured by the few days I spent at their home on Sado Island in the early eighties. As a fledgling taiko player I had travelled to Japan with other members of the newly-formed Katari Taiko to experience the birthplace of taiko and visit as many taiko groups as we could. The biggest thrill was being able to watch Kodo rehearse—sitting mere feet away on the polished wooden floor as they pounded the huge drums for hours at a time. It left my ears ringing and my enthusiasm for taiko stronger than ever. There was a focus and discipline in their rehearsals that North American groups lacked but there was also a sense of playfulness and fun that belied the stereotype of Japanese as soulless automatons.

The Art of Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani

Originally born in Sacramento in 1920, Jimmy Mirikitani was raised in Hiroshima, where he quickly showed a talent for painting. He returned to the US in 1938 to pursue his art, but ended up in the Tule Lake internment camp during the war . . .

Editorial

Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in another time. Chinese Proverb Ah, those ancient Chinese proverbs . . . As a parent of two high school-age daughters, reading Masaki Watanabe’s letter to his…

Brendan Uegama and Henry’s Glasses

One day, when we were only a week away from shooting and deep into construction, a friend of ours from Sunshine Valley came into the workshop with a Japanese Canadian woman and her son and grandson. She had been interned in Tashme when she was between 12 – 16 years old. They were just visiting, and had no idea we were making a film on the internment. We took her to the set to show her what we had built and once she stepped out of the car, she started to cry. Can you imagine going back there 65 years later and walking down a roadway reconstruction of Tashme?

Boats in the Harbour

It is not fair to say what I experienced in Japan is the same as what new Canadian immigrants must feel. We have a much stronger immigrant culture, one with a goal of emphasizing multiculturalism and embracing newcomers. Even those of us who were born in Canada still claim ties to the nations of our ancestors, as Neil Bissoondath points out. Anyone who can trace their lineage will call themselves half-Swedish or one-quarter French. Only those who trace their ancestry back to the earliest settlers will, at a loss, despairingly say, “I’m just Canadian.”

Kodo returns to Vancouver

It’s said that in ancient Japan, the size of a village was determined by how far away one could hear the village drum. It’s an evocative image that resonates even today, when the very concept of village and community is…