Category CrossCurrents

by Masaki Watanabe

. . . and the Way We Are – You Are Japanese (North) American If You . . .

Akemashite omedetoo gozaimasu to all our readers, and may we all have a fruitful 2014. Let’s begin the new year by examining the “way we are,” i.e. we Japanese Canadians, Japanese Americans and long-time resident Japanese. What are we really like?…

Over the past several years, I’ve been translating so many historical materials on such subjects as Japanese Canadians’ lives up to World War Il, that I’ve lately become somewhat obsessed with the basic question: “What does history mean to us?” …

Like many of you, going to Oppenheimer Park for the Powell Street Festival in early August has become an annual ritual for me in the 16 years I’ve lived in Vancouver so far. I’ve been going just about every summer…

One Nikkei Vancouverite’s Unique Contribution As you know, Vancouver, with its convivial multi-racial culture and splendid natural surroundings is regularly rated near the top of the “world’s best cities to live in” type of rankings. On the other hand, being…

“Hi, Mas,” the mayor of San Jose was nice enough to greet me casually as he extended his hand with those words. It was in the early 1970s in San Francisco during a conference of US and Japanese mayors, in…

by Masaki Watanabe I became a passionate pro baseball fan when I was still in primary school, over 60 years ago. Back then I knew only Japanese Professional Baseball (hereafter NPB) which was in the first heyday of the Giants…

My past two articles here have both unwittingly been about gratitude toward good friends who have passed on – an inevitability that we human beings, especially those of us in the senior age bracket, have to accept philosophically; not that…

The best sessions must have been from around 2000 to 2005 or so when Harry was still in good health and had the energy to plan and execute the programs as he wished with the help of assistants who were happy to volunteer, I’m sure, inspired by Harry’s personality and work.

Generosity toward friends, family and anyone else was what I learned from G.T. another unforgettable friend from my university days in Tokyo in the early sixties. I cannot count the number of nights I spent in his rooming house near the campus or his parents’ home in Yokohama after bouts of heavy drinking. As he was born of Hawaiian Japanese American parents, who grew up in Japan, we had many things to share, talk about.

“The Japanese and Chinese – A Confrontation of Destination” reads the title of a special feature the authoritative literary monthly Bungei Shunju ran recently. As we all know, the relationship between Japan and China, or more precisely Tokyo and Beijing…