WHY I REPORT IN ENGLISH by Yuri Kageyama

Why I Report in English by Yuri Kageyama

This is something I just happened to find in my desk, typed up (yes, typed _ remember those days?). It’s an essay about why I am a reporter, and why I report in the English language that I wrote I think in the 1980s. Perhaps I was applying for work? It is long before I joined The AP. I am not changing the wording, but have put it down exactly the way it is typed on the sheet of paper, except for the four changes made in red in pen that were already there. I might write it differently today. But I feel exactly the same. So here goes:

Ever since I can remember, I have been of both worlds _ American and Japanese. As a child of a Japanese “salaryman” who had dreams of pioneering science by crossing borders, years before the Japanese business Establishment decided “internationalization” was fashionable, I was constantly thrust back and forth between two very different, sometimes clashing, cultures.

I will not pretend that the experience was always pleasant. It was often stunning, confusing and painful. One moment, for instance, I was expected to be the submissive, demure Japanese girl, who laughed shyly covering her mouth. The next moment, I found myself having to turn into an assertive, no-nonsense American, who could outtalk and outperform any male.

Gradually I have come to accept this dichotomy. In a sense, I now cherish it as a privilege. I took to switching cultural allegiance for convenience. I would claim my “Japaneseness” when watching Ennosuke Ichikawa Kabuki, but I would, with no qualms, claim “Americanhood” while appreciating soul rhythms at an Earth, Wind and Fire concert.

It is, after all, an eyeopener to perceive that many of society’s rules are arbitrary. What passes as positive in one culture may be absolutely taboo in another, and vice versa. As a perpetual outsider, one can see through much of the false pretentious aspects of social norms and values and hope to grasp more accurately the universal human essence.

Reporting in English about Japanese matters, therefore, came naturally to me. Explaining the East to the West has been my persistent pastime. It is something I do well, I think, because it is part of my fate.

Earlier this year, I flew to Iwo Jima to cover the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s annual services for the war dead there. The sandy island speckled with gnarled tropical vegetation appeared, at first glance, barren except for the military bases.

Yet, upon closer inspection, strange voices seemed to fill the hot, dry air _ chants verging on song, rising and falling. So many people, both American and Japanese, have died here, the voices seemed to be saying. Their blood covers this island. Even if it has been washed away, the fact of history that thousands died here will never be erased, the windlike voices were saying.

Two monuments stand on Iwo Jima _ the one put up by Americans with the Stars and Stripes and the other of gray stone built by Japanese with a graphic depiction of the map of Japan. As though staring into two alien worlds with unmoving granite eyes, the two monuments remain apart on opposite sides of the same hill.

The visit held a revelation for me. Obviously, Japan and the U.S. are two separate countries that have even waged war against one another. Today, many of the misunderstanding and barriers that divide the two nations are still close to insurmountable. But thanks to a slightly aberrant upbringing, the two worlds are totally at peace within myself.

It is this unconditional yet effortless peace between Japan and America I know so intimately that I want to keep in mind when I work as a reporter.

The Yuricane _ our theme song of sorts by Yuri Kageyama: “we are one”

hirokazu photo

Hirokazu Suyama (photo by Takuma Toyonaga)

THE YURICANE
our theme song of sorts
by YURI KAGEYAMA
“we are one”

We are the Yuricane
We are the Yuricane
The hurricane of poetry
The hurricane of music
We are the Yuricane
Listen to the Yuricane

On tabla and so smooth drumming
The eye tongue ears
Touch of the storm
The Will Calhoun of Japan
Hirokazu Suyama
Listen to the Yuricane

On rock steady bass
He keeps you grounded where you’re headed
Composer arranger
The James Jamerson of Japan
Hiroshi Tokieda
Listen to the Yuricane

On virtuoso guitar
Touching your heart strings
And wearing only geta or cowboy boots
The Stevie Ray Vaughn of Japan
Yuuichiro Ishii
Listen to the Yuricane

We defy definitions
We bulldoze borders
We crash categorizations
We slam stereotypes
We believe in music
We believe in poetry

We are the Yuricane

hiroshi

Hiroshi Tokieda (photo by Takuma Toyonaga)

yuuichiro

Yuuichiro Ishii

My Poetry in Pirene’s Fountain

My two poems “Haiku for Van Gogh” and “how to say ‘yes’ in Japanese” (coincidentally read in Tokyo recently) are published in Pirene’s Fountain.
The bio and poetry from inside the pages of the latest issue:
Yuri Kageyama is a poet and writer of bilingual and bicultural upbringing, born in Japan and growing up in Maryland, Tokyo and Alabama. She has two books, “The New and Selected Yuri: Writing From Peeling Till Now” (Ishmael Reed Publishing Co.) and “Peeling” (I. Reed Books). Her works appear in many literary anthologies and magazines, including “Y’Bird,” “Greenfield Review,” “San Francisco Stories,” “On a Bed of Rice,” “Breaking Silence: an Anthology of Asian American Poets,” “POW WOW: Charting the Fault Lines in the American Experience _ Short Fiction from Then to Now,” “Other Side River,” “Beyond Rice,” “Yellow Silk,” “Stories We Hold Secret,” “KONCH” and “MultiAmerica.” She has read with Ishmael Reed, Shuntaro Tanikawa, Eric Kamau Gravatt, Geraldine Kudaka, Victor Hernandez Cruz, Winchester Nii Tete, Seamus Heaney, Takenari Shibata, Shozu Ben and many other artists. She is a magna cum laude graduate of Cornell University and holds an M.A. from the University of California, Berkeley. She is working on an oral history of Tokyo taiko drumming group Amanojaku, where her son Isaku Kageyama is a principal drummer. yurikageyama.com

Haiku for Van Gogh | ways of saying ‘yes’ in Japanese

Haiku for Van Gogh

An old wooden desk
Yellow dots of light shrieking
Van Gogh’s room

Warped plums dagger rain
Crazed geisha dance in ukiyoe oil
Breathe Van Gogh’s Japan

Sliced ear of love denied
Road to nothing ravens in flight
Genius of yellow

ways of saying ‘yes’ in Japanese

“Hai!!”
That’s the correct way of replying when spoken to in Japan for centuries, hai! the way people are taught in school, by their parents, what’s right in society _
respect for the hierarchy, yes sir, thank you ma’am, hai hai hai, like hiccups, like hiphiphurray, hai! hai! hai! no pause, no hesitation, no thought,
following orders, quick, no questions, grunt it out, soldiers at attention, yelling, spitting, believing, say it with all your heart and mind,
hai!

“Haa~aai!”
That’s the way people answer in Japan these says, haa~aai! the way people drop out of school, freeters, parents are just friends to follow only on Twitter _
flattening out the hierarchy, maybe yes, maybe not, haa~aai! like a mumble, like a whisper, a kiss on the ear, haa~aai, innocent, hurt only for others,
wind blowing in your hair, smiley faces heart icons in cell phones, improvise, imagine, immaculate, sing it without a care in the world,
haa~aai!

ROTU (Rhythm of the Universe) at Berklee College of Music

Trailer for a project at Berklee College of Music in Boston, created and led by Emir Cerman, that brings together musicians from around the world including Isaku Kageyama .

Tokyo Yuricane Reading

Tokyo Yuricane Reading: Poetry by Yuri Kageyama with Taiko drums by Chris Holland, percussion by Winchester Nii Tete, guitar by Takenari Shibata, bass by Satoshi Adachi, drums by Jin Imamura.

I feel decidedly good about the future of Japan (and the world) when I work with young musicians like the ones who played _ and so sincerely and so passionately _ as the Tokyo members of The Yuricane, with my poetry reading Dec. 3, 2011 at the Tokyo American Club.
The world is in good hands _ if only it would allow the right people to get their hands on what happens.
One of the relatively new works we tried out, using different percussion to highlight the contrasts/evolution:

ways of saying ‘yes’ in Japanese
a poem by Yuri Kageyama

“Hai!!”
That’s the correct way of replying when spoken to in Japan for centuries, hai! the way people are taught in school, by their parents, what’s right in society _
respect for the hierarchy, yes sir, thank you ma’am, hai hai hai, like hiccups, like hiphiphurray, hai! hai! hai! no pause, no hesitation, no thought,
following orders, quick, no questions, grunt it out, soldiers at attention, yelling, spitting, believing, say it with all your heart and mind,
hai!
“Haa~aai!”
That’s the way people answer in Japan these says, haa~aai! the way people drop out of school, freeters, parents are just friends to follow only on Twitter _
flattening out the hierarchy, maybe yes, maybe not, haa~aai! like a mumble, like a whisper, a kiss on the ear, haa~aai, innocent, hurt only for others,
wind blowing in your hair, smiley faces heart icons in cell phones, improvise, imagine, immaculate, sing it without a care in the world,
haa~aai!

Haiku for Van Gogh
by Yuri Kageyama

An old wooden desk
Yellow dots of light shrieking
Van Gogh’s room

Warped plums dagger rain
Crazed geisha dance in ukiyoe oil
Breathe Van Gogh’s Japan

Sliced ear of love denied
Road to nothing ravens in flight
Genius of yellow

MUSICAL POETS: Al Young sings, presents award to Ishmael Reed



David Boyce of the Broun Fellinis, poet Tennessee Reed and Carla Blank, choreographer, performance artist and my editor at The Barbary Coast Award ceremony for poet, novelist and professor Ishmael Reed Oct. 12, 2011, in San Francisco.
Photos by Annette Dorfman.

Abnormalities

It was with a chuckle shaking his brawny body that Kenji Nakagami told me _ as though he was letting me in on a good secret _ writers aren’t “normal” (“futsu”) people.
“Don’t you believe what he says,” he said of another writer, Haruki Murakami. “He is a writer _ not a normal person.”
The idea that writers may not be “normal” wasn’t something I had thought about until then.
And he said it with a conviction that also had not occurred to me: That it’s better to be abnormal.
Normalcy wasn’t desirable.
It was boring.
It was ordinary.
Perhaps in the West, standing out from the crowd is considered a virtue.
But in Japan, being different is a stigma.
I had never wanted to be different, and I was always sad I could never blend in anywhere _ not being white in the U.S., being too Americanized among Japanese.
Abnormality is a special place to be, Nakagami was saying, waving his big glove-like hand in a Tokyo alley after our interview, smiling, totally not normal, totally unique, totally disarming, totally convincing, forever caught in that photo-shot moment, in my mind, more than 15 years after his death.
Hailing from the proud Buraku, his works have more in common with the multicultural works of America in an intense and mysterious way than with what we are accustomed to identifying with Japanese fiction.
If we were happily normal, maybe we would never have become writers.
And maybe we aren’t really writers at all.
Just rejected because of our abnormalities, doomed to the darkness that makes us crazy and furious in crawling out to that blinding ideal with our writing.

Writing

When I was in fourth grade, I became obsessed with short story writing in which the narrator becomes something other than human _ like Soseki Natsume’s “I Am a Cat.”
It’s a great exercise: all the stories that are possible by taking on the persona of an animal, a pen on someone’s table, a toy.
My teacher was so impressed with my output that she made her whole class write stories taking this approach.
What a great teacher.
I only remember one storyline from the “masterpieces” I churned out as a fourth grader.
I was a cherry blossom who floated from Japan to the U.S. over the Pacific Ocean, enduring storms, pirates, whales and other dangers.
And somehow I manage to bury myself as a sakura seed in the soil to become a tree on the Potomac River.
The rest is history: The first cherry tree in the U.S. multiplies to become the rows and rows of blossoms lining the Washington D.C. river today.
This is preposterous scientifically (but doesn’t the flower contain the seeds?).
But it shows that even then I was a self-proclaimed cultural ambassador, hoping to bridge the East/West divide.

Japanese politics

Joichi Ito’s opinion piece in The New York Times today was a truly enjoyable piece of bicultural (Japan/U.S.) writing.
To appreciate it, like an inside joke, you almost have to be bicultural in the same way he is bicultural _ observing Japan as part-insider Japanese and part-outsider “gaijin.”
I interviewed Joi Ito in 2004 as a star blogger when mainstream journalism was still trying to grapple with blogging as a new medium.
Now, even I blog!
Diversity/sensibilities shed light on life/social change/prejudice/injustices _
Being marginal helps us question societal assumptions and understand what’s relative/arbitrary vs. what is fundamental/eternal/universal.

American on board at Toyota

A white male isn’t ususally speaking from the minority side of the diversity divide.
But Jim Press is the first non-Japanese to join the board of Toyota ( my story on his promotion winning shareholder approval last week).
He talks very softly _ Japanese style _ and says much of Toyota’s corporate culture is Japanese _ hence the understatement about becoming No. 1.
I asked him about that: Why Toyota officials keep saying they aren’t making beating GM/becoming No. 1 their goal, when reaching the top would seem like a victory for a company.
“Do you read your own headlines? Do you believe it? Would you forget how you got there, if you were? I don’t see any benefit in that. Customers don’t care who’s No. 1.”
Then Press asked me where I was from _ to make sure I understood Japanese culture.
“There’s no satisfaction of beating somebody,” he said. “That’s not something you’re proud of, is it?”
I had to say:
“Sometimes we like to beat Reuters.”
His reply:
“But you’re not a Japanese company, are you?”
How can Toyota become more American?
Toyota is already an American company, he said.
He said Toyota has a “hybrid” culture _ clever how he got the automaker’s key technology in there!
Press compared Toyota to the immigrant who becomes American _ yet continues to be proud of his/her roots:
“At how many generations removed from the original immigrant do you lose your identity? None. You should keep that. That’s part of diversity. You keep the strength of what makes you different, what makes you good and successful. But you’re doing it in that country. We want to be the best company in America _ period.”