Why we should love Osaka mayor Toru Hashimoto

There are plenty of reasons to love the Osaka mayor Toru Hashimoto. Two weeks ago, he made remarks about comfort women has caused a ripple in the international waters of women issues.

I'm not really clear on what Hashimoto actually said, because when I worked from the Rafu Shimpo I noticed that sometimes statements made by politicians were taken out of context. And sometimes, the media gets caught up in whatever sounds good and sells papers and gets good ratings.

When I first wrote about the issue of comfort women, it was in an essay published in the Rafu Shimpo called "The Rape of Conquered Women." At that time--just before the Los Angeles Riots, there were two claims that are no longer touted today: The comfort women was something unique to the Japanese and that even the Nazis hadn't used sex slaves. One of the favorite witnesses for English language articles was Seiji Yoshida. His accounts and his book were widely criticized by Japanese historians (who were then in turned bitterly criticized for being Japan apologists).

As it turned out, neither claim was true. The Nazis did have sex slaves--taken from the Jewish, gypsies and other political prisoners. The exploitation and sexual enslavement of women from conquered populations has a history that goes back further than 415 BC, which was when "Troades" or "The Trojan Women" was first produced. Greek playwright Euripides wrote the tragedy during the Peloponnesian War. In 1971, Katharine Hepburn was Hecuba, Vanessa Redgrave was Andromache and Genevieve Bujold was Cassandra. Irene Papas was the infamous Helen.

After the publication of my essay, men, mostly I suppose Korean, threatened my colleagues and myself. Ironically, a man threatening me with violence or rape because I held an opinion he didn't like puts such a person on the same level of men who rape during war. Fear is a way of silencing dissenting voices. Rape is a way of silencing women and disgracing "their" men.

The rape and enslavement of conquered women during 415 BC was one of the perks of war. What about in 1930-1940s when the Japanese committed the war crimes supposedly associated with the comfort women. I propose there are several problems in revisiting these acts and interpreting them.

1. Racism in the Allied Countries such as the U.S. allowed for the rape of non-white women by white men without much fear of punishment. 
2. Institutionalized racism affected national and international policy.
3. The attitudes toward rape tended to blame the victims.
4. The attitudes toward women protected as property.
5. Because women were treated as property within certain cultures and societies, the concern was not about how women were treated by how women were treated by others.
6. Similar war crimes committed by the Allied troops against the women, including "rescued" comfort women, complicated the issue and made it more likely to be ignored.

According to Associated Press reporters Mari Yamaguchi and Malcolm Foster,  Hashimoto's most recent statement clarifies his position. He "meant to say military authorities at the time, not only in Japan but in many other countries, considered it necessary." From my understanding of Japanese history, this is true. One of the first things they provided for foreigners in Yokohama after the opening of Japan was a whore house. There was a concept that men needed to have a sexual release and this wasn't only present in Japanese culture. The British also held that attitude and brothels were a part of their experience during World War I. 

Probably what should outrage women in Japan is that he suggested in a recent visit to Okinawa that the U.S. military make better use of the legal sex industry "to control the sexual energy of those tough guys."  

You might have been misled by more recent articles. In Japan Today, Washington's Jen Psaki supposedly denounced the comments Hashimoto made on Friday (17 May 2013), however Psaki's comment were on 16 May 2013. 

The full transcript reads:

QUESTION: Hi, my name is Takashi from Japanese newspaper Asahi. Osaka City Mayor Hashimoto recently made a comment on the so-called “comfort women” issue, arguing that even though it is unacceptable from the moral perspective value, but the comfort women were necessary during the war period. And he also argued that it is not fair that only Japan is criticized by the United States and other countries, because there are other country military that were provided sexual service by prostitute. And do U.S. has any position on his comment or criticism against the United States? 

MS. PSAKI: We have seen, of course, those comments. Mayor Hashimoto’s comments were outrageous and offensive. As the United States has stated previously, what happened in that era to these women who were trafficked for sexual purposes is deplorable and clearly a grave human rights violation of enormous proportions. We extend, again, our sincere and deep sympathy to the victims, and we hope that Japan will continue to work with its neighbors to address this and other issues arising from the past and cultivate relationships that allow them to move forward.

QUESTION: Do you describe this issue sex slave or comfort women?

MS. PSAKI: Again, I don’t know that I’m going to define it. You kind of laid out the specific details there, and we have described this issue in the past as comfort women[ii].

The U.S. State Department didn't reply to Hashimoto's additional comments. According to JapanToday.com, Hashimoto reply to Psaki via Twitter was:

Let me go straight to the point. When America occupied Japan, didn’t they make use of Japanese women?

I can’t help but point out that it is unfair for America to criticize only Japan by putting aside acts by its own country.

The United States should face what the US military did against local women, in particular Okinawan women when they occupied Japan.

The U.S. State Department (Patrick Ventrell, the acting deputy spokesman) didn't actually reply to these statements in the Monday daily brief:

QUESTION: Something about Japan’s comfort women? Osaka Mayor Hashimoto continued to argue that the American troops utilized women for sexual purpose during the occupation period in Japan, and even later – especially in Okinawa. And he also argues that the United States is unfairly criticizing Japan by putting aside what they did to local women during and after the war period. And I was wondering if you have any comment on that.
MR. VENTRELL: I didn’t hear who you said at the beginning that said this.
QUESTION: Osaka Mayor Mr. Hashimoto.
MR. VENTRELL: This is something that Jen addressed at the briefing last week and gave a very robust condemnation of those remarks. I really refer you to what Jen said last week. But we already condemned those.
QUESTION: But I thought what she condemned last week was his comments about them being a military necessity.
MR. VENTRELL: Yeah. Is this a new --
QUESTION: This sounds to be – this seems to be something new.
MR. VENTRELL: I hadn’t seen these new remarks. Let me --
QUESTION: The mayor says that the U.S. troops used– whatever term you want to call them – during the occupation.
MR. VENTRELL: Let me look in. I’m not aware of new remarks by the mayor of Osaka, more that we had a strong reaction to what he had said previously. Let me look in and see whether we’re aware of any subsequent remarks.

While the article goes on to assert "There is no mainstream evidence that modern militaries other than Japan employed a formal sex slavery system." it also continues that "Pulitzer Prize-winning historian John Dower is among credible sources who say American troops committed multiple rapes of Japanese women during the occupation and that press censorship muted reporting of these crimes."

What the article means by formal is hard to define. If by modern, Dower could refer to the early modern period of the 18th Century. There is ample evidence that the Nazis had sex slaves and they kept good records. There is also evidence that the British military in India kept and promoted military brothels. Brothels were lawful in British India until the 1930s and created racial and class conundrums, particularly when European prostitutes came. To put this in the context of the history of Japanese aggression,  first Sino-Japanese war was in the 1894-1895 and the second was in 1937-1945 with minor incidents beginning in 1931.  And what about the American military in Vietnam or in Korea? A 2009 UCLA thesis by Elya Filler looks at the role of Japan's comfort women system in the contemporary sex industry, but doesn't indicate where the Japanese got this idea.

When Commodore Perry opened Japan in the 1850s, Japan had been in seclusion for 200 years. It had no modern army, navy or airforce. Where did it learn modern warfare?  Military brothels were already being used in Europe and Asia by the British and French.

I do not believe that we as Americans or former Comfort women from Korea have the right to pressure the people of Osaka to find a new mayor, particularly since he has raised the issue of comfort women and attempted to expand the conundrum of the comfort women from an Asian point of view.  We've had mayors accused of sexism such as New York's Michael Bloomberg and Warren, Michigan's James Fouts. Fouts added that public employees should buy American autos. Bloomberg and Hashimoto are men of the 2010s. Men and women in the 1930s and 1940s in America were conditioned to accept:

1. All women want to be raped.
2. No woman can be raped against her will.
3. If a woman was raped, she was asking for it (perhaps by the way she was dressed or by being out late at night or drinking alcohol).
4. Rape can be enjoyable as in if you're going to be raped, you might as well  relax and enjoy it.

Susan Brownmiller noted in her book "Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape" that gang rape was found in many cultures as a measure of control for women who strayed from their prescribed social roles. The 1975 book has a chapter devoted to war and notes that during the Occupation of Japan there were incidents of rape. 

A more recent article by Terese Svoboda, noted that the U.S. government concealed information about rape and that the reasons were not just political but also racial. The punishment of black soldiers for rape was more extreme. 

Another article online draws from Svoboda as well as other researchers and newspaper reports of the time. There is also mention of Korean comfort women being raped by U.S. forces.  While the article is new, the information is not. I was aware of the rape of Japanese comfort women by the Allied forces a few decades ago from sources written in English. 

Although Hashimoto has backpedaled in a long three-hour statement, his original assertions should indicate why the issue of the comfort women is more complicated than has been presented to Americans by the media. Further, South Korea seems more concerned about their women's treatment by Japan as opposed to the concept of comfort women or the current plight of foreign women in Korea who find themselves under similar circumstances. That seems to hark back to the ancient concept of rape as a crime against property and not a person. According to Wikipedia, South Korea supplied comfort women to American forces in Korea and according to the New York Times, some of they want apologies and compensation. In a 2009 New York Times article, the women called the South Korean government hypocritical, something that is perhaps not lost on many Japanese.

Hashimoto bravely continued to assert:

Based on the premise that Japan must remorsefully face its past offenses and must never justify the offenses, I intended to argue that other nations in the world must not attempt to conclude the matter by blaming only Japan and by associating Japan alone with the simple phrase of "sex slaves" or "sex slavery."

As L.A. Asians, shouldn't we be concerned about the rape or sexual slavery of all Asian women during war or colonialism or even times of peace? That is the conundrum of the Korean comfort women. The issue should reach beyond Japan and reparations for crimes committed under imperialism has far-reaching implications. Imagine if Great Britain had to pay reparations to all the countries that had been under the British Imperial empire, including the women who became sex slaves.

Soba fresh in a Torrance hideway: Bamboo Inn

I love hole-in-the-wall restaurants with good food and one of my favorites is the humble Bamboo Inn. Located in Old Torrance, they make their noodles (udon and soba) once a day and when it's gone, you are out of luck. So get there early if you want to avoid being disappointed.

If you don't speak Japanese you might be put off. The people at this place are generally friendly but most of the staff I've seen (usually only one person up front) do not speak English well. That may be the price for authenticity.

The soba and udon served at the Bamboo Inn (also known as Ichimi An in Japanese) is made from flour shipped directly from Japan in refrigerated containers. Then the buckwheat is milled daily and the chef uses the flour to make the daily batch of noodles. The freshness is what makes these soba noodles so chewy and fragrant.

I love the unagi soba for $8.50. The serving is respectable but don't expect leftovers. In any case, soba like most noodles doesn't do well the day after.  The nishin soba ($8) has fish that has a light touch with the sweetener.

There's tororo which refers to yam puree. It's gooey and a bit stringy, but has a light taste. Once mixed with the broth (you can order hot or cold noodles), tororo acts as a thickener. Nishin soba is soba topped with migaki nishin (dried Pacific herring slightly sweetened with sugar and seasoned with soy sauce). There is a whole vocabulary list for Japanese noodle dishes. If you have a question, don't be afraid to ask or better yet...just order it and see if you like it.

If you don't like noodles, you can always have something like mentai rice ($2.75) or maybe two pieces of inari sushi ($1.50). Mentai rice is rice with mentaiko (marinated pollock roe ).  Thin slices of nori are  sprinkled on top. You mix them all up for a tasty, slighty salty savory treat.

Other rice dishes include donburi. For the less adventurous, there's always oyakodon (chicken and eggs cooked over rice) for $4.60.

Bamboo Inn currently has two locations, but the second newer location in the Rolling Hills Plaza has a different menu and goes under the name: Ichimi An ( An means hermitage).   Don't be fooled by the humble Old Torrance storefront because inside are gourmet treasures.

Old Torrance

1618 Cravens Ave.
Torrance, CA 90501
Tel: 310-328-1323

Hours of Business:

Mondays, Wednesday - Fridays: 11:00 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.
Saturdays-Sundays: 11:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Closed on Tuesdays

Ramen lovers love Santouka Ramen

Do you love ramen? That's reason enough to visit the South Bay and one of your ramen tasting stops should be Santouka Ramen. Tucked away in the food court of Mitsuwa marketplace in Torrance, this ramen shop is well known. Check out Yelp.  People come back for more and sometimes the lines are long.

You have a choice of three broths: shio (salt), miso, and shoyu (soy sauce). The shio (salt flavor) ramen is a bit too salty for our tastes and of course, there high sodium content in both the miso and shoyu as well. The broth is good, but its the artistic slices of pork that really make this place special. The slices are thick with the right amount of fat, never dry, always tender.

Yes, that's right. Fat. We love fat.

You can get a miso ramen done spicy ($6.99) and the toroniku ($9.99) The ramen may look spicy, and you might break a sweat but it won't turn you into a fire-breathing dragon like the kimchee ramen.  For the toroniku (miso) there are seven pieces of pork on the plate! More than double what is offered with the regular-sized ramen. These pieces of pork are extra tender because they come from the cheek (jowl).

You can add an egg hard-boiled in soy sauce (Tamago $0.99). Who said fast food couldn't be good and look good?

Photo credit: 

Ian Ono/Jana Monji

Santouka Ramen

• 21515 Western Ave.,
• Torrance,CA 90501
• (310) 212-1101
• 11:00 a.m.～8:00 p.m. (Last order 7:30pm)
• cash only

Could Asian pugilists have changed stereotypes?

Since I went to see the play "The Royale" at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City, I've been thinking about men, manhood and racism in America.

The world premiere play "The Royale" takes its name from Battles Royale. You might remember a 1999 Japanese novel called "Battle Royale." The story about how the Japanese government forces junior high school students in a battle to the death competition became a movie in 2000. You can stream it on Netflix.

• Review of "The Royale" on Examiner.com
• Review of "Unforgivable Blackness" on Examiner.com

Historically, battle royale or a battle royal, pits more than one competitor against each other and the winner is the last one standing. Apparently, illegal fights had well to do white men betting on black men fighting for spare change. According to MuhammadAliBoxing.org.UK, the battles royals is "The purest form of depersonalization." The play, "The Royale," is a fictionalized account of Jack Johnson's winning the heavyweight championship by beating a white man.

What struck me as odd was that he wasn't the first black man in the ring to beat a white man. That had already been done (Joe Gans in 1902). He was the first black heavyweight to beat a white heavyweight boxer. I then watched "Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson," a PBS documentary on the real Jack Johnson and the riots he caused.

This being Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, I began thinking: What would have happened if an Asian had done the deed?  Jack Johnson was born in 1878. He died in 1946, after World War II had ended. Johnson knocked out Canadian Tommy Burns in 1908, and then in 1910 beat James J. Jeffries in Reno, Nevada.

Searching on the Internet, I found that the first and only Asian to hold a major heavweight title was Ruslan Chagaev. Born in 1978 in what was at the time the Soviet Union, he won the the WBA title in 2007. The city where he was born, Andijan or Andizhan is the fourth-largest city in what is now Uzbekistan. The Republic of Uzbekistan is a Central Asian country, bordered by Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan.  Internet chatter muddies up the matter. Some claim that Chagaev is either full or part Tatar. The Tatars were the western part of the Mongol Empire, the Golden Horde.

If a black man becoming a heavyweight champion started riots, what would have happened if some Asian or Pacific Islander guy had done it? Yellow perilism had brought the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.  How about instead of weightlifting and basketball, what if some Chinese sized large men had done boxing? What would have happened if a few Samoan guys had taken to boxing instead?

Boxing as a sport isn't good for your brains or your good looks. It's like asking for a concussion and whiplash daily. It's like wondering if your nose isn't flat enough. I know from watching a recent documentary that some Chinese are turning toward boxing as a means of escaping poverty. I also know from Frederick Wiseman's "Boxing Gym" that white collar workers are taking to boxing as a form of recreation.

• Review of "Chinese Heavyweight" on Examiner.com
• Frederick Wiseman's "Boxing Gym" on Examiner.com

My father used to watch boxing and he even got us two pairs of boxing gloves, mostly for my brother. We didn't take to pummeling each other though.  We all scrapped our way through college because we were poor and my father had passed away before we even graduated from high school. Our battles were more intellectual.

I guess what shocked me about Jack Johnson's story was that it wasn't a black man beating a white man that started riots or that rioting in the streets after a sports event started so early, but that was only the heavyweight title that carried so much cultural meaning, that was linked to concepts of manhood and race.

Weird what it takes to be considered a man in America.

• Frederick Wiseman's "Boxing Gym" on Wordpress Pasadena Art Beat blog
• "Chinese Heavyweight" review on Wordpress Pasadena Art Beat blog
• Review of "The Royale" on Wordpress Pasadena Art Beat blog
• Review of "Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson" on Wordpress Pasadena Art Beat blog

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When Asian modesty goes too far

Sometimes, it's not that we weren't listening, it was that our elders didn't tell us. It's never too late to start talking...we while we are living at least. When you're dead it is much too late.

After my uncle died, his widow found out that he had been in the army. He died from lung cancer after years of smoking. He could have easily died in Europe during World War II.

My uncle was a man of few words. He was extremely modest. During his prime, he got up early every day to work on a his farm. He and my aunt, my mother's older sister, never had children. They were kind people and very patient.

I never remember seeing them argue. The only thing I really remember him saying was that he didn't want to return to Europe. He had seen enough.

It was after he died that his widow discovered he had a Purple Heart. A Purple Heart. That came as a complete surprise to her. My aunt wondered about what he had done to deserve such a high honor. We've actually sent an inquiry about it, but months later, have yet to hear back.

Maybe you and yours haven't done anything as life-and-death critical as he did, but when you've done something, it's really is worth talking about. Talking and not boasting surely won't offend any Asian cultural constraints. Tell your friends. Tell your children. Tell your stories.

My uncle, Hideo "Tom" Maruyama, was a hero at a time when so many exploits by people of color went unrecognized, when so many people died and could not tell their stories. I wish he had told me those stories just as his widow now wishes to know what little information remains in the military archives.

Reclaiming and disclaiming Khan

Khan is a title for a ruler in Turkic and Mongolian languages. It was also used by Persians and Afghans for their chiefs and noblemen.  Khan is also a surname found in Central and Western Asia. That all makes sense.

In history, the most famous Khan was Genghis Khan (1162-1227), the ruler of the Mongol Empire. His grandson was also famous enough, Kublai Khan. Genghis conquered most of Eurasia--the largest contiguous empire in history. Not just the history of Asia. In history. He united nomadic tribes brought the overland Silk Road under a stable socio-political environment. In Turkey and Mongolia, he's a hero.
In China, he gets mixed reviews. In Iran, Egypt and Europe, he was one of those threatening hordes.

In "Star Trek" TOS, he was the savage in "The Savage Curtain." That's the episode that pitted good (Abraham Lincoln, Captain Kirk, Spock and Vulcan hero Surak) against evil (Genghis Khan, Klingon empire founder Kahless, genocidal human Colonel Green, and having a bad-hair century Zora of Tiburon).

Khan was played by an East Asian American (Nathan Jung). And according to Memory Alpha, the Star Trek Wiki, the Klingons were originally made to look like "futuristic Genghis Khan."

Of course, in Star Trek, there's that other Khan. I'm not talking about the 23rd Century USS Genghis Khan, but the infamous Khan Noonien Singh. He makes his first appearance in TOS episode "Space Seed," portrayed by Ricardo Montalbán. Montalbán reprised the character in "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan."

Khan was supposed to be a genetically engineered superhuman Sikh from Asia. He took control over a quarter of Earth during a Eugenics Wars in the 1990s. When found by Kirk and Enterprise, he's been in suspended animation. Now in Star Date 2267, he attempts to take control of the Enterprise. Kirk defeats him, but puts him on a planet Ceti Alpha V. Fifteen years later, he escapes and attempts to get revenge upon Kirk.

The casting of Montalbán as a Sikh can be explained away as the convention of those times. Then for the movie, there was a matter of continuity. SPOILER ALERT. Yet for the current reboot of Star Trek, there is almost no credible explanation. Marissa Sammy called it "Star Trek: Into Whiteness."

In 2004, there was an estimated 27 million Sikhs. Most of them are in India. There are quite a few in the U.K. and the United States as well as Canada if accent was a problem for J.J. Abrams.  I've not seen the movie yet and am unlikely to do so. I'm not pleased with Abrams casting choices for Kirk, Sulu or Spock and Uhura. I was a theater critic and the captains I admired all had stage presence and theater backgrounds. Like Christian Blauvelt, I appreciated what he calls the "exploratory spirit" of Gene Roddenberry's series. I liked the humor of TOS and also admired Janeway in the Voyager.

I'm not interested in an action movie that keeps our attention instead of attempting character development and writing in emotional or intellectual content. There are still many ethical and social questions that can still be explored in this century that could be transferred to the time of a young Captain Kirk, but not with J.J. Abrams.
And I particularly am not a fan of whitewashing history. Both Blauvelt and Marissa Sammy of Racebending.com noted this whitewashing as well. I enjoy Cumberbatch as an actor. I enjoyed the encore screening of his "Frankenstein" with Jonny Lee Miller. But he doesn't make me think Asian or Sikh and he won't replace the impression that Ricardo Montalbán made as Khan in my mind, even, I'm pretty sure, if I went to see the movie.

Aren't there enough Asians and Asian Americans in Los Angeles for J.J. Abrams and Hollywood to understand this?  There's been a lot of whitewashing in movies--think of "21." And then there's yellowface.

Another point would be in this reboot, with an international market that TOS didn't expect to have, why don't the producers even acknowledge and give respect to Asia and ethnic Asians who make up over 60 percent of the world population. I'm not saying that the new Khan has to be Sikh. He should be able to pass as Sikh or Asian Indian. He should not be the same actor who has taken to playing some very distinctly English characters as in Sherlock Holmes (a modern version) or a British officer in "War Horse."

The Star Trek reboot had the opportunity to overcome the ethnocentric evaluation of Genghis Khan which I feel relates to why this villain is given the name of Khan Noonien Singh. We're in a different century, five decades after TOS.  While "Iron Man" skillfully handled the issue of bringing The Mandarin forward into this century, "Star Trek into Darkness" went backward.

If the English considered the Asian Indians, including the Sikhs, as black like "Little Black Sambo" then why does our Sikh of the future Khan Noonien Singh appear to be so white? Is this like "Cloud Atlas" where the whole population of the Big Island of Hawaii becomes white as Tom Hanks? These two cases of whitewashing remind me of the 1944 "Dragon Seed" where white people can play any race and Asians and ethnic Asians can be background actors in the movies and life.

I don't know that 60 percent of Earth's population wants to remain background players in movies or in the world. When will the whitewashing end? Some day I hope that a Star Trek movie will reclaim Khan as Asian and that other Khans like Genghis will be re-evaluated as if the Federation actually has become a less Eurocentric organization. That would be a step into a future that Asian and Asian Americans can share and I would endorse. What J.J. Abrams proposes is a future that has gone backwards and his movie should come with a disclaimer: This is Khan and the Federation with an attitude from the 1940s but the CGI and technology of the 2010s.


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The problem of Israel versus the Arabs

Three recent movies show a growing change in the public sentiment toward Israel: "Valentino's Ghost," "5 Broken Cameras," and "The Law in These Parts."  You might ask why this would concern an LA Asian?

First we have to locate Israel. It is in the Middle East, but that term covers once country in Northern Africa (Egypt) and several countries in Western Asia, including Israel. According to Wikipedia, the term was coined by the British India Office in the 1850s.

Oh, beware the British. They conquered Palestine in 1917. And from the British comes much of what we, or Hollywood knows about the Arabs according to the recent documentary, "Valentino's Ghost." The Valentino the documentary has in mind is Rudolph Valentino who died still young and much adored at the age of 31 in 1926. He had starred in the silent movie "The Sheik" and later "The Son of the Sheik." His father was Italian; his mother was French.

In the movie "The Sheik," he played the titular character, but the twist at the end, prevented this fantasy of love in Arabia from crossing the color line and threatening the tenants of Social Darwinism. Raised by Arabs, the character was half-British and half-Spanish. He was European, even if some Brits might look down on the Spanish for color or Catholicism. He was not Arab and rose above his surroundings as a superior man.

"Valentino's Ghost" looks at how we've portrayed Arabs and Persians in the media. We've gone from them as what Rudyard Kipling called, "The White Man's Burden," to the bestial hoards of fanatical terrorists. When European powers invade their lands, the Arabs are certainly not defending their land and rights to self-determination. The Arabs and later Persians are savages and rebels. That does make the question of Israel very tricky indeed.



Arabs, Persians and many Muslims are Asian and it's still PC to stereotype them. History is written by the victors, but that's only half the story. In America, we're mostly taking the story from a Eurocentric viewpoint.

Yet even Europe and America have to look at what's happening in Israel and wonder. "Valentino's Ghost" is narrated by bleeding heart liberal Mike Farrell of the TV series, "M*A*S*H" fame. I admire him for doing it.

The documentary "Valentino's Ghost" shows how movies and media have whitewashed history and supported the image of the Arab or Muslim rebel which has transformed into terrorist.

"The Law in These Parts" looks at Israel's viewpoint, but I didn't come away with much sympathy for Israel. Using archival footage as well as contemporary interviews, the documentary shows the men who shaped the Israeli policy toward the Palestinians. We're talking lawlessness within law enforcement. The documentary won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.
On a more personal level, "5 Broken Cameras" has a father using cameras as a means of non-violent protest.



"5 Broken Cameras" was nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary in 2013. It won Best Documentary at the Jerusalem Film Festival in 2012, the Busan Cinephile Award at the 2012 Pusan International Film Festival and a directing award at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

My point is by buying into the Muslim, Persian or Arab terrorist stereotype Asians and Asian Americans are ignoring the concerns of other Asians and Asian Americans and participating in the whitewashing of history.

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My breasts and I salute Angelina Jolie

As a child, I remember looking at my Barbie and wondering when I, too, would look like that. I would suck in my waist and try to expand my childish breasts. Of course, as an adult I realized that normal female human beings do not look like Barbie.

Besides, being ethnically Asian and not part of the Beverly Hills Sweet Sixteen I need a plastic surgery party kind of social class, it was not meant to be. I was never going to have a chest that might inspire comparisons with missile heads or melons. Men and women let me know about my deficiency in this respect.

Yet I've been on both sides of just enough and not enough. As a mediocre gymnast in high school, my meager cleavage was a blessing.  I have a good physique for a female gymnast. Gymnasts move on after they hit their twenties and develop womanly figures, and some even develop some real cleavage. When I was still pursuing gymnastics, I got on a scale every day. As one male gymnast pointed out, if you don't have much cleavage you can't afford to get a gut.

Now, I'm much too old for gymnastics, but in my current hobby of belly dancing, there's not enough jiggle on top to make any sort of shoulder shimmy worth watching. While belly dancing originated in North Africa and West Asia where women dress conservatively, in Europe and America, belly dancing is performed in what is little more than a fancy bra and a skirt. Cleavage matters. I have no jelly bowls to jiggle. 

As a young adult, I've suffered through bad bras, and as a post-college woman, I've been offended by online crassness when I was still dating. A guy wants to see a  full-length photo and even then, more than a few will ask you what your cup size is. They expect at least a B and hope for a C if you're Asian.

As being ethnically Asian defines me, having breasts that require a bra defines me. I am to some men, my bra size.

Even so, I can't imagine the kind of pain and self-image reassessment that Angelina Jolie went through before she arrived at her decision. She is an attractive woman and she must know that some of that attraction has to do with her breasts. When the story broke about Jolie's NYTimes opinion piece, I remember thinking about what some waggish film commentator wrote about her as Lara Croft, something about her running in a T-shirt. For some men, all women are just their breasts. I once watched the Oscars with a mixed crowd and a pre-med student kept commenting on all the women--whether they were or were not wearing a bra. Maybe some men filter those thoughts before letting the words leave their mouths. I hope not.

As one of my colleagues noted, there was some lamenting online about the loss of Jolie's breasts. I am sure that she must have known this would happen. She has chosen to have reconstructive surgery. Will people now cattishly compare the now and after?

The kind of mindset that equates women with their breasts almost justifies the kind of modesty you find in North Africa and West Asian countries. Consider that female breasts are not the historically the sexual obsession of all cultures. There used to be a joke about the difference between Chinese and Japanese women showing their physical assets. Chinese women showed a little leg. Japanese women showed the back of their neck or a white foot and ankle. Cheongsams and kimonos aren't made to show cleavage.

In Japan, the concept of female sexuality is more mutable. The first novel in world history, Genji Monogatari, was written by a woman. At one point, the protagonist's good friend opines that it is a shame that Genji wasn't born a woman. That's not an admission of homosexuality, but how in the Japanese culture things aren't always what they seem. A beautiful face is a beautiful face but could easily belong to a man or a woman.

In Japanese traditional theater, all the actors are men. That wasn't originally so. Kabuki started out with female actors, some of whom might have also been soliciting. Eventually, the women were replaced by boys and when male patrons were still brawling over the boys as women, the boys were replaced by men and the onnagata tradition began.

One of the most popular and celebrated onnagata is Bando Tamasaburo V. Watching him on TV and on stage, you can learn how to be womanly in a traditional Japanese sense. You don't need cleavage to be feminine. I've met heterosexual men who were lovestruck by Tamasaburo in his younger years.

Even the samurai tradition, if Western aficionados would admit it, has an element of homosexuality that can fall into a gray area as illustrated in the 1999 Japanese movie "Gohatto" (御法度), or "Taboo."The Nagisa Oshima film isn't so much about homosexuality but the desire for a beautiful face that could be a woman's. You have to wonder why Kanō Sōzaburō (Ryuhei Matsuda) refuses to cut his bangs. Would that make him more masculine and in this all-male group, less powerful? Yet for this essay, what's important is that he inspired lust not because he looks like another man, but because he could pass as a woman.

How hard is it for a woman to realize that she'll never be as beautiful as a man dressed as a woman? That topic was touched upon in the 2003 Takeshi Kitano "Zatoichi." I knew that feeling when I saw Tamasaburo as a woman and again when I was in Hollywood one day. I was rushing in between work and classes. I had not brushed my hair or had time to put on lipstick. Yet the most beautiful woman in the room was a man. He obviously had to try hard and I wasn't even trying. That either makes you give up and gives you time to consider what makes a woman?

In Western cinema, women like Audrey Hepburn and Elizabeth Ashley have been able to make it without a bountiful cleavage and been considered beautiful. Yet in more recent years it seems as if pornography has crossed over to become part of pop culture with Madonna posing for a special limited edition pornographic book. Breast augmentation surgery has become more common place. Now small breasts can be considered a physical defect.

In another real streets of Hollywood experience, I remember taking a woman to a one-woman stage show about breast cancer in Hollywood. She said, "Why would anyone want to talk about that?" What she said was true. Even at a time when it was finally PC to talk about AIDS and HIV, past the Larry Kramer and ACT-UP generation, people didn't want to talk about breast cancer. But we do need to talk about breast cancer, and women shouldn't feel that their identity as women depends upon their two breasts.

Instead of talking about Angelina Jolie's breasts, we should be talking about how expensive it is for the average American woman to get the genetic test for BRCA1 and BRCA2. We should talk about how some 458,000 women each year die from breast cancer and how few women can afford the choice of reconstructive surgery. We should talk about breast cancer or how to talk about breasts without falling into a snickering boy peeping Tom mentality. 

In America, we have the technology, but we don't have affordable healthcare, something that is available in other countries such as Japan and Canada.

We need to rethink our values. Angelina Jolie gave us something to talk about and it was undoubtedly a courageous thing to do. Let's talk about things that matter to hundreds of thousands of women all over the world. I no longer want to be Barbie, but I also don't want to be defined by my cup size. Angelina Jolie noted she had options, but those medical options aren't available to too many women in America and around the world. 

Why LA Asians are mad

You'd think in Los Angeles County, in areas where many of the cities have a large Asian ethnic populations, there's be more sensitivity toward Asia and Asian American issues, but not so.

Check out the recent City of Los Angeles Department of Public Works video on water conservation. The video was shot at the Tillman Water Reclamation Plant in Van Nuys where there is a Japanese Garden. This was one of several videos produced by L.A. CityWorks, a program that airs on the Los Angeles city-owned Channel 35.

You can read the CBS local report.  The video has been taken down, but not before some clips were recorded by NewsCatcher31 on YouTube.

Love in the midst of yellow fever

The yellow fever I'm talking about isn't a virus transmitted by mosquitoes. It's the obsession non-Asian men, usually white, have towards East Asian ethnic women. I've also called it the East Asian Babe Syndrome--men who might have a functioning brain suddenly can't seem to deal with the evidence in front of their eyes and ears.

When you are the only East Asian woman in the room and a guy cuts across the crowd with his eyes on you and only you and he's not an undercover agent and you're not a Bond girl, that's pretty much a man made overly-friendly by yellow fever. You can speak English--you may only actually speak English, but he will think you have a charming East Asian accent. The Internet has given this symptom a charming twist: If the man formerly didn't know you were an East Asian ethnic and discovers your place of ethnic origin, then he suddenly is able to discern evidence that you are not a native speaker of the language you speak at home and at school, English. Sure, one could blame this on the rotten teaching methodology that results in most college students barely passing the English comprehension and writing college exams, forcing them into Subject A classes, but too often that person is also a product of that same educational system. Ironically, at times, your English language skills may surpass that person's.

I was thinking about yellow fever and all those people who thought they liked or disliked my people (and worse those East Asians and East Asian Americans who wanted to tell me how to be more Asian) when I watched the 2012 documentary "Seeking Asian Female." In this film, we follow a 60-year-old overweight underachieving white guy at the end of his 5-year search for another wife.

The man in this case, Steven, comes off as more than a little creepy with all of the catalogues and photos of the women he's corresponded with in his decade long search. You can tell that he's not actually accessed the situation well when he takes up with an attractive 24-year-old. You later come to question his ability to understand concrete matters of daily life--such as how can a man who works as a parking attendant at San Francisco International Airport afford to travel to China and  splurge on a big wedding.

Steven does find a woman to marry him--a 30-year-old Chinese woman, Sandy, who would be too embarrassed (lose face) if she returned home at the end of her 3-month fiancée visa. She's already told the director she just wants to earn her green card (the hard way) and then divorce Steven. According to the information at the end of the movie, Steven and Sandy are still married after four years. We'll have to see how that all plays out after the interest in the movie wanes and Sandy gets naturalized as a U.S. citizen.

Sometimes, I wish I could warn these guys with submissive geisha on their mind. Some women are looking for a green card or how about just a kid born in the U.S. Some have clearly made a decision to marry an American. Some go about it in different ways. Sandy isn't submissive. She's a real go-getter. According to her, she hasn't found a man in China because she didn't attend college and now she's, by China's standards, over the hill. The woman worked her way up from on the floor of a factory up to an executive secretary position at a fashion factory and speaks have local dialect, Mandarin and Cantonese.

Steven doesn't bother to learn Mandarin Chinese or much about the culture. He wants a Chinese woman, but he later complains, "This is not China and I am not Chinese."

Director Debbie Lum allows her feelings toward yellow fever and even Steven to color her documentary. We see Lum rushing around attempting to play interpretor for Steven and Sandy when Google Translate isn't quick enough. We don't get to hear enough from Steven's family--his son who married a Japanese woman, his daughter-in-law and his two ex-wives. All would give us a better idea of who Steven is.

You can look online and Steven isn't totally pleased with the product. According to Steven Bolstad:

I am not “rescuing” her from a plight in the rice fields. She had a great job, a cool apartment, and lots of friends in Shenzhen. And she has a mind of her own. She is a real person. That is exactly what i was hoping for. My friends all love her.She loves my family and my family loves her.

Steven feels somewhat betrayed by Lum and her editing style although they spent about five years together  as he commented elsewhere online.  In my review, I note that we really don't know much about Steven or Sandy except what Lum tells us or what they themselves reveal.

When I did a little undercover work, thinking that mail-order brides might be a good topic, I attended a seminar for Japanese women living in Los Angeles. They were mostly divorced and might have children. Those two issues might make it harder for them to find a husband in Japan where:

1. They might not want to live.
2. Few families can afford to have more than one or two children.
3. Divorce carries a heavier stigma there than in the United States.

The same is true with older divorced women from Catholic countries. Marriage can be a practical concern for some (over romantic) and that might be the case for Sandy. 

The ick-factor comes when it is all about looks. Steven doesn't really seem to embrace the Chinese culture and doesn't seem to have learned much Chinese. Perhaps that's changed in the almost four years they've been married. Another ick-factor would be someone who doesn't care what type of women he marries just as long as she is of that nationality. I shudder to remember one student at the exclusive Japanese study center who pursued every Japanese-American single woman at the center and also any Japanese woman. He seemed determined to be married in a month or less. He was married before the end of the year and his end of the year speech was about cross-cultural relations--totally anecdotal and about as deep as an ant's wading pool. 

I won't rant on like our favorite Asian American agitator, Frank Chinn, because I think you can be Christian and be a real Asian American. I think you can also find love across cultures and ethnicity. When my husband's father and mother married it was considered controversial for Hawaii. A lot of haole and mainstream Americans wouldn't understand because his mother is Chinese American and his father in Japanese American. He is by definition happa. I am not. I wanted someone who could enjoy eating most of the things I do and dance Argentine tango. 

I have relatives who married outside of the Japanese American community--notably three uncles who married Caucasian women. Two remained married until one of them died. The other divorced. At the time they married, it was a gutsy move for the women. I wonder how their family felt.

Yet I don't define that as yellow fever--not because it was a woman marrying an East Asian ethnic male, but because they were from the same general culture and spoke the same language. I don't think was a case where my aunts  only dated East Asians. They dated people. 

When I was dating, I had several ads that were essentially the same except how I identified my race: nothing, Asian or Japanese. No photos even though they warn you you won't get a response if you don't use a photo. Still, the one for a Japanese woman got a heavy response. As an experiment, I added a little lie: black and white. I can tell you that Japanese and Asian got the heavier response, but also that when I refused to date someone--sometimes for something as basic as geography, men responding to a Japanese or Asian woman got angry, very, very angry. Some would then claim I was a lesbian or that I should be grateful for their attention. Some would send me photos of their erection (which I forwarded to my gay friends). Some would tell me that they had women prettier than I for a few bucks when they were vacationing in Asia and informed me that I was probably to old to be a whore. 

Then there were the ones who seemed to be waiting for me to find my inner geisha and put down Asian and Asian American men, forgetting that my father was also Asian American. 

Of course, I can't let off Asian and Asian American men. There were Asian American men who were angry that I would consider men from any race and felt it their duty to tell me how to be more Asian. 

That's a different kind of yellow fever. 

Yesterday inscrutable; today asialogical

Stereotypes have unfortunately linked the word inscrutable with the whole continent of Asia and at times extended that domain to include North Africa (i.e. Orientals).  According to the Urban Dictionary, the new term, contributed by tdotcom on 4 January 2010 is asialogical.

The meaning of asialogical is "An Asian way of doing things that doesn't make sense in the Western tradition. Maybe the word inscrutable was to hard to spell for tdotcom because the example sentence was "The Chinese decided to build a building before drawing the plans, which which of course was totally asialogical."

I also learned that saying a person is an egg has been replaced by weeaboo for someone obsessed with Japanese culture or anime. Another word for such a person is wapanese. I wonder what they use for eggs who are into Chinese or Indian culture.

Looking at the Urban Dictionary's entries for "Asian" and "Asia" make me appreciate Wikipedia more. Did you know that Asia is a "Continent whose citizens would completely die out without rice. It is not just a stereotype, all Asian countries(except maybe some in the Middle East) depend on rice and even food that is not rice is often made of rice somehow"?

Personally I prefer bread (sorry, mom) and tortillas. 

Smithsonian exhibit on Asian Pacific Americans comes to L.A. in June

As part of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibit Service (SITES) and the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center opened a new exhibit at the American History Museum, "I Want the Wide American Earth: An Asian Pacific American Story." The exhibit runs until 18 June 2013 and then travels to the Japanese National Museum in Los Angeles.

The exhibit takes its name from a poem by Filipino American poet Carlos Bulosan (1913-1956):

Before the brave, before the proud builders and workers
I way I want the wide American earth
For all the free
I want the wide American earth for my people.
I want my beautiful land. 
I want it with my rippling strength and tenderness
Of love and light and truth
For all the free. 

The exhibit goes beyond the usual story about the railroads, immigration laws and representation and the search for identity. Did you know that Punjabi men were unable to bring Indian brides to America and so married female Mexican field workers? How about Chinese traders were making trips to Mexico City as early as 1635. New Orleans already had Filipino communities in the 1760s. Asian Americans also participated in the American Civil War on both sides.

To give you historical context, Jamestown was founded in 1607 with only 61 of the original 500 colonists surviving the starving time of 1609 to 1610. In 1635, Japan forbid merchants to sail abroad and particularly wanted those Portuguese ships destroyed. The Tokugawa shogunate began in 1603.

In 1760 George III ascended to the throne of Great Britain. In 1644, the Ming Dynasty ended and the Qing Dynasty began and lasted until 1912. The Great Wall of China was already in place with small portions build in 220 BC and in the 7th Century BC although the majority of the exiting wall was reconstructed during the Ming Dynasty. India was under the Moghul Empire (1526-1757).

Currently JANM doesn't list this as a coming exhibit so keep you eyes out for this.

Why embracing purple is very LAsian

In Japan, Murasaki is both the name of a color and the name of a famous person. The color is purple or rather the shades of purple that can be produced by a certain type of dye. The famous person should be better known worldwide except she is Asian.

Murasaki Shikibu, or Lady Murasaki (紫 式部), in the early years of the Heian period in Japan wrote what is considered the world's first novel or at least the first novel to be considered a classic and this novel isn't just a tale that describes events, but it is also the first psychological novel. The story, "The Tale of Genji", was written in the women's language (hiragana) which more closely approximated the spoken language of the time because learned and aristocratic men wrote in Japanese Chinese, or kambun.

The novel can be broken up into three parts and has 54 chapters in all. Genji or the shining prince dies during the novel and the narration (the Uji chapters) then follows his supposed son. In the novel, Murasaki is the girl whom Genji abducts, raises and eventually marries.

East Asia gave the world the first novel and that kind of creativity is notable during Asian Pacific Heritage Month.

An English edition of "The Tale of Genji" is available free online.

'LAsian' is another derogatory phrase for Asians?

According to the Urban Dictionary, the first definition for LAsian is:

 

An Asian American, typically from Los Angeles or other large cities on the West Coast. Their style is a blend between street gang and skater. LAsians wear slightly tilted to the side baseball caps without curving the bill, oversized designer sunglasses, and sleeveless basketball jerseys even if they have no muscles. In their minds they are a player, in your mind they are a gigantic douche. You will find these types everywhere on the west coast. They are exceptionally bold in their Mecca, Las Vegas, where they constantly brag about their access to the hottest clubs on Facebook well into their 30 and 40s. There is a high probability that they are night club promoters and fill their photo albums with pictures with women who they never had a chance to sleep with.

That definition comes from Vegas Insider, that writer's one and only contribution to date as of 23 January 2013.

The example given is: Look at that LAsian and his Hyundai, must be on his way to their Mecca, Vegas...

I'm not originally from Los Angeles and the LAsians who I found a bit cliquish were the Gardena-area Japanese Americans who were sure they knew just what a banana was because I didn't understand their subculture or appreciate it. There is actually more to Japanese American culture than what grew up in Gardena and no one in San Diego had called me a banana before except as a rhyme with my name.

However, this description doesn't fit with the Gardena Japanese Americans (except for that 30-something who was still living at home that had nothing but disposable income but there are plenty of men like that in other ethnic groups) I knew nor many of the Asian Americans I've met.

The second definition in the Urban Dictionary is a "lesbian of asian descent." Seriously do writers for the Urban dictionary know how to use caps? That contribution came from Improve Asylum on 21 June 2005. This is Improv Asylum's only contribution as well. According to this expert, "lasian was first used in the show 'Pork Fried Clowns,' as performed by the Improv Asylum, Boston, MA, in the spring of 2005."

While I've been accused of being a lesbian (usually by white men who I wouldn't date while I was single, especially those who didn't believe heterosexual guys danced), I've never had the urge to be intimate in a carnal sense with a woman and I've also not fond of Las Vegas. I don't gamble at all.

The last definition, contributed by JLow on 28 October 2012 is Lasian for a "lady asian." JLow has also only given one contribution.

So as a lady Asian, a guerrilla geisha and dancing dragon lady, this blog is from the LAsian point of view. As a writer, I don't think we can erase some phrases but sometimes we can tweak how they are used and some of my short story writing is about tweaking, twisting and expanding the images and stereotypes of Asians, Asians Americans and women.

What's LAsian?
Who do we let define us?
Lady Asian asks

Celebrating Asian Pacific American Heritage Month

What began as Asian/Pacific American Heritage Week in 1978, eventually became Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.

What better way to celebrate than to start a new blog.

Let's start with the history of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. You might be wondering why May? Because it was originally only one week, the date was chosen because the first week of May was when the first Japanese immigrants arrived in America (7 May 1843) and on 10 May (1869) was when the transcontinental railroad was completed.

The railroad was originally known as the Pacific Railroad (because the nation was very East Coast-centric). Later it was called the Overland Route. The 1,907-mile contiguous railroad line was begun in 1863 and connected the East U.S. at Bluffs, Iowa (on the Missouri River) with San Francisco.

At the start, many of the semi-skilled workers were former Union Army and Confederate Army vets and immigrants from Ireland. The Central Pacific Railroad Company of California (one of three private companies that built the line--the other two were Western Pacific Railroad Company and the Union Pacific Railroad Company). used slaves escaping during the Civil War and Chinese immigrants escaping the Taiping Revolution. Chinese manual laborers were the ones primarily responsible for the Central Pacific roadbed, bridges and tunnels.

However, the first Asians in North America was, according to the PBS documentary "Ancestors in Americas" Chinese Filipinos in Mexico. These Chinese Filipino sailors came to the U.S. in 1750 and other Asians were brought to the Caribbean islands and South America as slaves from China, India and the Philippines.

As slaves, then as laborers, then as menial workers, Asian immigrants came from countries that had unequal treaties with the U.S. and were often subjected to laws that prohibited them from becoming citizens, owning lands, marrying other races, etc.

Asian Americans have come a long way since then and so has Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. Stargin as Asian/Pacific American Heritage Week in 1978, by 1990, the week was expanded into a month. In 1992, the designation became permanent.

In Los Angeles, Asian Americans only make up 12 percent of the population. But Asia accounts for 60 percent of the world's current population. Judaism, Christianity, Islam and the Baha'i Faith originated in West Asia. The Hindu and Buddhist religions originated in Central Asia. Islam is the religion in Asia with the largest number of adherents. Hinduism is the second largest religion in Asia (25 percent).

This month, it's time to remember our historic roots as well as our accomplishments and history in the United States.