Let’s all take a mental health break and look at some camellias.
Posts Tagged ‘Seattle’
Camellias at Washington Park Arboretum (2015)
Posted in Japan in Seattle, Photography, tagged camellia, Seattle, tsubaki, Washington Park Arboretum, 椿 on 2015/03/13| 5 Comments »
Momiji at the Seattle Japanese Garden
Posted in Japan in Seattle, Photography, Sight-seeing, tagged autumn, シアトル日本庭園, 秋, 紅葉, garden, momoji, Seattle, Seattle Japanese Garden on 2013/11/13| 5 Comments »
I got out to the Seattle Japanese Garden to do some 紅葉狩り (momijigari, maple viewing or “maple hunting”) on October 28. Momiji season is a few weeks earlier in Seattle than in Ishikawa. The garden, which is part of the Washington Park Arboretum, was built in the Japanese style in 1960 by Junji Iida.
The Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience, Seattle
Posted in Architecture, Art, Japan in Seattle, Visual Culture, tagged Asian American, history, immigrant, panAsian, photography, racism, Seattle, Wing Luke, Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific Experience on 2013/08/26| 5 Comments »
Seattle is home to all sorts of interesting “niche” museums, and while I haven’t had a chance to see them all yet, I wanted to share with you my photos of the permanent exhibitions of the The Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience. Located in Seattle’s International District, the museum is the only pan-Asian museum in the US, and serves as both a look at the history of Asian immigration to the Pacific Northwest as well as a space to explore contemporary American identity politics.
The permanent exhibitions include biographical information on Wing Luke, who was born in China and immigrated to the US when he was 10. A WWII veteran, he was the first Asian-American elected to public office in the Pacific Northwest. He served on the Seattle city council until his death in a plane crash in 1965.
Wing Luke’s biography.
“Remember Your Humanity, and Forget the Rest”
Posted in Culture, Photography, tagged a-bomb, atomic bomb, events, From Hiroshima to Hope, hibakusha, Hiroshima, japan, lantern float, memorial, Nagasaki, photography, Seattle on 2013/08/06| Leave a Comment »
Photos taken at “From Hiroshima to Hope” Floating Lantern Ceremony, which honors those who died in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and all victims of violence. Green Lake Park, Seattle, August 6, 2013.
…We shall try to say no single word which should appeal to one group rather than to another. All, equally, are in peril, and, if the peril is understood, there is hope that they may collectively avert it.
Genbaku Dome, Hiroshima, 2011
We have to learn to think in a new way. We have to learn to ask ourselves, not what steps can be taken to give military victory to whatever group we prefer, for there no longer are such steps; the question we have to ask ourselves is: what steps can be taken to prevent a military contest of which the issue must be disastrous to all parties?
On Japanese Studies, Cultural Appropriation, and Hybrid Identities
Posted in Culture, Expat Living, tagged API, Asian American, awkward, cultural appropriation, culture, egg, Identity, japan, Laura Kin, mixed identity, mixed race, racism, Seattle, Under My Skin, white privilege, Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience on 2013/07/05| 16 Comments »
Laura Kina “Gosei” oil on canvas, 30×45 in., 2012 on view in Under My Skin. Via Laura Kina’s blog.
As a fellow Japanese-Studies scholar, I feel I ought to comment on Maggie Thorpe’s “You don’t have to be mixed-race to have a mixed identity” in The Seattle Globalist. Although the article begins as a review of the Under My Skin exhibition at the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience in Seattle, Thorpe, a white grad student at University of Washington, uses the themes of the exhibition to discuss her personal identification with Japanese culture:
I became infatuated with Japanese culture when I was 8. Growing up in the southwest, I was like many white American youth, feeling “vanilla” and “boring” because I did not have a culture that was easily definable. So I found something else that appealed to me. These days, my co-worker announces frequently that I am the most Japanese at the Japanese restaurant I work at. The restaurant owned by a Japanese man, and staffed by mostly Japanese-American workers. When a Japanese pop song comes on the radio that I admit I don’t recognize, or there’s a reference to an anime I don’t know, I’m teased for not living up to my Japanese-obsessed reputation.
The article is problematic, to say the least, (more…)
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