“JANM is delighted to begin this programmatic partnership with the Consulate General of Japan in Los Angeles,” stated Ann Burroughs, JANM President and CEO. “Food is a wonderful vehicle to help understand history, traditions, and culture. While the Japanese American community has always observed food traditions during holidays like Oshogatsu or New Year’s, the history is often not well known. This partnership with Consulate General is important for JANM and the Japanese American community to help strengthen our ties with Japan.”

Nothing says “home” like familiar tastes. Throughout time and the Nikkei diaspora, immigrants have learned how to bring the flavors of home to the table through ingenuity and tenacity. In this program, learn how early immigrant communities adapted traditional Japanese cooking in these new environments, and watch a cooking demo on how to make two delicious types of musubi (rice balls).

The Japanese American community has not always broadly welcomed gay, transgender, and queer Nikkei people. It took courage for LGBTQ+ Nikkei to live openly and with integrity in decades past. In this program from September 26, hear from four LGBTQ+ Japanese Americans who are forerunners of making Nikkei communities more accepting; Melvin Fujikawa, Gary Hayashi, Bill Tashima, and Mia Yamamoto. The conversation was moderated by Aya Tasaki and also included Marsha Izumi, founder of Okaeri, and Barney Cheng, the award-winning filmmaker who directed Okaeri Voices: An Oral History Project, a series of short Okaeri-produced documentaries about each of these figures.

Watch the full documentaries here.

On September 15, leaders in the Japanese American and Muslim American communities came together for a conversation on Muslims at Manzanar: A Civil Rights Journey, produced by the Council for American Islamic Relations. This documentary follows CAIR staff as they participate in the 2019 Manzanar Pilgrimage that commemorated the 50th anniversary of the first organized Manzanar Pilgrimage in 1969. The conversation explored the importance of sharing our connected histories and experiences as well as the power of pilgrimage and honoring significant sites in our histories.

On August 15, two award-winning Japanese American authors Kathleen Burkinshaw and Naomi Hirahara joined together for the first time to discuss how they felt compelled to tell the stories of their Hiroshima hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors) parents through novels.

In March 1946, an important moment in jazz history took place when Miles Davis and Charlie Parker, two all-time jazz greats, performed together at the Finale Club in Bronzeville/Little Tokyo. During WWII, forced removal of Japanese Americans into concentration camps left Little Tokyo largely empty. African Americans coming West for defense jobs moved into Little Tokyo—one of the only neighborhoods without restricting housing covenants. Bronzeville was born.

On October 11, the Little Tokyo Historical Society and JANM explored the rich artistic and musical history of Little Tokyo during the Bronzeville Era in a celebration of live music, Bronzeville scholars, photos, and videos.

“One of my fondest memories is of the annual mochi making party that was held at our house in the week after Christmas and before New Year’s Day. My Kurosu second cousins, the grandchildren of Jichan’s elder brother, Shinsaku, would come to our house in South Park to make mochi. The sweet mochi rice would have been pre-washed and steamed over pipes from the steam boiler which heated our greenhouses adjacent to our home.”

Share your own Japanese American holiday stories on Discover Nikkei! (submission guidelines)

In conjunction with JANM’s Oshogatsu Virtual Family Festival (January 3–8, 2020), Discover Nikkei is compiling photos to share our global Nikkei community’s New Year traditions. We want to see all your favorite dishes, family gatherings, or special traditions that you use to ring in the new year!

All photos must be submitted with descriptions by January 8, 2021 to [email protected] or uploaded directly to the Nikkei Album. Click on the link above for more details and instructions on how to participate.

Telling the lesser-known history of Nikkei on the East Coast—a community vastly different from West Coast Japanese Americans—author-historian, consultant, and attorney Daniel H. Inouye explores the unique stories of a divided community of Japanese New Yorkers before World War II. Inouye draws from a wealth of primary sources, including oral histories, memoirs, newspapers, government documents, photographs, and more, his award-winning book Distant Islands: The Japanese American Community in New York City, 1876–1930s.

Inouye will be joined by award-winning journalist Fred Katayama who will add a comparative contemporary dimension to the discussion.

Distant Islands is available at the JANM Store.

Gather with us in the comfort of your own home to share tea and conversation! As winter settles in, we will be writing letters of compassion and support to those currently incarcerated in Otay Mesa Detention Center in Southern California and spending some time in personal reflection. Prompts will be provided by special guests and traci kato-kiriyama, former Little Tokyo +LAB Artist-in-Residence at JANM. Make yourself a cup of tea, get comfortable, and join us online for this interactive monthly program! All ages are welcome to participate.

Learn how to do genealogical research, even while physically distanced, with family members of all ages! We'll highlight activities you can do with children - particularly those engaged in distance learning - to help your family stay connected. Find creative ways to share your family stories across generations and how to get started with your genealogical research from home.

In partnership with Nikkei Genealogical Society, this workshop will be led by Marisa Louie Lee, an independent researcher and genealogy speaker.

In the second part of this series, we will explore how Japanese American cultural holiday traditions, such as mochitsuki, or mochi making, have adapted over time with JANM Curator, Emily Anderson, Ph.D, and get a glimpse of what items from our collection reflect these stories. We will also hear firsthand from several generations of Japanese American home cooks about their own family holiday recipes. Finally, audiences will learn how to cook the traditional first meal of the year, ozoni, with cookbook author and designer, Azusa Oda, in an easy cooking demo and tutorial.

Discover Nikkei is JANM’s community-based web project sharing stories and the experiences of Nikkei around the world. “Nima” are members of the Discover Nikkei online community. Hailing from all around the world, they each bring unique experiences and perspectives to the site’s rich archive of stories.

“Nima Voices” is an interview series where we uplift our Nima through brief, but enlightening, interviews! In this second episode, hear from Discover Nikkei contributor, Erik Matsunaga—a Yonsei who has researched and mapped Chicago's Japanese American neighborhoods (Oakland/Kenwood in the 1940s–1950s and Clark & Division in the 1940s–1960s)—as he is interviewed by our guest host, award-winning author Naomi Hirahara.

A neighborhood is made up of people and places. It is defined through the experiences of those who consider it home. And it holds their hopes for the future and their memories of the past. In 2002, the exhibition, Boyle Heights: The Power of Place, celebrated these experiences and memories of Boyle Heights, a vibrant, multiethnic, and multicultural Los Angeles neighborhood. The short film, Crossroads: Boyle Heights (2002), was produced for the exhibition to highlight the voices and faces of this Boyle Heights community.

Watch the film on JANM’s YouTube channel starting Friday, December 4, then join producers and curators Sojin Kim and Claudia Sobral, along with Chicano Artivista Quetzal Flores, musician, writer, and producer Rubén Funkahuatl Guevara, and JANM VP of Exhibitions and Art Director Clement Hanami for a retrospective Q&A about the short film and exhibition.

Join JANM for a week of virtual, kid-friendly activities to celebrate Oshogatsu (New Years Day)! From interactive, offline festivities for all ages to multi-lingual story times and play performances, welcome the Year of the Ox with JANM!

More information to come. Check janm.org or follow us on social media for details.

The music of this CD was created for the documentary Masters of Modern Design: The Art of the Japanese American Experience, co-produced by JANM’s Watase Media Arts Center and KCET for the series ARTBOUND.

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JANM is proud to support Stand For The Arts and Be an Arts Hero who have joined forces to rally a coalition of arts organizations, venues and individuals across the country to make a bold call to Congress: Do not leave 4.5% of the nation’s GDP out of a relief package or future budgets. Recognize the cultural AND economic value of the arts, and commit to investing in its workers. This campaign, led by the partnership between Stand for the Arts and Be an Arts Hero, is a call to action to demand immediate relief from Congress for the arts and culture sector.

JANM continues to partner with Made By Us to bring history to younger generations in innovative and meaningful ways, so they have more fuel to power the future.

Made up of hundreds of history and civics organizations coming together to build something bigger and to use history to power the future Made By Us and JANM aims to inspire, inform, and empower change makers to shape the next 250 years of our country.