Vitro Nasu

(Akiko Masuda)

Tricycle – Interview

Just be present and let the film be.” If we can simply be present, like we are with a friend that’s getting ready to cross over, then we can see how deep that humanity is. That’s what I want people to take from the film: Be present.

August at Akiko’s

(Christopher Makoto Yogi and Alex Zhang Hungtai)

Christopher Makoto Yogi, homepage

Chrsitopher Makoto Moji (Instagram)

Peace in the Breeze

August at Akiko’s (Variety)

Senator Inouye and John F. Kennedy
The Remarkable Service of Senator Daniel Inouye will be long remembered
Daniel Inouye Longest-serving member of the US Senate who investigated the Watergate and Iran-Contra scandals

“There exists a shadowy government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, it’s own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of the national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself.” –the late Senator Daniel Inouye

In France, he was hit by a bullet which was stopped by two silver dollars he carried in his pocket. But he had lost his lucky charms just before an assault on Colle Musatello, in the Po Valley, Italy, in April 1945. Despite being wounded, he took out the first of three German machine-gun positions pinning down his platoon. He led an attack on the second, before collapsing. Then, as his unit attacked the third, he crawled into position to throw a grenade. As he stood to throw, a German rifle grenade severed his arm, leaving the grenade in the fist. Keeping his troops at a distance, he prised the grenade out, threw it, and finished the attack one-handed. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.

“That’s one of the horrors of war, that you can train person, train them to hate, train them to kill.

Daniel Inouye September 7 1924 – Decmeber 17, 2012

Daniel Inoyue photo
Daniel Inouye, one-and-a-half years old in Honolulu, 1924.

Inouye’s Epic Civial Rights Championship Senator Inouye fought for reparations for Japanese Americans who were interned..

At the time of his death Monday at the age of 88, Inouye was third in line to the presidency.
But he never stopped confronting power on behalf of the rights of people of color, people with disabilities, women, lesbians and gays and political dissenters to equal justice and equal opportunity. A modest man who served in the Senate for more than fifty years, Inouye was not always accorded proper recognition of his historic advocacy on behalf of civil rights and civil liberties. But that is the error of those who underestimate Inouye, not of the senator. Indeed, as Vice President Joe Biden, who knew Inouye better than most in Washington, said after the senior senator’s death: “To his dying day, he fought for a new era of politics where all men and women are treated with equality.”

Mitsuo Aoki was my Professor
He was 95.

Professor Aoki introduced me to the writings of Paul Tillich, Soren Kierkegaard, Simone Weil, Camus, Martin Buber, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others in his class at the University of Hawaii. He used to step on top of the podium and do the Zorba the Greek dance. His lectures were so moving that many of his students in class were often in tears. He was a Buddhist and a Christian and a cosmic dancer.

A Mystery to be lived

Counselor on dying rejoiced in life (Obit from Star Advertiser)

The Rev. Mitsuo Aoki helped countless people, particularly cancer patients and their families, with his compassionate outlook on dying.
“He was sought out a lot for his wisdom,” said the Rev. Clarence Liu, chaplain of Hospice Hawaii. “He lived his dying in the very same way that he shared about it and talked about it. There was great integrity and great truthfulness in the way he lived his life.”
Aoki, a theologian, minister and college professor who founded the religion department of the University of Hawaii at Manoa and served as an influential figure in the establishment of Hospice Hawaii, died Thursday at his Pohai Nani home in Kaneohe. He was 95.
Born in the plantation town of Hawi on Hawaii island, Aoki, known as “Mits,” attended the Chicago Theological Seminary and Union Theological Seminary.
According to longtime friend Rick Bernstein, who knew Aoki for 40 years, he was raised in the Jodo-shu Buddhist tradition and converted to Christianity in the 1920s. He was a recipient of Honpa Hongwanji Mission’s Living Treasure award and the Jefferson Award for outstanding community service.

Dying people are my people
In 1957 Reverend Aoki experienced an out of body experience when he had a car accident.

Robert Aitken 1917 – 2010

Robert Aitken dies at 93; American Zen master
Aitken, one of the first Americans to be fully sanctioned as a master of Zen Buddhism, emphasized a path to enlightenment through social action. (LA times)

D T Suzuki and Robert Aitken

The story of how Robert Aitken came to Zen is remarkable in itself. Aitken was an undergraduate student at the University of Hawaii when he decided he needed a break from studies, and he took a construction job in Guam. So it was that he was an American civilian in Japanese-occupied Guam when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. He was taken into custody the day after the bombing and spent the entire war in civilian prisons in Japan.

One of the guards loaned Aitken a copy of R. H. Blyth’s book Zen in English Literature and the Oriental Classics. Aitken read the book several times until the guard took it back. But then Aitken was moved to a new prison, and his cell mate was — R. H. Blyth. Blyth was a student of Zen who had been teaching English in Japan when the war began, and so he also spent the war in Japanese prisons. So it was that Aitken’s misfortune became an opportunity, and he and Blyth had long discussions about Zen.

Aloha Roshi (Diamond Shanga)

A memorial ceremony and celebration for Robert Aitken will be held at Palolo Zen Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, on Sunday, August 22 at 10 AM.

Capsule by Hal Lum

20 Going On 21: Honoring the Past, Celebrating the Present, Looking to the Future–An Exhibition of Hawaii Artists will open at The Contemporary Museum’s Makiki Heights galleries March 19 and remain on view through June 21, 2009.

Centre- by Hal Lum

See works by seven other Hawaii artists from here.

Hal has photographed the shoebox sculptures for another exhibition.
Thinking Inside the Box

The triennial Shoebox event marks its 10th exhibition March 1 through April 9 at the University of Hawaiʻi Art Gallery before going on the road.
The idea of presenting three-dimensional art in such a small format was the brainchild of Department of Art and Art History Professors Fred Roster and Mamoru Sato in collaboration with then gallery Director Tom Klobe.

Flicker <><>by Bernice Akamine, Kāneʻohe, Hawaiʻi

In Her Shoes by Yuriko Matsuda, Japan
Above photos by Hal Lum and Paul Kodama, courtesy of the University of Hawaiʻi Art Gallery.

For reference, in 1973 Barry was a big 6th grader and I was just a little 3rd grader.

Here is the picture I found (I blurred out the other non-public figures) apparently taken at a pencil chewers convention (Barton’s Blog)

Obama in 1973
Via)

What is an Aloha spirit?

Cotton Kamehameha

This is a remarkable print on cotton by Kamehameha. I love the depth and use of color. I stole this shirt on ebay last summer for $25. (Vintage Hawaiian shirt net)

Royal Hawaiian Brown<> <> <> Ricky Ricardo Unique<> <> <> love this 50’s Fishermen
Kamehameha Rayon <> <> <>watercolor streak <> <> <> 50’s Beachcomber
Kahanamoku <> <> <> Lauhala <> <> <>Poorman’s coconut boy

Val Foubert & Jim Wichterman taught English and Philosophy in ‘Anarchist Alley’ at Mercer Island High School. Each influenced Stanley Dunham, Barack Obama’s mother, who graduated in 1960. They collaborated in nurturing her independence of mind. (via)

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“She was a scholar who was one of the first to see about microbanking,” Neil Abercrombie says.

Barack Obama’s trubute to his mother (youtube)

Stanley Ann Dunham

She was just too cool – from Dana Stevens at slate

Somewhere around the words “peasant blacksmithing,” I found myself thinking, “This man can never be president. His mother was just too cool.” American presidential mothers don’t drift bohemianly around the globe, marrying and divorcing foreigners, working for Third World development banks and discussing “esoteric Indonesian woodworking techniques” with their daughters. They are not named Stanley.

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Obama is plugged in to America

Obama and Aloha shirt retrospective

“I need a breath of fresh air” Barack’s niece danced naked in front of a security guard, Maya Soetoro-Ng (Barack’s sister) also talked about her brave mother who loved to watch the moon.

Theres no one as Irish As Barack O’Bama
Moneygall is the village where Barack Obama’s great great great great grandfather Fulmuth Kearney emigrated from.

Obama Champon looks like a regular ramen.
Obama city in Japan has already cashed in. (See this youtube coverage in Italian)

Obama wrote the letter in English but signed it in Japanese, “Your friend”.
“We share more than a common name; we share a common planet and common responsibilities,” Obama wrote in the letter.

Different Biography (earlier at agog)

Mamaki is best known as a refreshing herbal tea and for it’s medicinal uses. It grows only in Hawaii.

Mamaki Tea

My sister (Fung-Ching) sent me a bag of Mamaki tea she cultivated and some digital images via email.

This native Hawaiian fiber bush lacks the stinging hairs of other nettle family members. Caterpillars of the Kamehameha butterfly eat the red veined leaves. Bark was used to make poor grade tapa and medicine, and leaves for herb tea. The fruits are an unusual white mass with seeds on the surface like strawberries, and have a mild laxative effect.
More photos of Mamaki tree.

Exercise, eat fruits and vegetables and drink teas. We Americans must do our best to avoid becoming sick.

Aloha

Diver

(Courtesy of Honolulu Academy of Arts)

Congratulation to Hal Lum!
“Diver” by Hal Lum, took the Cynthia Ayre Award at Artists of Hawaii 2007.

A UCLA professor sizes up Hawaii’s best art of the year by Joleen Oshiro. (Star Bulletin) and page two here.

Previous posts on Hal Lum include his photo of poet Linda Gregg and his painting.

We Are Not Afraid
Hal and Masayo posed for Les Levine.

Hal, Masayo and Paul Weitz, this one is by me.
On the wall is Hal’s painting. (Paul Weitz directed “About A Boy” and other popular movies today but we knew him as a playwright in the early 90’s.)

Sorry Hal I don’t have your recent photo. But I like these old photos.

Buy Nothing Day image of the day.
(Yesterday was the big protest day against consumer culture but I decided to extend the buy nothing day to one more day.)

Pat Mastsueda’s book of poems – Stray is coming out in January.

“Pat Matsueda was born in Fukuoka Prefecture in Japan, the daughter of a Japanese woman and a Japanese American soldier. She now resides in downtown Honolulu. In 1988, she received an Elliott Cades Award for Literature”.

“There are about three dozen poems in the book, and the styles and subjects vary quite a bit. Below is a short poem that you may want to consider; like many in the book, it draws on my life. ” (Via email)

Fallen World

What is no longer there
I can still see

Where shade was,
shadows fell
I still know
Where groves were,
white roots now
bind the earth

And all my young selves-
shamed, battered, raped-
still look through my eyes

and answer to my name

Pat Matsueda
You can “Stray” and buy this.
More on her and a photo of Pat with her colleagues at
Kyoto Journal – Revealing The Invisible
Frank Stewart & Patricia Matsueda of Mãnoa, on expanding cultural horizons.

“PM: For me, a favorite issue is Silence to Light: Japan and the Shadows of War, which is all about Japan in WWII. A few of the pieces come from that period, and others were written afterwards. That is one of the most important issues that we have done, because the subject of the war is so large, complicated, and emotional. Japan’s behavior during WWII was really abominable, but if you read Silence to Light from cover to cover, you’ll see that the pieces arouse a lot of sympathy for the Japanese. They were victims of war too. Nicholas Voge’s translation of a group of letters written by kamikaze pilots to their families was reprinted in two British newspapers and in Harper’s magazine. Soon after 9/11 happened, we were contacted about reprinting them. I think people found those letters of great power and relevance.”

Manoa Journal linked at sidebar menu under “firelingue”.

Found about this sad news today. There was a headline a while ago about accidental drowning in Southern California but did not connect the tragedy with the filmmaker who made the “Picture Bride“.
This lovely film was produced by an acquaintance (Lisa Onodera) and our family and Friends in Hawaii feel extremely proud of their achievement.

Kayo Hatta

“Picture Bride” began as Hatta’s thesis project at UCLA. During the early 1900s, nearly 20,000 Japanese, Korean and Okinawan women crossed the Pacific to Hawaii to marry Japanese plantation workers after an exchange of photographs.” More here.
Her new film “Fishbowl” will air on PBS.
Remembering Kayo Hatta.

“Kayo turned to adapting the novel The Floating World. But amazingly, she faced disappointment after disappointment trying to get the project financed and going. Even after her success, very few were willing to take a chance on Asian or Asian American material.”
( I wonder if it is the same “The Floating World” by Cynthia Kadohata.
It is a great loss – I would like to see how she would have realized that singular vision Cynthia created in her fresh novel. More on Cynthia check my previous post).
(*** As a personal aside, my grandmother was a picture bride but she was a Chinese peasant with big feet, who left Canton China to marry an overseas Chinese man in Japan. She married on the boat to a rooster instead of a young man she had never met. I never bothered to ask her about the symbolism of a rooster taking over for the absent husband. Don’t know if there was a cockfight after that. My grandmother uncharacteristically was a heavy smoker all her life and she was seventeen when she married. Lucky that she was a peasant, as she escaped having her feet bound. My grandmother did not fear sex or frank discussions – she was a very level headed former picture bride. Her arranged marriage produced more than 8 children and had a relatively happy union except for my grandfather’s occasional opium smoking. )
Rent ‘Picture Bride” (might find it at your local library) or read “Floating World” and thanks to Kayo Hatta for your courage and hard work and we will remember, try to continue and follow your example.

Buffalo by Hal Lum

Hal Lum is showing his paintings/drawings at First Hawaiian Center in Honolulu. The exhibit continues to May 3, 2005. “Hal Lum’s whimsical and often organic compositions in brilliant colors reflect his delight in discovery of new places, people, and experiences.”
Hal is a Monkey Gemini and his works represent the spirit of curious and fun nature. Hal I assume is more like Paul Gauguin than Marquis de Sade. Only Masayo who photographed his work and posed for the photo knows the secret.
This morning Hal and I have exchanged a number of emails talking about the passing of a great playwright Arthur Miller.
Just the other day I found out that Catherine Deneuve’s favorite actress is Marilyn Monroe and she mentioned specifically Marilyn in the Misfits. Catherine Deneuve, though mentally tough and had much better childhood experience than Marilyn must know something about the burden of being a sex symbol for the world. Miller-Monroe union and the subsquent breakup was part of important moments in the history of American culture, vis-a-vis of merging of high and low culture, creative collaboration, fame, glamour, political witchhunt, about integrity and authenticity. It is interesting to note that Miller’s daughter Rebecca Miller has become a filmmaker and her incredibly talented husband Daniel Day Lewis has become a supportive husband to her creative work by appearing in her small independent film. They seem to have been spared from the pain and turmoil that Marilyn and Miller have suffered.
Came across this fun article by Miller on his visit to Cuba, writing about Fidel Castro.

From Village Voice, a tribute by Michael Feingold is here.
A tribute from Harold Pinter is here.