January 22, 2016/ 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM

Jan Popper Theater, UCLA Schoenberg Music Building

Japanese traditional performing arts in the WWII internment camps

A documentary film about traditional performance arts practiced by Japanese Americans in WWII internment camps.

Photo: via www.rafu.com, 2014.

The Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies and the UCLA Center for World Music present a film screening of Hidden Legacy: Japanese Traditional Performing Arts in the WWII Internment Camps. With its rich mix of compelling interviews, historical photographs, musical performances, and rare archival film footage, this 2014 documentary offers extraordinary insight into the persistence of traditional Japanese cultural practice among Japanese Americans interned during World War II. Despite intense pressure to reject all aspects of their ethnic heritage, with often harsh consequences for Issei (first generation) arts masters, many internees nevertheless chose to maintain or even discover for the first time Japanese forms of music, theater, dance, and other performing arts.Meet filmmaker and creative director Shirley Kazuyo Muramoto-Wong, a koto performer for over 50 years whose interest in the subject grew from her mother’s koto lessons at Topaz and Tule Lake camps. Special guest Takayo Tsubouchi Fischer will talk about her experiences as an internee at Jerome and Rohwer camps in Arkansas, where she studied kabuki, classical Japanese dance, and shamisen in camp.

Free with reservation. Visit the website below for more information.

www.ethnomusic.ucla.edu/hidden-legacy-japanese-traditional-performing-arts-in-the-wwii-internment-camps

Sponsor(s): Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies, Asian Languages & Cultures, UCLA Center for World Music, The Yanai Initiative