My wife is pregnant and I am becoming a father. It’s joy and terror; anticipation and anxiety. How can we afford a baby? Will I hold the baby right? Will I be a good father? My wife wonders if she’ll be a good mother? What will the baby look like? Is it a boy or a girl? A girl will be easier and cheaper. “We’ll just chain her to the bed, home school her, she’ll live with us forever, no …
Category: Japan
Want to say “nigger” without taking the chance of getting beat the fuck up? Are you a white liberal tired of white guilt? Feeling a little transracial? Does everything about you seem black, but your skin? Do you sketch self-portraits using a brown crayon, instead of peach? Find yourself tweeting #blacklivesmatter, but still getting bussed to the #alllivesmatter side of town? What about that blackface frat party you always wanted to throw? Want to get shot for no reason? Can’t …
I met artist Tadashi Moriyama at Art Fair in 2015. I interviewed him through email. This was around the time that Kantra started walking and her life force was beaming. Haruki and I were exhausted, grappling with this new human among us. “Where did you come from?” Haruki asks her. “Do you remember?” I dropped the ball on this (and a few others). If you’re reading this Moriyama, my apologies. The first time I saw Tadashi Moriyama’s work was at …
Born With It is a short film about an African-Japanese boy who identifies as Japanese, but the world sees him differently. Written and directed by Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour, Jr., the story explores isolation, alienation, and racism. Aside from the heartbreaking, yet revealing documentary Hafu, Born might be the first of it’s kind: it’s a scripted film, Japan is a vital character, and it exclusively centers a half black half Japanese kid struggling to make sense of who he is. It’s a tiny film that needs to be seen. Emmanuel and …
Last night I woke up at five in the morning to get some water. I gulped it down and opened my eyes to my wife holding my head up. “Are you ok? You collapsed”, she said. I was laying near the dinning table with a chair on top of me. I don’t remember anything, except waking up to the sound of my moaning. Nothing like that has ever happened to me before. The stress of living here has managed to manifest …
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