The 1998 holiday issue: American Food Culture

Vol. 127, No. 11, December 1998. 120 pages. View this issue

Food was the one subject of the 120-page holiday issue that closed 1998. Writers traced Japanese American identity through the kitchen, from Loren Kajikawa learning his grandmother’s recipes to Velina Hasu Houston on green tea and Bill Hosokawa on Japanese food across America. Ron Oba wrote of how Nisei soldiers of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team cooked during training and combat, and Mei Nakano’s road trip took in Amache.

Other pieces looked at the California Sushi Academy, the L.A. Tofu Festival and a tofu and natto cookbook from the Little Tokyo Service Center, Benkyodo Manju in San Francisco’s Japantown, and Japanese American community cookbooks. About 70 of its 120 pages carry holiday greetings from chapters such as San Mateo, Salinas Valley, San Jose and San Diego.

What’s in this issue

Community

• Pacific Citizen Marks 1998 Holiday Issue With Food Theme, by Caroline Aoyagi, page 4. The executive editor introduces the annual Holiday Issue, explaining that this year’s theme centers on how food has shaped and sustained Japanese American culture. She thanks contributors, advertisers, chapter representatives, staff and volunteers who made the 120-page issue possible.
• Fatherly Love, by Cynthia Gates Fujikawa, page 30. Playwright Cynthia Gates Fujikawa remembers her father Jerry Hatsuo Fujikawa, a former actor who embraced Japanese cooking and his ethnic identity later in life after suffering a heart attack. She describes his elaborate homemade meals and how food became his primary way of expressing love and connecting with his mixed-heritage family.
• Chirashi Sushi Meditations, by Stanley N. Kanzaki, page 62. A New York JACL member reminisces about the distinctly Issei style of chirashi sushi without raw fish, contrasting it with restaurant versions, and tells the story of a Puerto Rican Air Force veteran who fell in love with sushi in Japan and became a sushi chef in New York. He laments the declining quality of traditional Issei-style chirashi at community events and proposes a tongue-in-cheek ‘International Issei Chirashi Sushi Day’ to preserve the tradition.
• Sushi 101: Inside the California Sushi Academy, by Tracy Uba, page 66. The article profiles the newly opened California Sushi Academy in Venice, the first state-registered Japanese culinary arts school in the U.S., founded to address a shortage of trained sushi chefs. It follows head instructor Andy Matsuda, a cancer survivor turned health advocate, and several ethnically diverse students training for careers as sushi chefs.
• Tofu Feast Fest: The Story Behind the L.A. Tofu Festival, by Martha Nakagawa, page 70. The Little Tokyo Service Center’s annual Tofu Festival, now in its third year, has grown from a modest gathering into a major community fundraiser and cultural event drawing tens of thousands of attendees. The piece traces its origin as a brainstormed idea by LTSC staff and details its rapid growth in restaurant participation, volunteer involvement, and community impact.
• Cookbook With a Cause: LTSC’s Tofu and Natto Recipe Book, by Martha Nakagawa, page 71. LTSC staff members Alice Ishigame-Tao and Yasuko Sakamoto created a tofu and natto recipe book to raise funds for the organization’s domestic violence prevention program, raising over $180,000 since its creation. The cookbook, now in its third edition, blends traditional and creative recipes, including fusion dishes designed to appeal to Los Angeles’s multicultural population.
• Union Center Cafe Provides Job Training and Community Connection, by Tracy Uba, page 92. The Little Tokyo Service Center’s newly opened Union Center Cafe aims to provide job training and stable employment opportunities to survivors of domestic violence and others in need. Manager Amelia Toy and her staff emphasize personalized customer service while the nonprofit works to build a sustainable business model to fund social services.
• Benkyodo Manju: Still Doing It Like They Used To, by Mika Tanner, page 93. San Francisco’s historic Benkyodo manju shop, founded in 1906 by Suyeichi Okamura, continues to be run by third-generation family members Ricky and Bobby Okamura. The shop has survived wartime internment and neighborhood changes to remain a beloved gathering place and touchstone of Japantown’s community and culinary heritage.

Commentary

• Cookin’ with Grandma: A Yonsei Learns Family Recipes and Life Lessons, by Loren Kajikawa, page 6. A young Yonsei man recounts spending a summer helping his Nisei grandmother in her garden and learning to cook her signature dishes like shoyu chicken and fried rice. Through their cooking sessions he uncovers her life story and comes to see her culinary work as an act of love that sustains family bonds.
• What You Can Pick Up With and From Chopsticks, by Raymond Nakamura, page 14. A marine biologist reflects humorously on the cultural meanings and etiquette of using chopsticks, recalling teaching a foreign visitor proper technique in Japan. He muses on chopstick superstitions, environmental concerns with disposable chopsticks, and their symbolic value as a bridge between cultures.
• Green Tea Girl: Meditations on Tea and Culture, by Velina Hasu Houston, page 15. Playwright Velina Hasu Houston describes how green tea, first given to her as a baby by her Japanese immigrant mother, became a lasting symbol of her Japanese cultural identity growing up in Kansas. She connects the ritual of tea drinking to her multiracial heritage and her efforts to pass Japanese culture to her own children.
• My Grandmother’s Kitchen: A Memory, by Sachi Seko, page 18. The writer recalls her grandmother’s mastery of the kitchen during her California childhood, especially the elaborate New Year’s preparations involving fresh ingredients from traveling vendors. She also remembers her grandmother’s quiet generosity toward strangers and neighbors during the Depression, and the songs she hummed while cooking.
• Small Kid Time Cartoon, by Gwen Muranaka, page 22. A cartoon-style piece touches on childhood memories related to Japanese American food culture. It appears as a short illustrated feature within the Holiday Issue’s food theme.
• Days of Wine and Roads, by Mei Nakano, page 23. Author Mei Nakano recounts a two-week road trip through the Southwest with her husband and his brother and sister-in-law, visiting sites tied to their family’s internment history including Amache. Shared meals and cooking on the road, including a comic mishap involving Woolite mistaken for cooking oil, become a source of connection among the two couples.
• 1976: Cross-Cultural Faux-Pas and 1994: The Food Tapes, by Stewart David Ikeda, page 25. Novelist Stewart David Ikeda recounts a childhood dinner mishap involving chopstick skills and misunderstood Japanese praise, followed by reflections on interviewing his dying grandfather for a historical novel, discovering that food memories dominated his grandfather’s recollections of Depression-era hardship and railroad work. Ikeda weaves together intergenerational and interracial food experiences with his own multicultural relationship.
• I Was a Japanese Food Snob, by Mika Tanner, page 37. A graduate student describes growing up believing ‘authentic’ Japanese food should remain unmixed with American influences, looking down on dishes like Spam musubi. Working at the Japanese American National Museum and sharing potlucks with Nisei volunteers helped her embrace Japanese American cuisine and develop a fuller sense of her JA identity.
• Here, There, Everywhere: Japanese Food Across America, by Bill Hosokawa, page 41. Veteran journalist Bill Hosokawa recalls the Americanized Chinese food served at small-town Midwestern restaurants decades ago and contrasts it with the humble, plebeian Japanese meals of his own boyhood, quite different from today’s upscale sushi restaurants. He notes how far Japanese cuisine has traveled from prewar Nisei households to becoming fashionable across the country.
• Good Luck Rice!, by Leslie A. Ito, page 43. A Yonsei writer describes her Issei grandmother’s labor-intensive preparation of sekihan, a red bean and sweet rice dish served for good luck at family celebrations. She reflects on the difficulty of preserving these culinary traditions as the generation of Issei and Nisei women who know the recipes by memory passes on.
• Online Spam and Virtual Japanese Food, by Wataru Ebihara, page 46. The author takes readers on a tour of Japanese food-related websites available in the early internet era, covering resources on sushi, wasabi, sake, tofu, soy sauce, ramen and even a Spam haiku archive. He frames the piece as a lighthearted exploration of ‘virtual dining’ for the tech-savvy Japanese American reader.
• For My Father’s Generation, page 46. A poem honors the Nisei generation of fathers, recalling their nicknames, physical hardships from labor and farming, their wartime internment experiences at camps like Manzanar and Heart Mountain, and their quiet expressions of love through everyday activities rather than words.
• A Taste of Ethnic Identity, by Craig Ishihara, page 77. A Yonsei college student reflects on how Japanese food names like takuan and miso soup remain some of his strongest remaining ties to his heritage despite limited knowledge of the Japanese language. He recounts embarrassing moments of ignorance about Japanese cuisine and a debate with a Korean friend over the origins of certain dishes that stirred his ethnic pride.
• Memories, by Iku Kiriyama, page 88. A longtime educator reflects on food-centered family memories spanning childhood illness remedies, New Year’s mochi-pounding traditions, her father’s love of fresh lobster, and dishes she never learned to replicate from her mother, who is now incapacitated by a stroke. She also describes her own family’s evolving holiday food traditions, including Christmas pancakes and annual New Year’s cooking.
• A Grain of Rice Goes a Long Way, by Peter Hironaka, page 89. Cartoonist Pete Hironaka reflects on rice as a lifelong staple, from scavenging leftover toasted rice in the Poston internment camp to relying on kind Issei friends for rice-based meals in college. He also humorously recounts his identity as a backyard barbecue grill chef, cooking bratwurst and sauerkraut as his own hybrid Japanese American tradition.
• Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches!, by Mariko Tran, page 89. A teenage writer recalls the embarrassment she felt in fifth grade over bringing Japanese foods like omusubi to school and her demand that her mother make her peanut butter and jelly sandwiches instead. Looking back at 16, she describes coming to appreciate her Japanese heritage rather than reject it in favor of assimilation.
• More Than a Cup of Joe: A Christmas Memory of Coffee and Ghosts, by Tracy Uba, page 92. This piece appears to overlap thematically with reflections on food and family memory tied to the holidays within the issue’s broader content on culinary traditions.
• Uncloseting the Vegetarian Within, by Tracy Uba, page 101. A staff writer describes her transition to vegetarianism three years prior and the varying reactions from family members, including a childhood memory of her Issei great-grandfather eating a fish eye that reinforced her early aversion to meat. She also discusses the different tiers of vegetarianism, from ovo-lacto vegetarians to vegans and raw foodists, and the ethical challenges of navigating cultural differences around meat consumption.
• Culinary Inspiration, by Caroline Aoyagi, page 104. The executive editor reflects on growing up in Toronto eating her Shin-Issei mother’s home-cooked Japanese meals, and how she fell into unhealthy fast-food habits after moving to Los Angeles for work. She describes rediscovering a connection to Japanese cooking traditions during her parents’ recent visit and while preparing for holiday meals with her mother.

In-Depth

• The Health Quotient of Japanese American Foods, by Kathy Ishizuka, page 10. The article surveys the health benefits and risks of common Japanese American foods, including fish, soy products, green tea, mayonnaise, Spam, Asian vegetables and seaweed. It also reviews the nutritional content of traditional New Year’s dishes like mochi, gobo and soba.
• A Taste of Japanese Culture Through Restaurants as Cultural Ambassadors, by Gil Asakawa, page 35. Denver-based writer Gil Asakawa argues that Japanese restaurants function as cultural embassies, introducing people of all backgrounds to Japanese food and customs. He describes memorable dining experiences, including an elaborately designed restaurant styled after a traditional Hokkaido farmhouse, and recalls his family’s multicultural New Year’s Eve feasts growing up.
• Our Second Look: Cookbooks by Nisei for Japanese American Families, by Harry Honda, page 81. Editor Emeritus Harry Honda surveys a range of Japanese American community cookbooks published over decades by JACL chapters and churches, comparing their varying sweet and sour pork recipes as a case study. The piece traces the history and fundraising purposes of titles like the East West Cookbooks, Nisei Kitchen, Creative Cookery and others, many now out of print.
• Christmas Gift Ideas for the Japanese American Household, by Tracy Uba, page 96. A holiday gift guide highlights Japanese American-themed products including Country Samurai Kona coffee, the children’s book ‘Nikkei Donburi,’ relaxing ‘Pianolight’ piano music albums, and elaborate chocolate ‘Koo-ki sushi’ gift sets. It also promotes Ramen City, an early online retailer offering hard-to-find imported instant noodle brands.

Military & Veterans

• Hawaiian Ways, American Taste, by Ron Oba, page 27. A 442nd Regimental Combat Team veteran recounts the multicultural food traditions of pre-war Hawaii and how Nisei soldiers adapted and improvised meals like hekka during training at Camp Shelby and combat in Italy and France. He describes bartering with local farmers, cooking with scavenged ingredients, and how food became a way for the men to maintain their identity far from home.
• A Nisei’s Food for Thought, by Jim Yamasaki, page 51. A former internee recalls the food supplied at the Gila River Relocation Center, including canned goods, an incident of hoarding by a block manager, and debates over farm labor conducted for little pay. He also describes a Southern California social group of retired Nisei who continue gathering monthly for Japanese cuisine, reflecting the enduring hold of Japanese food on Nisei identity.

Incarceration & Redress

• A Father’s Last Wish, by Glen Kitayama, page 31. The writer recalls Christmas 1990, spent at his in-laws’ home in Mountain View caring for his Filipino father-in-law who was recovering from a stroke while his wife was hospitalized. Over instant decaf coffee, his father-in-law confided fears of seeing ghosts and shared stories of his immigrant life before passing away weeks later.
• Making Mochi, Creating Communities, by Jim Matsuoka, page 34. The author recalls a 1969 New Year’s Eve mochi-pounding event organized by young Sansei and Nisei volunteers for elderly Issei men living alone in Little Tokyo’s small hotels. The gathering, centered on a borrowed usu and homemade ozoni, became a powerful expression of intergenerational community and pride following the internment era.

Arts & Entertainment

• Get Booked: New Release Roundup, by P.C. Staff, page 102. A roundup reviews numerous new book releases relevant to Japanese American and Asian American readers, spanning topics from immigration law guides to Jackie Chan’s autobiography, Frank Chin essays, camp internment histories, and literary works by authors like Hisaye Yamamoto and Mitsuye Yamada. Titles cover history, fiction, poetry and cultural commentary across the Asian diaspora.

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