Ginko Okazaki: a Japanese American Novelist in an Age of Ultranationalism

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Friday, November 22, 2024 | 5:30pm to 7pm
 
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This panel presentation introduces an ongoing project to recover and translate the Japanese-language writings of the Issei novelist and teacher Ginko Okazaki (pen-name of Masue Shinozaki Orimo, 1895-1973). Ginko was part of a cohort of highly educated Japanese women who emigrated to the United States in the 1920s. A graduate of the Tokyo Women’s Higher Normal School (now Ochanomizu University), Ginko was also a protege of playwright and novelist Masao Kume. After a brief first marriage that ended in divorce, Ginko married Kichitaro Orimo, a California-based labor organizer and Japanese-language teacher. Ginko came to the United States shortly before the Immigration Act of 1924 severely restricted further emigration from Japan. In addition to teaching Japanese at a language schools in Monterey and Delano, Ginko continued her literary career, publishing two serialized novellas in the San Francisco Shin Sekai [New World]: Cypress Sighs (サイプレスの嘆く, January 1927) and Sphinx (スフ井ンクス, Summer 1928). She is best known for her publication of the novel Soil of Salinas (サリナスの土, currently in draft translation by Stephen Kohl, professor emeritus, University of Oregon). Originally written in the 1930s, the Soil of Salinas manuscript was lost during World War II. After the war, Ginko rewrote the novel from recovered notes and published it in 1967.
 
Alan K. Ota, nephew of Ginko’s daughter, will present on how the study of Ginko’s life and work may offer insights to aspiring artists, activists, and teachers as they confront new forms of oppression and ultranationalism in the 21st century. Andrew Way Leong (UC Berkeley) will present on the ongoing work involved in bringing Ginko’s work to a contemporary English-language readership.

Author Bio

Presented By:

Alan K. Ota is a writer based in the Washington, D.C. area. He was a Nieman fellow at Harvard University. Alan has covered Congress as a senior writer for CQ Roll Call and an editor-at-large for LexisNexis’ Law360. He was a Tokyo correspondent for The Oregonian and co-founder of the Asian American Journalists Association’s Asia chapter.


Presented By:

Andrew Way Leong is assistant professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. He also serves as a scholar-editor for the Issei Poetry Project at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center of Los Angeles. Leong is the translator of Lament in the Night (Kaya Press, 2012), a collection of two novellas by Los Angeles-based writer Nagahara Shōson.