Hidden Legacy: Japanese Traditional Performing Arts

The Asian Pacific Heritage and Culture Club invites you to the second our documentary film series featuring Shirley Muramoto and her film Hidden Legacy on Wednesday, February 19th  at 3:00 PM at the East Rec Center.  There is no charge and  refreshments will be served.

Shirley Kazuyo Muramoto’s roots in koto music grew from the dusty desert American concentration camps during WWII. Her mother, Barbara Hori (aka Kazuko Muramoto), was incarcerated at 9 years old with her family, yet still learned to play the ancient instrument from fellow internees at Topaz and Tule Lake prison camps. In these desolate prisons, Barbara learned to play the koto by rote, with finger picks made of cow bones and tuning bridges carved by her grandfather from scraps of wood and toothbrush handles. It became the music of survival.

 It has been 82 years since the Executive Order 9066 during World War II led to the forcible relocation of approximately 120,000 Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans, about two-thirds were American citizens, into American concentration camps

The Hidden Legacy project researched and collected stories from former incarcerated artists who learned from some of these teachers. The questions were: how and why did traditional Japanese arts in the camps continue, how they used creativity to practice them, and how they fashioned equipment, kimonos, instruments and so on to be able to practice them. These arts played a critical role in the lives of those incarcerated to continue to survive and help them be resilient. After the war as many felt these traditional arts would make them appear “un-American”, many shunned these arts.  Now, we are learning that traditional cultural arts and music aid in survival and continue to do so today as we learn how the arts help us to understand ourselves.