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Boston Globe
07-08-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
Big drums, big sound — and a big space problem
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The only problem? It's a pretty loud oasis. Advertisement Taiko's big sound — one of the hallmarks of the art form — is also why Odaiko New England is having a tough time finding a long-term rental space where they won't annoy neighbors. In recent years, the group solved their noise issue by operating within the basement of the Regent, where the sound of their drumbeats doesn't travel outside. Juni Kobayashi, artistic and managing director of Odaiko New England, leads a 'Just Ji & Jammin' Drills' class. Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff But the sound does bleed upstairs, and the new owner of the building is planning projects in the main theater space that require periods of quiet, some of which conflict with the group's class and practice schedule. He has kept the rent low, but so far he's offering the group only three-month lease extensions while he figures out if he and Odaiko New England can coexist in the building. Advertisement 'That makes it very hard for us to plan ahead, which is why we're looking for new space,' said Juni Kobayashi, the drumming group's artistic director. Odaiko is New England's oldest and largest taiko organization, and planning is a key part of bringing performances, classes, and workshops to communities across the region. From Amherst to Arlington, the group performs at festivals, schools, and companies across the state, and they've taken their show on the road at venues as far away as Ohio and Florida. For months, Kobayashi has been on the hunt for a new, ADA-compliant practice space — hopefully somewhere that's near public transportation, has ample parking, and is large enough for roughly 30 people to drum together. She's reached out to community centers, houses of worship, additional theaters, gyms, and commercial spaces, but she hasn't yet turned up a suitable location. 'Most retail or business office spaces have shared walls with other businesses,' she said, noting that the sound of the group's collective drumming can reverberate through walls and floors. 'The other challenge is that we're looking for a space that will also allow us to store our drums — and we have a lot of them.' Elaine Fong founded Odaiko New England three decades ago, after she'd been involved with a taiko group called Soh Daiko in New York City in the early 1980s. When she moved to Boston in 1991, she was surprised that the city didn't have a similar group, and figured her taiko days were over. Advertisement Juni Kobayashi (center foreground) talks to a group of players during a break from playing on Japanese Chu Daiko drums. Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff Then she was contacted by a local dance company that was planning a performance to mark the 50th anniversary of Executive Order 9066: the order signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt that led to the internment of 125,000 people of Japanese ancestry during World War II. The dance group was looking for taiko drummers for the performance. They'd contacted Soh Daiko to see if they could help, and Soh Daiko suggested getting in touch with Fong. Fong pulled together a small group of local drummers for the performance. Afterward, some of the performers wanted to continue playing together, which led to the creation of Odaiko New England. 'Our first-ever practice space was in a church basement in Brookline,' she recalled. 'We practiced in the children's playroom for about four months.' Since then, the group has often struggled to find suitable locations to call home, said Fong, who stepped down as the group's artistic director in 2007 and currently serves as treasurer. 'The best place to be is an urban center, but urban centers are so dense that it's a real challenge to find a space,' she said. 'At every performance we had, I'd announce that we were a nomadic taiko — that we didn't have a home — and that if anyone had a space, they should let us know.' After one of Fong's post-performance appeals, someone reached out about a space the group could use in Woburn, the now-shuttered American Chinese Art Society. The nonprofit had a large space with an auditorium, and because there weren't any close neighbors, that location worked well for more than 20 years. But, over time, houses cropped up nearby, and noise became an issue. Since then, Odaiko New England has been at the Regent. Advertisement As the search for a new home continues, Fong is concerned about the taiko group's future. 'Odaiko New England is a very small Asian American performing arts group,' she said. 'And it can be a struggle for any small culturally specific organization, particularly in this current political climate, to survive.' Tomo Deeney, of Roslindale, drums in the 'Just Ji & Jammin' Drills' class in Arlington. Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff If staying at the Regent proves unrealistic, Kobayashi has a potential backup plan — a space in Middleton that may be available. But some of the group's members aren't keen on traveling that far, and weeknight practices at that location wouldn't be able to start until 8 p.m. Kobayashi hopes to locate another space that works for everyone, but if she can't, the group might find itself without a home, which she says would be a huge loss. 'No other group in the Boston area offers what we do,' she said. 'For the performers and students, it's an activity that's musical, physical, and involves working together and being part of a community,' she added. 'Taiko really enriches the quality of people's lives.' Megan Wu, of Reading, is reflected in the mirror taking a pause, during the 'Just Ji & Jammin' Drills' class. Brian Forbis, of Cambridge, is at center. Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff
Business Mayor
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Mayor
A Landmark Exhibition Explores Ruth Asawa's Creative Legacy Over Six Decades
'An artist is an ordinary person who can take ordinary things and make them special,' reads a quote from Japanese American modernist artist Ruth Asawa at the entry corridor to her first posthumous retrospective, on view through September 2 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). Organized in 12 galleries that unfold in loose chronological progression over six decades, Ruth Asawa: Retrospective features over 300 works, including her signature hanging looped-wire sculptures, as well as lesser-known creations, like her 1940s paintings and drawings of flowers from the '90s and early 2000s. Asawa was born in 1926 to Japanese immigrant parents and raised on a farm in Norwalk, California. As a teenager, she and her family were separated and displaced in 1942, unjustly relocated to incarceration camps as a result of the U.S. government's Executive Order 9066 during World War II. After the war ended, Asawa traveled to rural North Carolina and enrolled in the experimental Black Mountain College (BMC), where from 1946 to 1949 she studied under teachers including Josef Albers, Buckminster Fuller, and Max Dehn. 'Each instructor was a practicing artist, dancer, musician, or mathematician, who understood his craft by doing it,' Asawa once said of her time at BMC. Inspired by dance classes Asawa took with Merce Cunningham at Black Mountain College, the Dancers motif seen above (oil on paper, 1948-49) is one of several abstractions of dancing figures Asawa produced, highlighting her exploration of physical motion. The interlocking forms hint at her development of nesting and layering techniques in future sculptural work. Her diverse coursework in art and design—as well as mathematics and dance—inspired her early drawings, paintings, and wire work, but it was a foundational 1947 trip to Toluca, Mexico, that exposed Asawa to basket weaving with wire, a key inflection point that would critically influence the looped-wire technique that characterized her forthcoming sculptural work. The gallery encompassing Asawa's time at BMC showcases works dominated by bold colors and patterns, a reflection of her studies in color theory and her early experimentations with biomorphic forms that marked this period. It was also during this formative era that Asawa met her future husband, architect Albert Lanier. In one corner, a postmarked envelope from Lanier addressed to Asawa at 'B.M.C.' is displayed with the 1948 painting she made using the stamp colors. Read More Arche acoustic pod by Marouane Sadki for Leet Design In 1949, Asawa joined Lanier in San Francisco, and the city became their adopted hometown. It was there during the 1950s that Asawa honed her hanging looped-wire sculptures with her 'form within a form' nesting technique and interlocking lobes. In an expansive gallery dedicated to these abstract wire forms, sculptures of varying sizes hang individually and in groupings, creating shadows on the white gallery walls almost as intricate as the sculptures themselves. Asawa learned the pivotal looped-wire weaving technique approach that she would later apply to her hanging sculptures on a 1947 trip to Toluca, Mexico. Asawa and Lanier had six children between 1950 and 1959, and the family moved to a cedar-shingled Arts and Crafts–style home in Noe Valley (where the couple lived for the rest of their lives). Although they renovated the home to incorporate a separate art studio, Asawa preferred to work in the living room—taking advantage of the double-height ceilings to suspend her wire sculptures from the rafters above. 'I've always had my studio in the house,' Asawa said, 'because I wanted my children to understand what I do and I wanted to be there if they needed me—or a peanut butter sandwich.' A gallery with wood-paneled walls—a departure from the white walls of the surrounding spaces—represents the Asawa-Lanier residence, with the size and scale of the space akin to their original Noe Valley living room. The exhibition includes the redwood doors formerly installed at the home's entrance, hand-carved in 1961 by Asawa and family members. Wire sculptures are suspended from the ceiling just as they were in Asawa's cathedral-like living room. Exhibition visitors are invited to pull up a chair and imagine the home as it looked as Asawa worked and raised her family there. Read More Can Video Games Improve Doctors' Decision-Making? One of the Ruth Asawa: Retrospective galleries evokes the living room of the Noe Valley home where Asawa and Lanier raised their six children in San Francisco—and from where Asawa often worked. Rough sketches of bananas and tomatoes—many of them on display in original spiral notebooks—and watercolor drawings of eggplants, cherries, chrysanthemums, and calla lilies reveal the artist's love of gardening and are also featured prominently in the Noe Valley gallery. Another gallery hones in on Asawa's focus on flowers from the 1980s into the early 2000s, with soft watercolors and black-and-white drawings of bouquets given to her by friends and family. Asawa, pictured in 1954, works on a large-scale sculpture. Elsewhere, through video, photographs, maquettes, and archival materials, the exhibition shines a light on Asawa's public artworks in the Bay Area from the 1960s onward, as well as her fierce advocacy for integrating art into San Francisco's public schools. 'It is especially meaningful to debut Asawa's first national and international retrospective in her adopted home city of San Francisco,' says Janet Bishop, Thomas Weisel Family chief curator at SFMOMA, who co-curated the exhibition with Cara Manes of MoMA, New York (where the touring exhibition will head this fall). 'She left her mark all over the city in the form of her public works.' This early-1990s drawing of a bouquet from Anni Albers represents Asawa's continued exploration of flowers and the natural world. Walking through Ruth Asawa: Retrospective, room after room, shines a light on the rich variety of Asawa's oeuvre. 'Asawa was always making, always learning through doing,' says Bishop. 'By representing the full breadth and depth of her practice, we're hoping visitors will see for themselves how inventive she was across two and three dimensions, at a range of scales, and in a wide variety of materials.' Top image: Ruth Asawa and her granddaughter in front of her Japanese American Internment Memorial, 1990-94, commissioned by the City of San José; ©2025 Ruth Asawa Lanier, Inc., courtesy David Zwirner; photo: Laurence Cuneo READ SOURCE
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Opinion - Trump is repeating one of the darkest chapters in US history
In December 1941, my great-great grandfather, Sawaichi Fujita, a 58-year-old tinsmith who had lived in Hawaii for 36 years, was torn away from his family, marking the first of his 1,432 days incarcerated by the U.S. government. Invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, President Franklin Roosevelt ordered the internment of him and thousands of others based on their ancestry. When he finally returned home after World War II, my grandfather said he was never the same. Soon after he was wrongfully jailed, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which authorized the forced removal of all people deemed a threat to national security. As a result, men, women and children of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast were forced to leave their homes. Between 1941 and 1945, the United States forcibly incarcerated more than 125,000 people of Japanese descent. In 1983, the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians determined that their incarceration was caused by 'race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.' Four decades later, the commission's findings are more relevant than ever. On Day 1 of his second administration, President Trump ordered the State and Homeland Security Departments to prepare for him to put into effect the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 — the same law used to intern my great-great grandfather and 31,000 other noncitizens of Japanese, German and Italian descent during World War II. When he invoked the archaic wartime authority on March 15, Trump sought to target members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang. In reality, judges, lawyers and journalists have found that the administration used the act to disappear immigrants to a maximum-security mega-prison in El Salvador with little if any evidence of gang membership or criminal history. The majority have no criminal records and some were in the middle of asylum case proceedings. Mere tattoos, including an autism awareness ribbon and the words 'mom' and 'dad' beside crowns, were used to justify some removals. The Trump administration's actions have upended human rights and basic due process. Immigrants are being held incommunicado, unable to contact their families or access lawyers. Alone and terrified, they do not know how long they will be held in detention after being taken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement or where they are being sent when boarded onto a plane in chains. Trump's executive orders declaring an 'invasion,' barring refugees from seeking safety, and getting rid of the few legal migration pathways available have laid the groundwork for mass raids and deportations across the country of longtime residents and newcomers alike. To defend these illegal and cruel actions, Trump and top White House officials are falsely conflating all immigrants with criminality and threats to the country. This is the same kind of rhetoric that motivated our national stain of internment. Meanwhile, Congress has put forward a budget resolution that cuts food assistance and health care to build more border walls and detention centers. If passed, ICE will have billions of dollars more to arrest our loved ones, neighbors and coworkers at job sites, schools, places of worship and their homes. Far too many are mothers and fathers who pose no risk to public safety but are nevertheless considered a threat and a 'criminal.' These arrests are eerily parallel to the FBI rounding up Japanese, German and Italian community leaders after Pearl Harbor. During World War II, the United States used the Alien Enemies Act and Executive Order 9066 to undercut civil rights and imprison innocent people and families in squalid camps. Using the Alien Enemies Act today to usurp our existing immigration laws and scapegoat immigrants repeats this shameful chapter. Congress should pass the Neighbors Not Enemies Act, which would finally repeal the Alien Enemies Act and prevent its abuse to target immigrants and deport them without basic due process. Politicians are once again sowing fear and xenophobia under the guise of national security. For the memory of my great-great-grandfather Sawaichi Fujita, and the thousands more that suffered this indignity 80 years ago, we must urgently act to stop repeating one of the darkest episodes in U.S. history. Kimiko Hirota is the associate director of policy at Church World Service. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
11-04-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
Trump is repeating one of the darkest chapters in US history
In December 1941, my great-great grandfather, Sawaichi Fujita, a 58-year-old tinsmith who had lived in Hawaii for 36 years, was torn away from his family, marking the first of his 1,432 days incarcerated by the U.S. government. Invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, President Franklin Roosevelt ordered the internment of him and thousands of others based on their ancestry. When he finally returned home after World War II, my grandfather said he was never the same. Soon after he was wrongfully jailed, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which authorized the forced removal of all people deemed a threat to national security. As a result, men, women and children of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast were forced to leave their homes. Between 1941 and 1945, the United States forcibly incarcerated more than 125,000 people of Japanese descent. In 1983, the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians determined that their incarceration was caused by 'race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.' Four decades later, the commission's findings are more relevant than ever. On Day 1 of his second administration, President Trump ordered the State and Homeland Security Departments to prepare for him to put into effect the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 — the same law used to intern my great-great grandfather and 31,000 other noncitizens of Japanese, German and Italian descent during World War II. When he invoked the archaic wartime authority on March 15, Trump sought to target members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang. In reality, judges, lawyers and journalists have found that the administration used the act to disappear immigrants to a maximum-security mega-prison in El Salvador with little if any evidence of gang membership or criminal history. The majority have no criminal records and some were in the middle of asylum case proceedings. Mere tattoos, including an autism awareness ribbon and the words 'mom' and 'dad' beside crowns, were used to justify some removals. The Trump administration's actions have upended human rights and basic due process. Immigrants are being held incommunicado, unable to contact their families or access lawyers. Alone and terrified, they do not know how long they will be held in detention after being taken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement or where they are being sent when boarded onto a plane in chains. Trump's executive orders declaring an 'invasion,' barring refugees from seeking safety, and getting rid of the few legal migration pathways available have laid the groundwork for mass raids and deportations across the country of longtime residents and newcomers alike. To defend these illegal and cruel actions, Trump and top White House officials are falsely conflating all immigrants with criminality and threats to the country. This is the same kind of rhetoric that motivated our national stain of internment. Meanwhile, Congress has put forward a budget resolution that cuts food assistance and health care to build more border walls and detention centers. If passed, ICE will have billions of dollars more to arrest our loved ones, neighbors and coworkers at job sites, schools, places of worship and their homes. Far too many are mothers and fathers who pose no risk to public safety but are nevertheless considered a threat and a 'criminal.' These arrests are eerily parallel to the FBI rounding up Japanese, German and Italian community leaders after Pearl Harbor. During World War II, the United States used the Alien Enemies Act and Executive Order 9066 to undercut civil rights and imprison innocent people and families in squalid camps. Using the Alien Enemies Act today to usurp our existing immigration laws and scapegoat immigrants repeats this shameful chapter. Congress should pass the Neighbors Not Enemies Act, which would finally repeal the Alien Enemies Act and prevent its abuse to target immigrants and deport them without basic due process. Politicians are once again sowing fear and xenophobia under the guise of national security. For the memory of my great-great-grandfather Sawaichi Fujita, and the thousands more that suffered this indignity 80 years ago, we must urgently act to stop repeating one of the darkest episodes in U.S. history.
Yahoo
04-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Alien Enemies Act Is an Unconstitutional Affront to Civil Liberties
The Trump administration has, for the fourth time in history,y invoked the war-time Alien Enemies Act of 1798 even though our nation is not at war—and its last use remains one of the most shameful episodes in American history. That involved President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 in 1942. It was the basis for the internment of around 112,000 people of Japanese descent, 70,000 of whom were American citizens. The Japanese internment should be of particular interest to Southern California readers, as The Orange County Register was the only major West Coast publication to oppose the internment as it was taking place. Other California newspapers have since bemoaned the injustice of incarcerating people based on their ethnicity and stripping them of their property. During the time, however, those newspapers often promoted fear of the Japanese. "It seems that we are remembering, belatedly, that more than two thirds of them are citizens…against whom no charge of disloyalty has been brought," argued one 1942 Register column. "It seems that throughout the land there is a mounting suspicion that their removal en masse became a 'military necessity' only after a carefully managed campaign of hysteria." Likewise, the current move to deport alleged alien criminals is driven by hysteria. For years, we've endured constitutional conservatives' bloviating about the importance of protecting the sacred principles enshrined in our Constitution. Those include the separation of powers—legislative, executive and judicial checks on one another—and due process. Many of these hypocrites are defending the administration's policies and bashing a judge for halting the hasty airlift of accused criminal aliens to a prison run by a banana-republic strongman—a directive the president promptly ignored. Perhaps most of these deportees are criminals and a threat (unlike peaceful Japanese residents who posed no threat whatsoever). They still deserve due process—their day in court, so to speak—to prove they have indeed violated the law. Constitutional conservatives of all people should understand that the government gets things wrong and individuals deserve protection from arbitrary actions by its agents. We've already seen examples of immigrants who were deported based on the government allegedly mistaking a soccer tattoo for gang insignia. Let's say you were walking around and, based on your attire or ethnic background, the police suspected you were a gang-banger and took you to jail. Wouldn't your first call be to your lawyer? Don't you deserve due process to prove you were a passerby before being shipped to Pelican Bay? (And non-citizens generally are considered persons under the Constitution—and also deserve due process.) The administration isn't just ignoring these constitutional due-process protections but seems to be actively mocking them. "What were all these young women that were killed and raped by members of (Tren de Aragua)—what was their due process?"" asked Tom Homan, director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Murder and rape always are horrific, but everyone still gets a trial to, you know, prove they actually committed the crime. If Homan is correct, then we should dispense with the criminal court system altogether. Meanwhile, Trump justified invoking the wartime law by describing the nation's immigration troubles as an invasion. If that's good enough for you, then any president can with a magic wand—and without congressional approval—describe any problem as a war and then exert nearly limitless powers. Perhaps the next Democratic president can call climate change a war and then just impose the Green New Deal by fiat. "Oopsie…Too late," Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele posted on X after the administration claimed it was too late to listen to a judge's order to stop the plane of deportees after it departed for his prison camp. As an aside, I find it appalling for Americans to savage a judge and our federal courts—and side with a man who, Amnesty International alleges, has used a state of emergency to commit "massive human rights violations, including thousands of arbitrary detentions." Savvy defenders of our freedoms—rather than those who throw around "constitutional" as a truncheon to advance their partisan goals—understand that massive expansions of government power always start with cases that draw few objections. No normal person is sympathetic to violent Venezuelan gang members, but once due process is ignored and everyone laughs at panty-waist judges, then the die is cast for other types of roundups and extrajudicial actions. Forty-six years after Executive Order 9066, President Ronald Reagan signed a law providing restitution to victims of the Japanese internment: "What is most important in this bill has less to do with property than with honor. For here we admit a wrong; here we reaffirm our commitment as a nation to equal justice under the law." Instead of issuing an apology in decades, perhaps our government can do the honorable thing now and uphold the principles of due process. This column was first published in The Orange County Register. The post The Alien Enemies Act Is an Unconstitutional Affront to Civil Liberties appeared first on
