Interviewed by Leonard Chan

Judith Kajiwara is the author of the picture book “Silly Green Mask.” She recently signed copies of her book for our patrons at the San Jose Obon Festival and she has agreed to do an interview with us.

LC: Hello Judy. First of all, tell our readers a little bit about yourself. Your biography says that you earned a degree in psychology from UC Berkeley and worked as a grassroots organizer. You are a person with many different hats – we’ll hopefully cover your other interests in this interview too. Was community service your primary life’s work and if so, tell us about some of the things you’ve worked on?

Community work was not my primary life’s work, but it has been the foundation for my need to sustain a grassroots connectedness to my community. During my student days I began working in San Francisco Manilatown as a member of the International Hotel Collective. During the 70s, the Asian American Movement had been formed by Asian American student leaders throughout the country. Locally, the work of the Asian American Movement was inspired by the UC Berkeley Third World Strike (link for more information on the wider Third World Liberation Front movement) and by the community services being set up by the Black Panther Party in Oakland. Ambitious Asian American students collectively organized services for their respective communities, many that still exist today. These include Japanese Community Youth Council (JCYC, founded in 1969); Kimochi (founded in 1971), Nihonmachi Little Friends (NLF, founded in 1975) in San Francisco; and J-Sei in the East Bay [founded in 1971, originally named East Bay Japanese for Action (EBJA)]. 

As part of the Asian American Movement, as a dancer, I conceived of and formed the Asian American Dance Collective (AADC) in 1972. Its purpose was to bring together Asian American dancers to teach classes, share ideas, perform, and collaborate on creating a dance form that represented and was relevant to our history and identity as Asian Americans. AADC later became Asian American Dance Performances (AADP) run successfully, for many years, by Claudine Naganuma. 

LC: The book description for “Silly Green Mask” says that you had the story for it sitting in a file cabinet for 40 years. Did you always know that you had the story somewhere and wanted to get it published someday? Tell us the genesis for the story – was it based on a similar experience with your daughters or some other experience that you had?

I guess all parents feel their children are exceptional little people. My oldest daughter, Tamiko, was quite unique and still is today. Silly Green Mask was written as a children’s story in 1980. It was based on an incident that happened when I was a young mother with two young daughters, who are the main characters in the book. Tamiko’s actions were so poignant, that I wanted to share it with other children as a storybook. I had asked my sister to illustrate it, but we both got busy with life and forgot about the project. I never thought about it for 40 years until I found the original typewritten manuscript in my files, two years ago. I reworked the story and was thrilled when award-winning illustrator, Felicia Hoshino, agreed to design and illustrate the book.

LC: For me, the message of the story is that love and compassion are more important than self gratification. The main character is only three and a half years old. Is it unusual for someone that young to learn this valuable lesson and if this was based on a real experience, was that why it stood out for you? Many adults even have trouble with this lesson. Perhaps it’s something for us all to be constantly reminded about.

That’s very well-said, Leonard. That’s exactly what I thought when I originally wrote the story. I have to admit, I was very surprised by Tamiko’s actions as a little girl. It’s such a simple lesson, but one which conjures up a lot of thought and feelings. I read every night to my children and grandson when they were young. I loved this special time together. None of the stories dealt with the emotions of a child. I thought Silly Green Mask did not fit the popular genre at that time but, 40 years later, I had lost that concern. In addition to sharing this simple lesson from a child, I wanted to publish the story as a legacy to my family and to Nihonmachi Little Friends (NLF). As a young mom, NLF was such a blessing for me and my children. I’m forever grateful for its nearly 50 years of service to families, its positive influence on our children, and its everlasting contribution to the legacy of Nihonmachi.

LC: You are a Butoh performer and teacher of this art form. I just read something about Butoh and compassion. Is there some connection between “Silly Green Mask,” Noh Theatre, and Butoh? Is there a connection between the green mask in your book and masks in Noh performances?

That’s an interesting question and thought experiment. Masks are really quite extraordinary. Covering up one’s face with a mask has the potential for unexpected transformations to occur, not only in children but also in adults. Butoh, unlike Noh, doesn’t use masks. However, in Butoh, the body and face are covered with white make-up much like in Noh. By the very action of applying make-up to the whole body is very transformative and allows the dancer to easily adapt to whatever character she or he is portraying. When I ran a Butoh performing ensemble, I once did an exercise where the dancers had to improvise duets while wearing their “life masks” which we had made for a specific performance. I was shocked. Wearing a mask brought out a lot more expression--more boldness and aggression--not normally exhibited by the dancers. Perhaps you can find similarities between the outcome of Tamiko wearing her silly green mask and the dancers wearing their life masks.

For me, Butoh is a form of storytelling. I always choreograph my solo pieces based on a chosen character, then create a beginning, middle and ending to that character’s journey. Like in Silly Green Mask, my Butoh stories culminate in a positive metamorphosis of the main character. It’s my hope that the lives of the viewers of Butoh, and the readers of Silly Green Mask, are touched in some way.

When and how did you get into performing Butoh? For those of us that are not familiar with Butoh, it looks quite unusual and perhaps hard to understand. Could you also give us a simple explanation of Butoh and ways to appreciate it?

As I mentioned earlier, I had formed the Asian American Dance Collective as a vehicle for finding a dance style unique to the Asian American experience. Not one that mimicked western dance forms such as modern and ballet, nor required a university dance degree to make a dancer credible. I’ve always resonated with the concept of “grassroots.” Grassroots implies that everyone, regardless of training, can have the opportunity to study and perform dance. I started teaching dance when I was in my early 20s at the Japanese Community Youth Council (JCYC) in San Francisco’s Nihonmachi. My mission was to teach “non-dancers,” those young folks who’d never been encouraged to learn dance. This baby step led me to the realization that my life mission was to be a community dance teacher and choreographer.

In the course of developing my own dance style, I gravitated toward performing and teaching “improvisational” dance. Improvisational dance is freely dancing in the moment whatever one feels. By chance, in the late 70s I noticed a small ad for a performance by a dance company called Harupin Ha. It was a company that had just arrived from Japan, led by Hiroko and Koichi Tamano, students of Tatsumi Hijikata, one of the founders of Butoh dance. I’d never heard of Butoh and was very curious to see it. The performance was so bizarre and scary, I wanted to run out of the tiny theater! I forced myself not to cause a scene by leaving. By the last piece, a solo by Koichi, I didn’t realize I’d entered an altered state of consciousness and was “seeing” the performance from a different lens. Koichi was sitting on a swing, his ugly white body exposed a few feet away from me. I began sobbing quietly as a memory of myself as a 3-year-old child emerged. I was sitting alone, feeling very sad and forgotten, on my homemade swing my father had made for us. My mother had suddenly gone to the hospital to give birth to my younger sister. I knew life would change from then on and it surely did.

That experience sold me on Butoh and my search for a dance form was over. I secretly promised myself I’d one day become a Butoh dancer. Butoh, which originated in the late 50’s in Tokyo, was the bridge I’d been looking for—the bridge between being American and Japanese. Because of its post-war origin, for Japanese artists, it carried an outspoken, rebellious essence--rebellion against western dance forms that had started to influence Japan, and the perfection and elitism of traditional performance arts such as Noh. Oddly, Butoh reflected my intentions for the Asian American Dance Collective. In 1994, shortly after my 4th child was born, I decided it was time to start self-exploring Butoh. In 1995, I performed my first Butoh solo at the Theatre of Yugen’s NOHspace in San Francisco. It was called The Ballad of Machiko.

Butoh is often performed excruciatingly slow. Its body movements are painfully contorted and labored. This, along with its abnormal timing and lack of cadence, easily places the dedicated viewer into an altered state. Butoh gives both viewer and performer the time and space to enter the infinite world of one’s inner soul—a place where one’s thoughts, images, memories and feelings are revealed.

LC: You are also a practitioner of Reiki energy healing. Tell us more about Reiki – is it similar to acupressure? Is there also a connection with Butoh? I read something about how Butoh was kind of meditative and that the viewers could be brought into that meditative state.

Yes, you’re so right about Butoh being meditative! Yes, there is a correlation between Reiki energy healing and, if you will, Butoh energy healing. Reiki is a channeling of healing energy (ki) from the Universe into your hands and into the body of the receiver. Like Butoh, it’s very spiritually-based. Unlike acupressure, Reiki applies no pressure. It is just the laying on of hands. Reiki knows where to go. Like Butoh, both require a meditative state. This allows messages--received through thoughts, images, memories and feelings--to enter one’s consciousness. Messages inform the Reiki practitioner about the client’s needs, just as messages inform the Butoh practitioner about one’s inner soul feelings. They say that “to feel is to heal” so, yes, Butoh and Reiki are both pathways for deep inner healing.

LC: Your biography mentions that you grew up in the California Central Valley town of Livingston and you wrote to me of your mother’s connection with Florence Hongo’s mother. For our new newsletter readers, Florence Hongo was the long time head AACP and one of its founders.

Please tell our readers about this connection and also of your Butoh performances based on Florence’s mother. I loved that email you shared with me and hope the family gets to read this. Please feel free to also tell us about growing up in Livingston on a grape farm like Florence did.

It so happens that my very first Butoh solo performance was called The Ballad of Machiko. Florence lived nearby my hometown farm community of Livingston, California. Like Florence, my father was a grape farmer, though a Nisei. I remember my Nisei mother (born in 1919) telling me stories of the hardships endured by the Issei women who were farmers' wives. In particular, she told me about her friend, Florence's mother, who shared snippets of her life with my mother. Like all good Issei women, she worked long hours in the field, did all the cooking, cleaning, while taking care of many children. Before sunrise and after sunset, it was endless work. My mother was both saddened and inspired by her strength. I too was very moved by learning of the life of this remarkable Issei woman. She became my inspiration for The Ballad of Machiko. I performed it many times afterwards as it kept evolving. I felt my character, Machiko, was speaking through me. Each time I performed the piece, her voice got louder and more courageous. I never told Florence that I'd choreographed and performed a piece based on the spirit of her mother.

LC: So do you have other stories that you may be considering to turn into children’s books? Do you possibly have a sequel to “Silly Green Mask”?

At this time, I have no thoughts of writing another children’s book. I want to keep teaching dance and performing stories through Butoh for as long as I can. I’ll also keep writing my real-time documentation of personal stories and spiritual impressions of the COVID pandemic’s impact upon the future of humanity—an ongoing research project I started in March 2020.

Thank you very much for doing this interview with us and for coming to the San Jose Obon to sign your books. We hope we have more chances for you to meet the public at some upcoming events.

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Various Links

- Videos of some of Judith's butoh performances

- Judith's dance collective OnenessButoh