Interviewed by Leonard Chan (LC)

Back in August of 2021, we had the pleasure of interviewing award winning mystery novelist Naomi Hirahara upon the release of her book “Clark and Division.”

Earlier this year, we were happy to reconnect with Naomi when she signed copies of her latest book, “Crown City,” for us at the Asian Pacific Americans in Higher Education Conference. Now she has joined us again for an interview about “Crown City.”

Thank you Naomi.

LC: A while back, I believe after you wrote “Sayonara Slam,” someone at one of your events that I was at asked you whether you were going to write another book in the Mas Arai series (your first mystery series). I recalled you saying something about how it was hard to continue the series because it was like the “Murder, She Wrote” TV series conundrum where murder and mystery seemed to follow the main character and how Cabot Cove (the hometown of that series) would be one of the murder capitals of the country, if it really had existed. 

In your newest novel “Crown City,” I had to take a second take on whether or not this book was really a part of the your Japantown Mystery series. I’m sorry to say that I did not read “Evergreen,” the second book in the series, and only read “Clark and Division” before I read “Crown City.”

First of all, congratulations on this novel and for figuring out a way to get around the cozy mystery series conundrum. For those that have not read any books in the series or have only read one or two of the books (like I have), tell our readers how these books are all connected. I can vouch for our newsletter readers that you do not need to have read the first two books in the series in order to read “Crown City.” Speaking for the contrary point, can you think of useful reasons for readers to read theother two books in the series before or after reading “Crown City”? It’s interesting how the three books take place in completely different time periods and locations from each other, and are still a part of the same series.

There’s an Irish mystery author named Tana French who writes the Dublin Murder Squad series. Her series is told from different members of the homicide division. In the same way, I decided that if I were to produce another series (and it was highly recommended that I do so by my publisher, based on the success of CLARK AND DIVISION), each installment would be loosely linked. The first two novels are told from my Nisei female protagonist’s POV, but they are essential bookends of the Japanese American resettlement story—from Chicago, the most popular destination from the 10 mass incarceration camps, back to the West Coast, specifically Los Angeles. I happened to make one of the minor characters, Louise, Aki’s older sister’s roommate in Chicago, from Pasadena. As a result, when I wanted to take a deep dive into my hometown of Pasadena, I decided to tell the immigration story of Louise’s father.

There’s an Easter egg at the end of EVERGREEN in which Louise writes a letter from Chicago to Aki in Los Angeles. She announces the birth of her son, whose middle name is Ryunosuke. Aki is wondering, what kind of name is that, and her husband explains that Ryunosuke was Louise’s father’s name. That’s how the connection is introduced.

LC: Like any works of historical fiction, readers and viewer are often left wondering what was real and what was fabricated. In the back pages of “Crown City” you includeduseful information and sources that you drew from. I didn’t read this until I got to the end of the book and I think I’m kind of glad that I didn’t look sooner. In a mystery novel, the real stories could act as a reveal to what may happen. Is that a problem when writing historical fiction mysteries?

It can be, but in the case of CROWN CITY, many of the real people, especially the Japanese American ones, are relatively unknown. Probably the most famous one is Tsuru Aoki, who would go on to marry silent film star Sessue Hayakawa. Even though Tsuru was the more established thespian when she met Sessue, he, of course, eclipsed her acting career.

CROWN CITY, more than any of my novels, is a kind of history book in that I’ve integrated so many real people in my narrative of my fiction characters. Since I was writing about my hometown, I didn’t want to fictionalize any big events or make major changes that would have changed the course of history.

LC: “Crown City” takes place in your home city of Pasadena, California. I’m guessing that you must have been learning historical information about Pasadena for a long time. Is this your first book that takes place in Pasadena? How long were you contemplating doing a story about the town and how did you finally choose the period and elements that got into your book? I read in the back of “Crown City” that one of the characters, James Logan, actually got murdered in real life a few years after the main part of this novel’s conclusion. Did you consider doing a story based around that murder?

The real inciting incident for me to write CROWN CITY was learning about Toshio Aoki’s cherry blossom dinner in spring of 1903 in which the wives of the titans of industry had gathered to eat Japanese food, listen to music played on the shakuhachi and commune underneath an artificial cherry blossom tree. And the event took place in Toshio’s art studio in one of the most storied buildings of Pasadena. It was difficult for me to reconcile the anti-Asian sentiment of the time with this embrace of Japanese culture. Of course, this brings up the issue of cultural appreciation vs. cultural appropriation. And perhaps an investigation of why people love the notion of Taco Tuesday but not the people who create and produce that food.

In terms of James Logan’s murder, it occurred three years later and had nothing to do with the Japanese immigrant community, so I didn’t go that path.

LC: I have worked with an author named David Newcomer on his books about Japanese gardens (“Public Japanese Gardens in the USA: Present and Past: Southern California” and “Public Japanese Gardens in the USA: Present and Past: Oregon, Washington and Hawaii”). David wrote about gardens that no longer existed and ones that still could be enjoyed today. As an aside, when I first opened to the inside cover of your book and saw a map of Crown City with GT Marsh’s Japanese Garden on it, I was immediately reminded that this was one of the places that David had wrote about. While working on his books, I thought it was kind of neat that there were non-Asians that really loved and appreciated Asian culture and aesthetics even in times where Asians were being discriminated against, harassed, persecuted, and driven out of parts of America. So how do you think the two can be happening at the same time? I seem to recall that the main character, Ryunosuke “Louie” Wada, even ponder the question.

In terms of the Japonisme movement, it’s a bit complicated and nuanced. Japan was an imperial power that had been closed to the west for so long. Finally, with the Meiji Era, the US and Europe are seeing the art work produced during Japan’s isolation. Their aesthetic principles involving architecture and art are so different from the west. The Japanese Pavilion created for the Chicago World’s Fair as representative of Japan’s power inspired a whole generation of American architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright and the Greene and Greene brothers. Now instead of the Victorian and more ornate characteristics of buildings, these architects considered more spared down, utilitarian structures that would bring the outside in.

At the same time, women, especially wealthy ones with means, were seeking ways to express their independence on their road to gaining the right of vote. Asian art and clothing, specifically Japanese, was embraced for their sophistication.

LC: Your fictional character, Louie Wada, seemed to dislike what he saw as cultural appropriation by the customers and patrons of the Marsh brothers’ Japanese fine arts store and Toshio Aoki (a real Japanese American artist that is one of the characters in the book). He seemed particularly disturbed by the faux Japanese outfit that he had to wear at Toshio Aoki’s Cherry Blossom dinner and the thought of having to work in the Marsh Japanese garden that was being created. Why did you portray Louie this way and do you think this view was prevalent among other Japanese workers that catered to the non-Asians that delighted in Japanese aesthetics? Did you find photos of the wait staff at the Toshio Aoki’s Cherry Blossom dinner (an event that really happened) that showed how they wore their kimonos over other clothes?

G.T. Marsh, the Australian immigrant who opened one of the first Asian art stores in San Francisco and perhaps the nation, also spearheaded the Japanese Village at the California Mid-Winter International Exposition of 1894. Toshio Aoki, who was working for Marsh, also participated in the creation of the space. There was a bit of a controversy over Marsh’s insistence that jinrikisha (rickshaw) be pulled by Japanese-appearing men as one of the features of the fair. Japanese immigrants protested, claiming that it would be demeaning. Marsh changed his plans and had German men in makeup pull the jinrikisha. I took that incident as a sign that not all Japanese were happy with appropriation and representation of Japanese culture.

By the way, the cherry blossom dinner in Pasadena was reported in newspapers across the country (that’s how I knew roughly what kind of food was being served). The Pasadena Museum of History had a wonderful photograph of all the white guests around the cherry blossom tree that I included in the book. And the dinner was also included in this Good Housekeeping book with descriptions of different ways to create a memorable entertaining experience. The book reminds me of something Martha Stewart would have released in 1903 if she was alive at that time. And yes, the book included an image of a group of Japanese workers preparing for the dinner. And they were wearing kimono over their street clothes.

[photo from the Good Housekeeping book]

LC: Tell us more about some of the real people portray in Crown City? Artist Toshio Aoki and his adopted daughter Tsuru seemed like interesting subjects. Were you able to find actual accounts of their personalities (things beyond their general list of works)? I didn’t know that Tsuru was a silent film actress that married the famed actor Sessue Hayakawa. Feel free to write about any of the other real people in your book and tell us something about them that you didn’t get to mention in the end notes.

In terms of Toshio Aoki, I was able to glean glimmers of his personality from his newspaper illustrations and brief essays. Concerning Tsuru, the American public television executive and filmmaker, Joseph L. Anderson, documented how the child actress came to San Francisco with her aunt and uncle, well-known in the Japanese theatre world. His book, Enter a Samurai: Kawakami Otojirō and Japanese Theatre in the West, provided invaluable details on Tsuru and the theatre troupe’s challenges dealing with discrimination in San Francisco. With that context, I became aware of the young Tsuru’s strength and perseverance. While there’s a lot of information on her husband, Sessue Hayakawa, there’s not much on Tsuru, sadly. I was delighted to find an article in the local Pasadena newspaper recording her attendance at a white classmate’s birthday party and had to include it in the novel!

Probably one of the most fascinating Japanese immigrant figures I came across was Fred Terusaburo Kuranaga. He was mentioned as a dominant labor contractor with the Southern Pacific Railroad in Yuji Ichioka’s seminal work, Issei. He led a more idiosyncratic life in Pasadena in that he operated a Japanese art and tea store and married a white woman. After much marital strife, the interracial couple finally divorced in 1914, which made the front page of the L.A. Times. The scandalous article included a photograph of not only the estranged wife but also the mixed-race daughter. He eventually lost his vast fortune and died in Los Angeles in 1934.

LC: At the very end of your end notes, you state there is not enough written about Japanese outcasts and the caste system. Prior to reading “Crown City,” I never gave it much thought except to note that there were the Samurai class and everyone else. So I think you are right – Americans don’t really know much about the Japanese caste system and how it may have played into the everyday lives of Japanese Americans. Non-Japanese Americans just kind of view Japanese Americans in a homogenized way, but the early Japanese immigrants to America brought with them their beliefs about class. Can you tell us a little more about what you learned about this?

I’ve always been interested in marginalized peoples and came across a book on the burakumin class in my local library while I was in either high school or college. I asked my mother, a native of Hiroshima, about it but she was totally unaware of such an underclass. But my father, a Kibei Nisei, who lived in Hiroshima during his childhood until after World War II, did know about this outcast class, probably because he was male and allowed to wander around different kinds of neighborhoods. I think I learned more about the burakumin in my Japanese language classes at Stanford and the Inter-University Center for Advanced Japanese Studies in Tokyo, where I studied for nine months after earning my bachelor’s degree in International Relations.

LC: Are you working on another book to the Japantown Mystery series and if so, where do you think you’ll go for the time and locationof this book? If you don’t have anything specific planned or are not at liberty to tell us about, then what are some of the interesting things that you are currently learning about?

My next novel in the Japantown Mystery series is J-Flats, and is scheduled to be released in February 2028. It’s set in 1959-60 East Hollywood in a working-class neighborhood that was home to one of many Sansei gangs in Southern California at precipitous period of Japanese American life. Hammer Ishimine, a former Zoot Suiter in the first two novels in the series returns as a now 35-year-old married man, father of two young girls and a gas station operator. He attempts to support a teenager accused in a killing of another gang member while a new character, a Nisei LAPD officer, vows to put the accused away in prison. It’s my version of L.A. Confidential!

LC: In our last interview back in 2021, we asked you for your favorite recent mystery novels by AAPI authors and or containing AAPI characters. Can you do that again for us?

I highly recommend Kerri Hakoda’s atmospheric thrillers set in Alaska with a mixed-race detective (his mother is Sansei). The first one, Cold to the Touch, was nominated for an Edgar Award, while the second, Too Deep to Cross, has scenes going back to Minidoka.

Tori Eldridge’s series set in Hawai’i are extremely detailed and rich. Her second, Hawai‘i Rage, which deals with the paniolo (Hawaiian cowboy) on the Big Island, has received much love from Honolulu Magazine.

My Soho Crime colleague, Ed Lin, has his hilarious Taipei Night Market series, which deals with serious topics in Taiwan with a comic flare. His latest is The Dead Can’t Make a Living.

Another Soho Crime author is the legendary Sujata Massey, the author of the Rei Shimura series, whose fourth Perveen Mistry set in British Colonial times is The Star from Calcutta.

There’s been a whole plethora of other new mysteries written by Asian American Pacific Islanders. The ones that have received a lot of attention are Liann Zhang’s Julie Chan Is Dead and Jane Pek’s The Verifiers. Mia Manansala, author of the popular Tita Rosie’s Kitchen mysteries, has expanded into writing YA books. I hope to make the time to read all of them soon!

LC: Thank you so much for doing this interview and for being a friend of ours and AACP.