One of the many pleasant surprises that making art has brought me is connecting me with the Japanese American community in Seattle. Growing up, my exposure to other Japanese Americans was limited to those I met through Japanese school - mostly first and second generation, halfies, kids who were temporarily here for their parent’s work, etc. After I quit Japanese school in high school and as I got older, I met fewer and fewer Japanese Americans, but my understanding of Japanese Americans was still largely informed by the bubble I grew up in.
Over the past couple years, as I’ve started to explore what being Japanese American means to me and making art about it, I’ve also had the opportunity to cross paths with many Japanese Americans who resonated with my work or were artists themselves. Through these many serendipitous encounters, I have learned about the many ways in which we are similar, but also different. I'll admit, a part of me used to subconsciously believe that all Japanese people were more or less the same (which I partially attribute to an internalized white gaze). Now, I see just how diverse we are in our family histories, our knowledge of Japanese culture, the way we relate to our Japanese identities, and our overall lived experiences.
In celebration of the diversity of the Japanese American community, I illustrated this set of faces, all made with the same hiragana characters (へのへのもへじ), but each stylized differently to showcase our colorful array of differences. ♡