NIKKEI VIEW: The Asian American Blog

Iva Toguri D’Aquino died Sept. 26, at age 90, in Chicago. You might not know her, or remember her today, but she was a victim of circumstance who was once one of the most hated women in the United States.
You might not know her, but you might know her nickname: Tokyo Rose.

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Pitchfork has published a rambling list of the “200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s,” beginning with the Kinks’ “Sunny Afternoon” at 200 and ands with the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows” at #1 (presumably — the final 20 aren’t numbered). It’s an interesting list because it’s in a British publication, and these songs were chosen [...]

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Think “ukulele” and you’ll invariably get a quaintly exotic image in your head (and the wrong pronunciation – it’s “oo-koo-leh-leh,” not “you-koo-leh-leh”): warm sun, swaying grass skirts, coconut bras, colorful cocktails with umbrellas, and palm trees and a beach in the background.
It’s true, the ukulele is a stringed instrument that was born in Hawai’i (albeit [...]

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I grew up – like all baby boomers – during an era of radio when the Top 40 format was perfected during the first two decade of rock and roll, and genres didn’t divide up into separate formats. An entire generation of pop music fans pretty much grew up listening to a wild mix of [...]

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One of my ongoing passions is pondering the passing of pop culture references. Baby boomers have lived through decades of new hip phrases — for instance, the hip word for “good” has evolved every few years, from “cool” to “groovy” to “far out” (thanks to John Denver for killing that one off by using it [...]

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I finally saw Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake of “King Kong,” and I’m afraid I was underwhelmed. It was corny, and overly long and not engaging, even when the excitement factor revved up for the final third of the film. It reminded me that although Hollywood has been making monster movies since the original 1933 “King [...]

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One great thing about living in the New York area is the simple fact of its diverse population. I’ve been shopping regularly at various Asian markets in the area — a Japanese grocery store in Manhattan; the huge Japanese supermarket, Mitsuwa, in northern Jersey; the Korean Han Ah Reum (better known as H-Mart) — and [...]

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I’m watching “JFK: Breaking the News,” a documentary on WNET, one of the New York area’s PBS stations, about the media coverage of the November, 1963 assassination of president John F. Kennedy. It’s fascinating because in analyzing the way both print and broadcast journalists scrambled in Dallas after the shooting, the program shows how it [...]

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