San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
J-TOWN GIRL ROCKS TRADITION
In 1897, Emperor Meiji sent my grandfather to San Francisco to found the first Japanese settlement in America. He was Issei, first-generation immigrant, and Japantown is still here today. In photographs I have of him, he sports a thick mustache and is always wearing a suit. My parents’ generation, the Nisei, never wore kimono because in the 1940s, being Japanese was what landed them in U.S. prison camps. But I remember, in the 1970s, seeing sweet old Issei women in kimono riding the 38-Geary to J-town. (Now, of course, the Asian Art Museum exhibition, “Kimono Refashioned,” is on display through May 5.)
I love kimono. But my Chinese, Japanese, Spanish and Scots body wasn’t made for them. My first time wearing one was for a “United Airlines Flies to Japan” TV commercial. I called a nihon buyo sensei ( Japanese classical dance teacher), who graciously let me borrow a kimono and offered to dress me. But her face fell when we met at her studio in J-town.
Good thing I can’t understand Japanese. She began saying disparaging things as she dressed my American body, cramming wadded-up newspaper between my breasts, wrapping my torso in a beach towel and flattening me tight with strings. She explained that I needed to be a “pure column” for the kimono. When she wrapped the obi around me, she put her foot in the small of my back, squeezing the life out of me as she tied the bow — the only thing that keeps a kimono closed. I looked great, but could barely breathe. I could hardly walk. Then I drove myself to SFO in my ’69 stick-shift VW Bug. Pumping the clutch, losing all her hard work, I was a complete disaster upon arrival.
Around this time, I began a sevenyear apprenticeship with San Francisco’s Theatre of Yugen, a Kyogen (traditional comedic theater) company founded by my teacher, Yuriko Doi, whose sensei is Nomura Mansaku, considered a national living treasure of Japan. In those days, we were a troupe of five women and were blessed to have regular master classes with Mansaku-Sensei. I proudly remember performing with him at the Herbst Theatre. I put everything I had into my role as a mushroom! He invited us to Japan, and we trained at Chusonji, a UNESCO World Heritage temple with a real Noh stage. In Japan, Kyogen is only performed by men. The press was fascinated because we were American and women.
I had finally learned how to dress myself in kimono, but only as a man.
I came to appreciate traditional kimono patterns: The narrow triangles that represented Hanya, the Demon Woman, the hexagon Turtle Shell, symbolizing the World Mountain. The colors: vermillion for the Sun Goddess. The gorgeous purple called murasaki, which dates back before Buddhism came to Japan in the sixth century and was made from
rocked a kimono, above, in a Jefferson Starship video for “No Way Out” (1988). A playwright and storyteller, she’s also seen, left, in her solo show “Aunt Lily’s Flower Book: One Hundred Years of Legalized Racism.” shells collected by the ama, female divers, who swim topless like mermaids.
By the ’80’s, I was tired of going to auditions for pidgin-English-speaking cooks or washed-up geisha. All the good roles seemed to be for long-legged blondes. A friend dared me to go to one of those auditions. I dressed in my best “Kabuki punk” look with a red wedding kimono hiked to my hips, did a little fan dance on my short Japanese legs, and the director loved it. He rewrote the whole music video to center around me.
Luckily, I was a Motown girl, because I would have been intimidated had I recognized the names Jefferson Starship, Grace Slick or Paul Kantner. I was relaxed and comfortable and made friends with the guitar player, Paul, because I figured him to be a gig artist like me. Later, when he invited me to perform for the reopening of the historic Fillmore Auditorium, I donned my only kimono again. Paul added an 8-foot neon pole, and I danced on top of the long bar, swinging my pole like a samurai and stomping my boots because I was scared to death of the screaming rockers trying to grab my feet.
I shared my dressing room with Robin Williams, who was nervous because “This is my hometown and I want to give ’em my best.” He grabbed my fan and danced around our dressing room singing, “There’s no business like Noh business!”
I still love kimono — the older the better. Today when I perform I like to wear men’s haori (short jackets) inside out. All over the world, young people are coming back to their roots, but they’re rocking their traditional threads in new ways. In Shinjuku, I’ve seen young men in hakama (traditional pants) sporting leather jackets, and girls wearing kimonos loose over jeans. Recently, when I was performing in South Carolina, some African American teens showed up wearing kimono correctly. They spoke Japanese that they’d taught themselves over the Internet because they wanted to understand anime in the original language. They were beautiful.
I think the highest compliment an artist can receive is when the whole world gets your work. Today, the spirits of kimono makers past must be happy when they see their art still being worn. When you wear a kimono, honor the silkworms whose cocoons create that elegant flow; the flowers, rocks and plants that created the colors; the dyers who stood in chilly rivers rinsing to get just the perfect shade; the seamstress whose hands stitched it together; the people who owned the kimono before and whose lives are now woven in the fabric.
This precious garment found you. Now it’s up to you to rock it in your own special way.