CLINE:
Today is May 18, 2010. This is Alex Cline interviewing Johnny Mori .
We’re at the (Aratani) Japan America Theater in the Little Tokyo
area of downtown Los Angeles. This is our first session. Good
morning.
MORI:
Good morning. How you doing?
CLINE:
Okay. Sometimes those really mighty cell phones create cellular
disturbance in the recording, so if you get a call, everything goes
haywire.
MORI:
Really?
CLINE:
Yes. It hasn’t happened for a while, but a couple years ago I had a
couple of sessions where I wouldn’t have known until I listened to
it back. You know that fabulous sound that gets picked up by
amplifiers and things sometimes? (demonstrates) It would just start
doing that really loud. At least it isn’t in close proximity to the
machine. That seems to be part of the problem. Or maybe they’re
making them these days so that they’re a little less disturbing.
Okay. We’re going to do what we always do in these sessions, which
is start at the beginning. So I’ll start with a very simple and
straightforward, if totally obvious, question. Where and when were
you born?
MORI:
I was told I was born on November 30, 1949 in Salt Lake City, Utah.
That’s where my birth certificate tells me.
CLINE:
Really? Wow. Okay.
MORI:
I was just told this on Thursday, but I can’t remember. I have to
look at it and see whether or not it was on Thanksgiving Day, which
I don’t think so. Something like that.
0:02:12.0
CLINE:
I’m thinking that this question will lead up to why you were in Salt
Lake City when you were born, but let’s start with your parents,
first with your father. What do you know about your father’s family
background? Maybe you could tell us his name and what he did.
MORI:
His name was Yasuo Mori. His legal name was Sam Yasuo Mori. His
birth name was Ishigaki Yasuo, surname first. He was one of eight
children. He was born in Yokaichi in the Myagi Prefecture in Japan.
I believe he came to the United States illegally through, I believe,
either it was on a boat, but it was a (unclear) passport, which I
heard. And just coincidentally, the name on the passport was T, as
in Tom, last name Mori. But that was a coincidence, and I have no
idea how popular the term “Mori” means. Mori in Japanese, the
characters create three trees, which refers to a forest. So Mori in
Japanese means “forest.” But he came over, and he came over to live
or to visit with his sister, one of his sisters that was right above
him, older than him. I don’t remember how he fell into the sequence
of the eight children. I think he might have been number five or
six. I don’t think he was the youngest. So he ventured to the United
States, and he was farming with, I guess, my aunt. They were farming
in different numerous places in Southern California. I believe what
is significant about a lot of situations pertaining to the Japanese,
Japanese American history in Southern California and pretty much in
North America and all over the world was the significance of the war
in the Pacific (World War II) that the United States declared war
against Japan right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7,
1942 (sic). So at that time they were farming in the Mar
Vista-Venice area of Southern California, I believe pretty close to
Jefferson (Boulevard) and Lincoln Boulevard, in that area.
0:05:27.6
CLINE:
Wow. Down near the (Ballona) Wetlands.
MORI:
Yes. Exactly. When they heard the war broke out, the family went to
Utah, where the city of Salt Lake City was a free zone, so to speak,
in which those that were of Japanese ancestry could live without
being put into relocation camps.
CLINE:
So how long was your father here before he went to Salt Lake City?
MORI:
That’s a good question. I think he was here, I think, about two or
three years. About two or three years, and then they went back to
Salt Lake City. So that was in the beginning, early forties to mid
forties, 1940s.
CLINE:
Do you have any idea how old your father would have been at that
point?
MORI:
You know, that’s a good question. I know my mom was born in 1921,
and I think my dad was maybe eight or nine years older than that, so
he was probably born in 1910. So he was probably in his twenties,
thirties. 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940s. Something like that. If you do
the math, he’s probably older than that when he got married and
stuff.
CLINE:
So for someone unmarried, he was almost kind of on the older side.
MORI:
Yes, I believe so. I’ll have to go back and look at my birth
certificate. It’s really curious that he came to the United States,
and I’m not sure why after the war. I guess he decided to make a
life for himself here in the United States. He was the only son
amongst eight children, so he had seven sisters. He was the only
son. In Asian families, the son, the first son or the only son
pretty much is the holder, keeper of the name of the family, and
whether or not he gets, earns the family assets, so to speak, is
passed on. So I never knew why he didn’t go back to Japan, although
I think in the late sixties, early seventies he and my mom went back
to Japan. I guess there was some property in Japan that was in his
name, though he signed it over to a person in Japanese we call a
yoshi, which married one of the sisters and took on the family name,
which he also did too.
0:09:02.8
CLINE:
Oh, interesting.
MORI:
So move up a little bit here in that he married my mother, who,
coincidentally, last name was Mori> . (laughter)
CLINE:
I was wondering how that was going to work.
MORI:
Right. Exactly. So he legally took on the name, became a citizen,
and he legally changed his name to Mori.
CLINE:
What was his family’s business? Were they farmers as well, do you
know?
MORI:
I would suspect they would be farmers, I believe. I’m not exactly
sure, to tell you the truth. Unfortunately, I have had only a brief
conversation over some extended period of time that I ever asked a
cousin of mine from Japan what the family business was, but I
believe they probably farmers at that time. So that’s why he was in
Salt Lake City, and they were probably, more than likely, working on
a farm in Utah, which I know they were doing summertime in the sugar
beet farm. And then during the wintertime all of them worked at—a
majority of them worked at, or a lot of them worked at Hotel Utah in
Salt Lake City.
CLINE:
Interesting.
MORI:
Yes. So that was kind of like, you know, the winter work, so to
speak. Then they did whatever necessary that they needed to do.
0:10:52.6
CLINE:
So your mom and dad met in Salt Lake City then?
MORI:
So then that’s part of what that I understand what my dad is. So
basically in Japanese he’s known as an Issei, or first-generation,
here in the United States. My mother’s considered to be a Nisei,
second-generation American of Japanese ancestry. So her parents were
here. They’re from Yokaichi Fukuoka. I’m not exactly sure what city.
That’s where my dad was from, but they’re from Fukuoka. I’m not
exactly sure why they came to the United States, although I know
that there were seven sisters.
CLINE:
(laughs) Again?
MORI:
Yes, again, and all of them were born in the United States. So my
mom, being born in 1921, she was in the middle. Anyway, she was the
fourth, and so between her and the next sister there was less than a
year. What we called grandfather, Jichan, he was pretty busy. Very
busy. I guess he was trying for a boy. So you figure if she was born
in ’21, 1920, Dad was born in 1918, then the older one could have
been born in 1916, something like that. This is a rough guess.
CLINE:
Persistent.
0:15:33.60:18:44.90:20:47.1
MORI:
Yes. So obviously they came over to the United States 1914, ’15,
some place in there, I guess. They could have come in, yes,
something like that, and he immediately started a family. I have no
idea. My grandfather was a gardener. I think he was a gardener.
Again, significantly, the outbreak of the war, and my mom was born
in Los Angeles. I believe she was born in West Los Angeles, I
believe. Again, I’d have to look at the birth certificate. You know,
she could have been born in Gardena. I take that back. She might
have been born in Gardena, but grew up in the West Los Angeles,
which they call the Sawtelle area. She went to Nora Sterry
Elementary School. They were, I guess, moving different places in
Southern California, and then they were in South Orange County in
San Onofre area and they were farming, and I think she had gone to
San Onofre High School. I think they were farming and working in San
Onofre when the war broke out. She ended up in Poston (Internment
Camp), Arizona, and was interned there.
Then the family, the sisters, they were in their twenties when the
war broke out. She was born in 1921. They were at least in their mid
twenties. So prior to that, the oldest one, the second one, the
third one were married, and they, I guess, were living with their
families. The top two were in Manzanar (Internment Camp). Well, the
oldest one was in Manzanar. The second one, I think, was also in
Poston. The third one, she was in Heart Mountain (Internment Camp).
And then my mom and the rest of her sisters were in Poston. My
oldest aunt, the oldest sister, she passed away giving birth in
camp. I had heard stories about that situation. I knew they said she
passed away in camp. You probably have explanation of why it’s
considered called a camp. Naturally, it’s relocation camp. It’s also
been known as concentration camp, also relocation center, different
number of names. So when I talk about camp in this particular
situation, it’s not about summer camp, it’s not about some other
kind of camp; it is incarceration of if you were Japanese American
or Japanese, you were stuck into relocation camps, in the camps
throughout the United States. So the older one, she died in camp.
She died in camp. Later on I didn’t know she passed away giving
birth. Then fifty years’ anniversary of the war, in the nineties
Life magazine came out with a special edition of the war in the
Pacific, and in it it had pictures of the relocation camps, and one
of them was a funeral. I had never seen this picture in the family
before. It was a picture of a funeral of my oldest aunt in Manzanar,
and the caption underneath it, which was taken by Toyo Miyatake. He
was the photographer who snuck a lens and some hardware to make a
camera, so he made a box camera, and I think he smuggled in some
film or he had film smuggled in. And while he was in camp in
Manzanar, he pretty much documented the history of the relocation
camps.
So the caption underneath it said something to the fact of the
Japanese were very resourceful in that they made their own flowers.
They made pretty much artificial flowers. They made their own
flowers because they couldn’t get fresh flowers in the Owens Valley
because the weather was just too harsh one way or the other. So
anyway, I saw the picture and I go—my mom showed it to me and she
goes, “Can you recognize anybody pictured?” And I looked at it and
looked at it and I go, “Yeah, that’s obachan,” which is grandmother
in Japanese, “and ojichan.” And I go, “That’s you and that’s Auntie
so-and-so and that’s Auntie so-and-so and that’s Uncle so-and-so.”
And I looked at it again and I saw the picture and I read the
caption and I go, “Okay, who has the original? Somebody’s got to
have the original.” I guess my oldest cousin had it from the oldest
surviving sister. She may have gotten a copy. But eventually I got a
copy of it from an acquaintance of one of the grandsons from Toyo
Miyatake and I asked him and he found it. Ever since, I’ve got a
print of that. That was their experience in camp, and the camp thing
is another thing we can get into a little bit later on also, too,
but it could be endless. But growing up, they all talked about camp,
and when I was a kid, the only experience I had at camp I was in the
Cub Scouts (of America), Boy Scouts (of America), so I thought it
was summer camp, and they talk about social things like that. But
then as you got older and older, you go, okay, this is the regular
summer camp. This, like, lasted three or four years, so there’s
something different about it. But when I was a kid, they just talked
about camp.
So my mother was in Poston, and I guess she may have—when they came
out of camp, they relocated back to Los Angeles. I’m not exactly
sure where they went when they first arrived in Los Angeles. I know
there’s a couple of assembly places, so to speak, whether it be
previously Japanese Buddhist temples or other Community Centers that
people kind of gathered toward in the communities in which they
left, whether it be Little Tokyo, whether it be Orange County,
Venice area. Those are pretty much centers where they came back to
where they knew they could possibly, within a large gathering of
people, kind of share resources from their experience in camp and
stuff. They ended up in an area which is now, I guess, called
Arlington Heights, Jefferson Park area, which is between Adams
Boulevard in Jefferson and a few blocks either east and west of
Arlington Avenue and some other ethnic cultural communities. That
was also known as Sugar Hill. Sugar Hill was one of the few places
in which African Americans could also live, and it was right along
the site where the houses that were being built there and the size
of the property were being built there—this was before Beverly
Hills. So the mayor and all the dignitaries from the city and
downtown Los Angeles lived in that particular area, so the houses
were beautiful. The sizes of the property were huge. They’re still
as huge today too. So they lived on Twenty-seventh Street right off
of Arlington, and I think they all kind of sort of went there, kind
of met at my grandparents’ house. And then from there they were able
to find an apartment, a duplex to which my mom still lives in the
same place today.
0:23:21.1
CLINE:
Wow.
MORI:
Yes. That was after they came back from Salt Lake City to Los
Angeles. I guess they came back to Los Angeles, and then through in
Japanese it’s called a baishakunin, so I believe this particular
marriage was arranged, and a friend introduced acquaintances,
introduced my mom to my dad. My dad was in Utah, and I think my mom
may have gone to Utah after the relocation camp, met him, and they
came back to Los Angeles, and then eventually moved to Salt Lake
City, and they got married in Salt Lake City. I have one older
brother. His name is Sam, and he was born in 1947, June. I was born
November 30, 1949, so we’re about two and a half years apart. I was
also born in Salt Lake City, but I believe we left six months to a
year after I was born in Salt Lake City, I believe, or it could have
been a year and a half. Everybody’s memory of when we moved out here
is kind of sort of vague, but I believe pretty much it was in the
early fifties. So we moved back to L.A. in the early fifties. I
think we—well, I know we did, we rented a two-bedroom duplex, and
they eventually purchased the property. I’m not exactly sure when. I
can’t even remember when they did, because I think of all the alien
land laws, so to speak, of being able to own property.
CLINE:
Yes. Housing covenants.
MORI:
Right. Exactly. And being Japanese American right after the war. So
I’m not exactly sure when all that got cleared up and stuff.
CLINE:
Yes. The housing covenants were struck down some time during the
fifties.
0:26:37.5
MORI:
Right. So they eventually were able to save enough money, put a down
payment. While in Salt Lake City, I guess my dad did a number of odd
jobs, like I explained, worked on sugar beet farms, worked in Hotel
Utah. He actually ran a restaurant, is what I heard. He made tofu.
He was the only tofu maker in Salt Lake City, so he supplied other
families and, I guess, another restaurant maybe, making and selling
tofu. So that was pretty hard work, raising two kids and doing the
restaurant thing. This was a small diner, I think.
So then they moved. I guess he was looking for a different
profession and stuff like that. And as a majority of the Japanese
Americans, after they came back, I wouldn’t say a majority, but a
lot of them got into gardening. It was a self-employed business. It
was a service thing, you know, something that—I wouldn’t say it was
easy to get into, but you put into it as much as you get out of it,
so to speak. So I guess a lot of folks coming out of camp pretty
much got into gardening. It was an independent business. Then you
just have to learn enough English to talk to your customers.
Basically you just hit the streets and just knock on doors and see
if people need it. That was the boom of the housing and everything
like that. We lived near a major intersection; it was La Brea
(Avenue) and Washington (Boulevard), which is a part of Los Angeles.
It was part of the Tenth District, so to speak. It was a little bit
further west of where the Japanese American used to call this
section of Los Angeles Seinan area.
CLINE:
Which is more towards Crenshaw.
0:29:02.2
MORI:
Correct. Exactly. Right off of Crenshaw Boulevard. There were
different pockets of Japanese Americans growing up in Los Angeles.
Prior to the war, probably it’s safe to say, even though it’s not
documented, the majority of the people lived in Boyle Heights or
East L.A. They all pretty much lived in that area. And then in
Little Tokyo area, which is pretty much bordered by L.A (Los
Angeles) River on the east and went west as far as Bunker Hill, so
to speak and Temple (Street) and south of Temple all the way down
to, like, the produce market (Los Angeles Wholesale Produce Market),
which is down on Ninth (Street) and San Pedro (Street). So all in
that area was residential for a lot of single Japanese men.
It was pretty tough to raise a family in downtown L.A. Of course,
again, the schools and the shops and this other stuff, so people
starting migrating southwest of downtown Los Angeles, but still
along streetcar routes, pretty much streetcar routes. There was
fairly open space and acceptance of Japanese in the Seinan area,
which is west of Sugar Hill. So that was considered to be what we
call the old Westside.
CLINE:
Earlier when you mentioned the movement toward the neighborhood, you
described Jefferson Park. That area I was going to say, that was the
Westside.
0:31:58.3
MORI:
Correct. Right. It pretty much went from the natural border of the
110 Freeway, which is the Harbor Freeway, everything west up until
maybe La Brea (Avenue) or La Cienega (Boulevard), and from a little
bit above Olympic (Boulevard) all the way down to, let’s say,
Slauson (Avenue) or something like that, that particular area. But
it was concentrated within Adams (Boulevard) and Jefferson and Santa
Barbara Avenue, which is now Martin Luther King (Jr. Boulevard), so
within that area. On Jefferson Boulevard there were a number of
Japanese stores. There were two Japanese grocery stores. There was a
soft goods store, like a Five and Ten kind of a store, on Jefferson.
There were doctors and dentists that had offices on Jefferson,
restaurants, all types of businesses, real estate, insurance kind of
stuff all on Jefferson Boulevard, and they pretty much catered to
the neighborhood. Also in there were African Americans, still quite
a few whites, so to speak, Caucasians. I don’t think there were very
many Latinos at that particular time, hardly any at all. The other
part, again, was East L.A., and they’re already established before
the war, and they had a connection with Little Tokyo by the bridges,
First Street, Fourth Street Bridge, so that was accessible to come
over the river.
So that’s pretty much why I kind of sort of grew up in that
particular area. On the block it was very mixed, African Americans,
quite a few Caucasians. There were other Japanese American families
on the block, three or four, five, six blocks away, within three or
four blocks away, scattered families with kids either younger than
older than us, a lot of them older than us. So it was a mixed
community. It was a pretty mixed community. We’d all play together.
Behind our houses was a big empty lot, and we played football,
baseball, flew kites. Couple of other kids got into a lot of
airplane flying and stuff, so that was a pretty big deal to be able
to do that. The neighborhood was really interesting in that we had R
and B (rhythm and blues) legend Johnny Otis live on the block. I
don’t know her real name, but Sapphire from Amos ‘n’ Andy, she lived
in this house right next to the empty lot, and she’d always yell at
us to get out of the empty lot, and we did play baseball. We did
break one of her windows with the baseball. Somebody hit through her
window. Miko Tako from Sayonara, she lived on the other side of the
block with her kids. My mom and dad eventually bought the duplex
plus this other duplex that was on the same property. It was two
duplexes on the same property, not a fourplex. And this other actor
from Hawaii, *Ponsi Pons (sp? - QUERY), who was on TV, and he lived
in the apartment. So, different number of folks lived in the
neighborhood.
CLINE:
Interesting.
MORI:
That became pretty interesting as far who came out of the
neighborhood.
0:34:23.7
CLINE:
Did you have any other siblings eventually, or was it just you and
your older brother?
MORI:
Just myself and older brother, just two boys in the family.
CLINE:
So where did you go to school?
MORI:
Elementary school, we went to this elementary school Alta Loma
(Elementary School). Junior high school, even though now they’re
called middle school, junior high school we went to Mount Vernon
Junior High School. And then high school, went to Los Angeles High
School. Then in the sixties they built the 10 Freeway, cut through
the center of that section of Los Angeles, southwest section all the
way out to Santa Monica. So it kind of like was built a little bit
north of Adams Boulevard, so Adams was kind of like the natural
boundary between us going to L.A. High School or us going to Dorsey
(High School) because Mount Vernon fed L.A. High School and Dorsey.
So a lot of kids that kind of grew up around the Crenshaw Boulevard
area, they went to Dorsey. The summer schools at that time, which is
in the sixties, summer school high schools, you could go to any high
school that you wanted to during summertime. If you had
transportation to get to whatever school you wanted to do, you could
have gone to some school out in West L.A. or Venice or out in the
(San Fernando) Valley at the time. You could go anywhere. So one
summer I went to Dorsey, just kind of hung out and had fun all
summer. Did a little bit of studying, got passing grades. But that
was pretty interesting.
0:36:10.3
CLINE:
So in terms of your family culture now, what language was mostly
being spoken at home?
0:40:30.4
MORI:
My father predominantly spoke Japanese in the house. He understood
as much English as I probably understood Japanese or more. He
probably understood more English than I understood Japanese. So
Japanese terminology, I talked about the Issei and the Nisei, and
now I talk about the Sanseis, which is third-generation Americans of
Japanese ancestry. So basically it was part of the baby boomer
generation, and so there was quite a few Japanese Americans growing
up in that particular area to, I guess, have different cultural
significant or cultural churches and social activities and Community
Centers strictly pertaining to Japanese and Japanese Americans. It
pretty much started with the Issei, the first generation, in terms
of helping to continue Japanese culture, now, through different
ways. There were judo clubs. So this is basically in the sixties, or
actually the fifties, fifties and sixties. Since my father spoke
predominantly Japanese, my mother spoke Japanese also, too, again
because her family pretty much spoke Japanese with an American
education very similar to my experience. So at the dinner table
pretty much they spoke in Japanese and then broke out into English
when school or whatever subject that we had to deal with and our
schedules and our activities. I’m pretty sure my dad understood
quite a bit. And then when a poignant subject came up, they pretty
much spoke Japanese so we wouldn’t understand. Some of it, just
osmosis, you pick up on it and know. Then I guess when we were like
first, second graders, they enrolled us in Japanese language school,
which is part of this dai ichi gakko-en, which had maybe like four
or five schools throughout Southern California, Gardena, probably in
the Valley, other different areas of Los Angeles where Japanese grew
up. I went to the Seinan one, which is Crenshaw and Jefferson. It
just so happens one of my aunts, my mom’s sister right above her,
who she was the closest to in terms of physically living really
close to each other and, I guess, those growing up together, so they
had a small little mom-and-pop market on Twelfth Avenue in
Jefferson, and right behind these stores was this Japanese school,
language school. So I went on Saturdays from, like, nine o’clock
till three. My cousins, whose folks owned the store, they went like
every day after school for maybe an hour, hour and a half, maybe two
hours at the school. So they would come home from school and they
would go. So they went every day during the week, and I had to go on
Saturday, so Saturdays either I had to go to work with my dad—not
either. It wasn’t a choice. I went to Japanese school. So pretty
much went to Japanese school. If there wasn’t any Japanese school,
then either sometimes after school or sometimes Saturdays I’d go
help my dad do gardening. It got pretty serious after a while in
terms of doing gardening.
But Japanese school was really interesting. It was a cultural
experience in which you try to learn your language. But again, I was
like eight, nine years old. I was not very focused on it at all.
Going to school six days a week and then trying to figure out
English—I mean not trying to figure it out. I mean English is my
first language, and then try to understand grammatically English in
a regular school, and then going to Japanese school on Saturday and
being told something different in terms of grammatically, and then
learning a language verbally and written, you know. I pretty much
just had fun at school, learned how to make spitballs, paper wads,
disc guns, all the good things, fun things. I think I was into it. I
studied pretty hard for the first four or five years. Part of it was
out of fear for the teacher, in which they’d probably be yelling at
us, telling us to be quiet. They were very strict, very, very
strict. So we were pretty much focused on learning, so pretty much
learned most of my Japanese in the first two or three years and then
that’s it.
0:42:04.8
CLINE:
And what about academic expectations from your parents? Was there
much pressure there?
0:43:40.40:47:07.6
MORI:
There was in one sense, but they knew that after a while we were
messing up so much, and we pretty much knew that after we finished
some classes or a semester, so to speak, two teachers retired two
years in a row after they finished our class. So pretty much we knew
after a while, and I just picked up on this phrase after realizing
and started cracking up, “social promotion,” and that they just
advance you to the next grade, even though my level had stopped at
one particular point in time in terms of learning this stuff. So it
may have been third-grade, fourth-grade Japanese or something like
that. And then by the time I got to fifth grade, I totally was not
into it, sixth grade really not into it. Then I even went to a
junior high school of Japanese school, which totally blew me away. I
had no idea what they were talking about, so finally my parents
figured out that this wasn’t happening and quit wasting their money.
I just told them that, you know. So I stopped going when I was
twelve years old. At the same time we were going to Japanese
Buddhist Church, Senshin Buddhist Temple, which I fondly remember
and I still attend today. I think there are pictures of me in Sunday
school class when I was four years old, three or four years old. So
I know we were in the community, ’53, ’54.
Then when I was eight years old I remember beginning to play
organized baseball. Again, it was through one of my uncles that
owned the grocery store, and the grocery store pretty much for that
area was one of two, but it was more Japanese American than this
other store was more Japanese. So a lot of his customers were pretty
much everybody in the same boat. He extended a lot of credit to
folks. There was a lot of families that came. So he and some other
guy started, helped start, or the league may have already started,
this thing called Community Youth Council. What it was was a
baseball league that pretty much had catered to Japanese. I wouldn’t
say catered to, but people that were in it were predominantly
Japanese Americans. It’s probably a couple of different things. One,
I guess accessibility to a Little League league, L.A. (Los Angeles
Department of) Parks and Rec(reation). And it could have been also
due to physical stature of Japanese American being a smaller stature
than the rest of the society. But I think it was started as a
social, but sports, kind of situation. And to tell you the truth,
you know, they’ll tell you because they wanted—I think a lot of it
was the accessibility. Now, there’s a couple of guys that I know
that are still alive who helped start the league and stuff, and
actually they’re all in their early eighties. Well, they’re all in
their eighties. They’ve been honored, achievement and stuff like
that in helping to start this particular purpose and stuff. At the
time also, too, those individuals come out of camp in terms of the
mainstream businesses. There were no lawyers, accessibility,
bilingual lawyers as the goal of a community to try to serve its
individuals in the community. There were a few doctors in the
community that had gotten their medical degree from either the
Midwest or back East, and they were studying during the war, or they
had gotten their doctor’s license, and so before the war they were
practicing in camp, or they were practicing in free-zone cities like
Chicago and those particular Midwest cities. And then after the war
ended, then they came back to the West Coast.
There were teachers. There were no lawyers. There were no real
estate agents. There were no insurance people. A lot of farmers, a
lot of gardeners. So they, themselves, were beginning to get into
the culture and society in general, the general population, so to
speak.
CLINE:
Right. The mainstream culture.
MORI:
Right. But I’m sure they came up a lot, zillions of roadblocks. So
that probably led to the formation of this youth league. They would
say it’s for the Japanese Americans because the unaccessibility to
resources. So whatever the reason, we played against people from all
over Southern California. The different pockets of areas, like on
the Westside we could field maybe four or five teams with different
names. Actually, take that back. We had Halua Dodgers. We had L.A.
Dodgers or Westside Dodgers, Westside Giants. We had a group from
Venice. And then we also played against Uptown Tigers. Uptown
basically is where Koreatown is right now. There was a large
population of Japanese that went to Belmont High School. So that was
another large population of Japanese Americans, and that kind of
extended into Echo Park and then into Silver Lake, J-Flats, what
they called J Flats, and they went to Marshall (High School). The
folks on the Westside, like I talked about L.A. High School, Dorsey,
they also went to Manual (Arts High School). Some started the
migration in terms of late sixties, middle sixties, toward down
south. So not Gardena Gardena, but places around 130-something
(Street). So a lot of them went to Washington High School. A few
went to Washington High School. Then there was a large group that
moved to Compton. I wouldn’t say a large group; small group moved to
Compton, and that was very rural at the time.
0:49:34.6
CLINE:
Right. Farms and dairies and stuff.
MORI:
Exactly. Exactly. I mean, there’s still some open space in Compton
in Dominguez Hills area and stuff, right. So, yeah, they raised
chickens and farmed stuff out there, had a little plot out there.
That was another area. The people finally kind of like migrated into
Gardena Gardena area. So that was during the sixties. Then late
sixties, early seventies, they moved further south to Torrance, and
then another group moved out and joined the farmers out in Orange
County, and then the boom happened in Orange County, so that took
off. But a lot of families that lived in Los Angeles moved out to
Orange County that weren’t farmers. There was a large population of
farmers, because I have another set of cousins that farmed in Orange
County that eventually had to move because of the whole—
CLINE:
Development.
MORI:
—development and stuff. We can get into that a little later too. So,
Los Angeles, language in the house was predominantly Japanese, so
there was culture in the house. The whole Confucian kind of thing,
you know, before you leave the house, remember that you’re a
Japanese, remember that you’re Japanese American, remember that
you’re Mori , and remember about your family, this whole kind of
thing as you left the house. When you (unclear), “Remember you’re
Japanese.” I’d go, “Wow, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.” “Remember
the family.” “Okay, okay.”
0:51:30.6
CLINE:
What about music in the house?
0:54:00.5
MORI:
We had a record player. In the late sixties, seventies, there was an
individual in Little Tokyo called *Watao Awate (radio program - sp?
- QUERY). He had a Japanese radio program. There was a Japanese
radio program. It was on Sundays. I don’t know what station it was.
He broadcast it from Little Tokyo. I didn’t know what the signal
was. I still don’t know where all that power came from to broadcast
the thing, but my dad would turn on this radio and this Japanese
program on. All of it was in Japanese. A lot of it was speaking, a
lot of it was news, but a lot of it was music also, too, and he had
this music. I really don’t know what kind of music it was.
Eventually I found out it was inka music, which is Japanese folk
music, which is very similar to Japanese American ballads, which
sometimes can equate to country and western music in terms of
storytelling and stuff like that, or pretty much folk music. It came
up after the war. So they took a different form of Japanese music
and storytelling and they put it to music, like a lot of cultures do
the same thing, whether it’s rhythm and blues, whether it’s Mexican
corridos or something like that, right? Same kind of things
throughout the whole word. So that became pretty popular, and it
started playing. So there were such individual songs that kind of
sort of were popular within the Japanese, Japanese American
community. Other forms of music. Here in Southern California they
maintain relationships with those from the same prefecture in Japan,
so they call them Kenjin Kai, “Kai” meaning group, so to speak, and
“Kenjin” meaning places where you had come from. There must have
been maybe about twelve Kenjin Kais that I knew of, ten at a time,
largest being Kagoshima, one of the oldest, Hiroshima Kenjin Kai.
Again, my dad was from the prefecture Nomiya. They called it Myaken.
And they would have these picnics. Every summer they would have
these picnics. He called them Kenjin Kai picnics. You would go to
Elysian Park or some large park in Southern California, and they
would hire this band called the Miiko Taka Band. It was made up of
musicians, Japanese musicians, saxophones, drums, accordions, and
they also had singers and they would sing Japanese popular songs. So
that was the music, Japanese music. My grandmother would also listen
to Japanese music on a record player and Japanese radio and stuff. I
kind of vaguely heard it and stuff, but, again, not really paid too
much attention to it, but it was there.
CLINE:
And what about your friends? I’m assuming, based on what you
described about your neighborhood, they weren’t all Japanese
American at all.
MORI:
Pretty much listened to contemporary pop music pretty much. That was
in the fifties, late fifties. When I kind of recognized music, it
had a radio. I listened to the radio, pretty much pop music. And
then more so in the early sixties, middle sixties.
CLINE:
Top 40.
MORI:
Top 40. Began, yes, pretty much understanding music and
understanding what that was about, R and B, I guess rock and roll,
and then pop music.
0:56:15.6
CLINE:
Being part of the temple and having your parents, it sounds like,
insist on remaining connected as much as you could to your Japanese
culture, then were there other festivals of the year that you would
regularly attend as part of the community, like Obon or any of these
other functions through your growing up?
MORI:
Quite a bit. Yes, mainly through Obon festivals, and then also
through Nisei Week festivals. But the Obon, because there were many
different Buddhist churches in Southern California, you went to
different communities. So because my family and cousins and aunties
lived in West L.A., we used to go to the West L.A. (Los Angeles)
Buddhist Church and their Obon and carnival and bazaar.
CLINE:
And whatever on Corinth (Avenue).
0:58:47.2
MORI:
Yes, exactly, Corinth. And then there’s one in Venice, which is near
Culver Boulevard and Centinela (Avenue) on Braddock (Drive), okay,
although where they are today, they were actually two or three
blocks, maybe four blocks away. There’s a Community Center on the
west side of Centinela, and the Buddhist Temple’s right on the
corner. And then there’s also this large median that runs down
Culver Boulevard. But then they were a little bit off of Culver
Boulevard, that I remember, before they moved to the present place.
There’s one in Gardena, which I think is still on the same site but
new facilities and stuff on 166th (Street) and Normandie (Avenue).
The Orange County one, I believe it is at the present site, but
again a different facility. Downtown Los Angeles has the Betsuin
Nishi Honganji (Buddhist Temple). We never went out to the Valley.
There was one in San Diego. There’s one in Arizona. So anyway, at
the time it took hours to get to some of these. Like the one in
Orange County, we took like Washington or Olympic Boulevard totally
east, and through other side streets and stuff like that we finally
got out to Stanton, to Buena Park area, because my cousins have
farms out there. They were actively farming and stuff. So we would
travel to these different places, and everybody had same kind of
food, but different taste. And they would have the same kind of
dances because they all got together and danced the same so other
people can go to different Buddhist churches, but dance the same
dance.
So, within that there was a lot of culture. There was a lot of
festivals. There was a lot of activities, and got to meet a lot of
different people from those areas. Then the Buddhist churches
themselves in the fifties, late fifties, had its own summer camp,
and you got together with all these other campers, and people our
age, same age would go to the summer camp up in the San Bernardino
Mountains. So you start to meet socially these people from these
other areas, which you would probably never run into or meet. And
then eventually you would, again, play sports against them because
they would be from different neighborhoods. And then socially,
because of the car, you’re able to go to these different social
activities in these different areas of Los Angeles and then you
would meet the folks. So you would start to have this lifelong
relationship with these people that even still today I still see and
I still not necessarily socialize like I did before, but you still
see them and it’s like old times kind of a thing.
CLINE:
Wow.
MORI:
So culture was there, yes. My parents were definitely exposing me to
as much Japanese culture as possible.
1:00:41.1
CLINE:
Maybe because of or despite the diverse community that you lived in,
what did you experience in school in terms of your racial identity
compared to others at your school? What was your experience?
MORI:
It was—how should I put it? There was a distinction of who you were
ethnically. We all played together. We all did academics together.
Good guys, bad guys, cops and robbers, Indians and cowboys,
Americans and the enemy. So when we were playing cops and robbers,
it didn’t matter. Cowboys and Indians, it was interesting. But as we
got older, I mean, we were still young, because I think after a
while I’m not exactly sure when you started to understand the
significance of a person of color. It may or may not have been
struck upside my head or was a culmination of years and situations.
So even when we were playing army, you know, we had helmets, we had
guns, you know. We had, like I said, a big empty lot, pretty large
space to run around in at the bottom of the hill. I know that we
played, everybody played together. Everybody changed roles at one
particular time or another, and I think we were all—because one week
you were an American, the other week—and I think we may have even
used the term “Jap.”
CLINE:
Not surprising, really.
MORI:
I think we even used that term when we were playing. “Okay, this
week you play the Jap. I’ll play the American.” I think. It could
have easily come off the tip of my tongue very easily to designate
the good guy, bad guy. Probably so. This is during the late fifties,
early sixties, so there was no terminology of African American.
There might have not even been a terminology of blacks.
CLINE:
Negroes.
MORI:
Yes. I did not hear the word “nigger” until, I think, I got to
junior high school, so that was in the early sixties, middle
sixties, ’63, ‘64, someplace around there. Or I take that back,
early sixties. But I know I never used that word, but I heard it.
And then when we got to high school, it was used in a different way,
and none of it was derogatory. I can’t remember what terminology I
used describing a person of color. The colored kid, the colored guy,
the colored boy, the colored girl. I don’t even know if I used the
word “Negro.” Probably I did.
1:05:41.1
CLINE:
I remember “Negro” and “colored people” as being prominent.
1:05:41.1
MORI:
And in Japanese there was a term called kurombo, “kuro” meaning
dark. And there’s another term called kokujin that I don’t think I
ever used, but I used the word kurombo. You know, within certain
friends I just used kurombo. And then I guess the early sixties
happened, and then the middle sixties happened and all the Civil
Rights Movement beginning to happen, and then you would hear these
words, derogatory words, both sides. And naturally you would pick it
up and you would run with whatever the other kids were saying in
school and stuff like that. So there was a situation where, you
know, “Jap” came up. “Nigger” was also used. “Chink,” “Chinaman,”
“white boy,” “ofay,” “gray boy,” “spear chucker,” “beaner.”
CLINE:
Wow. Yeah.
MORI:
“Wop.” You know, all that was thrown around in junior high school.
High school, not as much. I think you were probably afraid of
getting your ass kicked. That’s why you didn’t use it a lot. Those
guys were a lot bigger in high school than they were in junior high
school. So it really wasn’t a racial thing when we were growing up.
You knew it was there. You knew because your parents didn’t go to
certain communities, always smiled to whomever they were dealing
with, may have made a few comments after, not in front of their
faces and stuff, and it laid some kind of impression in terms of the
negativity toward other races and stuff. So that set up a lot of
stereotype and stuff.
1:08:50.9
CLINE:
Now, your dad was a gardener, and I’ve heard that Japanese gardeners
kind of had their own culture, including their own sort of
linguistic style, shall we say. What do you know about that, and was
your father part of that whole Japanese gardener culture and their
language and way of doing things?
1:10:33.3
MORI:
(laughs) I didn’t pick up on it, but I knew that there was a
culture. I knew the group of guys that he hung out with at the
lawnmower shop. Sometimes he would take me to the lawnmower shop
after he finished on a rainy day. You know, we would go to the
lawnmower shop, and he would just kind of hang out, you know. He
wasn’t that much into drinking. Just physically he wasn’t—you know,
I knew he drank socially and stuff, but most of the time during the
weekdays he may have had a beer once a week or twice a week at home
after a pretty busy day, to hang out. I’m only mentioning this
because, you know, lot of other guys, when they went to the
lawnmower shop they hung out, and drinking was part of the social
kind of thing, and they’d play cards, and then they talked about
equipment, probably talked about, you know, the customers, what to
do. They talked about fees. They talked about where you worked.
They, you know, bought and sold houses. I mean clients, so to speak,
you know, part of routes and stuff like that. Dumped for or five
houses in this neighborhood, and they picked up three or four houses
in this neighborhood, you know, kind of a thing. So they would swap
and stuff back and forth. Majority of it was done in Japanese. Some
of it I didn’t understand. Some of it was in English.
They started their own gardeners’ federation, which still exists
today. They got group insurance, got warnings, eventually got
warnings of how they should use all the poisons that they were
handling and stuff, got breaks on seeds, fertilizer, equipment, you
know, the whole bit. And so they developed their own collective, and
it was probably based on a lot of the farmers’ situations also, too,
employing a lot of cops together and stuff and forming collectives
and stuff.
CLINE:
Where was the lawnmower shop?
MORI:
(laughs) There was a couple of them. There was a couple of them, one
on Western Avenue right there on Thirty-sixth (Street),
Thirty-seventh Street on Western Avenue. There were a couple there,
big ones. Then later on in—I was twenty, eighteen, nineteen in the
late seventies, late sixties, early seventies he hung out at this
place called Moss’s Lawnmower Shop. It’s on Pico Boulevard and
Windsor (Avenue), so it’s a little bit east of Crenshaw on Pico
Boulevard. Moss’s Lawnmower Shop. It actually was the father of this
girl whose name was *Donna Hokota Abata (sp? - QUERY). She
eventually plays in a taiko group and stuff. She’s originally from
Venice. He’s from Venice too. But that one was not the last, but it
was one of the last lawnmower shops run by Japanese in the community
after a while up in the Westside, so to speak. There was another
one, Kay’s Hardware Store too. It’s on Jefferson.
CLINE:
And there’s still George’s on Sawtelle.
MORI:
Yes, right. George’s on Sawtelle. And there’s probably a couple in
Gardena. Yamada’s. They’re still there. And I’m sure there’s a
couple on the east side that I know of. I’m not sure if there’s any
more in the Echo Park-Silver Lake area, J Flats-Virgil (Avenue)
area. I don’t think there’s any more up there. So he used to hang
out there. Then there was another one on Jefferson behind the Shell
gas station. I remember that one too. That one these guys got pretty
rowdy and shit, and they got drunk and stuff, so that was pretty far
out, hanging out there.
CLINE:
So as you progressed through school, and you didn’t sound like you
were particularly invested in academics, but what as you started to
get older, if anything particularly interested you in terms of maybe
what you were thinking about doing with your life, and how might
this have been affected by, as the sixties progressed, the huge
cultural changes that start to occur not just nationwide, but
worldwide?
1:17:17.7
MORI:
You’re right. My folks culturally, Japanese Buddhist temple. I took
judo from like eight or nine years old until I was fourteen, fifteen
years old, played baseball, football, basketball in Japanese
American League, socialized with a lot of Japanese Americans, ate
rice pretty much every day, if not every other day, was around
Japanese language all the time, went to high school every day,
junior high school, high school every day, was in the Boy Scouts,
though, at Senshin Buddhist Church. We had a very, very large Boy
Scout troop, predominantly Japanese American and other Asians in the
troop, and we competed against other troops throughout Southern
California. There was maybe one or two other organized—well, for
sure there was one at Boy Scout Troop Koyasan, which is located down
in Little Tokyo. They had a nationally renowned Drum and Bugle
Corps, but then you’d have these Scout camperies and you’d compete
against these other folks. And there was another one at Nishi
Honganji also, too, and there was a few others, so we competed
against them. Not only were we competing against them because they
were in the same district, but we were competing against everybody
else. We knew we were different. Sometimes we were together, I mean
in the same jamboree, and sometimes we were different. So it became
a little bit of a pride thing that, you know, despite learning all
the skills and everything like that. And for some odd reason they,
in terms of the leadership, really were pretty strict or disciplined
in terms of having us learn our skills, camping skills physically
and also, too, academic-wise. A lot of support from the families, a
lot of support. Peer pressure of going up through the ranks of
getting whatever ranking that you had. The pressure of getting an
Eagle Scout, which I attained at a fairly early age.
So, knowing at that time Boy Scouts and in sports, so this is during
your teens, that something is different here. Why are we in this
troop of all Japanese Americans? Why are they all in a group that’s
all ethnically different? Why is this one also ethnically different?
So there was no example of an interracially mixed group or troop, so
to speak, or sports teams or other things. So all of a sudden you
start to perceive things in terms of black and white, and then
there’s this gray area, and you’re kind of in this gray area.
Culturally also in this gray area. You hear and understand this
Japanese language and culture, and yet you were growing up listening
to rock and roll, watching Ed Sullivan (Show) on TV, along with
Disney shows on TV, cartoons, war movies on TV, good guys, bad guys,
cowboys and Indians. So along with the total population, meaning
worldwide, consciousness starts to happen, like the question that
you asked, and it did have an effect. Graduated high school, went to
Los Angeles City College, and I had to take a speech class. I was in
the library, and I think the topic had to be some kind of a
convincing kind of a thing. I came across a book, America’s
Concentration Camps, took the book, and at that time I understood
what camp was at that time, or vaguely understood about the
relocation camp. I still was like, “What?” And so I tried to learn
as much as possible. There was only a few books available, and this
is like ’67, ’68, ’68, maybe, and I take this class, speech class,
and I really got into it trying to find as much—there wasn’t that
much material. Start talking to people. Either they’ll talk to you
about it or the majority of the people didn’t want to talk about it.
Majority of the people didn’t want to talk about it. There was a few
people that talked about it and explained what it was, but it was so
incomprehensible that I was not necessarily in denial, I don’t think
that was it, but I was just so dumfounded that, like, how could this
ever happen?
1:20:14.0
CLINE:
Right. Didn’t exactly come up in your U.S. history classes at
school. (laughter)
1:21:48.0
MORI:
Exactly. Right? The bombing of Pearl Harbor and the bombing of
Hiroshima and that’s it. Nothing in between. Nothing. And so I got
into it. Anyway, I made this presentation in the thing, and I think
I took the title of the book, America’s Concentration Camps. It was
really interesting because I got into a dialogue with the teacher,
and obviously she was from Jewish heritage. So when I used the word
“concentration camp,” she criticized it pertaining to the word
“concentration camp,” not necessarily on my delivery or my
preparedness or not preparedness to the subject and to the
presentation. But we got into it a little bit, and the questions she
asked me and the situation she asked me I had no answers to. She
asked me, “How can you compare the killing of millions of Jews to
this harsh environment of relocation camps or what you call
concentration camp in the middle of the Owens Valley or wherever it
is?” And I said, “Well, people died in the relocation camps too.”
And she goes, “Well, not as many as so-and-so. They were on a harsh
treatment,” and blah, blah, blah, “in Germany and rounded them all
up.” I said, “Well, it’s the same thing, but these are the American
citizens.”
So anyway, we got into this long discussion, which was good for me
because I didn’t know none of the answers, but soon I did find out
the answers, and that kind of sort of like, you know, started my, I
guess, understanding of social consciousness, social justice. So it
made a big change. So that was the late sixties. I was eighteen,
nineteen years old. I registered for the draft. Vietnam (War) was
happening.
CLINE:
Right. Whoa.
MORI:
Right. Exactly. I saw this thing might hit me, you know, across my
head. It was like, oh, man, you know, the draft, my identity. What
am I going to do?
CLINE:
Yes. At a time when not only was there the looming specter of the
draft and, you know, service in Vietnam, but the Cold War, growing
up during the Cold War, the whole nuclear question.
MORI:
Exactly.
CLINE:
How did that color your view of things?
MORI:
It made me to try to understand myself, understand a little bit
better the environment that I was in. And immediate-wise when I was
nineteen years old, they initiate the lottery within the draft. My
number was 174, kind of in the middle. My district office was in
Westwood, okay. Other guys’ draft board was in South Central Los
Angeles. And before that, people were still being drafted, not as
critically, and people had volunteered and they were fighting in or
had gone to Korea. It wasn’t a made-up war, which was in the
fifties, but there was still lingering kind of things.
1:24:01.0
CLINE:
Yes. A lot of military presence.
MORI:
In Asia, right, you know. So people were going over there, and some
people actually had some combat in other parts of Asia and they had
come back. And so I realized what was happening militarily-wise with
the United States going overseas, even though there was no declared
war anywhere, you know. These uncles and cousins were coming back
shot. I’m like, wait a minute here. There ain’t no war happening. So
what was I going to do? What was I going to do? Was I going to get
drafted and go to Vietnam? And then folks that were older than I,
that were my brother’s age, a couple of them got killed in Vietnam
or the beginnings of Vietnam. And I go, okay, this is coming, like,
really, really close to home. Am I going to go do this or what? And
I took the physical and I passed. Not saying that I was trying to
get out through a physical, but, yes, I was trying to see whether or
not I could—what kind of options I had. The reason why I mentioned
Westwood is because my number came up, where these guys in South
Central, they were sitting there with like 100, the number 100, and
they weren’t going to be called up because all the numbers before
them, they were filling a quota of folks that got drafted and they
were sending off to Vietnam. Westwood, I found out, because so many
people had a little bit more financial, more people had a little
more money, and if it makes you in terms of how to delay or not
partake in the war, they had either gotten lawyers or they got
school deferments, which is all legal and fine and everything like
that, but they were given a little bit more information than these
folks in South Central Los Angeles. So my number came up, but at the
same time I was really soul-searching, so to speak, or not
soul-searching, but really thinking about what am I going to do. Am
I going to go or what? So then I decided to apply for a
conscientious objector status through Buddhism, and I went through
the process. Went to a hearing and five people on the draft board. I
stated my case of a concept in Japanese Buddhism called ahimsa,
which basically means non-killing. So I presented that and
everything like that. I dressed pretty much as I am today to the
draft board, maybe had a jacket on, but no tie or nothing like that.
Stated my case. The question I remember from one, “What would happen
if somebody came busting into your house with guns and threatened to
kill your family? What would you do?”
1:27:10.2
CLINE:
Right. That’s always the question. (laughter)
MORI:
Right. Exactly. So I told the guy, “Well, on one hand, you know,
philosophically I would have to see what the situation warrants. If
my family is physically being threatened, more than likely then I
would try to defend myself.” Then he got into this long spiel about
defending the United States and the whole bit and everything like
that. So I says, “Well, that’s your opinion. That’s why we’re here
in the United States, and that’s why folks are fighting for certain
rights and stuff like that, you know, but I think we can do this
without, you know, killing and stuff, right?” So went away finally.
Two weeks later, got a notice saying “rejected.”
CLINE:
Wow.
1:29:45.3
MORI:
I didn’t get, you know, at that level. So I says, “Okay. That’s
fine.” Well, not fine, but everything you had thirty days, sixty
days to appeal, right. So I had sixty days to appeal, so I thought
about it again, went to some draft counselors and talked to them
about some stuff. They go, “Okay,” and they go—because you can’t get
a job, either, because you’re only limited to every two months you
do an appeal, three months you get another appeal, right? So I
couldn’t hold onto a regular job either, so I says, well, a minister
at the temple—it wasn’t Reverend Mas (Masao Kodani) at the time. And
he says, “Well, I understand what you’re trying to do, so if you
have time, study Buddhism. Just understand the concept of ahimsa a
little bit more.” So I says, “Fine.” So I went to Institute of
Buddhist Studies in Berkeley, which is part of the Jodo Shinshu kind
of thing or something like that, right? At the time also, too,
there’s the guy named Dale Minami that was studying at Boalt Law
School up in Berkeley, and I’ve heard of his name only through the
community through social, through sports. Draft counselor out of
here in L.A. says—this is a Japanese American guy. He says, “Go talk
to Dale. I’ll call him up and tell him that you’re going to be up
there in summertime. So here’s his phone number. Get a hold of him,
and you guys meet up and see whether he can help you out.” Because
after I got denied here, then they said I could appeal to the state
draft board. So I says, “Yeah, I want to appeal,” so send it to the
state draft board, which is up in San Francisco. Anyway, that summer
of 1971, I got together with Dale. He looked at the reason why. He
says, well, it was because of my demeanor. And he goes, demeanor
basically means your attitude, right, because they can’t deny you
just on your attitude walking in.” I said, “Yeah, I may have had an
attitude. They asked me some of these questions. I don’t deny that,
but, you know.”
So he said, “They can’t deny you.” So he kind of scribbled some
stuff out in terms of what to say in the letter. I says, “You know,
I don’t think you do—.” Basically he says, “You can’t—,” just
because of my denial and all this other stuff, right? So I did it up
and I sent it back the same time as—it’s really interesting—Muhammad
Ali was going through his case also, too, even though he declared
himself to be a Muslim, but he also said moral grounds, that he was
a conscientious objector. So then there was this lull. There was
this understanding of different cultures and different religions and
concepts of being morally against the war and stuff. So to make a
long story short, I received my conscientious status probably
somewhere in the spring of the following year. I take that back.
Maybe thirty days after that I got a notice saying I passed. But
because my number had come up to be drafted, then my number had come
up for me to start my conscientious objector status service, which I
was supposed to work for a nonprofit organization for the two years
that I was supposed to be in the service. So I said, “Okay.” Came
back into the community, talked to Japanese American Service Center,
which is called JASC Office, and they said that these young other
folks that I knew, some of them I knew, were starting this bookstore
called Amerasia Bookstore, and it was the first Asian American
bookstore that would gather a lot of the informations from all over
the world and to house it in one particular place and to help supply
the emerging Asian American studies programs at the different
schools with materials from students. So I said, “Fine.” So we
opened up a store on First Street, and that’s when I began working
with it.
1:32:07.2
CLINE:
We’re going to knock off here pretty soon. Where, if at any time
during this period or when at any time during this period did you
start to have any inclination towards music, or did that come later?
MORI:
Happened at the same time.
CLINE:
Okay.
MORI:
Happened at the same time in terms of exploring your identity of who
you are, how can you express it. What I’m telling you right now at
the time I didn’t say, “I think I’ll try to find myself culturally
and identity-wise because I also need to fulfill the left side of my
brain or the cultural aspect of my—.” Some people said my feminine
side of what I’m doing, going to do. I had time. (laughs) I had time
to check things out. Listened to a lot of rock and roll, R and B. In
the back, subconsciously in back of my mind is all this Japanese
music, obon, whatever Japanese. It was gathas, whatever, even though
they’re Americanized. And so taiko was very physical. Played sports,
did judo, right? I’m looking at it, and I had always seen this since
I was a young kid, somebody playing in the town in the middle of
obon. People would dance around the tower, the yagura, and he would
kind of keep the beat. He would play to the music or he’d keep the
beat or he’d accent certain dance movements. So, you know, kind of
was into it, kind of was not, but I knew each obon had it. And then
this other individual who’s very prominent in all our lives pretty
much, Reverend Mas Kodani, he was a young minister and he was coming
back from Japan in 1968. He was born and raised in Compton, went to
Centennial High School. There were only like four other Japanese
people at the school. Two of them out of the five were his brothers,
and so there was only a couple of other Japanese American friends.
Out of the five guys that were there, three out of the four became
presidents of the school, and at that time it was predominantly
African American, Centennial High School. But it was really
interesting that he was also into African American music at that
time. So this is in the early sixties, late fifties.
1:34:51.6
CLINE:
With the race records, as they called them. (laughs)
MORI:
Yes. And he even taught African Americans about African music.
Anyway, he got interested in Buddhism. Then he went to UC
(University of California) Santa Barbara, and then he went to Japan.
He came back, and he says, “Yeah, I’ll be back.” And he told temple
that, yeah, he’d be back in April, May, June, July, August. It took
him three or four months to return to United States from Japan in
that he went the long way around. Instead of going east back to
United States through the Pacific, he went all the way around the
world, went through Russia, went through Europe, did that whole
thing. He went to India, Europe, and then came back to Los Angeles.
So everybody’s thinking, “Who is this guy? What kind of hot destiny
does he have to take his time getting back to the United States? You
know, we asked him to come back, and he ain’t coming back.” And he
guess he shows up in August or something like that. “Hello. How are
you?” So to make a long story short, he introduced us to taiko in a
way in which nowadays it’s called kumi-daiko, or group taiko, and
you play on an instrument known as wa-daiko, w-a-daiko, or wa-daiko,
which is Japanese taiko versus just taiko, meaning drum in Japanese,
and kumi-daiko, meaning group taiko, which there is in Japan, but
not necessarily as a formed taiko group. It’s a musical ensemble in
Japan. There’s another name for it also, too, because it’s called
kogaku, which is Japanese classical percussion music, which also
includes traditional Japanese folk music too. So that was it. And
then all of a sudden he introduced this group taiko to us. And when
I saw it and I picked it up, watching it, the physical part of it
was there and the cultural part of it was there, so for some odd
reason it just kind of like clicked.
1:37:22.9
CLINE:
Wow. Okay. I want to explore that more in depth next time.
MORI:
Okay.
CLINE:
That work for you?
MORI:
Yes, that’s fine.
CLINE:
Okay. Great. Thank you so much. (End of May 18, 2010 interview)
0:00:23.3
CLINE:
Today is May 26, 2010. This is Alex Cline . I’m interviewing Johnny
Mori at the Japan America Theater in Little Tokyo, downtown Los
Angeles. This is our second session. Good morning.
MORI:
Good morning. How you doing?
CLINE:
Pretty good. It’s another incredibly nice day out. We’ve been having
an amazingly nice spring here in L.A. this year.
MORI:
Very nice.
0:02:00.1
CLINE:
it’s very nice to be able to come here and to kind of stand around
by the now finished garden outside while I prepare myself mentally
for this interview process. Last time we left off talking about your
post-high school years and the change in your awareness about some
aspects of your Japanese American heritage, your approach to
avoiding the draft and consequent service in the Vietnam War. I want
to ask some things specifically related to this and also some things
just to follow up some of the things we touched on in the last
interview. One of the things I wanted to ask for sure relating to
this, for one thing, we talked about how you went to L.A. ( Los
Angeles) High ( School), and we didn’t actually talk much about that
experience. One of the things I wanted to ask you is as you were
nearing the end of high school, we know from the last session that
you decided to go to Los Angeles City College (LACC), but what sense
did you have what you wanted to do or where you wanted to go once
you graduated from high school? What were your interests at that
point, if any?
0:04:57.70:08:18.4
MORI:
Good question. I guess that’s the question that faces everybody.
What are you going to do after high school? I didn’t have any really
specific interests other than the possibility of—and I don’t know
why—art, some kind of an art, more visual arts, I guess, in terms
of, I guess, the limited amount of art exposure that you get in high
school, you know, whether it’s art history, drawings, design. So
after I graduated, I took a summer school class at LACC, just a
beginning art class, and it was more of a design art kind of a class
because you worked with paper and stuff and sculptures kind of
thing, but overall just a basic art class. I can’t even remember at
that particular time if I knew what I was going to do in the fall
other than having to take regular general education classes. It
might have been during the middle of summer—my cousin’s husband was
a dental technologist. This is so off, totally different. It’s
related, but it’s unbelievable. He was a dental technician, and I
asked him what he did, and he pretty much worked with carving teeth
for replacement teeth and stuff like that, crown and bridge, so to
speak, gold work and stuff, and then also in terms of dentures,
bridges, that kind of stuff. I thought that was pretty interesting.
then I met another guy who also was a dental technician. Actually,
LACC had a program, one of, I think, only maybe three in Southern
California. One was the UCLA Extension, and I think they may have
suspended the class or it was kind of like hard to get into, and the
LACC had one which I think was only maybe two or three years old.
Then there may have been another one out in Loma Linda or something
like that. I can’t remember exactly where, or a private school or
something like that. I think it was a private school.
So I thought, “Well, let me check it out. Let me enroll in it.” I
was taking this art class, so it was somewhat of an artsy kind of
thing because you use your hands and stuff, and I guess I liked
doing stuff with my hands. So I enrolled in the class in the fall,
and there were a class of, I don’t know, twenty-something, and out
of that class there was probably seven or eight Asians in the class,
and there was probably about five Japanese Americans. A couple of
them I didn’t know, but I knew of them because they went to Dorsey
High School or something like that, so within the community I kind
of sort of knew, got to know them, figured out who knew who. It’s
that whole thing of so many degrees of whatever. By the time you
finish conversation, within fifteen minutes we had common friends,
common situations, and geographically we pretty much grew up in the
same neighborhood. It’s a two-year program, this dental technology
program. So we took those classes, they were mainly in the morning,
along with regular general (education) classes, and then gym classes
in the afternoon, because at the time in the late sixties, early
seventies, you had to take physical ed, phys ed, and so them we did
that in the afternoons. But at the end of the first semester or the
first year, so to speak, the class had winnowed down to maybe about
fifteen people, and out of the fifteen people all the Asians were
still there. And even the instructor, one of the instructors, two of
the instructors were Japanese Americans. Now, all of a sudden it’s
like culturally we all pretty much got along. We didn’t necessarily
socialize that much other than within schooldays. Then a couple of
us took gym together and actually played golf together. After you
finished playing basketball, took basketball, tennis, swimming, two
rounds of tennis, two semesters of whatever, tennis, and then we
took a golf class. Then the last semester we heard that if you could
hit a golf ball between goal posts, you could join the golf team.
This is Los Angeles City College, right? So there wasn’t a culture
to play golf in urban Los Angeles, even though there were golf
courses and stuff, and my family was not connected with that
particular culture.
CLINE:
Well, it can be kind of a pricy culture.
0:09:57.70:12:16.5
MORI:
Right. Exactly, you know. Plus, there was just (unclear) I never
experienced, other than playing golf at the junior college level. My
older brother sort of kind of dabbled in it a little bit because I
guess he picked up—somebody gave us or found a used set of golf
clubs or something like that. So anyway, long story short, we tried
it out. Three of us actually that was in the dental tech program
made the team just so for us to do, and basically it was great. You
paid a dollar a day and you’re part of class, so a bus came and
picked you up every day at twelve-thirty, and we were right near
Vermont (Avenue) and Melrose (Avenue), so it’s real close to
Griffith Park. So every day a bus would come and they’d pick you up
and they’d take you to Griffith Park, and you got to play Griffith
Park every day for like a buck. We had this standing tee time at one
o’clock, just jump off the bus and boom, you know, you get to play.
Everybody waiting around got mad because we just showed up and we
just walked on the course. But that was pretty good because you got
to play pretty much every day for a dollar, and I didn’t really know
that much about golf, you know. Then the coach, he was a golf coach,
but he was pretty much a babysitter and he like playing golf,
because he was actually, I think, the track coach, so he doubled as
a golf coach. Basically he just, you know, chaperoned for us to go
up there, not get too stupid while we’re on the course. So I learned
etiquette and how to play golf.
But even though LACC was not a golf school, so to speak, the
number-one golfer in the state junior college system happened to go
to junior college at the time at LACC. His name was (unclear),
*(NAME?), this big huge Hawaiian guy. He played to like maybe a one
handicap or something like that, or less than that. Anyway, so once
a week he’d kind of join us and play, and we’d be out there playing
for fun anyway. So he’d come in. He actually was the one who taught
us actually different little pointers on playing and swing and stuff
like that. Then on Fridays once the season began, on Fridays I
guess, you know, they had tournaments with other junior colleges,
and we would sometimes just pick straws who would go to the
tournament. Or someone says, “I can’t make it on a Saturday then.”
Because there was like two open slots at the very end because there
was like four guys and then six guys traveled, and I think five guys
played or all six of them played, but they take only five scores or
whatever. So you get to play these really nice courses, got to
travel all over Southern California. I think I might have only
played one or two tournaments and that was it, because I necessarily
wasn’t that good and I didn’t have the time to go out and do that.
But anyway, so that was part of the thing. So anyway, I got into
doing dental technology and graduated fairly well in the class and
stuff like that. After me kind of like having a lot of fun in high
school, senior year in high school, to the point where, you know,
sometimes I always didn’t go to class in high school, I passed
fairly with a decent grade point average, but my attendance was not
really there in senior class, senior semester. I didn’t graduate. I
didn’t walk. Well, I knew I was going to graduate, but it was close
to me walking during the ceremony and stuff, but I did. So I kind of
finally, I guess, focused on what I think I needed to do.
So, graduated ’67, ’68, ’69, and then started thinking, as the other
example, about history of Japanese Americans, and the camp situation
arose and identity, the movement in general, Vietnam War, and all
those things kind of—while in college there were some discussions
pertaining to social issues and stuff like that. So toward the end,
when I was nineteen, going to be twenty, then I started reading a
lot more stuff besides relocation camp stuff, incarceration, just
about identity in general and just seeing the whole nation kind of
react the same way also too.
CLINE:
Can I back up to high school just for a moment before we get into
that?
MORI:
Sure.
CLINE:
You said you didn’t have a particularly consistent attendance that
last year, and high school for a lot of people, you know, a lot of
things happen, and some of those things we haven’t hit on yet. So
there are two things I wanted to ask you about pertaining to high
school. One, cars, because this is Los Angeles, and I was curious to
know. You’ve talked a lot about a lot of the neighborhoods where
there were other Japanese Americans living and had businesses and
things like that, and I wondered how much you were able to get
around, how much interest you had in getting around the area, and,
if so, where you would go basically to hang out as a teenager in Los
Angeles during the sixties. That’s my first question. You can go
with that.
0:15:00.7
MORI:
In high school, I guess, racially mixture of the school itself was
probably, now thinking about it, it was probably about 40 percent
African American. It was probably 30 percent Caucasian, and then
there were the rest of us. Probably the next largest population was
Asians, and then Hispanics and everybody else.
But in terms of school participation, there was all ethnic groups
involved in student activities as far as cheerleading, running the
presidents of the school, president of the classes, all the
different kind of social service classes, I mean groups that were on
campus and stuff like that. So actually, though, it was pretty mixed
school. Again, mentioned I went to L.A. High School, and I went to
the high school that was pretty much brick, the one that you may see
at the beginning of Room 222. Then in 1971 when the earthquake
happened—
CLINE:
Yes, the Sylmar quake.
0:18:05.20:20:56.10:23:49.9
MORI:
—Sylmar quake happened, it kind of pretty much—the reason why I
mentioned brick, it pretty much was the end of that particular
architectural aspect of the school. The only thing, I think, that
survived was the stadium and the swimming pool, but everything else
was torn down and rebuilt on the same site on Olympic (Boulevard)
and Rimpau (Boulevard). The neighborhood was changing. I mentioned
the Caucasian, white kids, and they came pretty much from north of
Olympic, south of Wilshire (Boulevard), well, pretty much Wilshire,
Olympic area, northwest of Crenshaw (Boulevard) and Olympic,
predominantly the white community that lived in—it was on the border
of Hancock Park, Fremont Park Place. I remember going to parties up
in Hancock Park, huge, enormous houses and a lot of fun. (laughs)
But it was something that was, I think, was something out of our
realm, so to speak. It was outside of our culture, outside of my
world, so to speak. We got to know people that lived up there and
stuff, became friends with them and stuff. Didn’t necessarily
socialize with them other than parties and stuff, that we had school
parties or class parties and stuff like that up there. So that was
above Wilshire Boulevard.
Then we pretty much socialized around the Crenshaw area, Crenshaw
and Jefferson (Boulevard), and there was this one particular
hangout, because it was open twenty-four hours a day, called Holiday
Bowl. It was a bowling alley with a coffee shop, a billiard hall
inside of it, and it was open twenty-four hours a day. The coffee
shop served Asian and American food, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and
whatever else you needed. So you could get anything any time of the
day. So after we’d go out and socialize, we’d all kind of end up at
Holiday Bowl, and all ages. There were gangs in the area within the
Japanese American community. One is the Buddha Bandits. One is the
Ministers, pretty much from the Westside. I don’t know why, it’s
interesting, Japanese Americans are just—I guess we kind of hung
out. They was into bowling. These are the communities that were into
bowling, Triangle Bowl in East L.A. near Beverly (Boulevard) and
Atlantic (Boulevard). Then there was Mission Bowl out in Gardena,
and Gardena Bowl. Then there was Mission Bowl. So I guess it was
really interesting. They were really into bowling. A lot of
community people were into bowling, I guess because physically you
didn’t have to be tall. You didn’t have to be—well, you had to be
somewhat coordinated, but it’s not necessarily power, you know,
physical muscle power, so to speak. So they had these leagues at
Holiday Bowl all nights of the week that you could participate in
and stuff. So anyway, that was kind of a social thing, too, that men
and women bowled, and so the families used to go there. It was a
family sport, so you possibly kind of sort of grew up there going,
having fun and stuff like that, and then later on just kind of
hanging out there.
Then socially, in terms of dances and stuff like that, the different
youth groups, whether they be connected with the Buddhist Church or
the Christian youth groups. Then later on in the early seventies,
then you got into very beginning fraternities and sororities that
were beginning to form at colleges and universities. I think the
first one at UCLA was this men’s one called Omegas (Sigma Tau).
There may have been another one called (Chi Alpha) Deltas at UCLA,
which is there, I think, before Omegas. Deltas was pretty much a
sorority, and they threw dances. There were these venues in the
neighborhood. One of them was called Park View. It’s in Baldwin
Hills right above Baldwin Hills Shopping Center right now. Another
one was called Rodger Young *(Village?), which was on Washington
Boulevard near Figueroa (Street), right below the freeway, actually.
They were just large halls. At the time also, too, there were
community bands. Chosen Few, Free Flight, Something Else, Beaudry
Express. God, there was a few, a few other ones, and they pretty
much would play Top 40. So in the makeup of the bands were pretty
much predominantly Asians. They had singers, both men and women, who
sang Top 40 songs, mainly R and B (rhythm and blues), and that would
be the weekend social thing. There would be one thrown by a group, I
wouldn’t say during the summertime probably at least once a week, if
not two dances at the same time at the same place, so that’d be
pretty interesting. They would put together these bands and they
would play on the weekends, and so we’d go there. At the time I
guess, we’d pay five bucks and stuff. They had a dance, live music.
There was hardly—I don’t think I’ve ever went to a dance dance that
didn’t have live music.
CLINE:
Right. This leads right into what was going to be question number
two, which is what about girls?
0:23:49.9
MORI:
That’s a place— (laughs) Where else you meet girls? Schools and then
churches, social activities, and at these dances. For a while,
because of the sorority of throwing the dance and the girls being in
the sorority coming from many different parts either of Southern
California and even across the United States, because this is at
UCLA, Cal(ifornia) State (University) L.A., USC. UCLA and ‘SC pretty
much had sororities. There may have been one at Cal State L.A. Now,
Long Beach State (California State University, Long Beach) didn’t
have one, but they’re a little bit further down the line here when
we talk about organizations at schools. So they didn’t necessarily
form a sorority or a fraternity, but they just happened to be one of
the very first schools that started Asian American studies, so it
was a different kind of a group that formed. I’m not saying that
there wasn’t socials, there wasn’t dances, because they had a couple
every year, anyway, to help socially and things like that. So that
was one place where you could meet all these other women and stuff
like that, girls, and they weren’t necessarily from your
neighborhood, not that you knew everybody who grew up in the
Crenshaw-Seinan area, but these were girls from Gardena-Torrance
area and then from further out. We talked about Boyle Heights and
East L.A. Now, that migration went a little bit further east to
Montebello, Monterey Park, Alhambra, Pasadena area. Pasadena,
Altadena, Monrovia, that area was still different from Montebello
and Monterey Park, and those who grew up pretty much from East L.A.
kind of moved a bit further east. So anyway, they would start coming
out to these dances and stuff, and, you know, there’d be, you know,
geographical chauvinism in terms of fights, stuff like that, guys,
you know, fighting over girls—
CLINE:
Wow.
0:31:07.4
MORI:
—and so-and-so and stuff like that. But it was normal kind of people
growing up and stuff. So, a lot of things socially you start picking
up on and realizing, “Oh, bowling. This is a mixed league? I think
I’m going to do that, check it out.” Or, “There’s a dance over here.
Who’s throwing it? Okay, well, do we know anybody there? Because if
we go there, shit, we might get into a fight or something like that.
Are we going out there by ourselves or what?” Or you hook up with
your cousin and they live out someplace and they’re going to this
dance and they ask you to buy a ticket or a bids, what they call a
bids, to this dance. You go, “Sure,” so you kind of like knew them,
so you kind of like started to broaden out in terms of
socialization, so to speak. People from Orange County started to
come into L.A. So the main large places that were tried and true had
parking, easy access, easy entrance. Then the people that ran or had
the venues, you know, it wasn’t like we—there was no trashing of the
place. There was no crazy, wild, throwing stuff like that, so people
respected the place. They just fought outside in the parking lot,
you know, either after the gig or whatever, you know. That was part
of the culture, very much part of the culture, and music was, music
culture and stuff in that it’s interesting to see Asians play music
that you listen to on the radio, and how that developed and stuff,
how they would put a little twist to it here and there and do
something. Pretty much it was all cover tunes. Hardly anybody wrote
any songs on their own. Later on, talking with other musicians and
stuff and further on down the road in like the mid seventies and
stuff like that or toward the eighties, actually, when further
discussion in terms of music within the Japanese American community,
in learning about the history of music, Western music within a
Japanese and Japanese American culture, the songs that were being
played on the radio or on somebody’s phonograph at home was Japanese
songs, and they were Japanese folk songs, but they were structured
very—they were structured in a way you heard a melody and then like
the verses, chorus, verses, chorus, verses, chorus, something like,
so it was a structured kind of thing. So you begin to think about it
and goes, wow, where did the structure come from and stuff like
that, and the songs that they sing in folks songs, you know, and the
story that it told and everything like that, okay? So then how did
they, or if they could, preserve it in camp? Which a lot of Japanese
music they couldn’t, because they pretty much rounded up all the
ministers, all the community leaders, and all the cultural teachers,
because they had, they thought that they had, “they” meaning the
U.S. government, thought that they had more of a direct connection,
and they were teaching culture and spouting off different kinds of
unwanted propaganda to the masses of the people.
CLINE:
Pro-Japan nationalistic propaganda.
MORI:
Exactly right. And so they were confused as anybody else. So if they
were lucky, they were able to have somebody watch the instruments.
Some were able to retrieve them from friends or family in the West
Coast, and they were able to retrieve them and take them to camp.
Some, as soon as they heard, if they found out that you were
Japanese heritage or whatever, that some of them, I heard, destroyed
their instruments, buried them, and whether or not it was before or
after they came out, to show that they were true Americans.
0:32:08.9
CLINE:
Right.
0:35:19.90:38:40.6
MORI:
So a lot of that culture was lost. As time went on in the camps, the
second-generation Niseis, they were able to get a hold of Western
instruments. There were many who learned or knew how to play Western
instruments before they got to camp. They were able to get or play
on, you know, pianos, brass, some wind instruments, and later on I
heard they were able to get some string instruments, violins and
stuff, to the point where they were able to form an orchestra in
some of these camps. They were allowed to, or they brought in
instruments, and they were playing pretty much forties big band
music, Tommy Dorsey kind of stuff, right? Out of that came notoriety
of certain bands in camps and certain individual singers that became
very, very well known in the camps and even spread to other camps. I
may be spreading rumors, but I think there might even have been a
tour, a mini camp tour where somebody from Manzanar, something like
that, which this woman named Mary Nomura, who became the songbird of
Manzanar, she may have been able to travel to other camps to sing
and to share, you know, was allowed to share what she was singing
and stuff with other camps. And there was about three or four other
women like that. Then after camp, then they had formed their own big
bands in larger communities. I know Seattle had one, San Francisco,
and here in L.A. they maybe had two. This guy named Tak Shindo had a
band, and there was a couple other bands in Los Angeles after the
war, and they’d play at socials and stuff like that. Then they would
start slowly being able to get back into a regular somewhat life and
socializing and stuff like that and hearing stories about, you know,
them going up to the (Hollywood) Palladium and dancing up at the
Palladium or different venues within Southern California and Los
Angeles and stuff.
And then after the camps, the cultural teachers began to kind of
resurface, so to speak, come out and teach classical Japanese dance
and music, shakuhachi, biwa, types of different kinds of singing,
shigin, and noh theater. Classical nihon buyo is connected with
kabuki and noh, so this kind of like this continuation of it. So all
those things came back, flower arranging, tea ceremony. They all
kind of slowly, you know, resurfaced again and stuff. So right now
in 2010 there are groups who celebrated hundred-year anniversaries
now, what we call the Kenjin Kais, the groups from Japan have
documentation that they knew that their ancestors came to the United
States in the late 1890s and stuff, so they already celebrated their
hundredth anniversary, and a lot of churches and temples are
celebrating hundredth anniversaries and stuff. So music-wise and
culture-wise it began starting to happen again, and growing up,
though, once in a while we would be told we had to go to these
different recitals and stuff like that. A lot of them took place at
the Koyasan Buddhist Temple on First Street. We just had a program
there about a month ago called Hidden Legacy, which this woman named
Shirley Muramoto from Northern California, because her mother, I
think, was in camp up north, Tule Lake, I think, and she took
lessons, she took koto lessons, music lessons from a teacher in
camp. I’m pretty sure, yes, she took lessons from this woman, and
Shirley eventually took lessons from this other woman who was in
camp also too. And she put together this program of those remaining
culture teachers, dance, music, pretty much just dance and music, in
a program here in Los Angeles. She did one up north in San Francisco
and one here co-sponsored by UCLA Asian American Studies (Center).
So they had a panel discussion with all these teachers that are
still living, mainly all women, pretty much only women, about their
experiences in camp pre- and post-, and some of them are still
teaching today. So that was pretty interesting, you know, the
struggles and stuff like that.
Then some of the instruments people in camp made, had to make, they
had to make due what they had to do because they had no instruments
and stuff, you know. So a lot of it was taught by singing. Whether
you’re a dancer or you’re a musician, you had to sing the piece
because there was no music other than people just singing it, which
was the way they taught in Japan anyway, you know, so they just
continued that. That pretty much carried over in seeing the Niseis
participate in music. I did probably go see a big band and then
family bands, the Miiko Taka Band *(CORRECT?) who I remember playing
at Kenjin Kai picnics. I may have mentioned that before. So that was
a mixture of Western and Japanese music. Another instrument,
accordion. In the fifties, in the early sixties there was, I know,
probably about two Japanese American accordion bands, and they would
be also going to competition, because I know my wife’s older
brothers, they played accordion, although I may have only heard the
older one play just to kind of mess around, but the younger one
didn’t. He don’t remember nothing. So there was introduction of the
music in the community, all different kinds, all different kinds.
CLINE:
Just before we leave high school, to go back to girls, briefly, was
there ever any thought or interest in girls outside your own
community?
MORI:
Yes, there was. (laughs)
0:41:05.7
CLINE:
You were in a diverse community and diverse high school. What was
that about?
MORI:
There was always that question of whether or not on different
levels, first of all, just your manlihood in one sense or just even
the friendships you had with the opposite sex at that particular
time. So this is high school. This is in, like, the middle to late
sixties. There was still racial consideration, of course, and social
consideration. Most of the Caucasian girls came from the more
wealthier culture. The African American girls in general seemed to
be a little bit more socially advanced, so to speak. That’s a
general statement, but because the Japanese, the Asian community
were fairly pretty much passive as far as socially and outwardness
and stuff like that, although individually there were—I knew of guys
who did date other races and stuff, so to speak. It was an issue
within the community. I know it was an issue within my family. We’d
go out together as groups, boys and girls, and different races in
the groups, social groups, so it wasn’t necessarily a question of
going someplace in a mixed group because, you know, it’s not a
problem. A lot of it was school social kind of stuff. Some of it was
outside of school, kind of school things, and we did venture into
areas, like because of close proximity to Hollywood, you know, we’d
go to clubs up in Hollywood and stuff, and it was outside. So it
wasn’t like we visited each other’s neighborhoods.
CLINE:
Right. Okay.
0:44:48.7
MORI:
Like us going out a little bit further south to South Central (Los
Angeles), although within the African American community and the
Japanese American, it’s the same community. So there were a few
things that we had gone to together in those particular
neighborhoods because they were just in the neighborhood, so that
wasn’t a problem either, although generally the Caucasian kids,
because there were hardly any in our neighborhood, it was not
necessarily difficult for them, but we were conscious of that. We
were very conscious of that, and to try to make it not uncomfortable
for them, but also, too, though, to share our social life, so to
speak, with the other cultures. But it was an issue. I mean it did
come up in different situations.
As I mentioned before, there were derogatory names. In the locker
room, so to speak, there was always those kind of little bantering
going back and forth and stuff. It never was used by the coaches.
Race was never used by the coaches to talk about it or to pit one
against the other. There was never of that. There may have been that
inside the family discussion situation about always wanting to try
to be better than so-and-so or better than another race, so to
speak, my parents had said, you know. They did say it. It could have
been a motivating kind of—they tried to make it as a motivating kind
of thing. Whether or not it worked or not, I touched on it or
referenced that in the back of my mind when I was trying to do
something, you know, whether it was to either study harder or
athletically try to practice harder or whatever it was, it probably
sat in the back of my mind. I don’t deny not saying it to somebody’s
face at particular times, majority of the time not, because I was
always on the shorter stature side and stuff like that, and I just
knew I didn’t want to get my ass kicked, and so you were very, very
conscious of those things. Also, too, you know, and at that time, I
guess, in high school, not necessarily understood the whole race
thing because we did grow up—we were conscious of it all the time,
but yet to the extent of situations that the African American
community was going through versus the Asian community versus the
Caucasian white community, even the Latino community at the time,
too, those kinds of things and who you grew up with and stuff, L.A.
High School at the time and its neighborhood and the surrounding
neighborhood was not the ghetto.
0:47:53.2
CLINE:
Right.
MORI:
There may have been pockets and areas which were very, very low
income and the housing situation was not necessarily comparable to
other neighborhoods, but majority of the people, they may have been
low income and they might have even been in poverty, but it wasn’t a
drastic situation. The emphasis of the individuals that stayed in
school were pretty focused on getting an education. Dorsey, Los
Angeles, L.A. High School, Manual (Arts High School), Hamilton High
School, and part of Fairfax High School, in terms of the African
American community and the middle-class and even upper-middle-class,
African Americans attended those schools. So the parents and the
economic level of people that went to those schools were on the
level of middle-class, so the values, everyone’s values were pretty
much the same within the minority communities. Even in the Asian
community there were poverty, there were individuals who struggled
financially, economically and stuff, but the value in terms of
education and the respect from folks and stuff like that was pretty
high. So I know in my class they had strived to be leaders within
the school, took on leadership responsibilities, organizing
responsibilities, and later on, those individuals within the school,
because you knew who they were, they were very popular, those names
kind of sort of stuck in your head. So twenty years or fifteen years
after, the names would pop up again in terms of supporting the
community, starting businesses in the community, being civic leaders
in the community, being politicians in the community from that
particular neighborhood, starting banks, knowing what the community
needed on all different levels. I’m not saying that it doesn’t
happen in other communities and areas, stuff like that, but it seems
that the level that they were starting off on was a lot higher than
other communities or pockets of communities in Los Angeles.
0:52:03.1
CLINE:
Right.
MORI:
It was fun. (laughs) It was fun exploring different communities,
different cultures. Yeah, it was fun. And my mother still lives in
the same house I previously grew up in, in the same neighborhood.
That neighborhood has changed. Right now it’s still predominantly
African American, with Hispanic families moving in and even
Caucasians moving into the neighborhood and buying up houses, large
houses on the block and refurbishing them and stuff like that. So
there’s new energy into that, and it’s geographically essentially
really, really easy to get to, a lot of things in Southern
California. Major streets close by, the freeways are close by, very
accessible, but you have to have a car. (laughs)
CLINE:
Well, it is L.A.
0:55:08.6
MORI:
You had asked about cars and mobility and getting places and stuff.
We were not a very—family-wise, my dad was a gardener, probably
worked ten, twelve hours a day, probably at least ten hours a day.
My mom pretty much was a housewife, so she was, you know, at home.
When we left school, she was home, when we came home from school, so
we were not latchkey kids. Very, very lucky to have that situation.
So when the time came around to getting some kind of form of
transportation, they were able to afford, my brother and I, he had a
car first, a used car. He had to have a pickup truck for his
gardening route, and I think they were able to finance and get and
purchase new cars every X amount of years. About once every ten
years they’d be able to get a car. I guess they had saved money and
stuff for it. So after they were able to purchase a car, they
obviously paid car insurance, but we pretty much had to pay for gas
and stuff like that, so we had to go out and get part-time jobs,
both of us.
Growing up, I remember jumping on the bus. I can’t even remember
what number it was. You just knew we had to walk to the top of the
hill on Washington Boulevard, and there was a bus stop right there,
pay, I don’t know, twenty cents, fifteen cents, twenty cents, jump
on a bus right there. And then it would take us all the way
downtown, and we would get off on Broadway, and we would spend a
whole day on Broadway shopping, you know, going to certain men’s
clothing stores and then also taking in a movie there. So that’s
when we were, like, probably twelve, thirteen, fourteen years old.
CLINE:
You mentioned movies. There were some Japanese movie theaters around
town.
MORI:
Yes.
CLINE:
I know there was more than one, but I only remember one from my
growing up here. What about those, and how often would you frequent
those, and what kind of impact did that have on your growing up and
your early adult life?
MORI:
We would go to these theaters often. And not paying attention to it,
but there were three theaters, and they were within—there were two
in Crenshaw area, one on Adams Boulevard near Crenshaw, which really
was called the Barb’s (phonetic) Theater. Anyway, that was, I think,
called the Kabuki Theater, and they showed movies. And then there
was another one called Kokusai, which was on Crenshaw Boulevard
closer to Jefferson Boulevard. And then another one called Toho was
on La Brea (Avenue) near Olympic. Actually, it was on Olympic and
Ninth (Street).
CLINE:
Right. I remember that one.
MORI:
Toho was the name of a film company in Japan, so they were a
distribution company, so they pretty much set up their own movies,
brought their own movies over and stuff. Kokusai, I think, was
another distributor, and they’d show movies. And then the Kabuki
one, I don’t think it was there that long, but it was amazing that
that was only four or five blocks away from the Kokusai, and I can’t
remember which one started, what was up first. There was two
downtown in Little Tokyo, one on First Street, which is no longer
there, and another one called (unclear) *(CORRECT?), which was on
Main Street, which used to be called the Tohei Theater, because
Tohei was another distribution company. So those two. And then once
in a while up in J-Flats and uptown area there was another theater
that showed Japanese movies. So there was a substantial amount of
Japanese movie theaters.
0:58:38.5
CLINE:
Yes.
MORI:
I remember going with my dad and my mom probably about seven or
eight times a year. And then afterwards in the seventies, it might
have even been in the late sixties, we would kind of go on our own,
because this genre of film, they’re called the chambata or samurai
movies, and they would have the blood and guts and spitting out of
blood and cutting off the arms and stuff, and it was pretty hokey
then and it’s still hokey now, but the storyline was pretty
interesting, you know, different kinds of different stories and
stuff. But we used to go to those a lot, a lot meaning out of a
month we’d probably go three or four times on the weekend or
something, three or four times out of the month.
CLINE:
Wow.
1:00:18.7
MORI:
They would change the movies sometimes every week, sometimes every
two weeks, depending upon the movie and stuff, and you would hear
stars like (Tatsuya) Nakadai, Toshiro Mifune, Shintaru Katsu, Katsu
Shintaru. He was called Zatoichi, which is the Blind Swordsman. So
there were a different number of movies and stars and people that
you just kind of followed around and stuff.
Then in the early seventies, then there were documentaries from
Japan, and then there were movies about social issues in Japan,
about the comfort women in Japan during the war. There was a movie
called Sandakan 8, which depicted these eight women who were
kidnapped and put on this island to service the Japanese Army, so to
speak. So it told that particular story of them. I remember that
movie because there was another movie called Goyokin that was
playing at the same time, which eventually became my most favorite
Japanese movie because of the story, the cinematography, and, of
course, the taiko at the very end called Gojinjo, which is a mass
dance which they perform taiko on.
CLINE:
When did you see that?
MORI:
We probably saw that in 1976 or ’77. So they were able to start
making films about different controversial things in Japan. We went,
I think, back two days in a row. I think we saw both movies three
times each night, so six times, and I think somebody even went back
another night and saw it two more times.
CLINE:
Wow.
MORI:
So we’d get there like at four-thirty, five o’clock and just stay
until the last movie.
CLINE:
Wow.
1:03:12.5
MORI:
That’s how much we were into it, and I don’t know why. Actually, I
think we were going to go see the taiko movie, but we made an excuse
to go see Sandakan 8. So that was kind of influential. But prior to
that, we heard of the movie Rickshaw Man, which depicted Toshiro
Mifune playing taiko, and, probably you remember, told the story
about how they saw it in Japan also too. And I think they saw the
same movie of Toshiro Mifune, although there was one I heard that
was made in the early fifties. He made one, I think, from the middle
fifties, which both of us saw in the late sixties.
CLINE:
Both of you meaning—
MORI:
Meaning another group in Japan. Then Tagayasu Den, he was the
original person who started Ondekoza, which later turned into Kodo.
CLINE:
Right.
1:06:08.31:08:53.7
MORI:
Actually, it was in the same room that a Japanese reporter, writer
from Folk Arts Museum in Japan was doing a story about taiko in
North America, and he explained, he told us that Den had saw the
same movie that we had saw. So that was the similarity at the same
time, and similar questions on who did he learn from, who taught him
how to play, where did that rhythm come from, where did that style
come from. So the modern-day odaiko big-drum solo originally came
from that, but what it evolved to today actually originally started
with this kind of Eitetsu Hayashi, who’s still performing in Japan
today, and his form, his attitude, his approach to playing, the
odaiko is still taught and still being dissected and analyzed even
today by the modern contemporary taiko players. They all kind of
like, you know, go off of that. So the media culture, music kind of
was around that time, late sixties, early seventies when, I guess, a
lot of stuff was here from Japan and people were just trying to
absorb it, understand, appreciate it. Going to the movies on the
weekends or whatever and probably even sometimes during the middle
of the week, which kind astounds me, now that I think about it,
because my dad pretty much, you know, woke up before the sun came
up. On a couple of occasions he was getting up and going to work and
I was just coming home. That was a trip. He’d go to bed,
seven-thirty, eight o’clock, get up early, work all day. He’d even
work on Saturdays. So Sunday’s kind of his day off, but he’d just be
still putzing around in his garage and stuff. He always had to be
doing stuff.
But around that time was pretty much, to think about it now, was
probably the most exposure to Japanese culture. It carried along
through the early eighties, all through the seventies and through
the early eighties in different pockets of areas of Southern
California where something would come up, something would start, but
I think it also showed the other cultural teachers that they could
do this and survive. Everybody, though, had to have part-time jobs.
They still do, a lot of them. A couple of them just did that, and
they’re still just doing that, teaching, but I’m sure they figured
out a way how to survive and stuff like that just on teaching and
stuff. It’s cycler (sic). I don’t know where it is right now. I
haven’t really thought about where it is right now. It’s still
there. A lot of people participate in Japanese culture, but I’m not
sure if it’s as organized and as many students as before, because
you can’t really tell because they’re not on one central place
anymore; they’re spread out. And some of it has been possibly
changed a little bit, diffused a little bit, very similar to, like,
martial arts, which is set up with a teacher, the main master. You
have all these kind of disciples, so to speak, right? And as it gets
further and further away from the masses, so to speak, then it gets
little changes here and there and adapts to the environment that
it’s in. So it is progressing in one sense, so that’s the Japanese
culture that have been diffused, homogenized, so to speak. And then
there are a few that have just maintained the original thing from
the get-go because there’s no other way to do it or play it, and one
of those is gagku/bugaku. I mean that’s what it is and—
CLINE:
It’s set.
MORI:
—it’s set, you know. It could be the slight tilting of the head,
could be the slight timing rhythm kind of part of it and stuff,
intonation on the melody and stuff, but it’s all right there, you
know.
CLINE:
This time, the late sixties, early seventies, a time of incredibly
momentous changes in the world culturally and politically and
everything else, is also the time that you start to become aware of
more of the truth of your Japanese American history or story, your
heritage, and you talked a little bit about being at LACC and
wanting to do a speech based on a book, which I think you said was
called America’s Concentration Camps.
MORI:
Yes.
CLINE:
What led you to that? If you can name anything, what started to
initiate your raising of consciousness in this area?
MORI:
At the time there were people that I knew socially, and pretty much
my peers were also going to college. I had mentioned Long Beach
State and UCLA.
CLINE:
Right.
1:11:48.71:14:15.1
MORI:
And socioeconomically, if you went to UCLA, you were smart.
(laughter) I mean, it took a little bit more to get into university
than it did to get into a state college or whatever, right? But that
was the perception at the time, right? And so I only knew a few
people going to UCLA, but I knew a whole lot of people going to
within the Cal State system, Cal State L.A. And then a whole bunch
of Asians and Japanese Americans were going to Long Beach State for
some-odd reason, whatever. I guess it was not Cal State L.A., which
was considered to be a commuter school. It’s one a little bit
further away in which you could commute easy enough by car and
freeway and stuff, but it was almost a totally different world, you
know. It was that extra—from Crenshaw area it’d probably take you
about thirty-five, forty minutes to get there, so it was twenty
minutes further than Cal State L.A. So this twenty minutes was even
a total different world than what we grew up in. It was Long Beach.
So people started going out there, but we’d see them sometimes on
weekends at different social activities and stuff. We’d see them at
church and stuff because they would come home on weekends and do
their laundry and whatever, but they would dorm out there. And they
would start talking about social issues. They talked about our
history and they talked about just the overall movement and they
talked about the community. I’m using all these phrases and stuff in
terms of organizing terminology right now, but at the time those
particular social organizing kind of terms were not there, you know.
It was like starting from ground zero. So this was ’69, ’69-’70. The
events that took place in the United States, dramatic things took
place in the United States in the early sixties and middle sixties,
and where the leaders again were being assassinated, Martin Luther
King (Jr.) movement, later (Robert F.) Bobby Kennedy, Cesar Chavez.
You know, the whole kind of thing were taking place. And finally, I
say that now, finally, but at the time there wasn’t a central place
that the young folks, Sanseis, could feel comfortable with in terms
of something supported and also, too, in terms of leadership. There
were Japanese Americans that were in politics or beginning to get
into politics, but everything was still spread out. On a national
level there were Asians and some Japanese, but they were pretty
much, you know, behind the scenes, behind the scenes.
There was an organization called JACL, Japanese American Citizens
League, that was a social rights group that was my parents’ age, my
parents’ organization, which I thought, and there was all these
different kinds of things about the JACL, about the good things that
they were doing in terms of helping individuals get back into
society, supporting legislation issues, and they were against the
anti-immigration laws, and they were also kind of like a semi-social
group also too. We knew of them because of things that we heard in
terms of how they helped or the organizational things that they
tried to do during the camps. They were pro-American. They were not
necessarily anti-Japanese, but they said in order for us or the
Japanese to be part of any society, you had to sign the loyalty
document.
CLINE:
Yes. Right.
1:18:04.61:20:14.4
MORI:
And they were pretty much all English-speaking, so they were pretty
much Niseis, some younger Isseis, but pretty much Niseis who spoke
English and communicated that, and they were probably all bilingual
also too. So, not that we were anti-establishment at the time, but
we probably were, so we were questioning everything that happened
before, wanted to know what circumstance happened. And then we also
tried to understand and explore the “no-no boys,” the boys who wrote
“no” in terms of their allegiance to the United States and the
commitment to the United States and had to give up their loyalty to
Japan. These were Niseis. They were people that were born and raised
in the United States, and they weren’t necessarily questioning their
loyalty, although they were; they were just trying to exercise their
right of being American citizens in that, “Why do we have to sign
this? Because we’re already American citizens. Why do we have to
denounce or reestablish our loyalty to one or the other?” But
nothing was written about that. Nothing was spoken about these
“no-no boys.” Nothing was explained about the resistors, the camp
resistors, the ones who did not want to participate. I’m not saying
that they were right or wrong. I’m not saying that the JACL was
right or wrong in what everybody did. But it’s a situation in which
it was a situation that people came across in camp at that
particular time.
So all these things were kind of pretty much swirling around and
being questioned of what you can do and what you can’t do and stuff.
Me directly, I guess, at that particular time in the camp finally
asked my mom, “What camp were you in?” She goes, “I was in Poston,”
you know, and her finally describing the life in Poston and stuff.
For her it was a mixed bag. She was in her late teens, so it was
socially, “Wow, all these Japanese Americans being in one place!”
But yet on the other hand, have to be put into these camps and
restricted socially and whatever you could do. Plus, you’re in this
camp, right? This prison. So talked to her about that, and basically
it was like, that ain’t right. (laughs) I mean, I say to myself,
that ain’t right, man. Just because you’re Japanese Americans, you’d
be taken away for like three or four years, stuck in this camp,
denied everything. You had to give up all your property, all your
personal belongings. All your material wealth just got taken away
from you, man. That ain’t right. So that a combination was seen
after Americans getting beat up. Not only that, experiencing the
Watts Riots and stuff like that, you know. It just wasn’t right. It
just wasn’t right. My peers would come back from Long Beach, and
they would just kind of like sit around socially, and we would get
together and talk about stuff. They would start describing about
trying to learn about those things, to learn about your own history
during that particular period of time, which was never explained to
you, never giving you that kind of sense, never giving you the
opportunity to make a decision whether it was right or wrong, but to
understand that, so it wasn’t there.
So they were trying to put together an Asian American studies
curriculum, you know. Along with the curriculum, that all kind of
sort of came to a head, and so when I saw my friends trying to
develop this particular program, seeing me try to figure out what
I’m going to do with my life at that particular time, if I’m going
to go to Vietnam, if I’m going to fight this particular war, if it
was a just war, because at that particular time it was a declared
war, but in the middle sixties it was not a declared war. And they
did bring up genocide. They did bring up Asians fighting against
Asians. What would you do within the community if you came across
somebody that kind of sort of looked like you, he had a gun, you had
a gun? Okay, are you on both same sides? Is he a decoy? Are you a
decoy? You know, what? Guys within the Japanese American community,
they would volunteer. They got drafted, you know, all different
forms of however just to do what they needed to do, and they did,
and I was questioning that, very much so questioning that.
CLINE:
How did that affect your relationship with your parents, or did it?
How did it change?
1:22:20.9
MORI:
Good question. Very, very good question, because I think I did sit
down with them. Well, I had to sit down with them and explain the
lottery, explain the drafting and the draft. Even my dad, with his
limited English, knew the draft. First time I sat down and had a
talk with them about anything significant.
CLINE:
Wow.
MORI:
Up until then, it was, “Okay, we’re going to Boy Scouts,” playing
baseball, going to high school, doing this, doing that. Some things,
“You want to do this?” “No, I don’t want to do this. Let me go and
do that.” But it was the first time I sat down and says, “Okay,
look. This is what it is,” meaning I made a decision I wasn’t going
to go to the war. I wasn’t going to go to Canada. This is an
alternative that I was trying to seek out, and so I was trying to
explain to them as best I possibly could what I was trying to do by
becoming a conscientious objector.
CLINE:
So you didn’t sort of seek their advice in making this decision
before that at all, then? This was outside your family relationships
that you came to this decision on your own?
MORI:
Pretty much.
CLINE:
Wow. That’s pretty amazing.
MORI:
I mean, part of it could have been the language situation in terms
of trying to explain it, and at that time I didn’t really even know
either what I was feeling and how was I going to deal with this, and
talking to I don’t know how many draft counselors.
CLINE:
So you were talking to your folks.
MORI:
Yes. But when I made a decision, I did sit down and talk to them
about it. Now, whether or not I solicited, asked them their opinion,
or I just kind of told them, of course, when you’re eighteen,
nineteen, you knew everything there was to know. (laughter)
CLINE:
Yes.
1:24:59.4
MORI:
I couldn’t tell them or ask them, because I already knew my decision
kind of, so to speak. But I think, looking back on it, because I
think I did sit down and talk to them, it was the first time, they
more or less, like, either were surprised or they respected that,
and whether or not they thought I knew what I was doing maybe, I
don’t think I ever convinced them convinced them that what I was
doing was right or wrong, whatever, but they trusted me at that
particular point in time.
I finished and got a AA (Associate in the Arts) degree from City
College, and I was working at the time as a dental technician, so I
had done everything that, I guess, was expected to me, so to speak,
in that terms. Went to school, got an education, got a job, was
working. In their eyes, I was doing the same thing as my cousin’s
husband was doing. So I think when I explained it to them, I think
my mom and my dad says, “Well, just let us know what the outcome of
this thing is and stuff,” you know. It was just, “Okay,” you know.
It was never saying, “I support you whatever you want to do,” kind
of a thing. They said, “Okay,” pretty much okay. My mom, I’m sure,
was very worried about the whole situation. And then I was trying to
explain it to them in terms of the appeal process and everything
like that, but I eventually told them the outcome of what had
happened. I remember seeing Muhammad Ali on TV getting the word that
he had gotten his conscientious objector status, and I think I
remember saying, “Well, if he got it, I’m going to get it. I can get
it too.” And sure enough, I got it.
CLINE:
So how did learning more about your parents’ camp experience affect
your view of your parents?
1:28:08.8
MORI:
Naturally, it made me understand the struggles compounded amongst
all the other economic and social situations outside of camp trying
to survive, and actually what they were trying to do for the family
and for the future of the family, and to compound that particular
short period of time on them was pretty amazing in terms of what
they had gone through and stuff. My mom pretty much sometimes still
refers to it, not as often. I’m sure she’s coming down with some
kind of memory loss, either dementia or Alzheimer’s (disease) or
whatever. I’m getting that way too.
CLINE:
How old is she?
MORI:
Eighty-nine and a half. But she once and a while brings it up in a
situation. “Oh, so-and-so.” Or I’d say, “This is so-and-so and
so-and-so. You told me that you knew them through camp.” And she’d
go, “Oh, yeah, yeah,” and then she’d explain the situation in camp.
And yet what we did two days ago she don’t remember. So it’s those
kind of things. It’s like the memory kind of a thing.
CLINE:
So where was the Amerasia Bookstore?
1:29:58.91:31:49.01:34:08.91:36:56.8
MORI:
That was being discussed in 1970 with, again, a lot of friends, and
it just so happens that I had gone to the draft counselor after I
had been informed, and I said, “Do you have any suggestions in terms
of where I could serve with a nonprofit organization to fulfill my
conscientious objector status?” I was at the time looking into John
Tracy Clinic, the eye clinic, Red Cross, (Los Angeles) Orthopedic
Hospital, so kind of a medical kind of thing, and that’s what my
connotation or my understanding of what a nonprofit organization was
at that particular time. I had no idea it could be social service. I
didn’t know it could be whatever. I just thought it had to be
connected with a hospital or some medical thing or whatever.
And they go, “JASC office, Japanese American Service Center, is a
nonprofit organization.” And I go, “Okay.” “And we deal with trying
to get a hot meals program, senior citizen program, a drop-in
center, a drop-in center for immigrants to talk about, you know,
immigration issues, senior care, language care, whatever.” And I go,
“Really?” “Yeah, we’re nonprofit. I says, “Far out.” And he goes,
“You know, so-and-so and so-and-so, they’re talking about starting a
bookstore that deals with Asian American books. And I go, “But
that’s a regular bookstore.” He goes, “Well, no. They’re under our
umbrella or they’re applying for their own nonprofit status. We’re
the physical receiver right now, but eventually they will be
independent. And I go, “Wow, I didn’t you could do that. I didn’t
know that was a nonprofit organization.” I says, “Okay, I’ll check
them out.” I went to a meeting. They says, “Yes, the mission of this
particular organization of this group is trying to gather as many
literature and English-written language translations of things that
affect Asians in the United States.” And I go, “This seems like
fun.” (laughter) “There’s men and women in the group, and so this is
fun. If I got to do something, I’ll check it out.” But I says, “Is
there any pay?” I mean, you know, I could get a job, you know, to
sustain myself. You know, I could get paid part-time minimum wage or
whatever, you know, working at a hospital or doing something.
He says, “Well, we’re writing all these grants and this other stuff,
so there may be a federal job training program, Job Corps program or
something like that, that we maybe are (unclear),” and eventually
they did, and we got some federal funding and stuff like that and
job training money and whatever else. And then there was also this
thing called NYC, Neighborhood Youth Council, and they would pay
high school kids, you know, part-time summer wages, and so we picked
up kids to help us do stuff and stuff, and we were just kind of
pretty much scrambling from grant to grant, trying to make some
salary and stuff like that. Then all the money that we made on
selling the books went back into the bookstore to buy more books,
more books, and more books, and, you know, pay an author to come and
sign books so we’d sell books and make more books and make more
money so we could buy more books. So we were on First Street above a
sushi restaurant and next door to a hair salon upstairs. It was one,
two, two and a half rooms upstairs, real, real small, very small
office. Happened at the same time that the creation of the first
Asian American studies at Long Beach State, and then soon after
that, UCLA developed its Asian American studies, and all these other
Asian American studies or classes started to pop up at different
places not only at colleges and university, but also, too, in
Community Centers in the community, and they, through the bookstore,
would buy and order books through a regular book distributor. They
had access to pretty much straight-ahead general publishers that had
published books.
A lot of the books were published by other universities’ book
printing publishing companies. Princeton (University) had one, Yale
(University), Oxford (University), and they would do a zillion
titles, but all the ones that dealt with Japanese, Japanese
Americans, there were only a few that were by major mainstream
publishers, Random House, (Simon and) Shuster and Sons. And I have
no idea why they printed what they printed and when they printed it
or why they did it, but they did. And so we pretty much did the
legwork for a lot of schools and stuff like that in terms of getting
materials, seeing what was available. We also got a lot of Red
books. We also got a lot of Chairman Mao stuff, Ho Chi Minh stuff, a
lot of stuff from China, (President Richard M.) Nixon diplomacy
going over, opening up the trade. So we got a lot of stuff from
China that was translated to English, carried Mao hats and jackets,
all the communist propaganda, posters, artwork and stuff from China.
We’d get it through our connection through Chinatown, and that was
pretty interesting. So we’d gather all this stuff. The professors in
the early days also came from the community, and so they would know
about the bookstore, and they’d go, “Okay, I got a class starting in
a couple months.” This is summertime. “I need for you to order X
amount of books of this particular book.” We’d go, “Okay, we’ll try
to get bulk.” A lot of times they don’t have them in stock or we had
to put a special issue order, and they would have to, like, print
some more or whatever, you know. And a lot of times the whole thing
about demand and supply. Now you started to ask about Asian American
material. Is there potential for us to start printing this thing
again or what? And they did. There were novels that were written by
Japanese American, Asian Americans that were printed in the thirties
and forties that we didn’t even know about, that we finally were
able to dig up. We were instrumental of actually getting a couple of
books reprinted, you know, resurrected and stuff like that, printed,
and they used them in the classrooms and stuff. A lot of Japanese
books, kids’ books that were in English and Japanese.
A lot of stuff about Chinese and Chinese Americans were in print and
available, and so that’s where the bulk of the stuff was about
Chinese Americans. Their cultural and their progress to move forward
wasn’t interrupted by the camp. They were pretty much staggered by
the immigration laws specifically geared toward Chinese, you know.
So that was interesting. And then we started doing readings of
books. And then at the same time there was also redevelopment of
Little Tokyo.
CLINE:
Yes. I’m heading into that, actually.
1:39:14.61:41:35.8
MORI:
Little Tokyo got into the City (of Los Angeles). Little Tokyo was
now recognized as a district, as an area, as not only a commercial
area, but also, too, of a residential area, more so in the beginning
as a residential than as a commercial, although they went hand in
hand. So in the forties or the fifties, late forties, fifties they
started talking about expanding civic center, meaning the
government. So then they started looking for a place to build the
police station. They figured it had to be near the City Hall. They
already had plans for City Hall East, so they says, “Okay, well,
next to City Hall is Little Tokyo. Let’s take up this particular
block.” So they took up the northwest corner of Little Tokyo, San
Pedro (Street) and First Street and borders Los Angeles Street.
Parker Center goes up there. That wipes out a whole block of
Japanese American businesses and hotels. So that shifts everything,
moves everything, and people start moving out and stuff.
So in the early seventies they start talking about redevelopment. So
there was a Little Tokyo Redevelopment Group (Project) put together
besides all the other pockets of redevelopment, CRA (Community
Redevelopment Agency) areas around the City of Los Angeles.
Normandie (Avenue)-Expo(sition Boulevard), Watts, out in the Valley,
Pacoima, you know, all these different pockets of areas, East L.A.
had the district redevelopment, and Little Tokyo had one. So then at
the time they started controlling a little bit. The thing of it was
it was really interesting that the north side of First Street
between San Pedro and Central (Avenue) was not in Little Tokyo
redevelopment CRA. It was and it wasn’t. It was a separate parcel
deemed North First Street, and the city government was eyeing that
property because it was not included in the redevelopment district
or area. The City of L.A. wanted to buy up all of First Street
because behind it was a dilapidated Union Church. Behind that was
this parking lot for the LAPD (Los Angeles Police Department) so
they figured, “Well, let’s expand and let’s take over the north side
of First street too. We’ll let them build a new whatever.” So that
went on and on, and the community became a little bit stronger and
they voiced their opinions. And naturally, the landlords were using
Little Tokyo as pawns in whatever. They could have sold the
property, you know, but they were possibly holding on for more
money. So, the city wants it, the city wants it. So, sure, the city
wants it, but I could get maybe a little bit more than rack rate for
it or whatever, retail rate for it, so I’m going to hold out, but
I’m going to encourage the tenants to protest this whole thing. So
it was a quiet protest in one sense.
And then they actually paid people, and then we knew of this move,
and they were trying to move people out, and they did. They
eventually moved some businesses out because of this threat that the
City was going to take over the north side of First Street. At the
end of the First Street was Nishi Honganji (Buddhist Church). That
was the church.
CLINE:
Right.
1:44:07.6
MORI:
Right? Sixties and seventies, they were talking about moving because
it was old and dilapidated, and they weren’t sure what they were
going to do, so they bought the property, you know, near the (First
Street) Bridge on Vignes (Street) and First Street. So the building
was still there, and then the City was talking about remodeling it,
right? The community was talking about remodeling it. And then
eventually it turned into Japanese American National Museum, JANM,
and that movement started in the late seventies. No, I take that
back. That movement started in the early seventies, this guy, by
Bruce Kaji and a couple of other people. So we were upstairs and we
heard about that, and they were giving out money to move, so we were
looking around Little Tokyo to move, looking all around Little Tokyo
to move. And somebody says, “Hey, there’s this empty storefront over
here on Second Street.” So where we’re at right now, if you go
directly straight, a beeline to Second Street, cutting through the
buildings and everything like that, that walkway was still there,
and there was a bar right here on the corner and next to it was this
probably about 1,000-square-foot storefront, and that’s where
Amerasia Bookstore moved to. The front half of it was about 800
square feet, and we built in shelving, display areas, and actually
what we did was we built this platform and raised the platform up.
It was four feet, and we had the books up here on the top, and we
had carpeted and stuff, so you can kind of sit on it and read books
at the same time. And then the books were up here, and then on the
bottom there were just shelves, and there was a display area in the
front for, like, artwork and stuff. We sold plants, indoor plants at
the time, right, you know, kind of thing.
CLINE:
It was the seventies.
1:45:56.0
MORI:
The seventies. Exactly. And then we put up some artwork, visual
arts, pottery, you know, all kinds of different stuff in the front
window. And then we put some more books in the side, and we put some
clothing up in the side and stuff like people that made and stuff.
And in the back was pretty much bigger than the front. It was, like,
maybe 900, so it was, it could have been, like, want to say, eight,
sixteen, eighteen, could have been 1,800, 1,900 square feet in
there. So the back part of it, this other guy and I set up a little
silkscreen setup, and we pretty much did all the silk-screening for
all the community events amongst our peers and stuff like that. So
whatever activity you had, you know, we printed out posters. We
printed t-shirts also too. So if you had a protest or if you had
some kind of event, we’d print the posters. And then we did readings
in there. There was a natural stage up there we could put chairs
stuff. People could hang out either up on the top or on the bottom.
And then in the back we cleared it out even more, and we set up a
larger stage area, and then we did musical presentations back there
too. So we moved over there. And then again redevelopment roared its
head, so to speak, and then from that spot there, as you could tell,
there’s a new building there, and then they moved again to over here
on Central and Third (Street). There’s this other building on this
side, which I thought was a pretty hip building. It was a very, very
unique building.
So then they moved over there, and they were there for a few years.
And then it slowly declined, and then just this one individual kind
of like took it on, and he moved it over to Japanese Village Plaza.
He used to do framing art stuff, and it was over there for a little
while also too. Then after that, it became just a mail kind of a
situation, and then it dissolved. But the name, you know,
corporation of Amerasia Bookstore, I think, is still there in
existence, actually, Amerasia. No, I take that back. It’s called
Aisarema, which is Amerasia spelled backwards. Anyway, so that went
on. It became well known, so we were shipping books all over the
United States. So that became a need of what it was in that because
there was so many Asian American studies and they were connected
with the school, then the bookstore basically ordered directly to
the publishers and stuff. So it pretty much served its purpose at
the time for a good ten, twelve, fifteen years as a place to get,
you know, resource material and stuff.
CLINE:
Longer than you would have had to fight the war. (laughs)
MORI:
Yes. Actually, I started—I was up there in ’71. I was there for the
opening. I was there part of the opening, so 1970. Seventy-one, yes,
I got the notice to start. It wasn’t even eight or nine months
later, it wasn’t even a year I got another letter saying that my
service was over, and I can’t remember exactly why. The war wasn’t
over.
CLINE:
Right.
1:49:01.3
MORI:
Something about even though my number was called and it was
processed, that—and I don’t think it was a time in which I first
applied for conscientious objector status to the time that I finally
got it, if that time was being counted. But anyway, after seven
months I got this letter saying that I no longer had to work for a
nonprofit organization and my responsibility was over, but I stayed
there.
CLINE:
Yes. A new career.
MORI:
Yes.
CLINE:
We’re going to call it. It’s getting late. We didn’t get too much
more into the taiko thing, but I want to pick up next time talking
not only more about the changes in Little Tokyo that happened
through the seventies, which are considerable, but specifically your
involvement in the taiko and more details about the connection that
you made today between the development of the taiko ensemble here
with Ondekoza and Japan and Reverend Mas’ role in all of this. Does
that work for you?
MORI:
Oh, yes. A lot of this is more—I’m glad, yes, you’re asking, and it
may be able to explain the depth because the little different
pockets of things that did affect it in terms of my ability
time-wise to explore the Japanese American history, and then the
cultural aspect of it and the timing of it in the time that was
allotted, I guess, for me to practice, so to speak, or to find out
more about it because thinking about it, if I had a regular job, I
don’t know if I would have been able to have that much interest and
time when I had the interest and time or interest. Not time, but
interest to be able to do that.
CLINE:
Well, it sounds like a lot of things came together, even out of
things that sounded like they were a little frightening, like the
draft, for example.
MORI:
Yes.
CLINE:
It’s amazing how things can work out.
MORI:
Yes.
CLINE:
All right?
MORI:
Thank you.
CLINE:
Thank you. ( End of May 26, 2011 interview)
CLINE:
Today is June 2, 2010. This is Alex Cline interviewing Johnny Mori
at the Japan America Theater in Little Tokyo, downtown Los Angeles.
This is our third session. Good morning again.
MORI:
Good morning. How you doing today?
0:01:06.60:02:05.4
CLINE:
I’m okay. I’m here. (Mori laughs.) I have to say it’s very pleasant
to come here, and this is a really nice room, perfect interview
room. We left off last time talking about what turned out to be the
many years you spent working at the Amerasia Bookstore and what
started out to be your conscientious objector nonprofit stint, and
it went far beyond that. And one of the things that we want to get
into today are the other things you were doing around that time
during the seventies besides working at the Amerasia Bookstore and
following it to its various relocations as Little Tokyo was being
redeveloped.
I did want to ask you, since during the time of your very brief
service as a conscientious objector, we talked a little bit about
the very large cultural and political changes going on in the
country and in the world, the late sixties into the early seventies,
and this is a time, of course, that a lot of people associate with a
lot of changes in popular music and association with the
counterculture, which also included the drug culture, hippies, all
that fun stuff that was so pervasive at that time. How much, if at
all, did that whole sort of thing affect you during this period when
you were also experiencing a raising of your own consciousness
regarding things sociopolitical, particularly with regard to the
Japanese American experience?
0:05:31.3
MORI:
I think at the time and through—I don’t know if individual study and
not necessarily research, but having the opportunity to gain
understanding and knowledge about other areas in the United States
and what things they were also thinking about and how they were
dealing with this either identity or the war and try to develop
these connections unconsciously or just trying to know what other
people are doing in other parts mainly, like, on the East Coast and
New York, where you had heard of different individuals. And they had
put out a publication called Yellow Pearl. It’s a take on “yellow
peril,” right? Pearl, peril. There was a group in New York. The
Japanese American and Asian community in New York was moderately in
size. It doesn’t compare to the West Coast, but because of the
geographical containment of the structure of New York in terms of
Chinatown and everything being compressed into this Manhattan Island
and stuff like that, very similar to San Francisco in the Bay Area.
And plus, just their intenseness of the East Coast. This is
geographical chauvinism, but also, too, what I call the daily life
rhythm of New York is a lot faster and intense than the West Coast.
So the issues that we’re talking about or concerned about were sort
of the same, and while I was going through my conscientious objector
status and going to Institute of Buddhist Studies in Berkeley—and I
can’t remember if I mentioned that; I probably did that—studied
Buddhism. And then, I guess, trying to communicate with my
generation and the next generation, so to speak, through the
Buddhist Churches of America organization, in which it was fairly—I
wouldn’t say fairly. It was very organized in terms of the structure
of the Buddhist churches. There was a Buddhist church in every major
city in the United States.
CLINE:
Right. Now, this is Jodo Shinshu.
0:08:12.5
MORI:
Exactly. Jodo Shinshu versus Zen or Nichiren or other sects of
Buddhism, Japanese Buddhism. Had a fairly structured base, and they
had a youth program, Young Buddhists Association ( YBA), and it had
a junior YBA, which was, like, high school kids, and they had
another one, just YBA, which was college freshman and above until
maybe about—it’s a lot less now, but maybe up until about
twenty-one. But when we were in it, it extended to, like, people
that were still twenty-three and stuff like that, a little older.
They called it Senior YBA. They would have Western District
conferences in California, West Coast, and they also had a national
conference also, too, mainly on the West Coast because that’s where
the majority of the population was centered. So then all of a sudden
we started going to these conferences, and prior to that and even at
that particular time there was purely—I wouldn’t say purely, but
heavy emphasis on social. You know, the guys would go see the girls
and girls would come see the guys, and then we would talk a little
bit about Buddhism, and then we’d go out and party, you know, and
have dinner and dance and, you know, just kind of party. So I
remember going to one conference, might have been in Stockton, and
it was a national conference, maybe. Take that back. It was at
Sacramento. It was a national conference, WYBL, Western Young
Buddhists League Association, conference, but it was also through a
national conference so folks from the East Coast and Midwest would
be able to come and stuff like that. And so this was in probably ’71
or ’72. I had gone to the Institute of Buddhist Studies, and then
there was a couple of guys in it that were older than I was, and
they were from L.A., and I knew one of them very well, fairly well,
and another Buddhist minister candidate. So this is who the Buddhist
Studies was a center that folks would learn. It’s kind of like a
training for becoming a minister.
CLINE:
Kind of like a seminary.
0:10:48.40:13:29.4
MORI:
Yes. Exactly right, but really a lot looser, not as strict. Jodo
Shinshu is pretty much that way, anyway. It’s more everyday kind of
everyday living rather than a monastic kind of situation, but it did
have its rituals and, you know, traditions and learning. So anyway,
there was about three guys that were going to it, and I went to,
like, a summer session, and we’re all about the same age. We’re all
kind of concerned about the war and the draft and everything like
that. And because of the conditions in the community and just
around, and being in a—studying Buddhism and being just conscious of
your surroundings, I guess, it just made you a little bit more aware
of things that for our generation didn’t seem right, or we were
questioning a lot of things. Whether it was right or wrong, it
didn’t really matter. We were just questioning it and just wanting
some kind of an answer to why this, why that. So anyway, along with
what was happening in the community, I guess a group of us started
this organization called CAB, Concerned American Buddhists, and
basically we were taking ideas and concepts and asking the
questions, and if there was an answer through Buddhism, saying,
“Well, what is the Buddhist word for concept of war?” Because of the
Vietnam War. What was the concept of this? What do you guys feel
about racism? Or is there a Buddhist stance? Or something like that,
right? We wanted them to be against the war, be against the draft,
be against the Vietnam War, saying it was injust war and all this
other stuff, and the young kids against the establishment, so to
speak. You know, we took it and we interjected into discussion
groups and all this other stuff, you know.
So we didn’t necessarily have a plan, nor did we have the answers,
or we didn’t even know what kind of answer we were looking for,
although we were probably looking for an answer that the Buddhist
Churches of America, you know, officially says, “We’re against the
war,” or something like that, right? But, you know, they would never
make that statement publicly or even to its members of this
congregation or whatever, you know. That’s just the way—I wouldn’t
say a broad generalization, but that’s just the way Buddhists are,
but it’s something an individual basically to make his own decision
and stuff, just make sure that you understand and have all the
facts. So going with that situation and just being able to
communicate with other members, the younger folks, and a lot of them
were kind of sort of a little younger than us, but a lot of us were
the same age that were in the organization. So we raised these
questions, and I don’t know what kind of answer, like I’d mentioned,
that we were looking for, so we were just questioning everything.
And we actually even made this film, this 8-millimeter film of us
dressing up in military gear, beg, borrow, and steal for army war
surplus. We went to Griffith Park and we made this movie, and I
think somebody still has the movie. I’m still looking for it. And
then, you know, we were kind of like—and we had American hats on,
helmets on, and U.S. fatigues and stuff. It would be looking like we
were walking through the jungle of Vietnam or wherever, but it was
in Griffith Park. And we were doing this kind of sort of close to
the edge of this road or something like that, and so then we were
filming. So one minute in a movie is pretty short that they’d see us
in American uniform. You know, we were walking through this thing.
And then we would confront these folks that were dressed like
Vietnamese, with a hat and everything like that, and then we would
turn around and it would be us. And then it would show the American
soldiers, again, would be us, and we’d kind of go back and forth,
right, because there’s no dialogue or nothing like that. So this
kind of sort of went on, and then eventually somebody gets shot or
something like that, and it’s the end of the movie.
So anyway, while we were doing this, the reason why I mentioned we
were close to the road is because LAPD ( Los Angeles Police
Department) showed up. And then somebody said that there were
reports of somebody in the bushes with a gun, and so they asked us
all to come out, and I had the rifle.
CLINE:
Oh, golly.
MORI:
So I came down, and I had my back to them, and he goes, “Okay, raise
the gun above your head,” which I did. I knew they were LAPD and I
did what they asked. Then I eventually set it down, they walked
over, they handcuffed us. And then they were starting to ask us
questions what we were doing and stuff. We told them we was making a
film, showed them the camera and stuff and a few other things. And
we had some other weapons that before we came out of the bushes we
just took them out of our pockets, something, and left them up on
the mountain, walked out. And other than the rifle, was the only
thing we had. So when we turned around, after I put the gun down, I
turned around, you know, there was, like, two other policemen out.
They had their guns drawn and everything like that. So later on he
said, “Good thing you didn’t turn around with that gun in your hand,
otherwise I would have shot your ass,” right? So, lucky situation.
0:14:51.2
CLINE:
Wow.
MORI:
It would be an interesting ending to the movie. ( laughter) Anyway,
so we took this film and then we spliced it together and we showed
it at this conference in Sacramento, and that raised a lot of
questions and stuff like that, which is good. So there was these
different groups that we were kind of asking questions about, and,
again, attending this conferences and stuff. So after, on my part, I
guess, it was just trying to raise awareness. And then we finally
hooked up with these people in, again, the Bay Area and New York,
and they started sending us their newsletters. We started sending
our stuff to them via mail and whatever, right, and so called each
other up and see what’s up and stuff like that. So from that
particular point, in the early seventies, then we would frequently
go up to San Francisco or San Francisco folks, Bay Area folks would
come down, and we would do joint kind of, you know, discussions and
seminars and support each other’s kind of protests and stuff like
that. And we became pretty good friends in terms of working with
organizations and even helping to develop organizations to help with
social services, whatever the situation came up, whether it’s
education, housing, arts, food distribution, all those kinds of
things in terms using some other ethnic group’s experience in terms
of trying to organize community through whether or not it was
through the African American community or the Latino Chicano
community. It never rose to—or I never knew, there probably was,
necessarily a stronger faction within the community, meaning the
Brown Berets or the Black Panthers.
CLINE:
Yes, right?
0:17:19.0
MORI:
Right? So it never—you just heard rumors of individuals that may
have been part of these other organizations that had weapons or—
CLINE:
More radical.
MORI:
A little bit more radical, yeah, if you want to call them that.
Radical situation, yes. So but within the Asian American community I
hadn’t heard of anything. I knew guys who had, you know, weapons and
stuff like that, just in case whatever happened, but I don’t
remember anybody—hearing of anything or anybody. Maybe one incident.
I think it was on the East Coast that I had heard that a couple
individuals with part of another group that was in a possible
shootout or something like that. But overall. So my involvement in
it, I guess, through community involvement was just to help
disseminate the information, so kind of giving that example in terms
of with the bookstore. So I was working in the bookstore, dealing
within the Buddhist Church content and the community, and then still
trying to understand and learn taiko. So that was before I actually
joined the band, you know, the band. And it was a situation with me
personally within playing taiko, was something I just felt very
compelled to try to understand as quickly as possible. I don’t know
why there was the urgency, but maybe it was because I enjoyed it. So
there was something that put whatever learning skills, process that
I had picked up, you know, into play here, so to speak, you know,
try to figure out a way how to study this, how to understand it. But
it was very frustrating because there was no teachers here in
Southern California, so there was nobody to tell you what you were
doing was either right or wrong unless you saw pictures and stuff
and just a whole attitude and approach to trying to play the taiko.
0:20:03.3
CLINE:
Before we get into the whole taiko thing, which we’re going to get
into today, let me just follow up a little bit with what you were
talking about. First of all, the sixties, not only is it a time of
counterculture and a lot of upheaval, certainly it’s a time
where—and as you indicated on the more kind of revolutionary side,
anyway—there’s a really huge development in what we call ethnic
studies now.
MORI:
Yes.
CLINE:
You said you were following things that were going on on the East
Coast, as well as up in the Bay Area and things, and I was curious
to know when you became aware of what was going on coming out of
Yale ( University), the original Amerasia Journal, Asian American
Studies Students Association at Yale started by Don ( T.) Nakanishi,
who then came to UCLA in the seventies. I was wondering what your
memories are of that particular expression of this at the time or if
you had any awareness of it at the time. You said you were servicing
the ethnic studies groups and the Asian American studies that were
developing in the seventies. I wondered about that.
0:21:44.10:24:02.6
MORI:
That was really interesting in terms of Don Nakanishi, because I had
kind of sort of grew up with him in the community, and again,
referring back to Japanese American sports. So he played on the team
on the Westside, basically at Nishi Honganji. So he played on a team
that were called the Wanjis or something like that, and being from
the Westside, we’d always compete against these guys. And then also,
too, he was a member of Nishi Honganji, which is part of the Jodo
Shinshu part of the Southern BCA. So then the Southern district
Buddhist Federation, which makes up of churches from the BCA plus
other churches like Zenshuji ( Soto Mission) and Nichiren ( Shoshu
Temple) and all this other stuff, they have this summer camp. And so
there was a period of time you’d go to the summer camp, like, three
or four years in a row and you see the same guys there because
they’re the same age.
So I think at one particular time Don Nakanishi and I were campmates
together, so we lived in the same cabin for, you know, a week, seven
or eight days, right? And so then the first year, met him, talked to
him, you know, and then we just kind of like hang out at camp as
young kids, and the following year the same thing, you know. So you
got to know these folks a little better, and then, plus, you saw
them in the community playing sports or attending the Buddhist
temples and stuff, right? He may have been a half a year older or
maybe even a year older. I can’t remember exactly, but we were
pretty much in the same peer group and doing stuff socially, or I’d
see him at conferences, something or other within the Buddhist
Church, and then playing ball with him and stuff. So we graduated at
the same time, and then him being from the Westside and me knowing
him, but not really knowing him, I didn’t even know where he went.
And then running the bookstore, so this was like ’70, ’71, right?
So, graduated high school in ’67, and then he went off to Yale, and
so then by the time he, I guess, had established, was four years
after we graduated high school. It might have been five for him. And
then he stayed out there for a while, like, doing scholastic work
and academic work and stuff. And like you said, at the time he was
one of the initiators of Asian American studies at Yale, along with
some other academics and stuff, right? And, yes, they started
publishing the Amerasia Journal, and this is from the East Coast,
right, and so we really necessarily heard about the East Coast,
right? ( laughter) And then all of a sudden I see this Don
Nakanishi’s name someplace on an article or probably could have been
part of a thesis or study or research that they had to do not only
for history classes, but also to justify Asian American Studies (
Center) at Yale University, right? So then we would start
getting—and we subscribed to and we started getting stacks of
Amerasia Journals, right? So I started seeing his name on it.
And then I think he probably came back to Southern California during
summertime, and he would come into the bookstore, and we would sit
down and we would talk about Asian American studies and just Asian
American movement in general and stuff, right? And so it was really
interesting, and throughout the years I’d see him and talk to him
periodically, some of it just social. You’d say, “Hi, how you doing?
How you surviving? How’s it going?” And then he moved back to
Southern California and then he got a job at UCLA or began teaching
at UCLA. That led into him being, I don’t know, chairman of—
CLINE:
Yes, the director eventually.
MORI:
—Asian American studies and the whole thing. Within his tenure, I
mean, it just exploded, you know, all over, pretty much, but he
helped guide it. And then I know there was a situation in which he
had to fight for his tenure and fight for his directorship and his
professor status, and he had to fight for everything, because up
until then there was no academically, I guess, credence to him
coming from the Asian American or Japanese American Studies Program,
rather than saying he is an Asian scholar or an authority on Japan
or something like that, right?
CLINE:
Right.
0:26:22.1
MORI:
So he had to justify his academics, what I understand of it, in
Japanese or Asian American studies, which at the time there was
nobody else. There may have been maybe one or two other persons who
had a Ph.D. and dealt with Asian American studies, but not
necessarily a Ph.D. in Asian American studies because it hadn’t been
created yet. There was no program other than a sub-, sub-, sub-major
of Asian American studies because it hadn’t been recognized as a
major subject.
So his name did come up, and we discussed stuff and supported his
campaign in terms of his thing at UCLA. So a lot of these little
breakthroughs were happening, and the more and more people that I
had met in the Bay Area, you know, taught at San Francisco State,
this guy Steve Nakajo and different number of numerous people who
were able to develop and teach curriculum at the universities and
stuff.
CLINE:
And Dr. Nakanishi’s primary attorney during his tenure case was Dale
Minami.
MORI:
( laughs) Yes. That was the other connection that we kind of sat
down and kind of talked about it after everything kind of settled
down and stuff.
CLINE:
Also I’m curious, during this time it’s a whole sort of
counterculture period, and I imagine includes things like the drug
culture and there’s a lot of confusion around sexual issues and
things changing really quickly. How much do you think your
connection to the Buddhist Church and your training in that area
affected the way you dealt with all of those sorts of things that
were going on at the time, or did it have any influence over your
thinking at all?
0:29:02.0
MORI:
It had a lot of influence, whether I could direct something directly
pointed to this cause or happened, or I dealt with it this way
because of this particular ( unclear) concept through Buddhism or
something like that. The main one was conscientious objector status
and the concept of ahimsa, non-killing. And so I had a hard time
kind of, like, grasping that particular situation. I mean in one
sense, like I just mentioned, the definition is non-killing, and so
how far do you go with this in terms of survival, in terms of daily
situation and able to feed yourself, so to speak? Do you question
everything that happens, from killing an ant to killing a cow or
beef, you know, steer to eat a hamburger, so to speak, to
understanding life in general? Not getting too esoteric and too out
there, but the composition of a leaf or lettuce or a vegetable that
you eat and stuff like that, naturally fish, a living thing that has
a backbone or whatever. So that also came into question in terms of
do I really understand what this means.
On the other hand, Jodo Shinshu allows you the situation to be able
to understand the situation that you’re in and to understand that
there’s reality. Buddhism pretty much is based in reality and not
necessarily one supreme being as a creator or anything like that.
But yet on the other hand, there’s some things that happen that
there’s just no explanation for. In that particular sense it could
be called either one of two things, jiriki or tariki. Jiriki is
other power, tariki is self-power. So this is something you could
take a lifetime trying to figure out, and there is no answer to it,
but it is what it is, and so you just kind of have to say it is what
it is, and that’s part of jiriki or something like that, right? So
there’s different aspects and stuff like that. You had also asked a
thing in terms of—I forgot the beginning part of the question.
CLINE:
Okay. In the context of the counterculture, drug culture, this
change in, you know, what they called then the sexual revolution.
MORI:
In terms of the drug culture—
CLINE:
Conduct.
0:31:31.4
MORI:
( laughs) Within the community, there’s a lot of experimentation, so
to speak, but then there was also a lot of folks in the community
that had gained access to drugs, mainly barbiturates, reds, yellows.
They were in the community, meaning the Japanese American community,
Asian American community. It was there, and I guess it was in the
community in general, just drugs in general. Weed, marijuana. There
wasn’t that much cocaine. There was some hallucinogenic drugs. But
in terms of barbiturates, it was a problem in the community to the
point where young women and men, teenagers, were overdosing, they
were OD’ing on these drugs.
CLINE:
Wow. Why do you think barbiturates so much?
0:33:53.90:36:42.90:39:41.0
MORI:
That’s a good question. I guess because it was what was available in
the community, whereas the speedballs and all this other stuff
wasn’t necessarily available. It wasn’t as easy to get in the
community. So there was major issues with drugs and overdoses, which
also led to heroin use and stuff like that. So out of that group,
the Asian American Drug ( Abuse) Program, which is still here. The
issue’s still in the community even today. Naturally, it’s changed
to meth *( CORRECT?), ecstasy, and all this other new kind of drugs
and stuff like that. And within the Asian American community there’s
still a problem with alcohol, and in the new immigrants pretty much
with smoking and alcohol, just part of the culture, you know. But
back then, Asian American Drug Abuse Program, AADAP, was started by
community folks mainly through people, again, of my generation that
had experienced some drug usage, ( unclear) abuse, and people that
were in gangs and stuff, I mentioned a few gangs and stuff, that, I
guess, knew the destruction of these outside influences in the
community, started the organization to help get drugs and kids and
families in how to deal with that. So all these pockets of support
groups were starting all over the community, and finally they came
together within the Asian American Drug Abuse Program, AADAP. There
were a substantial number of kids, like I mentioned, that OD’d.
There was at least about ten folks that I knew personally, kids that
OD’d.
There were a few folks my age at the time that we were in our
twenties, mid twenties, and these kids were, like, high school kids,
and there was a few older kids, adults that were into drugs and
stuff like that, but mainly kids. We were just trying to help them
with youth programs and sports programs. And then it got into the
family situation, and a lot of them were from families that both
parents were working, so the kids were latchkey kids and stuff like
that. So, guidance in terms of that. Not that it’s stereotypical,
but that’s just the life and the situation of an immigrant family at
that particular time or a minority family at that time, that both
parents had to work. I was very fortunate that my mom was pretty
much a housewife. My dad pretty much took on the responsibility of
income earner. But it was a problem, a major problem in the
community. The interesting other situation that you had mentioned in
terms of sex and sexes and stuff like that, whether it was
generational again or within the Asian American community, was the
prominence of the male role in the family and the—I wouldn’t say
breakup of the family structure, but what I was told and know for a
fact within the Asian community family structure that was very, very
and it still is very tight, the family, in terms of just sitting
down and dealing with a meal, dinner, so to speak, that everybody
eats together. And within the Asian custom you take care of your
grandparents, so to speak, because a lot of times they live with the
family, with the older son or the older daughter or whatever, right?
So you grew up with this learning process of a grandparent and a
parent and a child, and then the parents would go off to work or
whatever, and the grandparents would help raise the children and
stuff. And that was kind of sort of the structure before the war.
And then when everybody was put into the relocation camps, then the
family structure, even though you lived together, was sort of broken
up in that when you went to go eat in the mess hall, so to speak,
families usually did not eat together; they ate within age groups,
so to speak. So the parents ate with parents and the kids ate with
fellow friends and kids. And plus, you sat in there with a couple
hundred families of people, right, that were sitting in this massive
mess hall in shifts and stuff like that too. So everybody didn’t
necessarily eat together, and so that kind of broke down the family
situation also. So that may have been one of the situations. And
then also, too, the male figure within the family, you know,
basically got stripped of their manlihood, so to speak, that they
thought that they couldn’t do anything about it. For one thing, they
couldn’t. Second of all, that they felt that that was, you know,
very, very undignified because they was raised in terms of the
family structure of the male in the family, you know, being the
breadwinner and stuff. So that stripped away a little bit of their,
you know, the structure. And then when they came back out of camp,
then they pretty much forged ahead, said, “Okay, they stripped this
part of my dignity, so I’m going to deal with the family structure
the best I know how.” So you’ve got to also imagine that these kids,
some of these kids—I say kids now, but when they were going through
this and when they came out, they were pretty much adults. But yet
on the other hand, some of the family structure—and I’m not a
psychoanalyst nor am I a therapist on this thing, and a lot of this
is what through all the different reports of the effects of camp had
on my generation, the future generation in terms of families and
culture, like that, it was discussed. And so they forged ahead and
wanted to be all American, for one thing. Second of all, they wanted
to get back some dignity, so they were pretty much decided they
wanted to be, again, the head of the household, felt that
responsibility. So a lot of times then they pretty much took the
role model of, I don’t know, a Western family, and the husband goes
off to work and the mom stays home and watches the kids and stuff
like that. So I know a lot of times the father was probably still
head of the family, but a lot of times didn’t have any relationships
with the kids and stuff like that, the whole story and stuff like
that.
CLINE:
Yes. It wasn’t there.
0:42:14.8
MORI:
Right. So by the time it passed on to my generation, there was still
this machoism in terms of the male machoism, so to speak, in the
family and in the community. And yet the women in the community
started to understand women’s rights, so to speak, or the femininity
situation, but yet the support and the contribution that women had
in the community in general and overall, and yet part of it was some
cultural differences within the Asian family structure. And so I
remember hearing about men’s groups and women’s groups and them
joining together and having the discussion groups and support groups
for each other, and then eventually came together and talked about
these men and women issues and stuff like that. The women’s movement
I thought at the time was interesting, and I supported them
wholeheartedly in that they were getting the shaft in a lot of
situations. In the workplace they were doing the same amount of work
but getting not as much money. And then within the family structure,
within the Japanese and Asian culture, of walking three or four
steps behind the male when they was walking around. I just went,
“That’s weird stuff,” you know, and I just pretty much grew up on
the situation. And I knew my own personal family structure, which my
dad and the part of his language barrier, like I mentioned before,
and stuff, and he spoke Japanese, and my mom translating for us and
stuff. It being sort of kind of an arranged marriage, and so in
terms of where people are at, you know, watching Ozzie and Harriet
on TV or Father Knows Best, you know, these kinds of family
structures on TV with the father and the mother and the kids and the
family on TV. It’s so, like, you know, this all-American structure,
right? So you kind of, like, think about it and stuff, you know.
Trying to describe it at the time was not necessarily what was on
TV, so it wasn’t the current word “dysfunctional family” or anything
like that, but it wasn’t what we see on TV.
So there was a lot of confusion and stuff like that in terms of how
you were supposed to structure this, how the format was supposed to
be in terms of the family, and especially in an Asian American
family where you had this heavy-duty culture, because you would go
to meetings and stuff like that and all the men would sit together
and they would sit and talk. All the women would be over here in the
corner. They would be sitting there talking. And then the kids would
be out playing and just, you know, just playing. So there was this
division also, too, within that situation and stuff. But I mean, you
know, they all worked together pretty much within the organizational
community, church or whatever. There was always a male leader, so to
speak, right?
CLINE:
Right.
MORI:
But the women supported, you know, that whole situation. So within
my generation there was discussion about it in terms of women’s
rights and equality, gender equality. So there was that faction.
0:44:04.1
CLINE:
And also a last question relating to the Buddhist part of your life.
Actually, starting in the fifties, but certainly through the sixties
and definitely in the seventies, there became a lot more interest in
Eastern religion partly coming out of the whole cultural shift that
happened in the late sixties, and more Western people, more American
people interested in things like Buddhism. The establishment of Zen
centers and all that sort of thing started to really take off in the
seventies. What do you remember seeing, if anything, in terms of an
increased interest in maybe even at your own Buddhist temple at
Senshin, with regard to non-Japanese showing an interest?
0:46:35.70:49:30.60:51:21.5
MORI:
Good observation. Correct. In the seventies there was a lot more
exposure to Eastern cultures. At Senshin there was either
interracial marriage at Senshin, and Senshin’s an interesting
situation in which just geographically Nishi Honganji Center was
based in downtown Los Angeles in Little Tokyo, and its history is
pretty interesting in that it was a center for those, for people
that left, unfortunately, had to meet there to go to camp. And after
they were released from camp, a lot of people came back to that
particular location and used that as a Community Center, so to
speak, to either store stuff or just kind of like stay there till
they found a job or other places to live and to rent, you know. In
1930—actually, before the war, some folks from Little Tokyo had
moved out toward that particular area, and they had created, like, a
Japanese school out there and then teaching Japanese language, and
so the people started to move out toward that way. And then there
was a group of individuals—this could be folklore. This could be
exaggerated over the years in terms of saying this. But there was a
group of people that were at Nishi that had its own kind of sort of
thinking in one sense or wanted to try to do something a little
different, and they were bilingual, actually, also too. So they were
older Niseis, and they had moved out to the Westside, so to speak,
or the old Westside, to that area, Seinan area, and they wanted to
start their own church, part of Jodo Shinshu, part of Nishi
Honganji, Jodo Shinshu. And so all these folks that were teaching
and very involved with Nishi moved out there.
So not that it’s always had this aura or this thing of being a rebel
kind of a church, so to speak, but it kind of still did, and most of
the churches in Southern California, Buddhist churches, are really
interesting in that they captured the name of the city that they’re
in, and not necessarily a Japanese or Buddhist name, so to speak,
like Los Angeles Nishi Honganji, Gardena Buddhist Church, Orange
County Buddhist Church, San Francisco Buddhist, San Fernando Valley,
Sun Valley, San Diego, Vista Buddhist Church. But Senshin is the
only Buddhist church in Southern California that does not have an
area of the city in its name, like Westside Buddhist Church. I mean
there’s a West L.A. Buddhist Church or Seinan Buddhist Church. It
just has Senshin, which means to cleanse one’s kokoro. One’s kokoro
means not necessarily a soul, because there’s no soul in Buddhism.
In certain Buddhism, in Jodo Shin there’s no reincarnation or
anything like that, so there’s no soul. But to cleanse one’s, I
guess, mind and understanding, to be open to knowledge, so to speak,
to empty your cup, so to speak. So that’s what Senshin means. So
it’s always been, like, “Where’s Senshin? Where you from?”
“Senshin.” “Oh, okay, yeah, yeah. I heard of it. Where’s it at?” So
even that is really interesting. And then through the Watts Riots,
through all these things, and where it sits in southwest Los
Angeles, although it sits two blocks away from the campus of
University of Southern California, USC, but people who have lived in
Southern California, there are people today who have been living
there, oh, fifty-something years who have never been to Senshin
because they’re afraid to go to the neighborhood, and yet they may
be going to Nishi Honganji downtown, and there’s homeless and
burglary and whatever on the streets down there and stuff, you know.
Their temple looks worse than ours in terms of the fortification and
everything like that, bars and barbed wire, whatever.
So it’s always been a little different, always from the very, very
beginning. So the ministers that we’ve had there have also been
very, very interesting and different in that in the sixties there’s
always been a Japanese and an English speaker, always. And it’s very
rare for that size of a temple that didn’t have that much population
of membership to have two ministers, and one catered basically
directly to English-speaking. But basically that was just a feature.
They were just so far, not necessarily ahead of themselves, but they
were, because they saw the potential of English speakers, and that’s
why one of the reasons I think a lot of people moved from Nishi out
to Senshin, because they pretty much had all just Japanese speakers
except this one minister named Takemoto, Arthur Takemoto. He was one
of the first to go to Japan after the war, study, and then come back
and be an English-speaking minister, a bilingual minister, pretty
much. And he pretty much from there helped spur a lot of other
interest in other Japanese Americans to do that. So he was at Nishi,
so he was Reverend Mas’ mentor, so to speak. Told him to go to Japan
and study, go to Santa Barbara. He went to Santa Barbara, but he
told him to go to Japan and study, which he did. So the church’s
involvement and my pretty much involvement kind of sort of fit, you
know, comfortably. I mean, I’ve got to sort of have to say that now
because this is just what I was dealt and how it kind of sort of
came about.
CLINE:
Now, you mentioned in an earlier session Reverend Mas’ story and how
he was from Compton and grew up in a largely African American
community, studied in Japan, took his time coming back, but brought
back, interestingly, a lot of the traditional musical aspect of his
culture. I guess now based on what I remember reading, he started as
the minister at the Senshin in the later seventies sometime. Is that
right?
MORI:
Late sixties.
CLINE:
Oh, really?
MORI:
Yes. Sixty-eight.
CLINE:
And you were still attending there, so you knew him when he started
there.
MORI:
Yes.
CLINE:
Before we get there, so were there more Western people coming then
to the temple at that point?
0:54:06.90:56:47.40:58:37.61:01:22.2
MORI:
I had mentioned interracial marriage, so that wasn’t a problem. Not
that it would be, but that wasn’t a problem. Some places it could be
a problem, but it wasn’t a problem. And then there were some people
that had come because of the ministers before, Reverend Unno,
Taitetsu Unno, who’s a professor at Smith College back East, and
then his other brother, named Reverend Tetsuo Unno. I grew up with
the Unno family because the father, Enryo Unno, was the minister
there, and they were also serving with him, under him. And they both
pretty much left the church to each of them pursue academics, as far
as furthering their study of Buddhism. And so the older one, Tai,
Ph.D. and teaches back East. And then the second one, he probably
gave up his search for or dealing with trying to get a Ph.D., but
he’s a very, very well-known scholar in the Buddhist world, so to
speak, so he’s always out lecturing and giving lectures and stuff
like that.
So I grew up with really at the time that I didn’t even know it,
right, you don’t even know, with a very influential, very scholarly
Buddhist that made understanding of Buddhism very palatable, very
understanding, you know. So I had always thought of that. Each
temple also had an English-speaking person, so to speak. It just so
happens Senshin was very, very unique in that situation. So,
following that, and then Reverend Mas kind of comes on to the scene,
so to speak, right? So what I was going through the later part of
applying to or discussion about when I was going to do,
conscientious objector, a lot of it was discussions I had with
Reverend Tets Unno. Reverend Mas was there ’68, ’69, so that’s when
I started getting to know him and stuff, but even I thought, like,
he was a little out there. ( laughter) But we were pretty much on
the same wavelength, I mean same vibe in terms of him supporting me
and stuff. I didn’t know him as well, you know, because he had just
got there and I was eighteen years old and heard different things
about him. And then he pretty much followed in the path of his
predecessor’s English speaking. And then the father, he retired, and
then another reverend came in, ( Hoshin) Fujikado came in. And so
when this change started happening, he still pretty much respected,
and Fujikado was the head minister, and that was fine and stuff, and
then he started introducing people to the ritual. Now, the structure
of a Sunday Buddhist service was structured what I understand of a
Christian service format. You have a benediction. You have a
reading. You sing a hymn. There are more readings. The reverend or
pastor or whatever gets up and gives a talk or a sermon. You have
some other readings. You sing another hymn. And then there’s a
closing recitation or something like that, right?
And so growing up, that was the Buddhist format, and so that was the
Buddhist format, because I had never gone to Japanese service that
happened after the English service in the morning because there was
more kids and stuff, but they always used to have a Japanese service
afterwards. And so I had to wait for my dad or something like that,
so I went into it and sat there. I didn’t understand anything, but
they didn’t have all these readings and sayings. They may have stood
up and sang a Japanese song or something like that. The minister
spoke in Japanese, which I think I probably got bored and fell
asleep and just woke up and saw it, but I had to sit in there
because my dad was in the service. And then whenever Mas came, he
goes, “You know, this is a Christian format, and I think we ought to
try to go back to a Japanese format.” And somebody asks, “Well, what
is that?” And he said, “Basically, there’s no sermon in the service.
It’s done afterwards. So it basically is just chanting.” And the
chanting primarily was done up until, and it still is, primarily in
a lot of temples just by the minister or the ministers that were
there, and so they did all the chanting. They did all the thing up
in the altar part and all this other stuff, and the congregation
just sat back, and the only thing they participated in was reading
of some saying or joining of readings and standing up and singing
what you call a gatha, which is a hymn. And some of the gathas, or
hymns, are Christian, and they just substituted the word “Buddha”
for “God” or vice versa and some other disciples’ names rather than
the other disciples and stuff.
You know, it’s pretty interesting. It was pretty funny in one sense.
When I grew up and realized that, you know, what the Pledge of
Allegiance also is, too, in terms of God, and when you were a Boy
Scout or Cub Scout, you said, “Put my faith in God,” and all this
other stuff, right? And so those kinds of things, started
questioning even that. So at the same time you’re questioning your
identity, questioning your religion, questioning all these things.
And so then Reverend Mas just started bringing up all these
questions and wanting to kind of sort of change it and stuff. So he
was, I guess, the low man on the totem pole, and he spoke English,
but he also understood Japanese very well, too, because he spent
seven or eight years in Japan, and so he understood, so he started
promoting chanting and he put this group together, and he went to a
conference, a seminar. Chanting was just usually done by ministers,
but here it is, he has this group of, like, ten people that are
chanting. And chanting is not necessarily done as a performance or
anything like that at the time. And so they performed or they did
these chants that either only the ministers would do or you couldn’t
do without X amount of ministers because they had to all learn,
because there was different parts and each person was assigned a
different part. And so it was presented at a seminar, and within the
ministers they didn’t go as far as saying this is heresy or anything
like that, but they were questioning what he was trying to do. Then
these other Nisei English-speaking ministers thought it was great,
and Reverend Tai, Reverend Art Takemoto, and a few other ministers
said, yeah, this is what needs to be done because within the
practice of Jodo Shinshu there is no other physical practice, like
Zen, sitting. The Zen of this, the Zen of that, the Zen of taiko
playing, the Zen of drum playing, the Zen of tea, the Zen of
archery, the Zen of motorcycle fixing, right? All these different
books and concepts were focused on becoming egolessness, you know,
going someplace else within your mind so you don’t always consider
thinking about your ego and stuff like that. So that’s a concept of
Buddhism, right, so you sit there and you just sit, right?
Jodo Shinshu had none of this. Had ritual, but no big flash or no
big thing that you did except chanting. And what were you chanting?
It’s these words, ideas, and concepts from the sermons from the
Buddha, so to speak, and was translated, and then by the time it got
to Japan, a lot of things could have happened to it. China, and then
there’s Theravada Buddhism, Mahayana Buddhism. Japanese Buddhism is
Mahayana, but it has influences of Theravada, which is the stricter
Zen and the Mount Hiei kind of thing of walking around this mountain
a hundred days straight, right? Somebody just finished that. Saw it
in the paper. That’s amazing, right? Do this for seven days
straight, and you totally, like, can’t sleep. It’s weird. I mean
it’s out there, and somebody just finished it again. So anyway, so
all this chanting was done in, like, this weird language, even
though it’s Japanese words. But what kind of meaning does it have?
And so am I just spouting this stuff and not knowing what it is? So
naturally somebody tried to translate it, right, and still the words
and translations, independent upon who you are, still didn’t make
any sense, right? And so then after a while it was not necessarily
understanding what you were doing, but it was just the practice of
chanting, of saying these syllables and concentrating on the
syllable and doing it as an individual and then doing it in a group.
So that’s the main concept and idea of playing taiko also, too, and
music in general.
1:03:12.7
CLINE:
Yes. Right.
MORI:
And so through taiko it was a way to become understanding yourself
and understanding your situation, immediate situation at hand. And
at the time if you get so engrossed in playing or doing something,
then at that particular second that you go, “Far out. I’m totally
focused and locked into this,” all of a sudden your ego starts
coming back into play because then you start ( unclear) and you say,
“I got focus. I got focused. I got lost.” So you say, “I got lost,”
you’re not lost.
CLINE:
Right.
MORI:
Right. So anyway, he started this chanting group, so all those
questions came up. What are we chanting? Why are we chanting all
this stuff? So this is a ritual of Jodo Shinshu. That’s just what
the thing they had. So they started this group. After they did this
presentation at the seminar, they got so frustrated that they
started this group called Kinnara. Kinnara means Buddhist celestial
musician. So actually started out as a chanting group, okay? So then
they got so fed up with it, so they applied and they got this
nonprofit status, and yet they were functioning within this Buddhist
Churches of America and all these other ministers with the board
members and stuff like that. So they could do stuff and say, “Oh,
Kinnara. This is a Kinnara event.”
CLINE:
Oh, I see. Okay.
1:05:09.7
MORI:
And people would go, “Well, who’s Kinnara?” And then they would
explain who Kinnara was. They would explain who Kinnara was and what
they were trying to do. And basically they would use the answer,
everybody says, “Oh, we’re just trying to go back to our roots,
Japanese Jodo Shinshu ritual,” in which chanting would happen,
mainly a lot of chanting, some phrases and stuff. And after you
finished the service part of it, then you would go to another hall
and you would have a lecture.
CLINE:
I see.
MORI:
Then you would have the sermon, so to speak. But it would be outside
of this particular ritual that took place. So anyway, he wanted to
reestablish this formal Japanese service format at Senshin within
the Buddhist Churches of America, and actually there was a lot of
opposition, so that’s why Kinnara was started.
CLINE:
And I think my date regarding Reverend Mas must have been maybe when
he took over as head minister. Is that what—
MORI:
Probably what you’re looking at, because it’s probably in the
seventies or something like that. So this was in the late sixties
and early seventies, and part of the ritual was gagaku that was
performed every day at the main temple in Kyoto, honzan in Kyoto, as
part of the service. And lo and behold, there was a gagaku teacher
in Los Angeles at UCLA at the ( Department of) Ethnomusicology,
Suenogu Togi, Togi Suenogu. And he went to go talk to him a couple
different times, just explaining who he was and stuff like that and
what he wanted to try to do, and Togi said, “Sure. Put it together
and I’ll help you teach the class.”
CLINE:
Wow.
1:07:35.11:10:13.11:11:39.0
MORI:
So that was in early ‘70, because Kinnara was formed ’69, went to
retreat, and then they had this what was called a Kinnara retreat up
in San Luis Obispo. There’s a temple in San Luis Obispo, beautiful
temple, and it’s pretty remote, but yet right next the freeway, but
remote, a real nice area. They had this retreat, and basically what
we did, we sat, they sat. I didn’t go to the first one; I went to
the second one and from there on. It was in 1971 when I went. But a
year before that, then they started kind of like—before that gagaku
was happening, and then taiko started happening also, too, at the
same time.
So they had this Kinnara retreat, and they had experience sitting,
waking up early in kind of a semi-monastic, and this is only for,
like, a week or even less than a week. So they called in ( Kyozan
Joshu) Sasaki-roshi from the ( Rinzai-ji) Zen Center here in
Southern California to go up there and to teach them how to sit so
it was done right from the get-go, right, not somebody coming in.
And so he taught and he explained Zen, the translation and stuff
like that, and talked about different ideas and concepts and talked
about sitting. And he also talked about his understanding of Jodo
Shinshu. And it worked. Got up every day at five o’clock and you sat
for twenty minutes, you got up, you walked around, walking
meditation, sat back down for another twenty minutes, and then you
cleaned the temple, but no talking, nothing. That was your toban,
your work for the day. And then somebody was assigned to cook
breakfast or meals for that particular day, so they had to go
shopping. So there was no leaving the compound other than if you had
to go shopping in the car. No smoking, no drinking for a whole week.
On Wednesday in the middle of the week you fasted for one day. You
were able to drink, and if you had a medical problem, you could eat
and stuff like that, and maybe you could have a fruit, but that was
about it. There was no—you know. Plus, you being out there in this
temple environment and stuff accentuated boredom. It accentuated
trying to understand your physical being and your mental being,
right? So it was pretty intense. The number three is very
interesting too. By the third hour of that day, by the third day of
that day, all the bullshit was gone, right? Your relationship with
people that were there—a lot of people you didn’t know. Some people
you knew but you didn’t know, and some people you knew very well
because they were whatever. So by the third day, you were tired, you
were done bullshitting, you were tired talking about yourself, you
had thought you had known another person, which you really didn’t
know, and so part of it was, like, okay, now the conference or the
seminar or the retreat starts because you can’t bullshit no more,
because you already bullshitted for the first three days, so to
speak, right, so now hopefully it’s the true you.
So you had these other days to now start talking about whatever. So
Buddhist ritual, what you want to do, what you experienced growing
up as a kid. Was that relevant to you? Did that justify whatever you
were doing? Can we do this? Is it going to continue? Do we try to
promote the ritual aspect of it as far as the practice for Jodo
Shinshu? And these guys were pretty much the scholars, the future
scholars of Jodo Shinshu, and they were sitting here at this
retreat, because they eventually translated a lot of works by a lot
of scholars from Japanese to English. So they were talking all this
stuff also, too, right, and they were in their thirties, because if
I was eighteen, nineteen, Reverend Moss was ten years older than I
am. He was twenty-eight, twenty-nine. He was probably thirty when we
started doing these retreats, and these guys were, like, his peers,
so they may have been thirty-five, forty years old, right? And lo
and behold, these are the guys who’d be doing the translations and
the people that are now considered to be academics of Jodo Shinshu
in the United States. So they were talking about what they could do
in translation and Buddhist concepts and start talking about stuff
like that, and they came back and it started to pick up and grow.
And so that was the basis of Kinnara.
CLINE:
Okay.
MORI:
And then taiko emerged and then gagaku emerged. Gagaku pretty much
was studying with Togi-sensei. So he was here for the mid, early—I
had heard he had met Dr. Robert Garfias at UC Irvine. He wrote the
book of gagaku here in the United States and bugaku. He wrote the
book. And so they had talked about meeting each other and stuff, and
actually, Frank Gehry also took one of his classes. I don’t know if
you heard that story.
CLINE:
No.
MORI:
He took a gagaku class at UCLA. I found this out when the (
Reigakusha) gagaku group came two years ago to Walt Disney (
Concert) Hall to perform.
CLINE:
Oh, yes. Right. I was at that concert.
MORI:
Yes. So Frank Gehry was there, right, and he explained his
involvement with gagaku and the hall, and he says, “It just had to
happen. In the back of my mind it had—.” Robert Garfias was there
and explained gagaku, and Frank Gehry came out, right, and explained
the whole situation.
CLINE:
So Togi-Sensei was overseeing and training the gagaku/bugaku aspect,
but you said there wasn’t really anybody to teach taiko.
MORI:
Taiko. No.
CLINE:
So how did that happen?
1:13:57.7
MORI:
We pretty much picked up pictures, books that had festivals in
Japan, and Reverend Mas came down to Little Tokyo or called up his
other friends up in San Francisco and asked them, “Hey, are there
any records or books about Japanese music and stuff?” And they would
send it to us. People in our congregation knew what taiko was, and
they’d either go to Japan or they’d make trips to wherever, and they
would keep an eye out for us in terms of records and pictures and
stuff like that. So they would start giving us albums and pictures
of taiko and music and stuff, and we would listen to it.
And then, as I mentioned before, Reverend Mas would be at his
apartment and stuff and we’d be listening to music and stuff, and
he’d put on different various records. And after a while, we
couldn’t tell the difference between Japanese drumming and African
drumming. He slipped in an African drumming group in there, and,
“Far out. What part of Japan are they from?” He starts cracking up
and he goes, “Man, they’re from the west coast of Africa, Senegalese
drumming,” or something like that. So he expanded. And so then we
didn’t know how to stand. We didn’t know how to make any drums or
anything like that. We pretty much started from scratch. And then we
were playing taiko like we possibly thought we knew what we were
doing. We didn’t know what we were doing, but other people thought
we knew what we were doing because they had seen taiko, obon taiko,
but they hadn’t seen kumi or group taiko.
CLINE:
So what were you playing on when you started?
1:17:24.2
MORI:
So when I got interested and got into the group, somebody was going
to do the Hollywood Christmas Parade. It was one of the Japanese
dance groups, and they needed some drumming to go along with it or
people carrying stuff or a person that was kind of playing taiko on
a float behind the dancers to the music. So these guys that were
playing before I got into the group were practicing, and then I kind
of sort of got interested in it, seeing what they were doing and
stuff. And it could have been because there were so many women that
were there dancing and stuff like that, too, part of the dance
group, the Japanese classical folk dance group, you know. That’s
what kind of caught my eye too. They were all dressed up and stuff.
You know, far out. So they’re playing for all these women over here,
so I think I’ll check it out. So they go, “Oh, yeah, yeah.” And
Kinnara’s always been a situation when you walk in the door, when
you walk into the social hall at Senshin and you walk in,
traditionally in Japanese music, any kind of a culture thing, you
sit and watch. That’s part of the so-called discipline and training
or whatever. So you go in there and you sit and watch. But Kinnara’s
situation is you put into it as much as you want to get out of it,
and it works on a situation of dana, which is giving, and it’s
unconditional giving, in which you would give something, donate to
something. And naturally, our egos say, “I want some recognition for
this. I want to be recognized that I gave X amount of money.” In a
lot of situations, in majority of situations it works, because you
see your name published in a newsletter and you see the amount that
you gave, and then you see other people that gave, right? It’s
something you know you couldn’t—but you go, “Wow, so-and-so donated
twenty dollars. I only donated ten dollars. Next time I’m going to
donate twenty-five dollars so my name will be above there.” So it
gets into this ego thing, right?
So Kinnara’s always been about understanding yourself. So basically
if you give something within Kinnara, you try to do it without,
again, any kind of pat on the back, so to speak. So that’s really
hard for an individual to do. So again, you give as much as you want
to get out of it, but what you give is something that you really
want to try to do, or you give without any attachment to it. You try
to become non-attached to things, which is very, very difficult to
do in every situation.
1:18:02.0
CLINE:
Right.
1:20:03.61:22:12.51:23:47.4
MORI:
But it’s there. I mean, hopefully you try to strive for that, right?
So Kinnara has never asked for anything in return. So there’s no
fee, initiation fee. There’s no practice fee. There’s hopefully
after a while your own personal dana of giving back. So whatever you
give back is up to you, whether it’s monetarily you give back,
whether it’s your blood, sweat, and tears that you give back to the
group Kinnara or to Senshin Buddhist Temple to help, you know,
maintain the facilities or the function of it. Have people joined
Kinnara and then joined the temple? Yes. Have people who are members
of the temple who joined Kinnara? Yes. People that just walk off the
streets that want to play taiko? Yes. Are they part of any other
temple or anything like that? No, they just come to play taiko or
play music. Are they required to pay? No, they’re not. But hopefully
they understand the structure of Kinnara, and so what they gain out
of it they return in some way or somehow down the road or whatever.
But that’s not a criteria or anything like that. So getting to that
part, you walk in the door of Kinnara Taiko, you sit around and you
watch, and then if there’s a break, somebody would go up to you and
ask you your name and talk to you, what situation, why you want to
come, and what are you doing here and stuff like that, just
friendly, though, you know. And then they’ll hand you a pair of
bachis, sticks, and say, “Okay, play.” Or, “You want to play?”
“Well, I don’t know how to play.” “It’s okay. Just play.” And then
you experience playing, at least hitting it and stuff. And then
we’ll slowly teach you the stance and the concept and how to hold
and, you know, the basics and stuff like that. But you could do that
from day one.
It is total opposite from a traditional Japanese or Asian way of
teaching in one sense as far as understanding it, knowing the
basics, doing this, doing that before you’re able to play a stick,
be handed a pair of taiko sticks. So I’ve heard different stories
with people who were with the San Francisco Taiko Dojo that didn’t
play for, like, three to six months, but they just had to do
exercises, they had to do yelling and run around the block and all
this other fundamental stuff before they actually got a pair of
sticks. And even when they got a pair of sticks, they were old
sticks, and you got to play on an old tire or a stack of phone books
or something like that. So you never really got to play the taiko
until X amount of time which you knew a pattern or a piece and
stuff. So in one sense I understand it, because you didn’t wear out
the skin of the real taiko, so to speak, and weeding all these other
people out to be able to hang in there. So after you finish this
five or six months of training, so to speak, apprentice thing, then
if you’re committed to come X amount of times a week, a month, or
whatever, then they would, you know, start teaching you stuff. And
I’m not saying that’s good or bad. That’s just the way it was. And
Kinnara’s always on the opposite. As soon as you walk in the door
and you want to play, they’ll hand you a pair of sticks, and we’ll
figure it out and we’ll teach you whatever you want to learn down
the road. There are cliques within the group. Because we’ve been
together for such a long time, there’s natural kind of people
that—you know. And there’s a lot of quirkiness and stuff like that,
you know. So if you can hang in there for X amount of time until we
are able to find time to teach you, then that’s part of the process
also too. You know, so the whole social aspect of it, that’s part of
the Kinnara or any group dynamics, right?
With Togi-sensei it’s very structured when we started beginning in
the seventies. It’s a lot looser now. Even he’s a lot different in
terms of the teaching. But you sit down and he’ll tell you to play.
I remember this first day I went in there, I sat down behind the
kakko, and he said, “Play.” And I go, “I don’t know what to play. I
don’t know how to play. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” A
night before, because we practiced on Thursdays taiko, on Friday
nights at UCLA in the depths of Schoenberg Hall at the musicology
room, so we go downstairs, and I was told that on Sunday or Saturday
there’s a service that Kinnara’s going to play for, but they didn’t
have a drummer or kakko player. So Reverend Mas says, “Hey, why
don’t you come to practice. We need a kakko player.” And I go, “I
have no idea what you’re talking about. I have no idea how this is
going to work.” So I just come, and I said, “Okay, I’ll come.” So I
sit down, and whether or not Togi-sensei thought or maybe I knew
what they were doing, I mean I had seen taiko, but I didn’t even
know kakko, biwa, odaiko, shoko, whatever. I didn’t even know that,
right? And he said, “Play.” And I says, “I don’t know what. I don’t
know how to sit and hold or whatever.” He showed me and stuff like
that, and he sat right behind me, and he says, “Okay. This is
pattern one and this is pattern two. So when I kick you, play
pattern one.”
I says, “Well, how long?” And he goes, “When I kick you again.” All
right, this is in broken Japanese or whatever. I says, “Okay, I’ll
do it.” So then he kicks me, and so we start, right? And I don’t
even know the count. I can’t even count it. I can’t even feel the
music. The music is irritating. He plays hichiriki. It was blowing
in my ear. You know, the sonic sounds and whatever like that, I
couldn’t even count it. ( unclear) you were talking about.
CLINE:
It’s very slow.
1:25:31.0
MORI:
Yes. Plus, it’s very slow, right? So he kicked me, so I played
pattern one, and he kicked me again and I stopped. He kicked me and
I played pattern two. So we did that for the whole evening, went to
the gig, didn’t know how to put on the costume, whatever, sit down,
kicks me again. I said, “Okay. This’ll work.” You know, he kicks me.
And then I says, “Man, I ain’t doing this no more. This is too
stressful. I don’t even know what’s going on.” So about two or three
months go by and he says, “Hey, we need another kakko.” I says,
“No.” I says to Reverend Mas, I says, “I have no idea what we’re
doing here.” So finally Reverend Mas sits down and he says, “Okay.”
He explains a little bit to me, and he explains the counting, the
timing of it. So I go, “I still don’t know what you’re thinking and
I still don’t know what happened, but I’ll deal with it. I’ll check
it out.” So one practice I sat back, I just sat in the corner and I
watched. Togi-sensei was also counting it out, tapping it out and
stuff, and he was playing kakko and stuff. I didn’t get it, but I
says, “Okay, I understand at least the persona or the vibe of the
group and what it is.”
So I faked it for another two or three months, seriously faked it. I
mean, I had no clue what I was doing. Didn’t know where the one was,
didn’t know the count, didn’t know nothing.
CLINE:
Wow. Had you even heard gagaku music before?
1:27:54.2
MORI:
Hell, no. Hell, no. I may have seen it or heard it on one of the
records that Reverend Mas played, he showed pictures, and I’d
probably seen Kinnara play a couple of times, but I wasn’t
interested in it at all or nothing like that. None whatsoever. And
then finally, I think, after a year, I finally understood the count,
but I couldn’t follow the count. Even though I knew there was a
count, a rhythm to it, I couldn’t follow it because I couldn’t
understand the music. I didn’t know any of the melodies. I didn’t
know what to accent on or anything like that. Later on, through
osmosis, Togi says, “Oh yeah, I play an accent on the first beat and
on the third beat, so that’s a clue of what’s significant and where
things are at.” So I kind of picked that up. Five or six years go
by, I pick up a little few things here and there, and I switched
instruments and I started playing the sho. I think I started playing
the sho, but I also tried playing the sho, which I did for a year or
a couple of years. Then I played the biwa because the biwa’s timing
was the same as the kakko, so I mean you play on the first beat of
every measure and you play some other stuff in between. So that was
another percussion rhythm instrument. And then I started playing the
odaiko, which goes along with the kakko, so I knew what that was
about. And then the shoko played the same thing as the kakko. So the
percussion I understood. And then I tried playing the flute, and I
picked that up, and that went along fairly well. And then the
ultimately test was playing the hichiriki, and then I could not make
a sound on that frickin’ thing for I don’t know how long. “Relax,
relax.” Yeah, right. I never played a double reed instrument. I
didn’t even know what the concept of the double reed instrument is
about.
After a while, I just kind of just, “Forget it,” you know. But I
never learned a melody instrument. But, you know, just through
hearing it now, you know, after thirty-something years or
forty-something years, forty years, finally understand it a little
bit, just a little bit.
CLINE:
And you had no musical training at all.
MORI:
None whatsoever.
CLINE:
You never aspired to be a drummer or anything?
1:29:21.6
MORI:
No, I take that back. I did. You know, I aspired to be a drummer.
When I was in elementary school, this one teacher had me play these
rolls as they were arranging the flag in front of the school for
some kind of a ceremony or something. And so I go, “Oh, far out.” So
I did it twice. Kind of got a little bit interested, and my mom
asked me, “Hey, you want to take music lessons, drumming or anything
like that?” And I go, “Yeah, kinda sorta,” right? And then I never
really followed up on it. And then in junior high school I took this
band class, orchestra class, so I had to play something. So teacher
wanted me to play—I wanted to play trumpet or something like that.
He says, “Play violin.” I go, “I ain’t playing no violin. That’s
sissy shit. I ain’t playing that.” So I start playing trumpet and I
was having a hard time just melody-wise. You know, fingering was not
a problem. Melody-wise I just couldn’t.
And he says, “Okay, you want to play drums?” I says, “I’ll check it
out.” And so just real simple snare ( drum) and cymbal, and the
snare and a bass drum. Basically a snare and bass drum in an
orchestra, that was pretty much it. So these other percussionists in
the group, older guys in the group, in junior high school starting
showing me a little bit of other things technique-wise and a few
other things and stuff. And then there was this trumpet player,
Lester Smith, and he was a protégé of Louis Armstrong. He was his
protégé, so he could play anything. I mean, you know, he was just
phenomenal, and this is in junior high school. So he told me, “Okay,
play this.” So I was just playing this basic rhythm. It was maybe,
you know, one, two, one, two, one, two, three, four, whatever,
right? Then he goes, “Cool, you got that. You got the rhythm. Just
keep it steady.” And then he’d show me a few other little things
here and there, right, or rim kind of thing and just, you know, the
rim thing. So we were doing that in class, right, and the teacher
walks in, right? The teacher walks in and he goes, “Okay, what are
you guys doing? I told you guys don’t play anything that I don’t
give you music-wise,” and stuff like that, right?
CLINE:
Oh, boy.
1:31:08.6
MORI:
Yes. And I was going, “Oh, okay. Whatever,” you know. I didn’t know
what I was doing because I just started drums. So a couple guys
behind me go, “Fuck you,” right? And so the teacher goes, “What?” He
goes, “Okay, you, you, and you and you get out of here. Go to the
principal’s office,” you know.
And I go, “I didn’t say nothing. I didn’t say nothing.” I didn’t
point. I said, “I didn’t say it. Did I sound like—I didn’t say
that.” The teacher goes, “I don’t care. You guys, all you guys get
out of here.” So I was leaving the room, I was going out the door,
and I turned around and goes, “Well, if I want to get blamed for
something, if I’m going to get suspended or whatever, fuck you!” So
that ended my formal music education class. ( laughter)
CLINE:
A dramatic conclusion.
MORI:
Yes, right. That ended it right there, and I didn’t get back into
it. And then I didn’t even get back into it after that.
CLINE:
Wow. Well, your time is coming up, and we’re going to have to hear
the story of what you were playing on as far as taiko drums next
time—
MORI:
Okay.
CLINE:
—and how you went about figuring out what precisely to do to realize
the playing of taiko here in Los Angeles during the 1970s. Okay,
thanks for today. We could just talk for hours, clearly.
MORI:
Sure.
CLINE:
I look forward to next time. ( End of June 2, 2010 interview)
0:00:31.4
CLINE:
Today is June 16, 2010. This is Alex Cline interviewing Johnny Mori
on what is actually our fourth session. I said last time it was our
fourth session, but it was really our third session. This is the
price I pay for doing two interviews simultaneously in the same
week. So, good morning once again.
MORI:
How you doing? Good morning.
CLINE:
Okay. How are you doing?
MORI:
Fine, thank you.
CLINE:
Good. We left off last time talking about the beginnings of Kinnara
and Reverend Mas and the beginnings of your experience there trying
to learn how to play gagaku music. We were headed into the
beginnings of the taiko experience with Kinnara, and one of the
things I wanted to make somewhat clear, if possible, is you said
that playing the gagaku music happened there before the taiko
ensemble started. Is that correct?
0:03:18.90:06:32.3
MORI:
Yes, officially, in that the coordination of organizing and putting
together and asking ( Suwahara) Togi-sensei at UCLA to teach this
group gagaku did begin a little before, or did begin before the
taiko group, although taiko—there was a very, very loose group who
at the time was talking to an individual at Senshin ( Buddhist
Temple) known as Mr. ( Henry) Inouye. And Mr. Inouye, historically
back in terms of his relationship with Senshin, was the Japanese
school teacher, principal. When Senshin broke off from Nishi
Honganji, there was—and I’m not exactly too sure the timeline of the
exact facts, but there was a Japanese school on the Westside a
couple of blocks away from where the existing temple is now, and it
was a Japanese school in a large house or something like they
converted into a Japanese school with different rooms and stuff. So
that was there before the official Senshin congregation was
happening, so to speak, or the organization of the group began to
meet.
So anyway, he also played taiko for obon, and he was really
interesting in that he knew all the dances. Apparently, there may
have been somebody else who played taiko before him, but he knew all
the dances. Nobody at the time, I don’t think, had any formal
training in terms of playing taiko for obon. The reason why I
mention he knew the dances is because I think majority of the taiko
players who play for the obons play to the music and don’t play to
the dance, or a combination of the both. So since they’re playing to
the music, it’s a different feel than just playing and accenting
either moves or accenting stuff within the music. Not saying that
I’m contradicting myself in terms of the bigger emphasis on knowing
the dance, right, the music. Nowadays it seems more important to
listen to the music and know the dance because a lot of the music
that is used for the dances has changed. It has been modernized, in
which there’s a full band with bass, saxophone, contemporary
instruments that are also played during for the dance. So it’s a
different kind of music, so to speak. It feels different. This Mr.
Inouye was very, very unique. Henry Inouye is very unique in that he
knew the dances, and so he played and accented some parts of the
dance, some part of the background singers they call kakegoe, which
is, you know, the phrases sang either underneath or to accent the
lead vocal, so to speak, you know, and it’s part of the piece where
the groups sings it while they dance, stuff like that, accents
certain aspects of the music. So anyway, he knew that, so some
people, younger guys at Senshin wanted to and needed to learn how to
play obon taiko. And this is totally different than kumidaiko, group
taiko, wadaiko, Japanese taiko. It’s totally different. People
associate it as together, but it’s two different things, because
there was an individual that came from Japan in the mid seventies,
so to speak, that played a straight pattern or two or three patterns
over everything, and it didn’t work, but that’s the taiko that he
knew.
So there was always a problem, and there still is a problem, because
the younger folks—it’s not necessarily a problem because there is no
official obon taiko sensei or teacher in the United States or
anywhere, actually. There is none because everybody has their own
style. Everybody comes from a different prefecture, state, or city
in Japan and village where they do their own style of obon and they
have their own music and stuff. And because there’s fifty million
different dance teachers, there’s fifty million different
interpretations of a singular folk dance, right? The music is pretty
much the same, but again, the interpretation of the music and the
dance. So there was some individuals who wanted to learn obon taiko,
and they were kind of like hanging out with them, but this would
only be during the summertime, knowing that obon is coming up in
July or something like that, right?
CLINE:
Right.
0:08:41.3
MORI:
And then there was a group that—and we were working with this
Japanese—I mean working with this dance teacher. I think her name
was Kumori -sensei *( CORRECT?), and she was interesting in that she
kind of sort of found a niche in knowing the folk dances, even
though she came from a classical background, knowing folk dances and
learning them, and then teaching them to the Southern District
churches, temples. And not that she had designated herself the
teacher, but because she had credentials, so to speak, as a
classical dance teacher, you know, and she was a pretty good
teacher. People kind of referred to her in dance moves and some
other situations.
So she had asked some people in Southern District or in Los Angeles,
she put a group together with her own students and some people from
the different Buddhist churches in Southern California to dance in
the Hollywood main parade, in the Christmas Parade, so to speak, and
in doing so, she kind of had a trucker-trailer follow them with the
music, and on the flatbed truck was also a taiko player, I guess to
add to the ambiance and stuff. And not only women danced, but men
also danced, and they would kind of like trade off, and they’d be
holding these streamers and stuff like that. It would be a real
festive look for a parade, Hollywood Parade. So then people needed
to learn the music, so that’s why they also hooked up with Mr.
Inouye to help them teach them how to play, you know, music for the
obon, I mean for the dance, and I can’t remember which dance. So
there was about three or four people that did that.
CLINE:
I see.
MORI:
So there was a group that started to learn obon taiko. Then Reverend
Mas and George ( Abe) and a few other people, the story goes, were
putting away the taiko, and they had played for, like, three hours
straight after, you know, after obon happened and stuff. That sort
of began the idea of taiko group. I believe that happened in ’69,
but I think the formation of the gagaku group was, like, in maybe
1969, 1970, and then later on that part of the year the taiko group
also started. I mean, it wasn’t very much longer after each of them
started another one started, combination of stuff.
0:10:54.5
CLINE:
So in terms of your involvement, were you doing both simultaneously
when you came to it, or did you start with the gagaku and then—
MORI:
I started with the taiko first.
CLINE:
Oh, okay. I see.
MORI:
Yes. So I didn’t know nothing. ( laughter) Gagaku was like someplace
from out of nowhere.
CLINE:
Yes. Right. Not the kind of more physical, almost athletic approach
that seemed to be appealing to you either, actually a far cry from
that.
MORI:
Yes, yes. I had never heard it before. I had never seen it before. I
had no idea what it was. None, zero, zilch at all. And I think I may
have listened to it maybe just a few times prior to me being asked
to go to practice, which also led to a first performance.
CLINE:
And this is when you described last time Togi-sensei kicking you
when to start playing, when to stop playing.
MORI:
( laughs) Yes. Yes, it was just a nudge, because we all sit down on,
you know, cross-legged style, so he’s sitting around behind me. He
just kind of kicked me with his foot. I mean it wasn’t a kick kick,
but he nudged me with the foot every time I had to play. So, began
playing gagaku and playing taiko. Now, gagaku had a teacher, so it
was really interesting in that there was direction. I mean there was
a plan here, you know. If you didn’t know, you just asked the
teacher, so to speak, or he’d show you what you need to play. So
whether or not it was any easier or harder is hard to say versus the
taiko group having no teacher, us making everything up from the
instrument through what we were playing, through what we were
wearing. It was all new kind of a situation, you know.
CLINE:
Now, you said that Reverend Mas had some recordings of taiko
drumming.
MORI:
Right.
0:13:16.9
CLINE:
Were you beginning your musical material based on what you were
hearing from recordings, or where were you getting the pieces to
play from?
MORI:
In the beginning we were just listening to albums, yes. So all kinds
of different albums, whether they be from Japan, Asia, Africa—
CLINE:
Oh, wow.
MORI:
—wherever. It kind of had, like, a rhythm or a beat to it. We would
just sit there in his apartment and just listen to everything that
he had. And then we would borrow, take them home, listening to them,
and then we would kind of memorize a pattern that we liked, a couple
of them. And then the next time we met, we came back and we just
kind of, like, technique-wise try to pound it out or, you know, do
it. And then we played that for a while, and then we’d add things to
it and stuff like that. So some stuff made no sense at all. Some
stuff just happened to go along with each other and stuff, you know.
And then listening to a lot of Japanese records, and there were
maybe a couple, three rhythms that you heard throughout the albums
that were kind of sort of reoccurring, and different layered things
were put on top of it. Like I said, there was maybe about three or
four patterns and that was it, and we kind of picked up on that and
then we played it. And then there was a simple piece called matsuri,
which means festival, and that particular pattern or piece pretty
much we kind of picked up, and you hear it a lot on different
things. So we kind of learned that, and then we just kind of added
our own thing to it.
0:15:35.0
CLINE:
So what were you playing on then? I mean, you had to come up with
sort of a family of drums in order to do this. (Mori laughs.) I
think a lot of people, when they think of taiko, they think of the
very large drum that I can’t imagine you can go find, you know, down
at your percussion store. So how did you get around that?
MORI:
We were playing on one taiko. It was a real taiko, I mean, you know,
from Japan, and it was probably a Senshin. I don’t know when the
temple had gotten it. All I know is they were playing it for obon
and it was there, and it’s still there today, too, you know.
CLINE:
To do the kumidaiko, you have to have more than one. ( laughter)
0:19:24.8
MORI:
Yes. So one day I went to Senshin, and then there was this barrel.
On one side it had leather, processed leather, regular leather being
held onto this half of—I mean not half a barrel, but this really
light barrel with one end cut off and this leather stretched over
this end of it, and it was sitting on a chair. And Reverend Mas
says, “This is the taiko I made.” I go, “Cool. This works.” And then
we looked at it and he goes, “Okay, well, this is a start.” There
was a number of us that were into it now. I mean, they were so, you
know—it was looking through the Yellow Pages to find who sold
barrels, wooden barrels, and where you could buy them and stuff like
that. There was a place in East L.A. that sold used barrels, wine
barrels, fruit concentrated barrels, and they were thicker barrels.
And then there was a wine-making store or a beer-making store in San
Pedro that had supplies for making beer and wine, so went out there
to San Pedro and they had oak wine barrels. They were heavy. We
weren’t sure if that’s what we needed or wanted. I think we bought
one anyway. We didn’t buy the thickest one, I don’t think, the
heaviest and most expensive one, but a medium-size barrel. This was
after probably about six or seven other thinner barrels and only
skin on one side, because we only figured it out how to cut one end
off and stretch the skin over one end because we didn’t know how to
cut off the other end. Well, we knew how to cut it off, but we
didn’t know how to maintain the barrel and keep the barrel from not
falling apart once you cut off both ends because of the ends holding
it together and the bands.
CLINE:
Right.
MORI:
So then there must have been—we made probably about six, seven,
eight barrels with just one side, figured out a kind of a stand, a
tripod kind of stand that we, us Boy Scouts, would kind of, like,
lash together on one end and press the taikos on the short end, and
we’d just play it that way. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it
didn’t. Sometimes we just took a folding chair and turned it
upside-down over on itself and it worked, but it was a funky-looking
thing, you know. So we thought that might have been it, and then
somebody suggested, “Well, why don’t you fiberglass the outside of
it or fiberglass the inside of it. At least everything would be held
together. Then that way you could cut off both ends.” So we go,
“Okay,” so we tried it. So I think we fiberglassed the inside of a
barrel, not the outside, but the inside. And then we cut off the
other end and it held together. We kept the bands, the two major
bands in the middle of the barrel on it, cut the two ends off it,
and it held together. We kind of sort of skinned it the best we knew
how at the time, and then it kind of looked okay. It sounded
terrible. ( laughter) It sounded like basically playing in a plastic
tube, so to speak, because the hardness of the fiberglass on the
inside made it real pingy-sounding.
CLINE:
Right. Very bright.
0:21:32.3
MORI:
Real, real bright because of this hard surface inside. And then we
go, “Okay, that don’t sound right. This don’t sound like a real
deep-sounding taiko like it’s supposed to sound like.” So then
somebody says, “Well, why don’t you fiberglass the outside.”
And then I think we fiberglassed one on the outside, and it sounded
a lot better, naturally. The hard surface on the outside was really
hard and difficult for us to tack in the skin after we decided how
to skin it, right? At that time, skinning-wise, we were still
pulling the skins with a pair of pliers or something on each side,
so we had not had the sophistication of how they would skin taikos,
period. And then somebody goes, well, you know, instead of using
fiberglass, which was really messy, you had to mix the polymers
together, and you had to make sure you laid the cloth out right and
put enough resin on it and stuff. We says, “Forget that. Why don’t
we just do the hard epoxy resin on the outside.” So we did that. So
basically it looked like—( laughs) It looked like, it looked like,
it looked like a used oak wine barrel, a planter or a chair or a
tabletop because it had this really thick resin on it, right?
CLINE:
Oh, yes. Right.
0:23:50.9
MORI:
So it looked like a bar table or something like that, right? But it
held up, you know. So we were doing that for a while, and then we
were mixing the resin so it was thinner and thinner but still held
up, right? And then we were still trying to figure out how we were
to skin the taiko. Somebody gave us a picture of skinning taikos in
Japan of how they used to do it a long time ago, in which they used
to skin two sides at the same time, in which they would soak the
skins in the water, and then on its side they would put holes in the
skins, and they would basically lash the rope between the two skins
and you would have them going back and forth. And then they put a
wooden dowel in between on each rope, and they would twist the
dowels.
CLINE:
To increase the tension.
MORI:
Exactly. So that would tighten it up. So we tried that, and it
worked, and it worked. Then somebody came back, and it might have
been this guy Etsuo Hongo, who was the guy who came from Japan in
the seventies. Either he came back and showed us pictures or it was
Kenny Endo that showed us pictures while he was in San Francisco on
how San Francisco Taiko Dojo skinned drums. Or I think basically
what it was, he got pictures from Japan on how they skinned drums.
It’s kind of hard to describe, but if you were to place a small
platform on the floor, and then you would put carjacks on top of the
small platform, you would put a board on top or a round circle
cutout piece of plywood a little bit larger than the size of your
diameter of your drum, you’d put your drum on top of that, so this
is all vertical. Then you would put the skin on top of the drum, and
then there would be holes inside the skin, and then you would lash
the skin down to a frame that is underneath the jacks. So, in
essence, you are pushing the barrel with the jacks up through the
skin, which is being held down by the ropes to the frame underneath
the jack.
CLINE:
Right.
MORI:
You would let it down because the skin stretched, tightened the
ropes, and do that, like, about two or three times. And then the
third pull, so to speak, you’re there.
CLINE:
Wow. A lot of work.
0:26:44.7
MORI:
But then you didn’t know how much you would push this drum through
the skin or how tight you would want to have the skin. And then
because depending upon the thickness of the skin and where you put
the hose to lash and stuff, naturally, a lot of times the rope would
tear the skins. So this is the very beginning, okay? And so then
that was a problem, too, so right before tour, you pretty much put
the tacks in and you were done. ( laughter) Let it dry a little bit,
and cut off the remaining part of it, and then you had yourself a
skinned taiko. And then you did that on the other side.
CLINE:
Wow. This is a lot of dedication to get this all happening.
0:29:40.4
MORI:
Yes. There was a lot of, you know, trial and error, so to speak.
Then there were carpenters, I guess you could say, or people who had
very creative minds and either worked with barrels or kind of, like,
took it to another level. Here in Southern California this guy named
Stanley Morgan, and he was really interesting in that he was a
woodworker, worked with wood, worked with his hands, had hardly
any—didn’t have any really formal training in taiko, but he was one
of many probably throughout the United States—I take that back.
There was probably maybe about four or five guys in the United
States at the time who took the barrel apart, physically took the
barrel apart and put it back together again and figured out a way
how to take it apart and put it back together again so it still is
round and made the barrel a little more consistent as far as the
outside appearance of the taiko. So he was able to individually mark
each stave, put it back in the order in which it was made, but he
did it in a way in which he used wooden dowels or wooden nails in
between the staves as guides to put it back together. And because of
the angle of the staves and still have the ring, to maintain this
roundness to it, so he would drill the holes in the sides of the
staves, put either nails or wooden dowels inside of it, do the same
thing with the opposite stave, and then put it back together. So he
would kind of join it together. Then he would make a donut for the
inside so that it would be round on the inside. The staves on the
outside, the bands on the outside were to keep it, pull it together
tight, and you would knock it down. Then he also put a band around
it and then tightened up, winched it up that way so that it would
tighten it up in between the staves.
So he figured all that out so that you could cut off both ends of
the taiko. Some people left the donut on the inside, made it as a
ring, a wooden ring on the inside and attached that to the inside.
Some people took out the rings so that it was clean on the inside.
So it all depends upon how structurally you made this taiko. So now
it’s starting to get a little bit more sophisticated.
CLINE:
Right.
MORI:
Individuals in other parts of the United States, after we helped
start the taiko group—and this is very significant in Denver. We did
this road trip in 1977. Kinnara went to Salt Lake City, Ogden, Utah,
which is right near each other, and to Denver, and we performed in
those three cities, and we did gagaku. We took the whole gagaku
group out there with Togi-sensei and the whole taiko group, so there
was quite a few people that went, and we performed there. And soon
after that, they started their own taiko groups in Denver and in the
Ogden-Salt Lake area.
CLINE:
What kind of venues were you performing in?
MORI:
Pretty much in the Buddhist churches, so that was our pretty much
connection with the communities. Denver was really interesting in
that there was a group of individuals who took taiko to its very,
very raw beginning in that they were skinning their own cows, so to
speak, or getting skins fresh from the slaughterhouses, and they
were pretty much processing their own skins—
CLINE:
Wow.
0:31:58.6
MORI:
—cleaning them with lye or whatever, taking off all the fur part,
and they were curing their own skins. So this is in Denver, in the
country, so to speak, not that far out of the city, but still the
people were doing that, were able to do that and learn how to do
that.
This one guy whose name was Mark Niyoshi, he was into woodworking and
he was into carpentry and stuff, and he had worked with a couple of
other guys. They were into making everything. They were even
modifying the barrels. They were refining the process of gluing
barrels together and stuff. Mark, I think, was so into it, he did go
to Japan and he studied or learned or lived with a taiko maker, and
he got as much out of it as much as he could. But yet in terms of
the raw materials available in the United States, he was able to
get, you know, large logs, so to speak, and he tried to figure out a
way how to make a taiko out of one solid piece of wood versus the
barrel method, so to speak, staves and everything. But he came back
and he started making taikos. In the beginning stages, he tried
making it out of one solid piece of wood, and then he looked at his
resources, and he figured, well, maybe he had to try to make his own
staves.
CLINE:
Yes, I was wondering if anyone had decided to make their own barrels
just for taiko drums yet.
MORI:
Exactly. So then that way he knew that they could be more
consistent. He could figure out all the angles. While he was there,
he understood or learned from different taiko makers either the
formula or the proportions for the inside cavity of a taiko. Each
taiko maker makes his own sizes and makes his own dimensions and
length and diameter and whatever, and they pretty much have their
own design even for the inside of the taiko, depending upon the size
and the sound that would need to be created. So some really, really
fine taikos have, like, this herringbone cut on the inside of the
taiko, so it’s not smooth. Other ones have their own different
designs on the inside, pretty elaborate designs, pattern designs
that they would either make up or have somebody, an artist, paint on
the inside and they would cut it out just because the inside had to
be rough, so to speak. So he started doing that, and he started
making his own staves, and so everything was controllable and
everything could be made to a certain size. He could, I wouldn’t
say, mass produce them, but he could cut X amount and put it
together, and the taikos, in terms of the size, at least, would be
uniform. So he got into doing that. 0:35:27.0
CLINE:
I see.
0:36:34.4
MORI:
And then from Denver a bunch of people moved from Denver to Mount
Shasta. So at the same time there was a couple families from
Northern California that also moved to Mount Shasta, and then these
two other individuals, Russell Baba and Jeanne Mercer, moved to
Mount Shasta, and they played taiko with Seiji Tanaka and San
Francisco Taiko Dojo. So this little community of taiko folks in
Mount Shasta, and this guy Mark Niyoshi again started refining his
taiko-making. So he was pretty much the first one just dedicated to
making taikos in the United States. He played a little bit, but not
that much, but he played enough so he knew what it needed to sound
like, what it needed to look like, and everything like that. So he
was pretty much the first.
So, from that, the process, people picked up on it, and so there was
always some handyman in the community or some handyman at the temple
or something like that, that played taiko and they could also work
with their hands. So everybody started refining taikos, making their
own taikos. Today there’s probably about, I’d say, one, two, three,
four, maybe five, six taiko-makers that make their own staves, make
everything from scratch-scratch. I have not yet seen American-made
taiko out of one solid piece of wood. Small shimedaikos, which is
the size of, like, a snare drum, I’ve seen those made out of one
solid piece of wood, but I haven’t seen any larger ones they call
naganos. I haven’t seen those. A lot of it has to do with the
dryness of the humidity here in the United States.
CLINE:
Yes. Certainly on this coast, it’s very different from—
MORI:
Right. Exactly. Right. Because there was other African American
percussionists, Bill Johnson, Bill Jones *( CORRECT?). God, I can’t
remember his last name. Anyway, he was an African American
percussionist, and he played a lot with Grover Washington ( Jr.).
Anyway, and he just happened to live in Southern California. He
invited me over to his house, and he was making percussion
instruments and smaller drums out of one solid piece of wood, so
he’d have all these logs in the backyard, and they’d also have this
kind of like tar-like covering over each end of it so that he said
that it locked in the moisture. Not locked in, but, yes, pretty much
kept the moisture in so that when it naturally dried, it wouldn’t
dry too quick so it wouldn’t crack. So he and I talked for hours and
for days, but we never were able to make a taiko together.
0:39:10.1
CLINE:
You mentioned Kenny Endo a little while ago. How did you make
contact with him, and what was his role in this at this point?
MORI:
Kenny came to an obon in West Covina that Kinnara was playing at,
and this is probably in 1973, so this is, like, maybe just a couple
years after Kinnara began playing. Seventy-three, ’74, he came and
approached us and wanted to play. I think he was going to UCLA. I
think he was a regular drummer, a trap drummer, and he said this is
what he wanted to do. He was very interested in it. I can’t even
remember if he’d ever seen taiko before, but he came to a little
obon, and he says, “You know, I want to check it out.” So he started
coming to Senshin, and we started exposing him a little bit more to
Japanese culture stuff. I think while he was at UCLA he also took a
class from Togi-sensei, a gagaku class.
CLINE:
Yes, I was wondering.
MORI:
Yes. So soon as he got in Kinnara, things started to open up to him
because I think he grew up in La Mirada, La Habra area, so there’s
not that much culture there, Japanese culture especially, so this
kind of opened his eyes a little bit to what was available to him.
So he played with us for, like, maybe about five years, and we
introduced him to other Asians that are playing music in Southern
California, not the Top 40 musicians, but jazz musicians or people
that were kind of into more world music. But world music wasn’t
world music.
CLINE:
The category hadn’t been invented yet.
0:42:20.00:44:45.50:46:05.6
MORI:
Exactly right. So he wanted to take another step in playing taiko.
He was really, really into it. He moved into L.A., he’s still taking
classes at UCLA, and I think he graduated from UCLA. And then he
decided to go to San Francisco and play and study with Seiji Tanaka.
So I think he did that in, like, ’74, ’75, ’74, I think, because
when I went up there again and lived up in the Bay Area in ’74, he
had been playing with him because he had taken me to Tanaka-sensei’s
practice in the city. I think I was in Berkeley at the time, hooked
up with him. Tanaka-sensei knew of Kinnara, but I don’t really know
if—he may have seen us just once, but then again, he may have never
seen us at that time. He may have not seen us, but he’s heard of the
taiko group, he’s heard of myself through Kenny Endo.
So as soon as I went in there, into the practice room, there was a
regular drum set, which was Kenny’s, and there was taikos in this
room. This is at the Buchannan YMCA in San Francisco. Tanaka says he
was sitting at Kenny’s drum set and he was just kind of messing
around and playing. I guess Kenny had showed him some stuff, and
then Kenny was playing on the regular drum thing. They were just
messing around together, and I just picked up a pair of sticks and I
just started playing with them. Had no idea what they were playing.
And then he immediately started teaching me some patterns, and he
goes, “This is matsuri taiko. This is the warm-up that I created.”
So he started teaching me some basic stuff. This is during the
summer, and I was going to the Institute of Buddhist Studies, and
then that’s like a six-week program, six- to eight-week program.
Can’t even remember. Six-week program. So then I had hooked up with
Kenny again, and I went back over there and he started teaching me
more stuff. The timing that I went over there was really
interesting. It was between classes or between his own study classes
or his practices and stuff, and whenever we can kind of get together
when he had free time, so to speak, or either before or after the
class, usually after the sessions that he had with his students. So
one time I was able to go there, and I think either I saw the
beginning or the end of one of his practices, or maybe both. He was
very, very disciplinarian, so to speak, and traditionally
Japanese-taught in that as many repetitious exercises, physically
fit before you started playing, you’d be able to pick up the stick.
When I was there, you know, these guys had to run around the block.
This is at the Peace Pagoda block on Geary ( Street) between Webster
( Street) and Octavia ( Street), Laguna ( Street), and this is a
huge, long-ass block. He made them run around this block like five
times or something like that. People were just totally—you know,
plus come back and do, like, twenty-five, fifty sit-ups,
twenty-five, fifty pushups, right? I ain’t doing that. ( Cline
laughs.) And I was saying, “Man, this is good.” I mean he’s working
them and stuff.
Then there was the older senior people that they were playing on
taikos, and, you know, there’s folks that’s just sitting and
watching. Some of them had a pair of sticks, some of them didn’t
have anything, and they were all just sitting their seiza style with
their feet underneath them and stuff, and they were just watching
practice. Some of them were able to practice long because they had
bachis. Others didn’t, but they were just tapping it on their knees
or whatever, right? So there’s different levels and different
stages. And I was just watching. Then class was over. Then while
they were doing this pattern, they were doing these series of
practices, he would literally go around and he would strike people,
you know, on the back, on the arm, take his foot and kick their
thighs or something like that or kick their calves if they’re not
standing properly and stuff like that, right? So, I mean, you know,
he was yelling at them and screaming at them, you know, giving them
some encouragement, telling them and stuff like that. Men and women
were in the class, and they were just all sweating and they were
just yelling and they were just committed. And I go, man, this is
crazy, you know. This is, like, man, this is like—wow, this is
like—he was just yelling and screaming at them. Man, this is, like,
I couldn’t—I don’t know if I would be that dedicated, you know, to
kind of hang in there.
CLINE:
Yes. It’s like drumming boot camp.
0:48:07.40:49:38.60:51:29.5
MORI:
Yes. Drumming boot camp, you know. It was Japanese bushido samurai
spirit kind of thing. Man, it was like whoa, this is, like, really
deep, because I mean, you know, at the time it was in the early
seventies, you know. It was like whatever, man. This is like, you
know, flower period. This is the hippie days. This was, like, the
free movement, free kind of whatever it was. And I go, “Man, this is
like the opposite, man. This is, like, discipline, rigidness. This
is crazy.” So after they left, I was sitting there, “Man.” I says,
“You know—.” And I don’t know why, but I says, “Man, this is—.” And
everybody highly respected this guy. He was a sensei. You know,
rituals and bowing and all this stuff and very formal and stuff, you
know. And I go—I don’t know why I said, “Wow, I don’t know if I
could study with you,” jokingly, smiling, you know. “You’re pretty
tough here, you know.” And he kind of like laughed, chuckled a
little bit, too, and he goes, “Well, that’s how I learned, and, you
know, that’s just being a true taiko player,” kind of a thing. And
I’m thinking, “Well, if this is what taiko players have to deal
with, I don’t know about this,” right, you know? But after he
started playing, he kind of like—you know, naturally he kind of
relaxed and stuff like that. And then he just started showing me
some more patterns and rhythms and stuff, and he says, “Let me teach
you this. Let me teach you that,” right? And I had never picked up a
stick with him. I mean, he just handed me a pair of sticks and we
started playing, you know. He showed me a couple of other stance,
and that was about it.
Kenny was all this time, too, and he’s helped me out and stuff and
explaining some stuff, you know. And then after that, we’d go out
and have a beer. It only lasted maybe about forty minutes, half an
hour, forty minutes. So I did that about three or four times while I
was up north during that period of time. Then in the fall, Kenny
called me up and says, “Hey, Tanaka-sensei’s coming down to L.A. He
got this gig at this department store.” I think it was Broadway or
Bullock’s at the time. “And they got this East-West campaign.” So
they invited him down to play taiko inside the department store, and
he wanted to know if I would play with him. I go, “What do you mean,
if I want to play with him?” And he said, “You know those patterns
that he taught you?” And I go, “Yeah.” He goes, “Well, those are the
foundations of these pieces in which he’s going to have you play, so
you already know those.” I says, “Yeah.” So he says, “Okay.” So then
he came down and he gave me some stuff to wear, his stuff, and he
showed me these other things. So then out of maybe five gigs there
was in L.A., I played on four of them, and they were all either
inside the department store, and if it was in a mall, which there
was malls at that time and I can’t remember which one, we played
right outside the mall. Then the mall people got pissed because it
was too loud throughout the whole mall, so we had to go back inside
and play not as loud.
So the reason why I’m bringing this up at this particular time is
very, very significant in that—so he was in L.A. for probably about
a week, a little over a week, and this is in the fall, actually
probably in the wintertime, because Kinnara was not practicing like
it usually does or did after a while, which we practiced year-round.
We just practiced seasonal right before started in spring, early
spring, late winter, and then we practiced for obon, played at the
obon, and then kind of took a break after obon until the next
spring. So we were in between this, we was in this cycle, kind of,
so to speak. So we called up people, “Hey, Tanaka-sensei’s in town.
He says why don’t you do a workshop or whatever or just get together
with us, you know, so why don’t we practice.” So we’d round up maybe
about eight people to come and practice. Then there was this really
young kid that was there, and he was, like, eight years old or
something like that. So he comes walking in with a skateboard in his
hand and he’s chewing bubble gum and he’s blowing these huge-ass
bubbles. He says, “Okay, let’s play this piece, Ashida,” right? So
we started playing, and he just kind of standing there slouching,
and he’s playing the bass and he’s blowing bubbles, right? And
Tanaka-sensei and these guys from Japan were there, and they were
watching, you know. Then I think a few of them were staying at my
apartment or something like that, right? And then after practice,
Tanaka-sensei came over, everybody was kind of just hanging and just
kind of relaxing, and then right before he split, he called Kenny
and was talking to Kenny, and these other guys from Japan were
there. They were talking kind of in Japanese and broken English and
stuff, and I wasn’t paying attention to the conversation. And then
he split, you know. It was cool, and he split.
Then after folks had either gone to bed or whatever, Kenny says,
“Hey, you know, I need to talk to you.” I says, “Okay.” And he goes,
“You know, Tanaka-sensei and this guy Tosha said they were very,
very disappointed in your practice.” And I says, “Well, you know, it
was a real casual practice, and we just pulled it together because
Tanaka-sensei was in town.” And Kenny goes, “He understands, but he
says, you know, the style and method of how you practice and how you
guys played while you were playing the taiko was, to Tanaka-sensei,
not taiko. He didn’t go as far as saying it was very disrespectful,
but he says it was not taiko in the spirit of taiko, so to speak.”
And I go, “Really?” And he goes, “Yeah, almost to the point or to
the point where Kenny said—.” And Kenny was in this really weird
place because Tanaka-sensei’s now his teacher. We weren’t his
teacher. But he’s caught in this thing. He says, “Well, I don’t know
how to tell you guys this, but Tanaka-sensei and his other guys had
asked me to ask you not to use the word taiko.”
CLINE:
Wow.
MORI:
And I go, “Far out.” (
0:53:25.1
CLINE:
laughs.) And then we had got together, a bunch of us just kind of
got together again and reviewed what Tanaka-sensei had taught us
just so we didn’t forget, and other people learned different parts
so that, you know, when we put it together, we were able to put the
pieces together. And so we talked about that. I brought it up and I
says, “You know, Kenny told me, you know, Tanaka-sensei asked us not
to use the word taiko.”
You know, then we’re all sitting around talking about it. Reverend
Mas is there and stuff, and he was really interesting. He didn’t say
too much, which he usually does since he has a lot to say, but he
didn’t really say too much because everybody else was kind of, like,
throwing it out. Says, “Man, that’s like—I thought that’s what we
were doing, was playing taiko, and we were doing our own thing, so
to speak, because we didn’t have a teacher and stuff like that.” And
so we says, “Well, let’s think about it, you know.” And then over
the weekend either we had a taiko performance or we gave a
demonstration someplace, somehow, and then we got together again the
following week, and somebody says, “You know, I want to talk about
this taiko thing.” “Sure.” “You know, these ladies came up to us and
said they really appreciated us playing taiko, playing this, and
they felt very, very natsukashi,” which is very melancholy. Reminded
them of Japan, of home, of festivals. And so then we kind of, like,
looked at each other and go, “Wow, that’s pretty deep too.”
CLINE:
Right.
0:55:28.6
MORI:
In fact, what we were trying to do, we, I guess, unbeknownst to us,
it kind of, like, opened our eyes to say that, well, I guess what we
were doing in the eyes of some folks that because we called it
taiko, they also associated taiko, and they put an interpretation to
it how best they wanted to interpret themselves, and they expressed
this by telling us of their appreciation in remembrance of taiko. So
then after a while, we kind of still talking about it, and it kind
of bugged us for maybe about a month, you know.
CLINE:
Sure.
0:57:53.2
MORI:
And then we got to a point where I remember ( unclear) says, “You
know, there is no connection between the type of taiko that we’re
playing right now and what they’re doing in Japan.” He says, “They
aren’t doing this. There are no taiko groups in Japan. There is no
Japanese Buddhist taiko. There is none. They don’t do this.” At the
time there was maybe only a few groups in Japan that considered
themselves a taiko group other than a taiko group that would play
for an event or festival in a village that that particular village
is known for, and they don’t necessarily do it as entertainment,
although they do, but part of the ritual for the festival. So he
says, “There’s no connection. The elderly lady and gentleman who
called this taiko, to them it’s taiko, and it’s up to us to decide
what we want to call it.” So he said that we should still continue
to call it taiko because this is what it is. So we thought about it
for another week, came back together, and I remember I even told
Tanaka-sensei, and it’s always on the interview and basically a lot
of it just said, “Fuck it, you know, this is what we consider taiko,
what other people around us perceive to be taiko, so we’re going to
keep using the name taiko.” This is no disrespect for Tanaka-sensei
or anything like that, but—so there was always then this un—and we’d
see each other. Tanaka-sensei and I’d see each other at festivals
and stuff because the world of taiko is getting smaller. I mean, it
was getting bigger, but it was also getting smaller. We’d run into
each other, and he knew that Kenny had talked to us about it, and he
knew that he’d asked us not to use the word taiko. And I think for
ten years he had never seen us play after that.
CLINE:
Oh, wow.
MORI:
At least ten, fifteen years. And we never played with each other
until just recently, because our styles are totally different. He
had his cities and communities that he had gone into that he started
taiko groups, and we had gone through an invitation through the
Buddhist Churches of America to perform at these different cities.
New York started a group; Chicago; Seattle; Portland; Sacramento;
San Diego; Vista; Gardena; Orange County; San Luis Obispo; Fresno;
San Jose. All these were started at the Buddhist Churches. Some of
them continued the program or taiko within the temple
administration, so to speak. Some of them started at the church and
then it went out into the community and organizationally it’s not
connected with the temple. Some have a dual thing in which now they
practice at the temple, it is still connected with some festivals,
but yet on the other hand, it’s an independent organization away
from the temple, but they use it still. So many, many different
kinds of things. So we were all totally two different worlds, you
know, doing taiko. San Jose kind of learned stuff from us and then
went and studied with Tanaka-sensei, so then he considered them to
be underneath him. Then they got to the point where they developed
their own style and they were very, very recognized on their own, so
that was a little bit of an interesting kind of situation also, too,
because once you start with a teacher, then, you know, customarily
you’re with that teacher for life, so to speak, right?
CLINE:
Right.
1:00:36.81:03:45.0
MORI:
But because they were starting to learn and develop relationships
with a lot of other groups and even with groups from Japan, like
Ondekoza and Kodo, they started a relationship with them. So there
was different numbers of kinds of relationships that were beginning
to form or not form and stuff like that.
So, getting back to Kenny Endo, he was always very, very committed
to Tanaka-sensei because after he spent X amount, five years, in San
Francisco, then Tanaka-sensei made all the introductions for him to
go to Japan, so that while Kenny was in Japan, he was first
introduced to Daihachi Oguchi, who was credited for the group
forming of a large group taiko ensemble. Then he always was
introduced to O-Edo Sukeroku Daiko group, which four individuals
developed the slant stand and the Tokyo style of performing on
taiko. Then through other connections he was introduced a little
later on in the eighties to the group Kodo, and he knew those
individuals also too. Then through the whole process he had an
interest in learning traditional Japanese drumming, and he started
with a Japanese form of percussion, and he eventually became the
first foreigner to get a degree in hayashi, which is formal Japanese
drumming, and get a name, a title, and stuff like that. But all
along he would, you know, go back and forth from United States to
Japan, and he would, like, share what he knew from these different
groups, either rhythms, patterns, pieces, little things of skinning,
because when he went to Japan, he hooked up with Miyamoto ( Unosuke)
Shoten, which was a taiko maker and Japanese classical instrument
maker, and he learned from him through the skinning process of
making those barrels. And he also eventually hooked up with Asano,
the company Asano, taiko also, too, who makes all the taikos for
Ondekoza and Kodo. So he’d kind of, like, be the conduit for stuff
to come back to Japan, and a few other people went over to Japan and
studied taiko, specifically started taiko, and opened up the gates
for a lot of people to go Japan and study taiko, because at that
time there may have been only one or two other people that had gone
to Japan just for visits and to learn little things and came back to
Japan, but he actually went over there and lived there, so he’d
provide all the information and stuff, you know. So he’s totally
invaluable to taiko in the United States.
CLINE:
Right. I’ve been waiting to ask this, and you brought it up
yourself. When did you become aware of what Ondekoza was doing? I
know they did tour early in their existence and they came to L.A.
1:06:01.3
MORI:
So in 1975 we were approached by this Sansei guy named George Kochi,
and he was interested in music. He grew up in the Venice-Mar Vista
area, and he had come into the Amerasia Bookstore and wanted to talk
to George Abe about shakuhachi. And so George goes, “Sure,” you
know, so they kind of sort of hooked up. I think he may have been in
and out of UCLA or something like that, and I think he lived in the
Marina ( Marina del Rey), and he just wanted to learn how to play
shakuhachi, among other things. He had a connection to Japan for
some way somehow. So we started hearing about these other taiko
groups in the other parts of the United States, San Francisco, and
then this group called Ondekoza from Japan. A few of the people from
Japan had started coming to the United States as individual taiko
players that weren’t necessarily connected with anybody, but we
heard of them. And so we really never got together with them because
they always—because Tanaka-sensei, he’d be the connection because
he’d go back and forth to Japan and he’d tell us about this.
So I can’t remember what the connection was with this guy George
Kochi, who eventually worked at the JACCC ( Japanese American
Cultural and Community Center) *( CORRECT?) in the eighties, late
eighties, early nineties. So he told us of this group called
Ondekoza that was going to be touring the United States, and they
played this really big taiko.
CLINE:
( laughs) Right.
MORI:
And they showed us a picture of him and stuff. We says, “Okay, yeah,
yeah, yeah. Okay.” They were asked to play, or anyway, through
somebody somehow, either they booked themselves or they booked four
shows at the Embassy Auditorium up on Wilshire Boulevard, Wilshire
Ebell Theatre. So all of us were pretty excited to go. We bought
tickets in the center of the theater and we went to go see it. May
have seen pictures of him, may have not, right? They asked if they
could practice or work out at Senshin, and Reverend Mas said, “Sure.
Where are you guys staying?” They were staying at this motel up on
Vermont ( Avenue) and Third ( Street). They had this old school bus
that somebody had, George Kochi had found or something like that,
that was transportation. But we also heard that part of their
discipline was that they were, like, into running.
CLINE:
Right. Marathon running.
1:09:55.3
MORI:
Marathon running. And we thought that was pretty crazy, but that was
part of their whole ritual and their discipline and stuff. So some
of us, they says, “Yeah, you can come to watch our practice and
stuff like that.” And this guy ( Tagayasu) Den had actually come
before, and he came to one of our practices. He says, “We would like
to share with you all this other stuff, and we’d like to show you
different things and stuff like that.” And us being who we were,
just coming off of this Tanaka-sensei thing, thinking, “Who are you?
We don’t need your help.” (Cline laughs.) “We’re doing our own
thing. We’re not playing Japanese taiko. We’re playing Japanese
American taiko.” So in essence, we said, “Sure, come. You can use
the social hall facility and all this other stuff, but we don’t want
to get together with you and have a whole workshop or nothing like
that. That’s okay. That’s fine.” Then one day we said, “Well, we’re
going to have to come and check them out,” so in the daytime some of
us were kind of hanging out, and these guys would just kind of get
there and they’d be all sweaty and everything like that. We’d go,
“How’d you guys get here?” He goes, “We ran here.” “You guys ran
here? Where’d you guys run here from?” “Oh, from our motel.” And I
go, “What motel?” And then ( unclear) goes, “Oh yeah, the one up on
Vermont and Third.” We go, “And you guys ran from Vermont and Third
all the way down here?” And they go, “Yeah, yeah. Not a bad run. Lot
of traffic, but not a bad run.” We’re going, “Damn!” And then they
started practicing, working out, no drums or little few drums that
they had and stuff, right? ( telephone interruption)
CLINE:
All right. We’re back on.
1:10:49.9
MORI:
There was probably about fifteen, twenty guys, and they all ran.
Everybody ran. In the beginning they didn’t have any taikos, and the
taikos that we had weren’t necessarily that good. So basically they
just did drills, and they’d have their sticks. Then they would play
patterns and pieces and they’d be singing everything, or they would
just practice on stacks of newspaper or telephone books that we had,
because that’s what we were practicing on, or tires and stuff, and
they would practice their patterns and stuff.
Then I think right before the performance at Ebell, they brought the
equipment. They trucked it in. And all of a sudden these, like,
unbelievable, beautiful taikos were sitting in our social hall, and
the sound that they made from these things was unbelievable. But
they were very respectful for the neighborhood and everything like
that, so we heard them, but we didn’t hear them. I mean we heard
parts of them. Then we went to the Ebell and were totally, totally
blown away. I think, after that, we went to every concert that they
had. Went back probably four nights, right? They were just totally
mesmerizing. I mean, the first time was just crazy. It was great. So
that kind of like just totally set off people’s ideas, discipline,
possibly, what it may or may not take to get to a certain particular
level.
CLINE:
That’s a very athletic sort of approach, physically rigorous.
1:13:26.2
MORI:
Right. Then before they left, we had a potluck dinner. Everybody got
together and we fed them and stuff. We actually played for each
other kind of sort of. We had the potluck. The first time they came
through, we just may have gotten together and we had a potluck. The
second time they came through, might have been a couple years later,
we did the same thing, hosted them there, but then we played for
them. Kinnara felt confident enough we played for them just to show
them what we do. And, you know, we were all embarrassed and we was
all new to this whole thing kind of thing and stuff. So that was in
the late seventies, ’78, ’79. We had just come back from Utah, the
road trip. We were feeling pretty confident and stuff, confident to
the point where we felt comfortable of what we were doing. Otherwise
we would have never volunteered to play for these folks. It’s one of
those things, right?
CLINE:
Right.
MORI:
But we played for them, and the whole concept going back to us not
playing taiko or anything like that, that was part of it, but yet on
the other hand, it wasn’t because we got over that hump. And so we
were playing our style, and at that time Kodo—I mean Ondekoza did
not smile.
CLINE:
Right.
MORI:
They were very, very closed. They were, I think, on the verge of
having to go one way or the other.
CLINE:
Yes. This is pre-mutiny. ( laughs)
1:15:34.6
MORI:
Pre-mutiny, yes. Right before they broke up and became Kodo, split
up and then took his group back to Tokyo, and the rest of them
stayed on the island of Sado. So they knew this is the second or
third time they’ve been to the United States. The second time was
just as awesome, but they did not let you get into their world, so
to speak. There was still this non-emotional look on their face when
they played all the patterns, except the person doing the odaiko
solo, but he was facing the other way, so you really couldn’t see
his expressions or anything like that, but you knew he was into it,
and that was Eitetsu Hayashi who was playing the odaiko. They came
to a practice, and we pretty much kind of like were laughing, as we
do when we play taiko and have fun while we play taiko, and so it
was really interesting that Eitetsu—and I don’t think the leader,
Den, was there, so Eitetsu would be the senior member of the
group—was asked a question, “What did you think about Kinnara?” And
he goes, “Ondekoza plays heavy drums. Kinnara plays happy drums.”
CLINE:
( laughs) Interesting.
1:17:46.4
MORI:
It was. So because of that particular situation and the more touring
that they did throughout the United States, and the more that they
hooked up with taiko groups in the United States, and I think their
relationship that began pretty strongly with San Jose Taiko. San
Jose Taiko has a very, very outwardly, almost too happy of an
expression at times when they played taiko in the beginning. They
had a couple of women in there who smiled through the whole thing
and stuff, which, after a while, it didn’t go along with the piece.
But that was just the evolution of taiko anyway. So then right
before Kodo broke up—I mean Ondekoza broke up, there was an encore
piece that they played that they finally showed emotion, whether it
was the difficulty of the playing and focusing and concentrating,
you could see that on their face, or because it was the last piece,
it was the encore piece, that they smiled and gave out more of an
expression of joy when they performed, and that started to allow the
audience to get into them and feel what they’re starting to feel and
vice versa. Then after that, when Kodo began, they were trying to
find their personality also, too, so the first couple times they
were pretty non-emotional except, again, for the encore. And ever
since that time, more and more a piece within the repertoire or the
program had showed emotion, you know, a little bit more playful kind
of stuff, a little bit more interaction with women in the group
also, too, so that opened stuff up.
CLINE:
Yes, because Ondekoza, when they performed here, the women only
played the other traditional Japanese instruments like koto and—
MORI:
Right. Or they only danced.
CLINE:
—shamisen or they danced.
MORI:
Exactly. Or they only danced, right?
CLINE:
Right.
MORI:
Right. And then they started changing and evolving themselves and
stuff like that. And there was many discussions that we had with
Kodo. They were allowing themselves to discuss their taiko playing
internationally and within the United States. And so because of that
dialogue that they started to have with the groups of the United
States, they had now finally respect from the Japan groups to the
groups of the United States in terms of equipment that we were
basically making ourselves. They pretty much bought from somebody or
given to them or exchanged for them that we were making our own
taikos, our own costumes, even playing our own pieces based on
traditional Japanese pieces. Kodo was pretty much and Ondekoza was
pretty much doing the same thing.
CLINE:
Right. Right.
1:20:47.5
MORI:
They had gathered all these masters or these elders from the
villages and either went to them or brought them to the island of
Sado, and they taught Kodo exactly how the piece is played, the
rhythms, the timings, and all the nuances. And then Kodo made it
more accessible to everybody else, the presentation, the rhythms,
the costuming, everything. Then they decided they had to be more
open. So that was interesting, whereas other groups from Japan still
thought that because they were from Japan and playing on taikos,
that they were the authority of taiko playing, but not until they
started talking about the timing of it with Tanaka-sensei in ‘68 and
Kinnara in ’69. Then three or four or five years later, then San
Jose started, you know. So four or five years later, that’s Suwa
Taiko ( Association) New York started or Denver started. So that was
really interesting, but I mean we didn’t really analyze it or figure
it out until years later. So the Kodo’s philosophy even today is
very open, you know. They say that there’s not necessarily one
individual person that is credited for taiko in Japan, and that
there are other styles and things.
But there is a group in Japan called the Nippon Taiko Federation,
and they’re on the conservative side of ideas from Japan. About
eight to ten years ago now, since the Emperor asked the educators in
Japan to reintroduce the country to its own culture in schools, that
they were consulted as being, I guess, an organization that they,
themselves, accredited cultural teachers within their organization,
so that if you were to be a taiko player that was accredited that
now that the Education Department of Japan wanted to teach taiko in
public schools, then who would be qualified? So Nippon Taiko
Federation, along with the Nippon Federation in general, said that
because we accredited these people so they can teach taiko in public
schools.
CLINE:
Right. According to their idea of what that is.
1:23:19.3
MORI:
According to their ideas and understandings, correct. Whereas other
taiko groups, some taiko groups said, “Well, again, there is no
master teacher. There is no standard way of teaching taiko or, in
that fact, Japanese culture.” I agree with that on both sides
because there has to be some level of proficiency so that somebody
learning would be learned from a person who knows what they’re
talking about, you know, at least up to a certain level. And then
you need to make your own decision up to that then, and then you go
out and study whoever you want to study.
But who gives them—Kodo just asked the question, who gave them the
authority to say who was credited and not credited. I mean, you
know, again, conceptual-wise, there has to be some kind of a level
of teaching proficiency. But that was really interesting when they
came out with that statement, saying, “Well, there is no right way
or wrong way. There is a certain attitude and fundamentals, but—.”
So that was really interesting that Kodo, as a very respected group,
would make that statement and would have a very, very strong
relationship with the United States and North American taiko also
too.
CLINE:
And what would something like the Taiko Federation view of, for
example, attractive young women taiko ensembles be? I mean my
question being, beyond proficiency, are there other traditional
attitudes that are attached to this authority?
MORI:
Yes, yes. One of them was—but, you know, because of the
international feminist movement, there were separate taiko groups,
men’s groups and women’s groups. But for the longest time, until the
middle eighties, did they figure out that they could play together,
you know, musically. Physically there may be some differences, but
technique-wise you’re on pretty much the same, you know, level kind
of thing. So, yes, there were custom things, there were traditional
things that were not accepted, so to speak. So, you know, the
relationship between America and Japan is an ongoing discussion
within the taiko community and Japan culture, period, not
necessarily just taiko.
1:26:17.6
CLINE:
Before we knock off, I wanted to just ask you one thing, which
hopefully you can answer without going into too much length. We can
continue it next time if it’s an issue. But you talked about when
Kinnara started, how you started to develop material based on
listening to records, and you started to talk about—and you talked
in detail about how you started to make the instruments. What about
the stance? What about the physical, the movements and the look of
the taiko that you started to do? Where were you getting that
information from and what were you basing it on?
1:28:56.0
MORI:
Good question. A lot of it in the beginning were just—well, a lot of
it in the beginning was no stance. (laughs) No foundation. You stood
in front of the taiko and you hit the drum. No correct posture.
Possibly just figuring out of how to play the slant stand, naturally
one foot in front of the other, a wide stance very similar to a
martial artist. And then your upper-body routine or form was what
you brought. ( laughs) There was some looking at pictures and seeing
how they were standing and possibly how they struck the taiko. So we
just kind of looked at that and copied it, again through movies and
pictures. But there was no reason or rhyme why you stood the way you
stood or why you moved a certain particular way. My favorite program
at the time was Soul Train and a combination of just, like,
listening and watching these individuals dance and stuff, but
rhythmically listening to the music. Again, growing up in a
predominantly African American community and a minority, so-called
minority neighborhood, there was a lot of raw music and rhythms
coming from that neighborhood. So then to watch it on TV to be a
little refined and watching these contemporary dance moves that they
were doing, some of it were like, “How do you do that? That move
looks really cool. I want to put that into playing taiko.” Or, “I
like that rhythm, so I think I want to teach myself how to play that
rhythm and then present it to the taiko group and come up with a
move that I would feel comfortable, but that move still looks cool.”
CLINE:
Wow. Interesting.
MORI:
And then at the time we would go see everything. There was, like,
about four or five of us that would say, “Hey, man, so-and-so dance
group is going to be playing at so-and-so place.” A lot of it was
out at UCLA. A lot of it was just in the community. So we would go
and see a lot of different things, so that began opening up my eyes
to a lot of things, a lot of music, whether it’s contemporary,
mostly contemporary, but some classical stuff, too, you know, and
dance. I think we even went to go see a ballet, a regular ballet,
and that was a trip, because that was, like, “What are they doing?”
“I don’t know. Do you know the story?” You had to read the book to
figure out the story of the ballet piece or whatever, and that was a
trip. But you see the preciseness, you see the dynamics of the
performance, and then you saw the dance formations, so to speak, how
they would get on and off the stage, the different configurations of
how they set up, how they moved between themselves, athletically,
you know, how people would glide through the air, jump and glide
through the air. And then these guys would come out, and they would
start of kind of slower, and all of a sudden they’d do these leaps
across the stage. That was like you sit there and you go, “Man, this
guy got some hang time. Give this guy a basketball. Can that dude
dunk the ball? I bet you he could dunk the ball, and he could be up
a long time, and so he could fake people out with his jump shot.
Man, you ought to ask him if he could jump with the ball with his
left hand or something.” So all of a sudden this athletic thing
started kind of emerging into this ballet thing, and then
contemporary dance, jazz dance, tap dance, and tap because it had
movement and rhythm with your feet, right?
1:31:32.8
CLINE:
Yes. Right.
MORI:
So basically it just opened a lot of stuff, that it just wasn’t
music, and where you do you get these inspirations from. So people
would come into practice, “Hey, I got me a cool little move,” you
know. So we would watch the move. Okay, part of that move, where can
you hit the taiko if you want to hit the taiko? Or if it’s going
between drums or just one drum or if you dance around the drum, you
know, or what? You know, as you got this cool move, so is there a
rhythm that goes along with it? And he goes, “Yeah, man, I got this
rhythm.” So we’d play the rhythm, he’d do this move, and I go,
“Okay, well, what are you going to do with this move, you know? Are
you going to try to put the music into the move, or then there’s
music and you try to create the move to the music?” So at that time
it was exploring and figuring out how to get the music and how to
get the move, so there was no one particular place and there was no
one individual that was the writer or the choreographer.
CLINE:
Right. I see.
MORI:
So maybe for the next three months this person is, like, into this
piece and he wants to develop this piece, so we support each other.
CLINE:
Wow.
MORI:
Some of it was, like, you know, “Chris, man, this ain’t gonna work.
Screw it. We ain’t doing this,” and we’d move on or something. And
sometimes we’d come back with a different perspective or a different
eye on the piece or the movement. So not until some of us started to
hook up with Tanaka-sensei, then we’d bring back these moves and a
stance and it all made sense, and then after we got over this or
started to develop more and more relationship with Kodo, then it was
really interesting that they would teach us stuff, but,
unfortunately, it would be after the potluck, so everyone’s full and
didn’t really want to play, and then we’d just socialize. But once
in a while we’d get them to kind of, like, show us some stuff, you
know, and we had these different workshops and this one piece called
Miyake, which you spread your legs out really, really far, and
basically you’re playing this taiko at pretty much coffee-table
height. So you have to physically get down that low. So we had this
workshop doing this for, like, four hours, and not that we were
always down, you know, in this crouched position for four hours, but
majority of the time you were. So for the next ten days, literally,
man, I was, like, hurting. The next two days I could not walk.
CLINE:
Wow.
MORI:
But we started learning different postures and things, stuff like
that. Along with that, we finally began learning proper technique,
because people were getting hurt, you know, didn’t know the basic
fundamental mechanics. So we had people, friends of ours who were
chiropractors come in and says, “Oh, no, you can’t do that.” And
then we had formal dancers come in and explain, “Oh no, your knee
can never go past your foot,” right, you know?
1:34:54.1
CLINE:
Basic mechanics.
1:35:50.1
MORI:
You can’t lock your arms or your legs. You know, so just
fundamentals like that that none of us were dancers. None of us had
formal training musically or movement. And so we then started
obtaining these resources. Taiko players would say, you know, give
us more practice and lessons, and we would also teach them, too, in
terms of a little bit more freedom and expression and movement,
because they’re pretty much rigid. They have a certain way, certain
style, and they never usually deviate. Kodo was in a situation where
they never played anything that wasn’t part of their repertoire, so
a lot of them didn’t really have skills to improvise, you know,
because they were just never taught, and they were given that
opportunity to go outside of what they understood.
CLINE:
Interesting.
MORI:
So until Eitetsu Hayashi picked up a taiko, started smiling and
started improvising, they didn’t ever open anything up for Ondekoza
or Kodo.
CLINE:
Wow. Interesting.
MORI:
Because these guys pulled me aside, “That’s the first time we’ve
ever seen him smile while he’s playing taiko.”
CLINE:
Wow.
MORI:
“This is the first time we see him play something other than a piece
for Ondekoza.” So they was like, “Wow. This is a first for us too.”
CLINE:
That’s a real Japanese American taiko. ( laughs)
MORI:
Yes. But later on did we know the functionality of the way to stand,
not that any particular stance or movement was called anything,
meaning, like, take karate or kung fu. You have tiger stance. You
have crane stance. You have grasshopper stance. You have swan stance
or something like that or movement and stuff. In taiko there’s not—a
lot of it is just functionality in terms of balance. A lot of it has
to do with balance and executing or playing the large taiko.
CLINE:
Right. Well, I think we’ll call it. It’s twelve noon. And we can
finish maybe next time. We’ll see how it goes, but we want to get
into your experience playing with Hiroshima and what happens to your
wife after the seventies. Okay?
MORI:
Great.
CLINE:
Thanks.
MORI:
Thank you. ( End of June 16, 2010 interview)
CLINE:
Today is June 23, 2010. This is Alex Cline once again interviewing
Johnny Mori in this lovely lounge-like room on the first floor of
the Japan America Theater in Little Tokyo, downtown Los Angeles, and
this is session number five. Good afternoon.
MORI:
Good afternoon. How you doing?
CLINE:
I’m okay.
MORI:
Great.
0:00:38.2
CLINE:
I had a nice walk in the garden next door before coming over here,
and I feel pretty good.
MORI:
Good.
CLINE:
We talked a lot last time about the history of Kinnara taiko and
gagaku, and about some of the other taiko ensembles that were
developing around that time, including those from Japan. We talked
about Ondekoza coming to Los Angeles for the first and second time,
their continuation in the form of Kodo and their connection to an
interaction with Kinnara Taiko. What I want to get into today is to
follow a little bit more on the development of that story, but also
particularly get into some of the other activities that you wound up
doing simultaneously with Kinnara Taiko and gagaku/bugaku. And one
of the things that I have to assume happened along here somewhere
toward the end of the seventies is you got married and had a family,
started a family.
MORI:
Yes.
0:01:46.8
CLINE:
When did that happen?
MORI:
That relationship began in 1975. We did get married in 1980 in Los
Angeles, got married in Los Angeles. We were living together for a
while, about five years before.
CLINE:
Where did you meet?
MORI:
Actually, I had known my wife, I guess, future wife at the time, and
I met her at a dance at Senshin, I guess when we were about fifteen
or sixteen years old.
CLINE:
Oh, wow.
0:05:46.70:08:33.2
MORI:
And then through the years we’d run into each other through
different Junior Young Buddhists Association, which we called Junior
YBA, part of the Buddhist Churches of America youth groups, so to
speak, and we’d run into each other at different conferences,
different dances, socials. So that was in the sixties. Then we’d see
each other in different activities within the community, so it was
within the community and also, too, within the context of Asian
American movement. She was associated with a number of different
organizations, as with myself, again, because of the conscientious
objector situation that I was in in the early seventies and with my
participation at the Amerasia Bookstore. That was located downtown,
and at that particular time the social services along with the Asian
American movement—it’s not necessarily saying that it was
headquarters in downtown L.A. and in Little Tokyo. I would probably
broadly say it was located in Los Angeles. But it’s just that the
two community groups that had spurred the social activism was a
group known as what we called JACS office, Japanese American
Community Services, and there was kind of like an umbrella
organization at that time. From that started this Pioneer Project,
which that was outwardly Japanese and Japanese Americans, so they
were considered to be Issei, first-generation Japanese, that there
were a lot of single individuals and elderly, so not necessarily did
they have a family, whether they’d be widowed or they just didn’t
have family in Southern California. So this particular organization,
Pioneer Project, dealt with those particular issues and needs of
those individuals. That was a very, very universal subject or
concern within the community, and it began the roots of organizing
in the community.
So I was working with Amerasia Bookstore located in downtown L.A.
She was working with a different—she grew up in West Los Angeles
area. There was a group in West L.A. that had formed sometime after
the early seventies, probably in the mid seventies, and I believe it
was called ITA, which is—I can’t remember the initials for it, but
basically it was (unclear), and it was kind of like a service
organization because there was Japanese American community in West
Los Angeles Sawtelle area, and they were trying to organize the
youth out there and just do social service activities and events in
the community and stuff. But she also worked at an organization
called Storefront, and that was based in Southwest Los Angeles,
which was considered to be the Seinan area, which I described, the
Jefferson (Boulevard) and Crenshaw (Boulevard) area. It was called
Storefront because the physical location was based out of an old
storefront on Jefferson Avenue and Ninth and Tenth Avenue or
something like that. And it was really interesting. It did serve the
Japanese and Asian population in the Seinan area, but it was more
broadly based and helped deal with the community in general. So it
dealt with other races, so to speak, within that particular Seinan
area. Because of the environment that the organization and the
physical location, where it was, it dealt with issues that concerned
that particular neighborhood. So it was a group that started to deal
with and had confidence in relationships or understanding who they
were as Japanese Americans contributing to that particular specific
neighborhood, so they felt confident enough and organized enough
that they would be able to outreach to the other races that were
basically living in the community. And at that particular time, and
even today—well, at that particular time it was predominantly
African American community. So whether it be issues of street
cleaning, drugs, just issues that dealt with a neighborhood, so to
speak, they were involved, Japanese American or Asian American base,
but it also dealt with the public. So anyway, she was also working
in that particular situation.
Then Kinnara had started, right, in the early seventies. And her
mother—my wife’s name is Wendy. Her mother, her and two other women
were very, very interested and curious about Reverend Mas Kodani in
terms of what he had to say from when he gave his sermons and also
the concept of Kinnara. I can’t remember exactly—see, Kinnara always
used to have lectures, seminars, and it was open to everybody in
Southern California in terms of the Buddhist Churches of America. So
we would go out, you know, so-and-so is speaking, and we’d bring in
other speakers also, too, and develop a dialogue. We used to have
the spring and fall seminars, and Senshin Buddhist Church also
adapted that, has adapted that. Before, Kinnara used to do these
different workshops and seminars. The issues basically, or the
topics, were pretty much basic Jodo Shinshu Buddhism and stuff, but
they would bring in, I guess, scholars that were translating
Japanese Sanskrit, Chinese text into English and would be able to
present it in English. So anyway, Wendy’s mom, she would come and
she would attend these things. Part of Kinnara Taiko also, too, were
these weeklong retreats. In Jodo Shinshu there is no bells and
whistles. A lot of its practice dealt with internal examination plus
also, too, of chanting, and that’s part of the practice of Jodo
Shinshu. So Zen, you sit and meditate. In other—Nichiren has
literally chimes and gongs and sparks and all the bells and
whistles.
0:10:55.7
CLINE:
Were these the retreats in San Luis Obispo?
MORI:
Correct. So these were the retreats in San Luis Obispo, and so she
had attended these retreats. Her and her friends would attend these
retreats. It wasn’t until, like, two or three years down the road
that Wendy came to the retreats too.
CLINE:
Oh, wow. Okay.
MORI:
So she came, and she was interested in Kinnara. She was interested
because she’s also attended the Buddhist church at West L.A. and
certain functions and stuff. And there was a minister there named
Reverend Art Takemoto that was there. He actually was Reverend Mas’
mentor. So because of that—and he was also part of the original
board of directors for Kinnara. So I think he had talked to Wendy’s
mom, and her and her group came up, following Reverend Takemoto to
these seminars and stuff. Wendy was kind of sort of interested in
it, too, because it was different and because some members of it
that were in it started to deal with issues, social issues also too.
So she started attending some seminars and some retreats, and so
then we reconnected then. Then she joined the taiko group in ’73 or
something like that also too. Then we began our relationship in,
like, ’75. We had gone to see a friend of ours get married up in San
Jose together, and that’s when the relationship started.
CLINE:
Wow. And what’s her name again?
0:12:45.3
MORI:
Wendy, Wendy Sahara. Yes. Wendy Sahara.
So we lived together through the late seventies. In ’79, in
December, my father had passed away. Her father actually had passed
away, I think when she was, like, sixteen or seventeen years old, so
that was in ’67, ’68, ’69, something, somewhere around there. Her
father had passed away. He was a gardener, and it was a gardening
accident or something like that. So she had been without a father
for some time. So anyway, my father was in the hospital for about,
like, about a year dealing with a serious illness and a condition,
and, unfortunately, he passed away before we had gotten married, but
he knew that we were eventually going to get married and stuff,
right? So this was in, yes, ’79. The relationship has been very good
all these years, and I think it had to do with probably the values,
family values. More than likely, our living situation was very
similar in terms of economic situation the families were in, going
to temple, Buddhist temple, and dealing with stuff in the community,
being able to relate to both sides of the situation and stuff. We
got married in September of 1980 and talked about having children,
but did not really try until ’82, ’83. Our first child was born in
May of 1983, and then the second one was born in August of 1986.
CLINE:
And who are they, for the record?
0:16:46.7
MORI:
The oldest one is named Misako, Misako Jessica Mori , and the
younger one is Chiemi Renee Mori. If you do the math, they’re in
their twenties now. So there was the whole growing up with two girls
kind of situation and stuff, got to be involved in the community
activities and stuff and do Japanese American sports or Japanese
American sports leagues. Then also through different number of
circumstance situations we enrolled them in a magnet school, which
basically is supposed to be socially, economically academic, and
mixture of folks. It happened to be Westwood Elementary School and
then later become basically one of the first few charter schools in
the LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District) system, so to speak,
so it’s called Westwood Charter (School), I believe, right now. The
principal and the community was very supportive of it.
The younger one, when they initiated, unfortunately, was caught in
the new ideas, new curriculum in terms of teaching methods and stuff
like that. So it took a couple of years for it to kind of sort of
get settled, so to speak, in terms of how they were actually going
to administer charter schools and what was the responsibility of the
parents, the teachers, and the administration. So everybody had to
buy in. It wasn’t necessarily misgivings from the teachers, but they
needed to adjust how they were going to teach in this particular
environment was a little bit different. What they taught was still
pretty much basic elementary-school curriculum. How they were going
to do it, how they were going to share the information, and how they
were going to get support from the administration or the school
district and the community in general, so it took a little while.
And so growing pains, you know, cost a little bit, not money or
anything like that, just cost time and understanding of how that
system worked. But they benefited from it. They later went on to Los
Angeles Center for Enriched Studies (LACES), which was very close to
our house.
CLINE:
I was going to ask where your house was, so maybe this is a good
time.
MORI:
Basically, like I had mentioned before, I pretty much stayed within
the Tenth District of the City of Los Angeles, and so when we got
married and had the first child, we were living up near Los Angeles
High School. And then right before the second one, we had the second
one and then we got kicked out of that apartment or duplex because
the owner’s daughter wanted to live upstairs. So then we moved next
to our mom. In the process of that, we were looking for a house or
another residence, and we came across a house around the
Pico-Fairfax area, and we purchased that in, like, 1987 or something
like that, and we’ve been living there ever since. The home school
at that time would probably have been Crescent Heights (Elementary
School), which is up on Olympic. The middle school would have been
Emerson (Middle School) way out in—
CLINE:
In Westwood?
MORI:
—in Westwood.
0:19:34.2
CLINE:
Wow.
0:21:15.40:24:30.8
MORI:
The reason being is because—yes, that would have been the one. And
then the high school would have been Fairfax High School. The reason
why Emerson was because Louis Pasteur Junior High School was taken
over by the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies, which was the
magnet school they eventually went to. So we went to Westwood
Charter until—I think my daughter was the last graduating class of
sixth grade, and then she entered LACES in seventh grade. I think.
Then the youngest one graduated elementary school at the fifth grade
and went to LACES as a sixth grader. LACES used to go from the
fourth grade to twelfth grade, and then after they initiated the
fifth grade in elementary schools, then they changed it over to
middle school to a high school. But even still, the thought of a
twelve-year-old in sixth grade walking the halls with a seventeen-,
eighteen-year-old individual was really interesting, really, really
interesting. We need different people at the different schools,
whether it be at Westwood Charter and at LACES.
So it was a really interesting mindset of being a parent and trying
to find the best educational opportunities for your children. Not
that my parents didn’t have to worry about it, but yet on the other
hand, your home school was your home school. I went to Alta Loma
Elementary School, I went to Mount Vernon Junior High School, and I
went to L.A. High School. So it was pretty much set, so to speak, in
terms of that situation. But because of the transfer rules and the
magnet programs, there’s a lot more options here what you can do and
can’t do, and the whole tax credit kind of thing and all this other
stuff, so it made it a little bit more complicated. So all of a
sudden we’re starting to do some research and some homework here in
terms of what school you’re going to send your kids to and stuff,
you know, to see whether or not—how are you going to educate your
kids in the best environment, safe environment and academic
environment, you know, to see how best you could do. The standards
probably have changed and different number of factors have changed,
so it just made it really interesting and a little bit more pressure
in terms of finding these opportunities and being able to get into
these opportunities, because with the magnet program you have all
these point systems and stuff like that, how to get in and stuff
like that, and so it’s a little bit more trickier and a lot more
long-term planning in where your kid’s going to get educated. Them
attending LACES, it was a very small school in terms of population.
So it has six grades there or seven grades there from sixth grade
into twelfth grade, but there was only 1,200 kids on campus, so each
class pretty much was only, like, 200 people in the class. So if you
started—and even if you didn’t start—pretty much you knew everybody
in that school from the sixth graders to the twelfth graders, and
you knew all the faculty, too, because if you were going to be there
for six years, that’s a long time. Other than being in elementary
school, you know, that’s the next longest time that you’re going to
be at one school. So it’s good and bad. I mean, you took advantage
of it in terms of knowing the teachers, knowing the counselors, and
then having to support the school, you know, with whatever
fundraisers or just physically being there and helping out and stuff
like that, going on field trips and stuff like that. In our
situation it was a very ideal situation because it was basically a
home school because they would literally be able to walk to and from
school, although they never walked to school. They walked home from
school, but they never really got it together in time in the morning
to walk to school. It was literally just basically a mile away. But
they walked home.
So anyway, that particular environment was old-school, so to speak.
You know, we were very lucky we didn’t have to stick a kid on a bus,
two hour, whatever, to go to a school in the Valley or wherever
else. We were very fortunate. It was still predominantly African
American. Because the way the charter school and magnet school
situation, there were (unclear) different, diverse racially school,
and so it was pretty good. The teachers were very, very good, and
especially the counselors. So by the time they got to tenth grade,
parents and students started going to college, pre-college meetings.
So they helped give you, the parents, information for finances,
applications, and prepared the students very well in terms of how to
fill out an application, what they needed in the application, all
the requirements to get into all the colleges and universities. They
started while you were in the ninth grade just to prepare you for
that eleventh grade or that twelfth grade in October when you’ve got
to start sending the applications for college. So they were on top
of that. I felt they were very, very prepared. First year in
college, the freshman year, both of them said that they were
prepared academically to deal with the classes that they were stuck
into.
0:26:13.6
CLINE:
Where’d they wind up?
0:28:46.50:31:55.00:33:32.1
MORI:
The older one went to San Francisco State (University). She didn’t
necessarily have a clue what she wanted. She didn’t have a major
going into that school, but she wanted to get out of Los Angeles.
She knew a couple of people that were applying to that school, and
she wanted to check out San Francisco. It was close enough, but yet
far enough away. So she did that, and she eventually got into urban
planning, so she graduated in urban planning, and a minor within
Asian American studies. She dabbled a little bit into it when she
had to intern for the Community Redevelopment Agency in the City of
San Francisco around the same time that (Hurricane) Katrina
happened, and so she was doing interviews, conducting interviews
with displaced people from New Orleans. So she said that was
interesting because over half of the people that applied,
unfortunately, they were homeless from the City of San Francisco,
trying to get a little bit extra housing, you know, if it was
available. So there were some key questions that they had to ask in
terms of locations within New Orleans, and if they didn’t know, they
knew that they weren’t from New Orleans. So anyway, she dealt with
that. Then she applied for a different number of jobs within the
urban planning situation, whether it was for the government or
whether it was in the private arena, so to speak. Unfortunately, she
did not get any jobs in that particular situation, so she ended up
into retail and has been working in retail pretty much ever since,
bouncing around from different clothing retail situations. They’re
really interesting in that they’re all the first-time stores in the
City of San Francisco, meaning H and M, which first store on the
West Coast was in San Francisco. She helped open the store. Then she
got offered to work at Juicy Couture women’s boutique in San
Francisco, so she helped open that store. And then Barney’s New York
in San Francisco that she also helped open was and still is the head
of the jeans section within that particular store. So she’s always
been in the retail and customer service kind of situation.
The younger one was really interesting. In talking with her teachers
or the counselors and the teachers, she was a little bit more
focused in the eleventh and twelfth grade. She wanted to work in
customer service, and she wanted to get into hotel and restaurant
hospitality. She wanted to help organize stuff, kind of like being
an event planner. This may have come from me in terms of the shows
that I have produced, different areas of programs and events that we
helped, I helped put on in L.A. Also, too, my role that I had played
within the band (Hiroshima) as far as tour managing, having to deal
with airlines, freights, hotel bookings, hotel rooms, and just
ground transportation, getting from one city to another city, and
running that. So I guess she would see that. She applied to the
University of San Francisco, which is a private school in San
Francisco, small school. San Francisco State was also a small
school, too, although San Francisco State was pretty much a commuter
school very similar to Cal(ifornia) State (University) L.A. (Los
Angeles) here in Los Angeles. But they liked the smallness of the
school. They liked the weather of San Francisco. For Chiemi, though,
she applied, and she asked for early admissions. So she was pretty
set on this particular school and the major. So she got accepted.
It’s really interesting that, being a private school, she was out in
four years. The older one, Misako, she, unfortunately, took, like,
five and half, almost six years. The second, the last half of the
year or last (unclear) she only had to take two classes. But because
within the state system it’s hard to get classes, they’re not
available, and you’ve got to take certain classes in sequence, and
if you didn’t, you’ve got to start again the following year, so that
was one of the reasons why she had to take a little longer. So
financially it cost the same amount of money. Chiemi finished, she
finished in four years. Misako took almost five and a half, six
years. So that total cost pretty much came out the same. Private
schools pretty much have its own funding in one sense, even though
they do get some state funding, but pretty much they have their
little pools and pockets of money that they’re able to offer the
students.
So Chiemi pretty much was pretty focused, and she graduated in four
years. She was highly liked and recommended by the faculty, and she
got recommended for a job with Four Seasons (Hotel) in Palo Alto,
and she got accepted. She took the interview, she did very well, she
got hired in a manager training program at Four Seasons, and it was
an eighteen-month program. Unfortunately, when she graduated, she
was working there, and after the first year then the economic
downturn happened and it just hit the wall. Her position got cut,
but she still worked at the hotel in different other areas. So she
was able to stay on for another nine, ten months, and recently she
changed jobs. But she eventually said she’d probably go back to that
in either event planning or customer service or HR. So right now
she’s in customer service with a large national jewelry company, and
so she doesn’t deal with patrons directly; she deals with the sales
folks that sell to the—kind of like an Amway, Mary Kay (Cosmetics)
kind of setup in terms of how it’s run. So she deals with the sales
associates, so to speak. She’s only been there for the last three
years.
So they like it in San Francisco. Both of them are still in San
Francisco. Both of them like it there. The older one was thinking
about possibly sometime moving back to L.A., but it’s not, you know,
nowhere soon or anything like that. So they understand what we do.
There are some advantages and disadvantages. Growing up in the early
years, I’d be on the road traveling a lot and stuff.
CLINE:
Yes, and we haven’t gotten into that yet. Hoping to get to
(unclear).
MORI:
And even when between the older one and the younger one, luckily,
the older one I was in town in May. The younger one, since having a
second one is not as big of a deal as the first one, I had gotten a
substitute for a performance, and it was day by day. The person came
down from another city, rehearsed, and stuff like that. Then
actually we had the younger one, I think two days or three days,
three days before we were supposed to go on the road, and so then
after, had the baby in his office, and the younger one came home.
Then a couple days later she says, “Yeah, you can go on tour. You
can go out and do these gigs,” and stuff, right, because in Los
Angeles she had support. Her mom was there and my mom was there. Her
friends were there, and at that time—yes, so she had support there,
so she said she felt confident enough. Plus, I was no good anyway. I
didn’t deal with stuff, and she used to have to get up because she
breastfed anyway, so I was useless. So she says, “Okay, go out and
make some money so you can pay the bills,” you know. (laughs) So I
left. But the other person accompanied me. It was already booked
that they would come anyway, so they came on the road. So, luckily,
it worked out that way.
CLINE:
Wow.
MORI:
So the timing was fine. So we’ve been married ever since.
CLINE:
Wow.
0:36:05.5
MORI:
Yes. That’s a pretty good relationship.
CLINE:
Excellent. So between the Amerasia Bookstore and hitting the road, I
presume this is with Hiroshima—
MORI:
Yes.
CLINE:
—how did your life change in there? Clearly there’s a transition
that happened in here somewhere.
MORI:
So as I mentioned before, started playing taiko pretty much
considered the early seventies and worked at the Amerasia Bookstore
from 1970, ’71, and then still playing taiko or trying to develop
taiko all along and stuff, still working at the bookstore. Then I
did a performance with the band in ’73 called The Monkey Play. I
don’t know if I described that situation, but—
CLINE:
No.
0:38:38.0
MORI:
—the band, Hiroshima, was formed in the late sixties, early
seventies, so they were playing. And then internally they kind of
broke up. So the original members broke up in probably ’71, ’72 area
right there. Then they reformed the band again with a different
drummer, a different lead singer, and a new bass player and a
keyboard player. So all that was left was the guitar player, Peter
Hata; koto player, June Kuramoto; leader of the band, Dan Kuramoto.
And they asked me to come into the band. They didn’t really ask me
to come into the band; they asked me to perform in certain
performances and stuff, and I said, “Okay.” So I went to a couple
rehearsals. We kind of like were just playing—I was playing some
rhythms, and then they had come up with—I played for them certain
rhythms, and then they, meaning Dan and Peter, the guitar player,
came up with a piece. It was an instrumental, and I just played a
simple rhythm through the whole thing and that was pretty much it.
Played an introduction, and that was the beginning of it.
CLINE:
: How did you meet these guys?
MORI:
I knew June from high school, junior high school, so I knew June.
You know, I went to junior high school, and then when she was in
high school, I left all contact with her. Then the Asian American
movement started happening, like I mentioned, and then they started
having these cultural events to kind of, like, revisit your culture
kind of thing to help secure or help confirm your cultural identity,
so to speak. Anyway, so they had this cultural night at UCLA, either
some fraternity or some group. And we had started hearing about June
Kuramoto playing this koto. We had heard about what the instrument
koto was. We were not familiar, but we knew what it was and we knew
what kind of sound that it made, but this was the first person that
we had heard about when we were playing taiko, these individuals
that we went to go see her play at UCLA. It might have been either
the Sunset—
CLINE:
Recreation Center.
0:41:28.0
MORI:
—Recreation Center. Somebody had rented out, I guess, one of the
spaces up there. We went up there and checked it out, and she played
koto. For some-odd way or reason because she played the koto, it
looked, it sounded interesting. It wasn’t boring. (laughter) Not
that it made sense, but it’s just that because she was my age and I
knew who she was, and she was playing the koto. And I had no idea if
she was playing whatever she was playing right, but some-odd way or
reason there was this cultural connection to what she was doing, and
all of a sudden, like, “Wow, man,” you know. “She got it together
here,” and she could play these pieces and stuff like that. That was
amazing. So then she was the contemporary connection to Japanese
culture and Japanese instruments.
And then this other guy that used to be at—well, as I said,
(unclear), George Abe, who still plays Kinnara and they do this
Japanese Festival Sounds Educational Group, and we go out and do
this, he was playing shakuhachi, and I believe in the early
seventies his teacher was still alive, and so he would be taking
lessons. So there was some connection there, too, of folks of our
generation now getting back in the Japanese culture, but, you know,
we didn’t really know this was happening, I guess because they were
taking these lessons and not telling anybody.
CLINE:
(laughs) Interesting.
0:44:44.20:45:50.20:48:01.70:50:59.1
MORI:
Yeah. Because whether or not they thought it was uncool to be taking
these lessons of these traditional Japanese instruments. I mean,
June has this long story about, you know, being dropped off—well,
basically, she would have the teacher come to their house and teach,
and eventually she may have started going to the teacher’s house,
but pretty much in the beginning the teacher would come to the
house, because that’s how strong the mother wanted June to learn
koto. Or June actually said that she may have seen it in a community
concert or may have seen pictures of it, and she told her mom she
wanted to play that. So her mom found a koto teacher, Madame Kazue
Kudo in Southern California, and she had talked to her about coming
to the house because they didn’t have a place, she didn’t have a
classroom or anything like that. So she did. She came to the house,
and I guess maybe her and another girl from the community came. But
June wouldn’t tell anybody she took these classes. She came to the
United States when she was, like, five or six years old. She was
born in Japan and came to the United States. But she was born in
Japan, but she was born to a Nisei father, second-generation father,
so she was an American citizen, and she eventually pretty much
stayed in the United States. But she would never tell, and
especially in junior high school and high school. So she would never
tell anybody, especially her peer group, that she played koto until
there was a situation in which she finally had to cop to the fact
that, “I got to go to koto practice. I have a koto recital, and I
can’t go do this thing,” a social thing, right? I’m not sure her
peer group made fun of her or whatever, you know, because I think at
the particular time also, too, there was a piano teacher that would
go around to different people’s houses and teach piano, so it was
almost the same thing. But she even put some restrictions on herself
by saying, “Well, this is koto. This is even more obscure than the
piano,” right? So she studied on her own and learned and stuff like
that. So she took this all through high school and stuff.
So finally after she graduated high school, I think she was going to
college or something like that, and she may have gone to LACC (Los
Angeles City College), and then she started really liking it a lot,
really a lot, and then she started supporting her teacher, doing all
these recitals and stuff like that, and finally confident enough to
represent the koto at these other school kinds of things and within
the community and stuff like that. She felt confident enough to go
out and do that. All the same time—and this is what she tells us
too—at the same time—she said she didn’t know how she did it, but in
between her lessons or before she either got taught or after, she’d
also bring a transistor radio, and she’d listen to, you know, rock
and roll stations or pop stations on the radio right before and
right after. So a lot of R and B tunes and stuff like that, a lot of
Smokey Robins (and the Miracles), the Temptations and stuff.
So the late sixties started happening, and then she started relating
to a different number of guys within the community that was
beginning to start functioning and working in social service groups
and stuff like that. And also Asian American Studies started
happening at Long Beach State (California State University, Long
Beach). So her brother went to Long Beach State. His name is Tracy
*(CORRECT?). Then Dan Kuramoto was also at Long Beach State as an
art major or something like that. He had grown up in East L.A., went
to Roosevelt High School, and he decided to go to Long Beach State
and enroll in the art department. At the same time there were a
number of folks from Los Angeles, from all over Southern California
that pretty much was the core for Asian American Studies at Long
Beach State. It was considered the first Asian American Studies. So
they formed this particular group. So anyway, Tracy told June,
“There’s this guy, Dan Kuramoto, on campus, and he plays flute,” and
I think she may have needed a flute player to play this piece called
“Sakura.” It was a flute-koto piece, duet, right? So then he had
asked Dan. Dan was a self-taught musician also, too, so he figured
it out. He has a pretty good ear. So she played, I guess, the melody
or kind of wrote it out because her music was in Japanese, his
is—and I don’t even know at the time whether or not he could read
music or play, but they figured it out. Anyway, they played
together, and then they did a second performance together, and then
that started the relationship. So then she was in the band. The
concept of the band used traditional instruments. Same time after
Santana, Earth, Wind, and Fire happened, right? So then somebody had
asked—they figured that out later on somebody had asked the
question, where’s the Asian representative with Earth, Wind, and
Fire and Santana and coming from those particular ethnic
communities?
So Hiroshima started in the late sixties, early seventies. And then
with the koto there was a koto, a lead singer named Nancy Sekiza,
which eventually turned into Atomic Nancy, because her folks own
Atomic Café on First (Street) and Central (Avenue) that was open
till, like, four o’clock in the morning. So that used to be the hang
after you’d—late night or whatever night you could also go to Atomic
Café and get a bowl of udon noodles and kind of chill out and try to
sober up before you went home. She was a sixteen-year-old, Hollywood
High School, Japanese American girl. She loved to sing. She was
actually, the way she dressed, her manners and (unclear), she was
the original Cyndi Lauper, believe it or not, her mannerisms, the
craziness of her stage presence and everything like that. So she
sang. There was this other sixteen-year-old drummer named Randy
Yoshimoto. Then we had this young Chicano guy, Jesse Acuna, played
percussion and sang. Then they had gotten this woman named Terri
Kusamoto; she sang. And a bass player named Danny Matsumura
(phonetic), a keyboardist named David Iwataki when I got into the
band, and Dan and June. They invited me to play, to jam at this club
in the Crenshaw area, and I did. They asked me to play at a school
performance, and I did that, we did that. And then this thing called
The Monkey Play, and the producer-director on that was this guy
named Julian Falk, and he used to own this—his mom used to own this
store up on Sunset Boulevard near Virgil (Avenue) and Sunset area. I
can’t remember the name of the store. Anyway, so he had
relationships and connections with the industry, entertainment
industry, Hollywood because I think his mom had this store that had
all kind of Asian stuff in it, so people from the industry would
come to her store to pick up stuff for sets, the large pillows,
fans, stuff that had to deal with Asia kind of stuff. Eventually
China opened up, so they used to get a lot of stuff from China,
imported from China, soaps, Mao jackets, Mao hats, pins, whatever,
and that.
So anyway, he’d have some kind of connection with all these folks in
Hollywood, whether or not they be assistant directors, producers,
writers, choreographers, behind-the-scenes people, and there were a
lot of Asians that worked in the industry. So he pulled all those
folks together. Somebody came up with a script based on the Chinese
folktale, The Monkey Tales, about a monkey going around and having
all these different little escapades, so to speak. At the time kung
fu was becoming very popular, was a new word, a new martial arts set
within the community and stuff. So there was a master in Los Angeles
at the time, and they figured out some choreography moves along with
some dancers, and he was pretty much the Monkey King. Anyway, first
time that anybody had pulled the resources from Hollywood into a
play, and the band did the music for it. Then after the play was
over, then the band did a concert. So I was involved with the
concert aspect of the play, so that was the first official time that
I got into playing with the band.
CLINE:
Where did The Monkey Play happen? What was the venue?
MORI:
The Embassy Auditorium.
CLINE:
Oh, downtown.
MORI:
Downtown on Grand. Unbelievable stage, unbelievable acoustics in
that place.
CLINE:
Yes. I’ve played in there. I don’t know what kind of shape it’s in
now, but yes.
0:52:44.9
MORI:
It’s still there, though, right?
CLINE:
Yes. It’s still there, as far as I know.
MORI:
Yeah, I think it’s still there. It’s a functioning building, I
think.
CLINE:
It’s a hotel or it was. I don’t know.
MORI:
It was a hotel, and there were some kind of issues about the noise
to the rest of the hotel, I believe.
CLINE:
Right. I know they stopped using the auditorium sometime in the
eighties, I think.
MORI:
Something like that.
CLINE:
Interesting.
0:55:04.5
MORI:
Yes, because somebody just did a recent study about acoustic
environments in the City of Los Angeles. That theater came up, and
then the Variety Arts Theatre on Figueroa (Street). That came up
also, too, along with the Wilshire Ebell (Theatre). So those three
venues just came up because they’re naturally acoustically very,
very good. But anyway, so we did that thing there, and that led to
other performances and stuff. Sixty-three, ’64, ’65, ’66, ’67. So I
was still playing taiko. It was getting a little bit more involved.
I mean it was getting a little more participation in it and stuff.
The band was still doing a lot of these cultural situations in
Fresno and in the Bay Area, so we would travel to different places
within the state, down to San Diego, wherever these small clusters
of the community, Asian community. Not only that, these campuses
that had fairly decent population of Asians. So we went to Fresno,
of all places. We played at Fresno State (California State
University, Fresno), and then came back to L.A. Then because we grew
up in—the band that I performed with, June Kuramoto, she went to
Dorsey High School and Dan went to East L.A. Dan Yamamoto, the
drummer, he went to Dorsey also too. So within the Crenshaw area in
Leimert Park there was a gallery. It was an African American gallery
called the Brockman Gallery. Dale Davis and Alonzo Davis, they were
both artists. Actually—
CLINE:
Alonzo is the artist, I think.
MORI:
Alzono, and Dale was actually an art teacher at Dorsey High School.
So they may have remember June’s and Danny’s name because actually
Danny played in this band with Childs.
CLINE:
Billy Childs?
MORI:
Billy Childs.
CLINE:
Really?
MORI:
Yes. (laughs)
CLINE:
Wow.
MORI:
So he played in this quartet in Dorsey High School, and, naturally,
they won the talent show, the school talent show, and Danny was the
drummer and Billy Childs was in the group too. So Dale and Alonzo
may have remembered Danny and June, although they didn’t know each
other because June was a lot older than Danny. But anyway, Alonzo
and Dale were at the forefront of looking at artists and the arts as
a viable source of employment. There were federal job assisted
programs that were happening at the time. One of them was called
CETA.
CLINE:
Oh, yes. I know what you’re talking about. CETA.
MORI:
CETA program, Comprehensive Employment and Training Act.
0:57:03.0
CLINE:
Yes. Exactly. And there was funding from—
MORI:
Exactly. So his idea and concept, and he pushed for it and he got it
approved in that artists and musicians need support also, too, and
it is viable, because of Hollywood in one sense, it is a viable
job-training position. So Brockman Gallery pretty much applied to be
the administration organization for the CETA program. We couldn’t
apply as a band, so each individual in the band at the time applied
for a position, and so I think there was six slots available. We
applied for it, but there was eight or nine people in the band, so
we split the money as we’d get it, you know, paid during the week.
We’d put it into a pool and we’d split it up. So we were able to do
that, so we were able to practice and play every day.
CLINE:
Wow.
0:59:56.9
MORI:
Your requirement was to play in a public venue. I think at one
particular time it may have been weekly or twice a month or
something like that, to do a free concert, public park, a high
school someplace. So they had hooked up with LAUSD, and we played at
all the high schools within the southwest area of Los Angeles:
Dorsey High School, L.A. High School, Hamilton High School, Crenshaw
High School. We might have played at Manual Arts (High School). We
played in Westwood at the park right next to the Federal Building.
We actually played at Watts Towers. All the public municipal art
galleries, Barnsdall (Art) Park, the one in our neighborhood. I
can’t remember the one—it was an old (unclear). But anyway, we
played a lot everywhere. And a lot of people, to this day, that are
as old as we are or a little younger than we are, say, “Yeah, I
remember you. I remember the first time I saw you.” I says, “Oh,
really? Where was that, at some club in Hollywood?” He goes, “No, at
my high school,” you know. (laughter) So that was great exposure
because you had this captive audience that were there, and it made
an impression on these kids.
So anyway, that allowed the band to practice, to figure out what we
were trying to do. Seventy-eight, ’79, or actually in the beginning
of that process between ’73 and ’77, ’76, I was in and out of the
band, more out than in the band, so to speak, because there was no
really formal relationship or nothing like that. They’d call when
they had a festival or something like that or when they deemed
appropriate for me to perform with them to showcase the Japanese
instruments. Apparently, in that time they had hooked up with Quincy
Jones, and they did a demo for Quincy, and Quincy didn’t sign them.
For some-odd reason at the time Quincy did not sign them or support
them, but they still had a relationship with him. This is going to
come back to Quincy Jones eventually. That’s why I mention it. We’re
on that particular timeframe. That was considered to be somebody’s
ultimate goal at that particular time, to get signed, you know, to
have a record deal, get your music out there, plus be able to meet
with Quincy Jones. That was another situation. So we did the CETA
program and we played in this park in Westwood. There were, I guess,
some flyers put up in the campus at UCLA and around Westwood and
stuff. There was this actor from New York, Aki Leong. He played all
the Asian bad-guy roles in all the war movies and stuff like that.
Anyway, he just happened to be walking around Westwood and he saw
the flyer. Simultaneous at the same time, somebody had asked him the
same question of, “Where’s the Asian American Earth, Wind, and Fire?
Is there an Earth, Wind, and Fire Asian band?” He had heard of the
band, and all of a sudden it struck another note in his mind,
Hiroshima. So he contacted this guy named Wayne Henderson.
1:02:19.7
CLINE:
Oh, yes.
MORI:
(Trom)bone player for the Cru—
CLINE:
Crusaders.
MORI:
Jazz Crusaders.
CLINE:
Right.
MORI:
Right? So they had hooked up, and he had contacted the manager of
our band, who just happened to be John Kuramoto’s brother. He used
to play with the band Hiroshima a long time ago before I got in
there. And they hooked up this meeting, and then they hooked up this
showcase to play for Wayne Henderson. So he came, we met him at
rehearsal studio, SIR (Studio Instrument Rentals), probably. He came
down, he checked us out. He was very enthusiastic about it, and he
says, “Yeah, cats, I want to get you guys a record contract deal
within four months.” We go, “Yeah, we heard that before. Sure.” So
within a week he goes, “Hey, man, I got this place up in Hollywood.
I call it At Home Studio.” It’s up on Sunset (Boulevard) and Gower
(Street) right near the other studios and stuff. So we went up
there, we rehearsed for two or three days, got some material
together working with him. He says, “Okay, I got some appointments
arranged for some record people to come in and check you guys out.”
So we says, “Okay.” So then Mercury Records came by. Atlantic
Records came by. Dr. (George) Butler from Columbia Records—
CLINE:
Dr. George Butler, yes.
1:04:04.11:05:27.3
MORI:
—he came by. So all these guys who I had no idea who they were, they
all came by, and so all of a sudden I’m thinking, “This guy’s legit.
He’s for real. This is Wayne Henderson, right? He can get these guys
to come out.”
And then there was a week that went by, a couple weeks that went by,
and he says, “Okay, I got another showcase for you.” And I says,
“Okay, who is it?” “Well, I got Mercury coming back again, and then
I have Arista Records coming.” And I didn’t even know who Arista
Records was. We knew Dr. George Butler, we knew Columbia Records, we
knew Atlantic, we knew Mercury, but we didn’t really know Arista
Records, right? So then this guy named, African American guy, Larkin
Arnold (Jr.) came, and he came and checked it out and he liked it,
and he came up and he started asking us questions about the koto,
about the taiko, what we were all about and stuff. Then a couple
days went by and he says he wants to come again and listen to either
the same material or different material. So he came back again and
he listened to it again and he goes, “I think you guys got something
here. I need to bring my boss here. I think it looks very
promising.” So we go, “Okay.” So he mentions this guy named Clive
Davis, right? So some of us did some research on him. Some people
knew who he was, and at that time he wrote the book (Clive: Inside
the Record Business).
CLINE:
Yes. Well, he started Arista Records.
MORI:
Right. But at the time he also wrote the book. He wrote a book about
the industry.
CLINE:
Oh, okay. I see.
MORI:
So anyway, so some people knew of or heard of him. I think Dan and
some other people in the band knew of him. They went out and bought
his book. They came back and they read it, and they explained who he
was and stuff like that and why he was given Arista Records versus
him being Columbia Records, basically.
CLINE:
Yes. He used to be with Columbia, yes.
1:00:01.3
MORI:
Right. So, okay, so he came down to rehearsal and he checked it out
and he goes—because Larkin Arnold said, “I think I’m going to try to
sign you guys, but I need to meet with my boss.” So Clive Davis
came. I didn’t know who Clive Davis was. I mean, eventually I did,
but, you know. So he came down, he says, “I like you guys. I think
we’ll probably talk to your lawyer. I think we’ll work something
out.” Says, “Great.” Then Larkin was pretty much the overseer of the
group. Now, Larkin, you know, previous to him signing us, was
instrumental, I think, in signing Natalie Cole. Eventually he became
part of the situation in which he signed Diana Ross to, I think, RCA
Records or something like that after she left Motown, and then a
different number of African American groups and people that he had
signed. Then he had signed Luther Vandross and then also, too,
signed some kid named Michael Jackson, and we found out who he was
in terms of, you know, his Larkin Arnold, right?
So then we were still with Arista Epic Records or something like
that—no, no, Arista Records. And then he left, and then he signed
with Epic Records. Then we were with Clive Davis for two albums, and
after the second album—the first was very successful, second one was
pretty successful too. A tune off the second album got nominated for
a Grammy (Award). So right before that, though, we had a meeting
with Clive, and he started talking about changing the name of the
group and hooking us up with Rick James.
CLINE:
(laughs) Sorry.
MORI:
No. That’s the same reaction that I had too. I go, “Who?”
CLINE:
I did not see that one coming.
1:09:18.8
MORI:
Rick James. So you’ve got to figure this is, like, ’82, ’83, because
we had put out the first one in ’79, finished the second one in ’81,
and so we were talking about the third album, right? So then he’s
talking about hooking us up with Rick James, see if he can produce,
help us write and produce shows and stuff like that. So Rick James
being Rick James, he comes walking in there, and we’re at the studio
and stuff like that, and he plays stuff for us, and he says, “Yeah,
no, I know what you guys are doing.” He comes in, and after all the
bullshit happens, right, and stuff like that, he goes, “Oh, yeah, I
got a guy (unclear).” He sits down and alls he says, “You know, I’m
gonna sit here, and in one sense I can sit here and I can take your
money. I can take the company’s money and I can take your money
because this is your project, in essence. But,” he says, “what I do
and what you guys do are totally different, you know. I can make it
work or they will, the company, will make it work if we go ahead
with this situation, right?”
So we all kind of, like, hung out for a while, kind of cracking up
and laughing and stuff like that, but we knew it wasn’t going to
work, you know. Had dinner with him and stuff like that, met with
him, you know, made it worth his while, you know, and the company’s
time. It was on the company’s dime anyway, but it was basically our
dime.
CLINE:
(laughs) Right.
1:11:37.41:16:41.1
MORI:
So we went to the Grammys and we saw Larkin Arnold at the Grammys,
and right before that he had already left for Epic Records, Columbia
Records, right? So then we had started talking to him about is there
any room there for us to go there. He goes, “Well, let me check it
out. You guys have solid numbers, so it’s not a problem in terms of
economically being able to have you come over to the company; it’s
just the deal between you and the lawyer and the company.” So our
lawyer at the time, and still is, I think, probably, this guy named
Jay Cooper, one of the top three lawyers. And the reason why we got
this guy is because June, while being a musician, she had her second
job, she worked with this guy named Richard Rosenberg. Richard
Rosenberg was part of Regent Booking Agency. He eventually got in to
merge with two other companies and came up with Triad Bookings.
Eventually he went over to, I think, William Morris (Agency) or some
other large company. So he was kind of an agent lawyer, and so he
recommended this guy Jay Cooper to us, and he was a friend of Jay’s,
and Jay says, “Sure, I’ll handle them.” Then I don’t think June
worked for him, but anyway, she set up that relationship, so that’s
how we got him. We were in his office one day, and basically he
called Clive Davis and he called Tommy Mottola while we were sitting
there, and he talked to them. “Hi. Can I speak to Clive?” You know,
far out. “Hi. Can I speak to Tommy Mottola?” And he would have this
conversation with them. So he was in that situation where he could
call anybody in the business and they’d speak to him on the spot in
the minute.
So we go, “Oh, shit. This is great.” So anyway, he worked it out. So
we moved over to Epic Records, and I think we did four or five
albums with Epic Records, and Larkin Arnold was pretty much our
executive producer at the same time he was doing Off the Wall,
Thriller, and Bad (all by Michael Jackson). And then all of a sudden
he started getting a little bit too much power from the company, so
they kicked his ass out. So then we were doing the fifth, the sixth
album with Epic, Columbia/Epic. Then because we lost our main
support mechanism there, then eventually, you know, the relationship
kind of waned, and we got out of that relationship. But it was a
great, great, great run, I mean unbelievable run while we were with
Epic/Columbia. And at the same time, we were working—this is late
eighties, middle eighties. We had gone to Japan a couple times,
three or four times. First time we went back to Japan, that was
unbelievable. That was the first time June had ever gone back to
Japan, and this is in 1980, the end of 1980, beginning of 1981.
Actually, it was 1981 in January. Went to Japan and went to the
Philippines and then went to Hawaii, and it was unbelievable. Before
that, the first time we went on the road outside of California, our
first performance was at Howard University in Washington, D.C.,
African American school. Had no idea, no clue whatsoever as to
whether or not what kind of response we were going to get from
anybody outside of California. There was two shows. Both shows were
sold out. Very unbelievable reception the first show. During certain
solos, on their feet, whatever. Second show, apparently there was a
buzz for the second show. It was standing-room only, and I’d say
through 90 percent of the show everybody was standing. Hit the
stage. From the get-go to the end was unbelievable. First time, the
best memory of anything, right? I mean you would always remember
that situation. So that was almost too good. It was almost too—the
first tour was almost too unbelievable, to the point where we never
got cocky, we never got overconfident about who our audience was or
that we can show up anywhere and we’d get a full house and get
standing ovations everywhere we went, but it went from that was the
first outside-of-California performance, and it was a great, great
understanding of what was happening, great response. So at that time
it was kind of like, “Wow. Maybe we are doing something right here.
Maybe we are being able to communicate our experiences through music
to other folks.” So that was really unbelievable. Then we went on
kind of this mini tour, played Cleveland, the Front Row Theater,
which is in-the-round. We opened for Angela Bofill, hooked up with
all of these other East Coast musicians, developed relationships
with these guys. Fantastic being on the road. First time in a tour
bus, so to speak, right? All these first-time things in the early
eighties. Again, going to Japan, having all these different
experiences in Japan, checking out all the technology in Japan that
they had that wouldn’t come to the United States for, like, about
five or six years later: stereo TV, remote control, TV studio
cameras, moving lights. All this stuff was there in Japan. You’d
walk into the studio, there’s nobody in there, no other human being
in there except you doing what you’re doing, and these robotic
hammers, these robotic lights, you know, focusing on you and stuff.
It was nuts, man. It was eye-opening, man, the technology and the
concept that other people, other countries had. That led to more
touring, national touring, the second album, and then more touring,
then eventually the switching of record companies.
CLINE:
So were you making your living doing this now at this point, or how
were you—what was your employment situation? Especially earlier on
when you said you weren’t so intimately involved in the workings of
the band.
MORI:
Good question. In ’83, I also started Japanese Festival Sounds,
which was an offshoot from Kinnara Taiko, but it used available
other taiko players that (unclear) with Kinnara or kind of, like,
Danny Yamamoto kind of got into Japanese Festival Sounds too. It was
just two of us, George Abe and myself, and Danny got added into it.
So at that time I was able to do school performances, some corporate
gigs, and just kind of hustle as much as I could.
CLINE:
Wow. So you were Mister Freelance.
MORI:
Yes. Very freelance.
CLINE:
From gig to gig.
MORI:
Gig to gig. Yes, exactly.
CLINE:
And was Wendy working at this point?
MORI:
She was working. She was working. Yes, she was. We all had to work,
so to speak. Luckily, our parents were able to watch the kids while
we were out working full-time and doing stuff. So it was a struggle,
as even today could be a struggle for working musicians and stuff.
CLINE:
But it sounded like, based on what you were saying, you were also in
kind of a road manager capacity with Hiroshima.
1:18:37.0
MORI:
Not at that time. Only until the late, late, late eighties and the
early nineties did I get into that particular position. Yes.
Eighty-nine I started.
Eighty-nine was really interesting also, too, in that from the middle
eighties, though, I’d been talking with people at the Music Center
(of Los Angeles County) because I was on a roster of Music Center on
Tour, which I still am. And so then within the Music Center on Tour
roster there was individuals that were with an educational
performance company at the Music Center, and they were part of the
Music Center on Tour program. I had got into discussion with one of
the directors about Asian American material, folk materials for
these guys to go out and perform in schools, so I hooked him up with
some Japanese folk tales, other Asian folks tales that they rewrote
in a played form so they could present it at schools. So then they
started talking about the band, and apparently there was a grant to
develop a play, and it was a play about a biography of some entity
or some person. And it just happened to be he was interested in the
band and the band’s story of it being in L.A. So we had gone
through, like, three or four different grants, foundation money, and
all this other stuff. Then it got to the point where we hooked up
with the director, Gordon Davidson, head of CTG (Center Theatre
Group).
CLINE:
Yes. Mark Taper Forum.
1:21:36.0
MORI:
Exactly. So we sat down with him and explained what the concept of
this was. So it went from this kind of sort of director to this
other director named (Robert) Bob Egan, and he was pretty much
second or third in command up there creator-wise. So we sat down,
and he took on the project, found some funding for it, did a couple
of—actually, we did, like, three series of meetings, and then they
came up with a couple different scripts. Then we literally locked
ourselves into a room for, like, about three weeks straight, and
basically doing the same thing that we’re doing now, doing oral
interviews and oral explanations of our lives growing up in Los
Angeles and how that related to the band and how that affected the
band.
Then he and his staff transcribed everything, documented every
subject, and that took probably another two or three weeks. Finally
came up with an outline of different story scenarios and lumped them
together in certain scenes and developed a script. There was many
different versions of it. Finally came down to a couple of versions,
settled on one, and again, that got refined, too, but did a public
reading, I think did a reading, then a public reading, and it had
some legs. Gordon Davidson came in and he says, “Okay, this has some
legs. Let’s see if we can get some support from the community and
some funding.” The Asian American community stepped up, friends of
whatever, Mark Taper Forum, friends of the Music Center, and there
was an Asian component in that that was started prior to that to
help support Pacific Overtures.
CLINE:
Oh, yes, the (Stephen) Sondheim musical.
1:24:13.8
MORI:
Right. That and maybe a redoing of another contemporary play or
something like that. So there was this ad hoc kind of Asian American
support group for the Music Center. So all of a sudden this became a
project. At the same time, we were working on another album, so we
said, “Wait a minute. Time out here. We can’t do both at the same
time.” It’d be unbelievably a marketing—you could look at it as a
marketing nightmare or you could at it as a very, very positive
situation that you have two things simultaneously occurring that
could support each project, and it worked out that way for the
better. I believe the play was in April-May timeframe, and I think
we released the album (East) in the fall, late fall of 1989. I don’t
think it was the other way around. No, it was after.
As we were composing the music for the play, all the music was new.
Maybe one song was from a previous CD. Everything else was new, and
basically it told the lives of four of us in the band, Dan Kuramoto,
June Kuramoto, Danny Iwamoto, and myself, growing up in Los Angeles.
Started a little slow. It gained momentum. By the last—I think it
was an eight-week run with two weeks of previews. By the time it
ended, the last two weeks were all sold out. I think it was the
second highest grossing play at the Mark Taper behind Zoot Suit.
CLINE:
Oh, yes. And I remember when that was at the Mark Taper Forum.
MORI:
Yes. So that was really interesting and really unbelievable in that
they don’t do plays about people that are living. Most people have
plays when they’re dead, right? So that was really interesting. That
was really an eye-opening kind of situation of the potential certain
entity or certain organization or certain group and what it can do
and stuff like that, you know.
CLINE:
Yes. Well, it’s pretty rare to, in a sense, get that kind of
treatment, which is really an honor, in your own city long before
(unclear).
1:27:30.5
MORI:
(laughs) Yeah, you know. So it’s like, “Wow! This is great.” So that
was pretty interesting. Then the nineties came. The music business
started changing. Our time at Epic/Columbia was up, and so then we
started making some other relationships with other record companies.
We knew this other woman that happened to come to the play that
because she was Asian and she was Japanese and she was working in
the record business industry, that she felt after the play she said,
“If anything we could do for you, let us know.” So we called her up
and explained what our situation, and at the time she was, like, a
vice president for Qwest Records, Quincy Jones’ label. Called her up
and explained what the situation was in terms of us leaving the
record company or getting dropped, and to see whether or not Qwest
Records would be interested. Lo and behold, they were. Had a series
of meetings. Then Quincy was aware of the situation. He remembered
the band very clearly. We didn’t even sign a contract with Qwest
Records, and Qwest Records says, “Why don’t you guys come over to
the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, and why don’t you guys
play. And then you guys can have a meeting with Quincy Jones.”
“Sure! Sure,” you know. “Sure. Not a problem.” Pulled it together,
jumped on the plane, went to Montreux, Switzerland, and played at
the Montreux Jazz Festival. The night before, we had dinner with
Quincy at this chateau up on the side of Lake Geneva, overlooking
Lake Geneva or Lake Evian, one of the two, Lake Evian, I think,
because in the distance you’ll France, where it’s at and stuff. So
that was amazing. Soon after that, we came back and we signed a
record contract with him, and we did two albums with Quincy Jones.
He wasn’t as hands-on as what we had possibly hoped for, so to
speak, but his organization was real good in terms of them taking
care of business for the first one and then the second one. Then we
were going to do a third one, and then all of a sudden he lost
interest in the company, so to speak, or some financial support from
Warner Bros., who was his distribution company and mother company,
pulled a little bit of rug from underneath him and stuff, so he
wasn’t able to continue giving us the support that he had, so he
fired, you know, his president. Then this woman, JoAnn Tominaga, who
was the woman who originally signed the contract, she actually
became president for a while of the company. So we were just about
to release a CD with her, and she went ahead and we released it and
got some support from the company. Then it got real crazy after
that, and so we kind of like were still with the company. Then we
eventually signed with a subsidiary of Windham Hill (Records) *(Hip
Pocket Records?).
1:29:37.3
CLINE:
Oh, yes. Right.
MORI:
We got into doing that, yes. But the run is still happening. The
band is still together. The band is still signed to a record
company, which is amazing.
CLINE:
And what is it?
MORI:
It was a subsidiary of Windham Hill. Above Records (Heads Up
Records)?
CLINE:
I don’t know.
MORI:
I don’t even remember the name of the company, to tell you the
truth.
CLINE:
And this is Windham Hill after they had become part of A and M
(Records)—
MORI:
Exactly.
CLINE:
—and then A and M went the way of (unclear)—
MORI:
Whatever it went onto.
CLINE:
(unclear) Polygram (International).
MORI:
Then Windham Hill got absorbed by some other big company again or
got absorbed by BMG again. So in one sense it went full circle,
because when we were with Arista Records, it was BMG, and so we kind
of went back with BMG. So that was—started cracking up. That was
pretty funny. Above Records. Anyway, so they’re still with the band.
They’re still touring, you know. The business has totally changed.
1:30:57.6
CLINE:
Yeah, that’s for sure.
MORI:
So, you know, no longer in the band. But it took me places where I
never would have ever think I’d ever go to.
CLINE:
Yes. I don’t imagine you ever imagined you were going to become a
touring musician.
MORI:
Never. None whatsoever. That was the furthest thing—I didn’t even
consider that whatsoever, you know. And playing an instrument that I
had, first of all, no formal training in, you know, whether it be in
fundamentals or whatever, none whatsoever, even within the
instrument itself no real formal training except on attitude and
culturally understanding. That I had training for or had a
relationship in that area and stuff like that, but a lot of that was
still self-taught and still kind of, like, you know, figured it out
kind of situation. So the music part of it was still new, and it’s
still kind of sort of new, you know. But where it has gone and where
it came from and where it’s gone in terms of the lifetime of myself.
I’m still in the business. I mean I’m still in the music business,
so to speak, entertainment music business. So right now, you know,
the early part of this particular decade in the thousands, 2001,
2002 it got really, really frustrating because of just the
distribution situation and the marketing of your product and live
performances. It got kind of deprived of good leadership, actually,
not within this organization, but in the field in general.
CLINE:
Well, there’s a lot of confusion in the music industry now about
just what its product is and what to do to keep it going, and it’s
become very ephemeral.
1:34:28.2
MORI:
But I think in terms of music-wise and what is being performed, it’s
fairly interesting. There’s nothing new. It’s being repackaged in a
more gutsier package. There are more musicians, but less
accessibility to those musicians on one hand, on the straight
commercial side. Yet on the other hand, the advent of the Internet
just explodes everything, too, because you have access to all that
stuff too. So that makes it a little bit interesting too.
CLINE:
Yes. True.
MORI:
I’m still very curious about it, still very interested, still very
amazed by the different arrangements of rhythms and melodies and
stuff and what people have to say and how they’re saying it, because
I feel like, you know, all the people that are in the arts, you
know, a lot of documentarians, believe it or not, right, I mean
besides doing this oral interview, which you get it straight from
the horse’s or the ass’ mouth, but in terms of people in the arts
are expressing their environment and their relationship with the
environment and their living situation, and they’re documented in
the medium that they’ve chosen to communicate in. So there’s so much
mixture of melodies and rhythms and concepts that it’s kind of sort
of exciting not only listening to the music, but also visually
seeing people perform their music and how they interpret it, you
know, through their body, so to speak, whether it’s through dances
and just movements on stage and stage presence and stuff. You know,
then you get into the whole other aspect of videos and all this
other stuff.
CLINE:
Yes. Since the eighties, MTV (Music Television) changed everything
pretty heavily.
1:36:40.6
MORI:
Yeah. And then some goodness to it, yet on the other hand, sometimes
it may stymie your own creativity because you’re being presented
with this music video interpretation of the concept that the artist
thinks or somebody else thought of what the music is, and it’s
quirky enough so that it gets played a lot, so that it gets more
exposure or whatever, you know, whether it’s crazy enough to be
controversial for it to be out there.
CLINE:
Yes. So we’re kind of at the time here, and I can safely say that
we’re not through with your oral history yet, so we’ll have another
session and wrap it up.
MORI:
Great.
CLINE:
I want to talk more about where things are at with you now, your
work here, your feelings about being a Japanese American
taiko-playing world representative of this area, this culture, this
scene, and your feelings about where you think it might be headed.
MORI:
Great.
CLINE:
All right?
MORI:
Great. Thank you.
CLINE:
Thanks for today. (End of June 23, 2010 interview)
MORI:
Seven-seven.
0:00:19.4
CLINE:
Right. Today is 7/7. It’s July 7, 2010. This is Alex Cline
interviewing Johnny Mori at the Japan America Theater in Little
Tokyo, and this is session number six. Good morning.
MORI:
Good morning. How you doing?
CLINE:
Okay. How are you?
MORI:
Fine.
CLINE:
Good. Last time you talked a lot about the sort of trajectory of the
band Hiroshima and your involvement in that, sometimes somewhat
intermittent involvement in the band, but their success and how it
turned you into a touring musician, something you clearly had never
imagined for yourself before that, perhaps. Today I want to follow
up on that and ask you some specific things about your involvement
in taiko drumming and in its role in the community, so to speak, and
how it’s evolved since you started with Kinnara Taiko at Senshin
Buddhist Church. First let me ask you, since you didn’t really get
into it, you mentioned how, when you were first playing with
Hiroshima, the sort of role that you played musically. In one of the
tunes you sort of played a pattern and just kept the pattern going.
I wanted to ask you how you viewed your changing role in that
ensemble, musically how the taiko drumming role in the music changed
over the years, and how you viewed your role as a contributor in
that band’s sound as it progressed.
0:03:34.90:06:44.30:10:42.10:14:03.60:16:40.90:20:23.7
MORI:
The original concept of the band, again, was developed by Dan and
his brother John and June Kuramoto in relationship to presenting or
putting something out there representative of the Japanese American
community. Because of June’s performance or practice of koto or just
her feel and her interpretation of Japanese classical pieces, and
how that was integrated with contemporary music, melodies, rhythms,
it was something very unique, and I guess it was the expression of
that particular generation which pretty much nurtured its history
through the late fifties and sixties and culminated in the early
seventies, so to speak.
There were probably tinklings of this particular idea in concept
probably in Japan. No doubt about it. People were just kind of
experimenting and having interest in world music in general, and
probably tried it in Japan a long time ago in terms of integrating
both Western and Japanese or Eastern instruments. But I guess when
the band started doing it and started experimenting with different
sounds sonically and through recording, that it developed its sound
of the koto, melodic, but the bass and the foundation of the band
was pretty much rooted in Western and the American sound, rather
than if you were to do it from Japan, what the emphasis would be on.
So that was pretty interesting in that, just like I said, the basic
foundations of sounds of the kick drum, the snare, the drum set, the
bass, and, I guess, some bass chords and stuff like that from pianos
and just the bottom end, the rhythm section, so to speak, of the
band was pretty much American, the sound of it and stuff. So putting
the Asian melody on top of it, on top of a Western sound was
probably very—well, it was unique at the time. Then came the taiko,
which was another rhythm instrument, so to speak, and added to the
rhythm section, but we experimented, I think, also, too, with the
sound of the koto and the taiko, its sound, tone, and the placement
of where it would be in the recording, because does it play the same
rhythm or the (unclear), like, a kick drum or a bass rhythm? And yet
it does because in certain songs it helps support the rhythm. But
yet on the other hand, a lot of times just that bass sound gets
lost, so many similar frequencies, so to speak, and sound
cancellation and however you want to describe it and stuff.
So it took a little bit of experimentation and placement of that
particular sound, and because the sound is so very large, it took us
a bit to figure out who and how we could record it. Luckily, we had
a large enough space when we began recording, one of the large
studios up on Sunset Boulevard that was an old CBS studio that we
were able to start in. So that gave enough space, but we’ve
experimented in every large venue in Los Angeles, pretty much,
through all the sound stages at Paramount (Studios) and Sony Studios
and Paramount Studios just to find the right sound, right space.
Then we also did it in a very, very small space also, too, just to
see, you know, what the tone difference is and stuff, and
experimenting in different places to see how it sounds and stuff. So
all of those, developing the sound was very, very important. Part of
it was in the beginning it was new to everybody. Half the time I had
no idea what the sound engineer was talking about, none whatsoever.
(laughs) You know, he’d pull out these thousands of dollars of
microphones and stuff, and the placement of the microphones in the
rooms were just totally interesting where they would put them and
stuff. And yet it was amazing the sound that they had to be able to
capture, and it was so exacting it almost caused a problem because
of the overtones and the kind of music that we were playing and,
again, the mix and the length of the sound, you know, mixing or
getting fused with the bass and the drums and stuff like that. So it
took a little bit of a while to figure all that stuff out. But I
think unconsciously, and after kind of, like, trying to analyze or
describe or categorize the kind of music that we were doing in
different levels and describing this different interview, so to
speak, how you would describe it and stuff, and we never really came
up with a good answer or anything like that. I mean, still to this
day it’s not necessarily clear. But I guess the large taiko, the
lowness of it, the sound, the frequency, and then the melodic sound
of the koto, again, were at opposite ends. So the whole thing of
opposites, the whole thing of equality, in one sense, of one without
the other, the yin and yang of music or of philosophy and stuff.
Where June pretty much, you know, told her and expressed her
feelings and stuff like that through the koto, melodic things, her
instrument is very, very classical, and the way in which it is
played is very proper, very, very set, so to speak. And then mine,
it covers very, very many different kinds of styles, but because of
the style of matsuri taiko, or festival taiko, it’s a lot more
visual, so to speak. So she would communicate through her melody and
the soulfulness of her performing, and mine would be more visual and
more dramatic at particular times, in a sense. I thought that added
to the concept of the band and the philosophy and the concept of the
band. It took a while to develop that. A lot of the music that I
played, again, after a while, developed into short grooves, short
rhythm patterns or accents, and certain emphasis during the choruses
or the bridges and the out and stuff like that, in which it kind of
helped help the momentum of the song or something like that, again,
just minor accents here and there. But again, it was part of the
band, and it still is part of the band as a representation of, I
guess, Asian instruments. Music behind it was developed in many,
many different ways, in which somebody would have a specific rhythm
or piece that I would play, and then it would, again, be very, very
similar to, like, a rhythm section kind of a thing and how it’s
recorded. And then other times it would just be a groove would be
played and I just played on top of that, certain specific things and
certain things that were just pretty free. Other times they just let
the tape roll, you know. You’d just jam, and kind of came up with
stuff on top of that. So, you know, it’s many different ways. And
then from that, choreography was developed in terms of for the live
shows and stuff, you know, which was my particular contribution to
the band. But I think that was the unique thing about the band, one
of the unique things about the band. So, yes, it was a real
interesting concept in time.
There wasn’t any major arguments or anything like that in terms of
what was going to be on the album or what songs we were going to
play and stuff like that, because nobody really wanted to tread on
other person’s space and stuff like that. Although in the beginning
there were things in which I didn’t know musically or felt
uncomfortable with, certain patterns that I thought that wasn’t
necessarily unique to of my limited knowledge of Japanese percussion
and stuff like that, so there was a little bit of a discussion
behind that, but nothing major or anything like that, just some
artistic growing pains kind of a thing, you know, because nobody
really knew exactly, and we were kind of, like, throwing stuff
together and putting here and there and stuff. It was really
interesting. It was really interesting. Now that you look back on it
and how the band evolved and its history and stuff like that, it was
pretty amazing. It was pretty being at the right place at the right
time, so to speak. Since that particular time, naturally there are
Asian and Asian American artists and artists from Asia that are
probably more internationally known than contemporary and pop
artists from the United States that we don’t even know about, you
know. The popularity worldwide is huge, but some things get
restricted to United States. Some things that are, you know, run
through the right channels would never be exposed to people in the
United States. There’s this restriction, so to speak, or tariff or
however you want to call it from outside artists coming in, being
exposed in the United States.
So the door was kind of sort of open. The door is still open. But
nowadays it’s almost like—and even I’m kind of sort of guilty of it
when programming or getting into discussions about co-presentations
here at the theater in terms of the program’s popularity, the
artist’s exposure, its mainstream way of how to market and promote
an event so that financially it doesn’t lose any money and stuff.
You know, we’re all kind of sort of caught up into that and don’t
want to think that way, but, unfortunately, we do. So thinking that
way and trying to find out what is out that, what’s available, and
what people are being exposed to or can be exposed to is pretty
interesting. So a lot of stuff is also educating people to what they
might be interested in, or there’s something that they’re interested
in, but how to get that to them is another situation. With the band
in its very, very beginning there was not always, but not
until—first, second, third, fourth, fifth—not until the sixth album
was even an inkling of the band’s photo being on the front of an
album. The first album was a picture of a noh theater mask. The
second album was called Odori, which means dance. We had this
Japanese nihon buyo, classical Japanese dance on the front, and in
the background—it was taken on (Los Angeles) City Hall East, so City
Hall was in the background, our connection to Los Angeles and the
Japanese culture. The third one just had characters of the number
three, just three strokes, brush strokes, horizontally. The fourth
one was called, I think, Another Place, and that just had a seascape
or some picture of the ocean. The fifth one had the character of the
number five, Go. Or actually, the album was called Go, G-o, so that
was also the number five in Japanese, which was the number five.
Then the sixth one was called East, and that one had elements of
immigration, so to speak, to the United States, had a real small
subtleness to it in terms of Statue of Liberty, the Golden Gate
Bridge for Angel Island and Ellis Island and Angel Island, and
certain images of patriotic kinds of things, but yet on the other
hand—and that was the album that we did in conjunction with the
place Sansei.
So even that, the music business, what you consciously and
unconsciously were able to do was really interesting, and yet was
really interesting in that our executive producer and some in the
record business, because we mainly were put into the companies that
had somewhat of a R and B kind of jazz or jazz division, so to
speak. It started off in jazz kind of bins, and it still is, but in
terms of who took on the promotion of it and the marketing of it,
what division within the record company. In the beginning, all
record companies had specific divisions, jazz, R and B, pop, you
know, country and western, alternative, all that stuff. There was
always somebody in charge of that particular division. And so there
was somebody who knew exactly all the ups and downs about that, you
know, and they started combining divisions, jazz, we were into R and
B, and kind of R and B-pop kind of thing. Then there’s different
categories in terms of R and B and stuff like that too. But they
didn’t know where to put us. (laughs)
CLINE:
Yes. When the genres aren’t clearly defined or there’s a lot of
crossover, they really get confused. They don’t know what to do with
that.
MORI:
Exactly, you know, because we weren’t X, Y, or Z, so to speak,
right? Which was okay. But they pretty much put us and started us
off in the jazz bins, and we are, again, still there today. So that
was really interesting in that, in hindsight, you know, jazz really
wasn’t a moneymaker, but musically it was really interesting, and
the company kind of sort of had to have that division, so to speak,
if you were considered to be a large company, Columbia, Mercury,
Atlantic, EMI, Warner Bros. So all those had major divisions, and
jazz was a division. And again, it slowly shrunk and got absorbed by
something else and stuff, right?
0:23:20.6
CLINE:
Right. (DUPLICATE TIME STAMP?)
0:23:20.6
MORI:
So the atmosphere or the vibe, again in hindsight and at that
particular time—and this is not an excuse, you know. All of us were
actually trying to find that magic answer, so to speak. You know, we
would sit and discuss the different possible avenues of promotion.
Where is the community? Where is the audience? Who is the audience?
Support from the African American community was great because the
songs were being played pretty much on all R and B stations, a few
pop stations. There were smooth jazz stations, Quiet Storm stations,
and here in L.A. there was KJLH. There were the jazz stations, the
Bay Area’s KBLX. Here in L.A. there was KKGO and some other stations
that would play album cuts and stuff like that. Back East and
Midwest was pretty much R and B stations, so that exposed it pretty
much to the African American community. So pretty much the venues
that we played at to promote the album were pretty much in major
African American cities: Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Cleveland,
Detroit, Chicago. And it was really interesting in the South, all
the major cities of Florida: Miami, Orlando, Tampa, St. Petersburg,
Gainesville. And in Tennessee was really interesting: Chattanooga,
Nashville, Memphis. All of those cities we played a number of times,
and it was amazing. On the West Coast it was a lot of support,
again, too. Then there was always two jazz stations in the area, one
predominantly African American and another one kind of smooth jazz,
and smooth jazz stations kind of sort of won out. But that was
really interesting. At that time in the eighties, people didn’t
necessarily listen to the smooth jazz stations or the Quiet Storm
stations. Smooth jazz stations, it was just background music. The
Quiet Storm stations, they were very supportive in terms of selling
merchandise, the CDs, and also people coming to concerts. So that
was really interesting. But again, you know, nobody really knew how
to market or promote it. It was very frustrating. (DUPLICATE TIME
STAMP?)
CLINE:
Yes. And the scene is even more, I think, genre-specific nowadays.
Marketing is very definitely targeted, you know.
MORI:
Right.
CLINE:
Falling in the cracks is a treacherous thing.
MORI:
(laughs) Yes. But, you know, the longevity of the band is—still have
a record contract right now. It’s still touring a limited amount,
just pretty much—it still is able to do an East Coast run, a Florida
run, and even a Texas run of Houston and maybe Fort Worth and
Austin, and then Southwest, Phoenix and stuff. The Northwest was
very supportive of the band because there were some venues up there,
Jazz Alley up in Seattle and this other place called the Triple Door
and a number of other places that still book the band once in a
while and stuff. But again, it has a lot to do with exposure and the
radio stations. So that pretty much killed the music business quite
a bit, actually, quite a bit.
0:29:15.5
CLINE:
When the band started with its unique instrumentation, it was pretty
novel to have a band that combined traditional instruments from
another culture and instruments associated and styles associated
with popular music, R and B, American music. Now that’s not so
unusual, and certainly everything has been explored, combined, and
now we even have a category that people use, which you mentioned
yourself a little while ago, world music. How would you evaluate
Hiroshima’s contribution to that development in music, something
that I think isn’t so novel anymore, if it’s still not the most
commercial direction to go?
0:33:08.80:36:30.60:38:27.40:41:19.70:43:03.40:46:17.0
MORI:
(laughs) Yeah, that’s an interesting question. You know, one’s own
participation and one’s, I guess, patting on the back or ego kind of
thing saying, oh, yeah, you know, hopefully that the band’s sound
and its concept and ideas help spur the next generation of world
music, so to speak. I think it did add to it, you know, because at a
particular point through the eighties, I mean through the late
eighties and nineties at its peak, so to speak. Especially in Asia
it was welcomed, I think, as much so as in Europe, but I guess
because of the association with Japanese or Asian instruments or
Japanese instruments, I think it opened some doors, you know, to
quite a bit of people. Being in the position that I am in, in terms
of working within the Japanese American community and a venue (the
Japan American Theater) in which we do have Japanese artists from
Japan perform on the stage, and the musicians that come through were
told that I was an original member of the band and stuff like that,
and they recognized it. These are all younger artists that play
classical Japanese instruments, but yet I think like—not necessarily
like, but through their experience understood the concept of the
world music and the fusion of what was going on and stuff. Then the
older ones, in terms of our generation, you know, because of the
exposure of the band in the eighties on Japanese television, so to
speak, and in Japanese magazines, a lot of them are very, very
familiar with the band, very familiar with the band. I mean, when we
went to Japan the first time around, there were two TV programs that
we were on. One was sponsored by NHK (Nippon Hoso Kyokai), and that
was interesting in that we played with Katara Kisaku *(CORRECT?),
who was, I guess, a very, very young—he was a very, very young
classical Japanese percussionist. They put us together to play this
song on the TV, NHK, and that was in, like, 1980, ‘81. Then he came
to the United States through UCLA through one of Judy Mitoma’s
programs, and it was these masters from Japan and Japanese hogaku
percussion and noh/kyogen, which is Japanese comedy, classical
Japanese nihon buyo, classical Japanese dance.
In the United States it was always Suenogu Togi that taught at UCLA
at (Department of) Ethnomusicology bugaku and gagaku. They were here
for, like, a two month-program, which I took. I may have mentioned
his name before. He eventually, about ten years ago—yes, right after
I started working here about ten years ago, I think at the age of
sixty-four he was declared a living national treasure in Japan. He
was the youngest at the age of sixty-four. At that time Japan was
going through its identity, in which the Emperor asked the education
department—I may have mentioned this also, too—that instead of
having their kids in the educational system learn Western
instruments, violin and piano, that they were to integrate or
develop a curriculum of Japanese traditional instruments, and he was
part of that movement, so to speak, in terms of recognizing Japanese
artists and making them living national treasures to help promote
Japanese arts and culture within Japan. So we were able to study
with that and to do that. He had a series, a number of concerts that
took place here in Southern California, public and private concerts
and stuff, and he brought over some musicians, some part of his
school, Katara School, some part of this other school called
Mochizuki School. There was one individual, his name was Kiyohiko
Semba and just goes by his name, Semba. He’s a very unique
individual. I mean, his father, his grandfather, his lineage of
family played hogaku, Japanese percussion, classical form of
Japanese percussion, and folk percussion. But he was different.
(laughs) He was very, very unique, very, very outgoing, very, very
trying to use his broken English and stuff. I didn’t known
necessarily how to approach them, or they didn’t necessarily know
how to approach us because when in public, they’re pretty much very
formal, very non-expressive or anything like that. Something about
this guy was very unique, just very free, very, very open.
We got into this dialogue in a hotel near UCLA where they were
staying at, and he started asking me questions like, “What did
Katara-sensei teach you?” and stuff like that. He showed them stuff.
And he goes, “Oh yeah.” And he goes, “Check this out.” (unclear). He
started playing this and he started playing it, and then he started
saying little cute things here like, “Oh, this is for mikoshi,” the
shrines that people carry on their backs and push up and down like
that. There’s a particular rhythm for that, a couple of rhythms,
actually. Then he would just be pounding it out or playing it on top
of a counter in the hotel room or something like that, right, and I
just picked up on it. And just that one particular time in which he
taught me, I remembered. After all these years, I pretty much
remember it. His name came up throughout the years also too. This
was in, like, 1984. He had come to the United States to perform with
another artist a couple different times, and the first time I met up
with him again and started talking to him. We had a common friend,
Kenny Endo, pretty much knew of him because I guess him being that
unique and his family, and he, Kenny Endo, also studied within the
Mochizuki School of percussion, so he obviously knew him. When we
were in Japan, I had a chance to see his performance group, and as I
just told you, he tripped me out and blew me away. There was, like,
about fifteen guys sitting on the floor with Western (tom-)toms,
various sizes of toms, and some people had one stick, some people
had two sticks. Then they were play this whole mess of percussion
kind of things, and I think there was one guy with a flute or
something like that, a yokobue.
This was in Tokyo, so the whole atmosphere was, like, really a
happening, a performance piece, and it was amazing. It was totally
amazing. And yet two days later, we go see him at the Grand Kabuki
playing this classical hogaku music, right, and doing the whole
classical thing with all the etiquette and the proper thing and
everything like that. But we talked about it, and he knew who we
were, who the band was and stuff, so there was some notoriety. When
I mentioned before that Quincy Jones took us to Montreux,
Switzerland for the Montreux Jazz Festival, it was unbelievable in
terms of the people in Europe in that particular area who knew the
band, who knew of the band. The thing about it was really
interesting, the band, though, never really did a tour in Europe.
You know, that was really surprising to me in terms of uniqueness of
the band. We never had a tour in Europe, you know. It could have
been timing. It could have been a number of different kinds of
things that we did. The band was very, very cautious and had really,
really good advisors and really good advice. It was on the
old-school, so to speak, which was beginning this transition to this
other idea and concept of getting the money, and then the time is
now. So you try to develop the best of what you had at this
particular point in time and worry about later later, whereas the
old-school guys were pretty much based on selling of a unit, of an
album, and then getting to the point where you pay back the record
company and then you see royalties and stuff like that. Then once
you kind of sort of promote it and marketed the first one, and then
you go onto the second one, whereas I may be over-exaggerating or
have my own idea and concept of the record business at the time
where you do the first one, it does great, so that gives you
momentum to the second one. You hurry—not hurry, but you do the
second one, and that’s pretty good too. You get to the third one,
you kind of sort of hit a wall, but you’ve got to get something out
because you’ve got to get it out. And then that one doesn’t do very
well, but the first two ones kind of carry over through the second
one. So then the fourth one happens, and then the fourth one does
okay.
I’m saying this only in that I’m very appreciative, when you’re
looking back—again, a lot of this is hindsight because of the age
and how long you’ve been into the business, but we’re very fortunate
that at that time, you know, the record companies had the money and
they were spending it, and they did see some kind of long-term kind
of thing. We signed numerous extensions of the contract and stuff
like that because it’s, like, usually a three-album deal. Then after
the third one or during the second one you sign for another one,
another three-album deal kind of a thing, which is good and bad
because, you know, you were locked into them for the next seven
years, a seven-year kind of California contract, personal service
contract thingy. So they were protecting the future, you know, their
future with you. So then you’re kind of like that. But the new
concept basically is you got this money and people spent the money,
so when they got to the next one, they had to take out a loan for
the next two or three CDs. And then, you know, people went bankrupt:
Luther Vandross, Toni Braxton, TLC, and then probably another fifty
to a hundred that you don’t hear about because they’re not the
big-name artists. So I think that’s what really got the record
company in trouble, giving all these mega-million-dollar deals to
Janet Jackson and Madonna and whoever else came by that could kind
of sort of do something. So it just totally changed.
So the band had this idea and concept in the beginning of pretty
much sticking to old-school, and kind of went that direction in
terms of the advisors in which the band had had and the old-school
lawyers that we had and stuff like that, you know. But they were
very grounded. I mean, they were in the business X amount of years
before us, and they’re still in the business now. I’m sure they
retired, because they were fairly, you know, up in age and stuff,
right? So the band, in terms of its influence worldwide, again, had
some affect on the world, you know, in terms of that kind of music,
and then within the United States also too. As far as other Asian
American bands, again, since the—and I’m not exactly sure whether or
not this is true or not, but since they didn’t know how to deal with
it and they had slowly eliminated all the different departments and
divisions of how to do it, and I think they just lump you all into
the smooth jazz category now, and so they try to do the best that
they can in terms of getting your music out there, unfortunately
relying on your own uniqueness to try to promote it and stuff like
that. But the artists that kind of were there when we were kind of
sort of there or also had an international presence was, like, that
individual, Kitaro. He’d write, you know, music for scores of movies
and stuff like that, and was one of the pioneers, and still is, for
New Age music and stuff like that, right? And then there were other
artists that kind of were nurtured through different aspects that
were allowed to be part of the niche that they felt that they could
market and stuff and potentially. The thing of it, even today I
think—well, I take that back. But up until mainly only about maybe
eight years ago did anybody in the United States really know how to
market to the young Asian audience, not only in the United States,
but overseas. I think the promoters and other record companies and
executives and just promoters outside of United States have no
problem. It’s just within the United States, and it’s limited
accessibility how to outreach these particular communities in the
United States. They still haven’t got it yet. Yes. They really
haven’t gotten it.
CLINE:
Wow.
MORI:
It’s really surprising in terms of the connection with globalness,
so to speak. They haven’t gotten it yet. We’re still segregated.
CLINE:
Wow. This actually plays into my next question, which is Hiroshima,
aside from its musical contribution and influence, is also sort of
like, you know, I think, seen as the Little Tokyo house band, so to
speak.
MORI:
(laughs) Yeah.
CLINE:
Representatives or ambassadors of the community here, the Asian
American, specifically Japanese American community, but also
nationwide, because especially when you started, there really wasn’t
anyone else doing what you were doing. What, if anything, do you see
in terms of the impact of the band and the music as sort of this
ambassador role of Asian Americans, Japanese Americans in the United
States and how that’s viewed perhaps here and outside the United
States?
0:48:41.50:51:29.5
MORI:
There is a responsibility on the band to be part of the community.
Like you said, it does or it has adopted a number of different kinds
of descriptions, a house band, a garage band from L.A., all those
number of titles, so to speak. There’s a balance, though, of its
performances and what it does, what it should do, what it needs to
do. All those are positives and negatives.
I think the band could have, even while I was in the band, could have
done a lot more to participate in community events and help support
it by its performance in that particular event. Yet would that, does
that, did that affect mainstream play at the jazz festivals in
Southern California or the venues in Southern California? If you
were to play at a free event, you would get some honorarium to
perform, and it’d be to an Asian American festival, so to speak. It
would be promoted in all the local newspapers, all the ethnic
newspapers, not necessarily in the L.A. Times, but its exposure
would be pretty extensive, to the point where a Cerritos Performing
Arts Center (Center for the Performing Arts) date would be affected
by this particular Asian festival, so to speak, you know. So there
had to be some balance of performing at Cerritos or any large—I just
use Cerritos as an example at that particular type of a level,
whether it be Cerritos, UCLA, Long Beach Jazz Festival, Playboy Jazz
Festival, which we played in numerous—a couple, three or four times
that I participated in. So there was a balance. There needs to be a
balance and stuff. Usually we write requests, you know, on pieces of
paper and look out the year, look at the year, and see best how all
this thing kind of, like, slotted into play, where maybe we can do,
when we could do it, the timing of it. So timing was pretty
interesting and important about it. Whether we were doing a number
of performances so that we could just jump in and do this free
thing, or if we had to put the band together and rehearse for this
free thing, or if it’s part of the tour, then it’s a lot easier to
do that, you know, because you’ve already got everybody together.
Everybody’s rehearsed, and you just jump in there and do it, the
whole crew and the band, the musicians, and you’re in and out kind
of a thing, you know. So there was different scenarios that affected
the band.
I thought overall, though, the band did a fairly, fairly good—had a
very good support mechanism for the community and tried to do this
as fair as possible, not only, again, to the band members, but to
the community. Naturally, everybody can do a lot more than what they
do. Right now the times have changed with everything. I think the
band probably could do a lot more stuff, could do a lot more stuff,
but just getting together and stuff like that and, you know,
rehearsing, pulling stuff together and doing it at a certain
particular level, I think, is pretty important too. So there are
members of the band that have other side projects and stuff like
that all the time going, so it’s not like, you know, they’re idle
and stuff. But as a unit I think there’s still a response and
there’s still requests for the band to do quite a bit of things like
that, so there’s still pretty much of a name.
CLINE:
Yes. It’s interesting, in a way, that the band identity is perhaps a
bit like individual identity in that it’s perceived as sort of this,
you know, Japanese American or Asian American band, and there’s, I
would suspect, a part of the band that wants that to be something to
be maintained and nurtured and encouraged, and yet, at the same
time, perhaps perceived as irrelevant as you want to move outside
that label, that restriction, and just become universal, you know.
MORI:
Yes.
CLINE:
That’s an interesting sort of little issue or dilemma that probably
anybody who’s kind of created a niche for themselves has to contend
with, because, you know, their success and identity within that
niche, and at the same time probably desire to break out of it—
MORI:
Right.
0:54:05.7
CLINE:
—and just become, you know, well, it’s just music in this case, you
know. It’s good music or it’s not good music, and maybe shouldn’t
matter whether it’s Asian American or what genre we are trying to be
sold under or anything. I don’t know. Just a thought.
MORI:
Yes. When you listen to stuff on TV or just on the radio and stuff,
you get to, you know, the NPR (National Public Radio) stations and
stuff, and they play a lot of different kinds of music, different
kinds of programs and stuff, you hear different music on those
stations and stuff, and a lot of the sounds sound very familiar. The
rhythms may sound familiar. The tonality of the instruments sound
very familiar and stuff. Then the majority of the time, you know,
either you got to the song, in the middle of the song or whatever,
and sometimes you don’t know who actually did it or anything like
that, right? Some things, you know, you may be able to go to the
station’s website or call the station and find out who it was and
stuff, you know, if it’s that interesting to you and stuff. But
there are quite a few times in which you go, “Wow, is that the band
kind of playing? Do they have a new song or CD out or something like
that?” So the sounds and the whole thing in terms of the music
fusion is really interesting. We were a part of the jazz fusion, I
guess, terminology in the early eighties, and then a different
number of—smooth jazz, quiet jazz, Quiet Storm.
CLINE:
Contemporary jazz.
MORI:
Contemporary jazz. Right. Exactly. It’s all these so-called
classifications and stuff. Then within the band, I guess, they came
up with the phrase “cultural fusion,” you know.
CLINE:
Wow.
0:56:05.8
MORI:
Yeah, it’s all dependent upon who puts a title on it for what
particular purpose and what particular geographical area of the
United States, I guess.
CLINE:
Right. During the time that you were with Hiroshima and going on and
off the road and having that very different experience, Kinnara
Taiko was still going, as it still is. How did Kinnara Taiko evolve
over the period from when it started up to the present day in terms
of, perhaps, the people involved, how it presented itself, the sorts
of venues or the sorts of opportunities it had to present itself. Do
you know how much it’s changed over the years or not? How would you
sort of describe that?
MORI:
It’s interesting now we fed back on it, because pretty much Kinnara
celebrated its fortieth anniversary last October, and we put a list
together of as many people as we could remember through photographs
and just people’s me
0:59:50.21:03:15.51:04:05.71:05:43.11:08:01.2
MORI:
es and the relationships with contacts that we still have kind of
gathered and stuff. There was quite a few people that had gone
through Kinnara at one particular point or another, whether it be
gagaku, bugaku, or taiko, or just even study classes and retreats
that the band had, I mean that Kinnara had, not that the band had,
but that Kinnara had. It still has a concept of dana, of giving, of
trying to give without any attachment to it, of an egolessness
giving, of anonymously contributing to doing something without any
recognition, which is very, very difficult for, I think, any human
being. But at least you’re made aware of your actions and what are
you doing, which is actually a very, very good beginning. There’s
been a core group of individuals from the very, very beginning, the
one constant being Reverend Mas Kodani, and then this guy George
Abe, and then, I guess, myself. Although they came in later, I guess
around ’73, ’74, then Chris Yamashita, and later on Donna Hokoda
*(CORRECT?), Joann Yamada *(CORRECT?). Sharon Kogi *(CORRECT?) came
in probably in the late seventies. And all of us have pretty much
been with the group. Younger folks have been coming in and out, and
then there’s now a very, very strong core of younger folks that are
in there that kind of hung in there and have gone off and played
with other taiko groups and have come back.
Kinnara’s very, very open. It’s not like you have to study with us
and you have to do what we do and stuff. You’re free to do what you
need to do, and just hopefully responsibility-wise you come back and
either share what you learned and stuff like that or something like
that. The main idea of being as open as possible, I think it’s still
there. You run across people who play taiko from other groups in
other cities and have moved to Southern California for whatever
reason, and they see you perform and they start talking to you about
it. We tell them, “Yeah, if you like doing it, on Thursday nights at
eight o’clock come to Senshin and just play, you know. You’re
welcome to play, and this is what we do.” So that openness is still
very part of Kinnara. It goes the different levels underneath that
in terms of, again, putting into it as much as you want to get out
of it. It’s still that. There’s quite a bit of concepts that are
hard to describe, but after a while, I think they get it, and
there’s no really structure structure, so to speak, although there
are people that try to put, like, a curriculum kind of thing to it
and kind of have a set kind of stages of learning. But after a
while, people who are in it see that there is the—it’s not
necessarily discipline, but there is some kind of a structure to it.
There is some kind of requirements. There are certain phases of
learning. And I guess it works different ways, you know. Throughout
your whole education process in growing up, there’s always a grading
kind of thing, there’s always a teacher, there’s always certain
levels of achievement, and you’ve got to have that. No doubt about
that. You’ve got to have that. So this is something that is not
necessarily opposite, but it is something that is self-rewarding,
and it does look at your ego. It does look at, you know, how you
interact with people. Pretty much that’s what it is. And after a
while, people get it, which is really interesting, and some people
deal with it and some people can’t. I’ll see people come in and out.
They just have to kind of, like, be either reassured that we’re
still doing it the same way we’ve been doing it.
So it’s hard being part of it and part of the process and part of
the group for such a long time, and this even goes with the band
also too. You’re so much involved with it, you can’t really see or
get an outside perspective unless somebody from the outside looks at
it and says, “Well, that’s Kinnara for you.” Or, “That’s Kinnara and
the old-school in what you guys do and the feel of the group and all
those things.” You don’t necessarily define it or can you define it.
Whether or not you should define it when you’re going through this
particular process, I’m not exactly sure, but there is a definite
Kinnara. There is a definite kind of uniqueness about it.
It has changed. It has to change, and it’s got to change. It’s
inevitable, you know. The only thing about change that doesn’t
change is the rule of change. Impermanence, right? Everything is
changing except the rule of impermanence. That can be expanded, you
know. That can be totally, totally expanded in how you view stuff
like that. It has, I think, led people to change. It has led people
to, again, change, whether they had all this energy and the desire
to explore and stuff, and it kind of sort of calmed those people
down. Then on the opposite side, it took some shy person, so to
speak, you know, gave them confidence to express themselves in
certain situations. So you see that subtleness in people, and I’m
sure it’s the same way with myself and other members in the group.
As much as and as long as we’ve been performing and who we’ve been
performing and stuff, you know, there’s always new people to come
and check it out and stuff, find out what it is and stuff.
It’s going to be interesting. The next North American Taiko
Conference is next year, next August 2011, and it’s going to be up
in the Bay Area, basically around Palo Alto at Stanford University
campus. It’s going to be administered by, be organized by people in
that particular region and in the Bay Area. San Jose Taiko and then
also, too, San Francisco Taiko Dojo with Seiichi Tanaka is also
involved. He’s into it, and a number of groups from around that
particular area are also into it too. So that’s going to be
interesting. It’s always interesting, I guess, going out and seeing
different kinds of groups, see what they’re doing and stuff, getting
together with the larger taiko community every two years. Not really
sure about the future of Kinnara. It is changing. A lot of the older
folks, we are in—not a lot of us, but there are a few that are in
their late fifties, middle to late fifties, that are gaining upon
sixty. And sixty’s not necessarily a magic number or anything like
that, but it’s one in which, you know, you have time, like myself
right now, to reflect about, by doing this oral interview also too.
There are some younger people that are stepping up and saying that
more energy and more new pieces, variety of kinds of things are
needed to keep everybody engaged. And yet they’re still really
interested in learning the older pieces, all the older pieces, the
Kinnara pieces that are signature pieces for Kinnara. So they’re
really interested in revamping those, putting those back together
again, so to speak.
So the leadership for them is really interesting because now they
are given that responsibility, whether or not they take it by the
hand and expand on it or just kind of bide time until they find
their own niche or something like that. So they’re given that
particular thing, and so some of them like it. Some of them are
probably more fearful of it because it’s added responsibility.
Hopefully, the older members in the group would be able to let go of
it. That’s interesting also, too, to be able to let go of it. As
much a part of your life it has been, to—it’s not necessarily
walking away from it, but basically it’s to let the organization and
the direction and the future of it, let it go. There’s no
way—because remember I talked about that Kinnara thing. Like I said,
it’s hard to put a finger on what that kind of Kinnara thing is, but
it’s there. They understand it. They know what the aspect of it. And
if it changes, that’s fine, too, because that’s a necessity of the
individuals that are participating at that particular time.
CLINE:
With the increased awareness and popularity of taiko, how have the
type of people who are coming to Kinnara to participate in taiko and
also in gagaku/bugaku changed since its beginning?
MORI:
Kinnara doesn’t necessarily go out and recruit people. I mean, I
don’t know if that’s the right word. And we don’t do as many public
performances as we used to. And in terms of influencing, to have
people come up to us and wanting to take lessons or how to join the
group and stuff like that, since we don’t do that as often in terms
of performances, we don’t get as many calls for them to come and
check it out and stuff. A lot of it’s referrals. Part of it is the
physical where it is, you know, near Central Los Angeles in one
sense. Yet on the other hand, it’s sitting next to USC near the (Los
Angeles Me
1:11:26.21:14:05.0
MORI:
al) Coliseum, which not necessarily is the safest neighborhood in
the world. But yet on the other hand, it’s one in which if somebody
really wanted to participate, that’s part of the deal.
So the people that are interested in taiko for right now and for
Kinnara is a little bit of a looser group. I mean it’s more and more
out of curiosity. But the strongly interested in it, they will take
the time and effort to come to Senshin, and it’s one that would seek
us out. And after they get into it, they see that it’s very casual.
It’s very casual, and you have this learning experience, but it’s
pretty open. To someone coming that is serious about playing taiko,
not that the person that’s coming to Kinnara’s not serious either,
but somebody that wants to make it or get to a point where, “Can I
do this as a career? Can I survive off of playing taiko?” I mean,
that’s the other side of the fence to where one wants to do this as
a career or as a job, so to speak. So those folks, you know, they’ll
see, we’ll give them a little bit, and then we’ll tell them, you
know, there’s this group called TaikoProject and then this group
called On Ensemble, and then there’s San Jose Taiko, there is
Portland Taiko, and these are professional groups within the United
States that if you seriously want to play taiko, you need to join
one of these other groups as a full-time, you know, 24/7 participant
of playing taiko. You know, so we’ll start you off and everything
like that, but if you want to take it another level, you’ve got to
participate in the other group. So a member of Kinnara Taiko is
somebody that still wants to have fun doing it on a part-time basis
and get into this thing. Now, whether or not they come in and they
think, “This is an Asian discipline thing that is going to help me
put some discipline and some regimen and routine into my life,”
total contrary. That’s on the opposite end of the spectrum. That’s
not what Kinnara Taiko is about.
Gagaku is really interesting in that most people who come in it have
some kind of musical background or musical curiosity, have some kind
of understanding of Asian culture, had one time or another picked up
a gagaku instrument through a stint in Japan, through learning it in
Japan as they were growing up in Japan. So, a lot of people, whether
or not they’re Japanese nationals or something like that, but a lot
of them seem to have somewhat of a musical background. And then
there are some people that are in it and they learn just enough of
it to be part of the group, which is fine also, too, which is more
than interesting in terms of their participating in this because
their reason for playing this thing is for whatever reason, but it’s
just to be part of the group and to participate in it and to learn
some kind of Japanese musical instrument, that’s fine also too. Then
the dance part, the bugaku part of it, is self-discipline and group
discipline to learn the particular moves and to learn how to dance
this particular piece, which is really interesting because there is
no teacher teacher. A lot of it is watching a video, or there are
members of the group that could teach you a whole dance or a couple
of dances. So it’s a combination of stuff. So it’s that kind of an
individual.
CLINE:
When Kinnara started, it was very much a connected function of
Senshin, and therefore would be in some way connecting with the
people who go to Senshin, which would be largely Japanese Americans.
How much has that changed, if any, since the beginning, in terms of
the types of people who are participating in Kinnara’s musical
activities?
1:18:05.51:20:45.8
MORI:
Because Togi-sensei had taught at UCLA, he had pretty much his
class, so to speak, and then which changes on a semester, semester,
quarter, quarter situation. He’s always had a group of individuals,
probably about six or seven individuals, that one way or another
still play gagaku or still plays gagaku, but with the passing of
Togi-sensei, and even before the passing of Togi-sensei, within the
last fifteen years or so and since the time that he left UCLA, they
were still in Southern California, and those individuals still play
gagaku, and those individuals were not necessarily of Japanese or
Asian descent.
It was pretty interesting. I mean, I’ve been playing with these guys
off and on for the last thirty years, twenty-five years, and some of
them I’m just realizing what they do outside of gagaku. You know,
brain surgeons. Seriously, brain surgeons. I just found this out
about six or seven months ago that these guys are brain surgeons or
these guys are mathematicians and different various numbers of
occupations. I had no idea what they did. (Cline laughs.) But the
common thing was playing gagaku, which is interesting because it’s a
set thing. I mean, you know, it’s interpretation of the feel of how
you play it and what you play and accents here and there and stuff,
you know. I’m not sure whether or not what we’re playing is either
homogenized, Westernized, or changed of how it’s being played in
Japan today. I don’t know. But in terms of the teaching and the
finer points that were taught to us by Togi-sensei, in the older
days when we went to play with folks from Japan, the musicianship
and the understanding of it is very similar, is very close, you
know. I mean what he taught us was how he would teach in Japan if
you were in Japan. So the level of his understanding, his passing
along how a particular piece is supposed to be played is pretty
universal, I mean is pretty consistent what it was when played in
Japan. You know, their interpretation naturally is totally different
also too. So at this particular point in time I’d say, yeah, those
are more probably, if you were to put a label on it, would be more
consistent and have more lineage in terms of the finesse part of it,
interpretation. But when we got together and get together with him,
it’s pretty close. It’s really close.
CLINE:
You grew up here in L.A. You never really imagined, I suspect, that
not only would you become a touring musician, but it wasn’t common
to, as a young Japanese American, have any outlet, interest,
opportunity to learn something that’s more traditionally Japanese
culturally. Now a lot of this is available in a way that it wasn’t
when you were young, and it appears to be continuing. How has
learning these traditions and playing this music and combining it
with your Americanness, has it affected or changed you as a person
in how you reflect on your identity and your history as a Japanese
American?
1:26:00.9
MORI:
You’re right in that growing up, and even in the twenties, early
twenties, this wasn’t even a thought. This was not even a
consideration. In certain aspects it was so outside of the realm of
thought, it wasn’t even part of the mix, so to speak, as they say
nowadays. There were no examples. There were no people that were
into it that I knew of at the time. Later I had found out that there
were quite a few individuals that were professional musicians out of
the Japanese American community, but I didn’t know that existed
until the middle to late seventies as an option, as even an inkling
of a possibility, even with my limited resources. But I guess being
around other creative individuals, being around an atmosphere which
people were going in the same direction, so to speak, and was very
fortunate and able to jump on the train, you know. I was not the
conductor. I was not the engineer. I wasn’t even the guy in the
caboose. I jumped on the train, though, was able to get on the
train, and it went through totally different places that I had never
expected to be or expected to go, which I had mentioned before. Yet
nowadays, still on the train, still being able to contribute to the
train, maybe where I’m in the position of filling the coal cart to
power the steam engine. I don’t think I’m even in the engine taking
the coal and fueling the fire. I may be putting the coal onto the
train or I’m on the train and helping to load the train with coal so
it can get someplace, but there are other folks that are driving the
train, engineering the train. I probably have taken my turn as a
steward on the train, a porter man on the train, so to speak, you
know, helping people get on the train. What they do after they get
on the train, you know, I’m not sure. Help collect tickets, help
with the train. And the train is still moving, which is still good.
The train is still moving.
How do we go about nurturing newer artists and stuff like that? Just
to provide opportunity and the resources and let them know that the
resources are still there, are there. There are a few individuals
that are attempting to get into the business or to make this a
career, and they’re quite successful, because whatever they’re
doing, they have a very, very solid foundation in their art, in
their craft and technically how they’re doing it. The hardest part,
I’m pretty sure you understand this also, too, is, I guess—and it’s
not the commitment. The commitment is there. You can tell in their
work habits and just the proficiency of the technique, and the
performance is totally unbelievable nowadays at such an early age
also, too, which is great. But I guess the training and the proper
attitude about just the whole thing in general, I think. You could
have the discipline but not necessarily the concept. You’ve got to
have this understanding, and understanding the goal changes all the
time and the people that are involved in it changes a lot and stuff.
But I think it’s still pretty promising. It’s not as massive of a
movement as it was probably about six years ago, eight years ago.
It’s kind of leveled off, I think. That might just be in the case of
Kinnara in terms of people approaching Kinnara and performing in
Kinnara. But then you look. Some areas are expanding, some are
staying the same or even decreasing. The exposure and level of taiko
is expanding on college campuses, which is really interesting, to
where I know of a number of college-age individuals that will
academically achieve certain levels that they could apply to a
school, to a couple of schools that have very, very strong taiko
programs, and that was one of the factors of applying to those
particular schools. Right now I think Stanford (University), because
of the consistency of its advisors, school advisors, very, very
strong, very, very strong, unbelievably strong. Stanford University,
which is a unique situation. I mean you’ve got to be financially
fairly—you know, or you’ve got to be academically or something very
unique about the individual to be able to get into the school. UC
(University of California) Irvine, which has a group called Jodaiko,
which is also a very, very strong group. UCLA, Kyodo Taiko. They
have actually two groups, so Kyodo Taiko, which is the oldest taiko
group amongst colleges and universities. They have another group
called Yukai Daiko, which is a fun taiko group. Not saying that
Kyodo’s not fun, but there’s a heavy-duty audition process to get
into Kyodo, and their performance level and history and just
attitude. Yukai’s a little bit more lax on that, but I mean still
has to have, I guess, some kind of requirements to get into the
group and stuff like that. It’s a little looser. And then there’s
groups at UC San Diego; USC, who Kinnara’s beginning to work with;
UC Riverside has one. There’s one, I think, within the
Claremont-(Harvey) Mudd group of colleges, and I think they were
called Psycho Taiko or something like that.
1:30:55.2
CLINE:
(laughs) Okay.
1:33:59.2
MORI:
While we’re on that point of naming different groups, there was a
Tumbleweed Taiko from Texas. There’s a Ragin’ Cajun Taiko group.
There is a Raging (Asian) Women’s Taiko group. There is Grass Valley
(Taiko) location; Moab, Utah Taiko; Moab Taiko; Bitchin’ Blazin’
Bachi Taiko group *(CORRECT?). So, yeah, there’s all these different
number of names of all these different taiko groups that are there,
which is really interesting, which is really, really interesting. So
the collegiate situation is interesting, and so, like I said,
different areas of levels of groups, and I think the older groups,
consistent across the board, are talking about secession. They’re
talking about us members gracefully bowing out, changeover. So all
those things are being discussed of the older folks and stuff, older
groups and stuff like that. So that’s very positive, because if
you’re talking about secession, you’re talking about continuity or
the group being able to continue and stuff. It’s not like it’s dying
out and stuff. So Kinnara, I think, is in that growing pain,
movement pain and stuff like that, you know, to whether or not I
still attend taiko practices, or do I more go toward the gagaku
practice or something like that, right? So it varies. It all depends
on the amount of time and effort you put into it, again. But it is
still progressing. I think the taiko community is still progressing,
different areas of strengths, but it kind of sort of tapered off. I
haven’t heard of any new professional group besides TaikoProject or
ensemble and a few others kind of scattered around, and most of
those groups’ membership is—I mean group-wise it makes sense. It’s
from four to eight, ten people in the group. So because of that many
people are relying on taiko to help supplement their income, then it
has to be pretty steady for anybody to have any kind of steady
income that you’re looking at to be able to survive.
CLINE:
Out of your encounter with your traditional music culture, you also
started Japanese Festival Sounds, which I had gathered is a way to
perhaps help interest people, and therefore continue some of that
interest in those sounds, in that music.
1:37:08.0
MORI:
Right. It actually started out of the need—I don’t know if it’s
need, or the request for partially an educational kind of component
of taiko in Southern California, and also a professional group that
could perform during the weekdays. That’s the simplest way to
describe how it began. So, through different numbers of situations
that I encountered while in the eighties of playing taiko around
Southern California, and, I guess, the Japanese Festival in terms of
its strong kind of suit, so to speak, and the need for having this
particular art form within the schools, and, I guess, my initiative
or my needing to see if we could make a go of this professionally,
so we did a number of, I guess, exhibitions in an educational
setting or a youth/kid program setting, which I can’t really
remember what environment we were on, or it could have been just at
a festival in someplace in Southern California, that people would
approach us. A lot of them were just basic individual teachers. They
would say, “Hey, you guys do this for schools? Can you come to my
school or my class and kind of give this demonstration?” And at the
time the majority of them were Japanese American teachers, which
there are a lot of them, or Asian American teachers. At the time we
go, “Well, it’s either the whole group or it’s not none of us.” Or,
“Yeah, maybe a couple of us can come out and do something,” and we
did that for a while. It was like trying to figure out how to do
this and where and whatnot.
And then somebody approached me and said, “Hi. I’m with this group
called Learning Tree.”
CLINE:
Oh, right.
MORI:
“And we’re part of L.A. city schools, but we’re not part of L.A.
city schools.” And I talked to them and they said, “Let’s meet,” so
I went down and met with them. They explained the program and how
many years they’d been doing this and stuff like that. Then I’d work
with them to help nurture, put somewhat of a program together that
made kind of sort of some sense. Then we did that, and we were
getting to some bookings in schools and stuff like that for the
first year, and it seemed to work out. Then the following year I got
approached by another individual and said, “Hey, we want to see
whether or not you would be able to perform out of the Music
Center,” so the Music Center on Tour Program. And I said, “Sure,
I’ll check it out. I’ll come to an audition.” And then I think the
other guy couldn’t do it, so actually I was just doing this audition
by myself with one taiko, and I think I took a boombox, and I played
this rhythm and I did the lion dance. Then I just did this taiko
solo and explained a little bit about the taiko, and at that time I
think the presentation was no longer than eight to ten minutes. That
was it. And this is the truth. I followed a dog act. “All right,
Butchy. How much is one plus one?”
CLINE:
Oh, no.
1:39:44.11:41:51.41:44:12.81:46:35.31:49:08.1
MORI:
He had these numbers around his circle, and he would circle around
the circle, and he would stop, and he would pick up the number two
and put it down. “Okay, how much is three plus three?” This dog
would circle around again, and he’d pick up the right number.
I followed a dog act. At that time I was just going, “This ain’t
right. This ain’t right. This ain’t happening, man. This is weird,
man. I ain’t gonna be on no roster with no dog act. Are you crazy?”
They didn’t make it because animals aren’t allowed on campus and
stuff like that and the whole bit. You know, kids and dogs are not
allowed in school programs, so they didn’t make it. So then I had an
interview right after the performance and stuff, right, and they
go—the first question, “How committed are you to doing this?” And I
looked at them and I go, “First of all, I’m here. This is the middle
of the day. This is out in Carson.” They just picked a school,
right, that’s supportive of the program. “Driving all the way out
here, taking three hours out of my time to do this ten-minute
audition. You’re asking how committed I am?” I says, “Give me a
break.” I had an attitude of the yin/yang that day, right? That was
in the early eighties, ’82, ’83, because I formally got Japanese
Festival Sounds as a DBA (“doing business as”) in, again, ’83 or
something like that. So I was playing with the band. The band had a
couple albums out and stuff, so I pretty much committed to trying to
make a living off of playing taiko, so that’s why I was there. But
that day I just had an attitude, and I think I showed up in Levis
and I just threw on a hapi coat. I can’t remember if I had a
hachimaki or anything like that. Then she goes, well, the talk was
fine, but they commented about the costuming and stuff like that,
right? I says, “Well, I didn’t know what I was walking into, to tell
you the truth, and how formal of an audition this is and what it
was,” and everything like that, right?
Then we got into more discussion and stuff, and then another
rephrased question came about in terms of getting commitment and
stuff, right. So I said, “Look, this is a situation in which, you
know, this is not going to be an exclusive, either. I mean if some
teacher comes up to me and asks me, I’m going to take it because
this is a potential part of my livelihood,” stuff like that. So
anyway, to make a long story short, about a week later they called
me up and they says, “You’ve been accepted.” I go, “Wow, that’s
pretty good.” And then he says, “Well, your costuming could be, you
know we’ll talk about that, but you scored the highest on your
interview.” (laughs) And I go, “Oh, really?” I says, “Yeah, I wasn’t
having a good day that day. I just had an attitude and I apologize.”
I told them, “I followed a dog act.” I said, “Man, I was questioning
your credibility and your whole thing and all this other stuff.
That’s ridiculous, right?” I said, “That’s totally ridiculous.” So
he says, “Oh, you’re in the group.” So ever since then. So then I
pulled in George Abe, plays flutes and stuff like that, and we were
doing it, a couple of us, and that was getting older. Then I pulled
Danny Yamamoto in it and stuff, you know, so that’s been working out
pretty fairly well. Then also, too, so basically I just turned it
into a business, I mean into a professional taiko group. So at the
time then it was just San Francisco Taiko and Japanese Festival
Sounds that were a professional group, although later on I found out
that Tanaka-sensei, I guess he was—San Francisco Taiko Dojo and him
in itself was a professional taiko group. He made his income in
living on teaching taiko and doing these performances and stuff like
that. So he and his group were pretty much professional, not
necessarily now as much, although I mean he’s still teaching and
earning a living off of playing taiko, but at the time he and I were
the only ones, and so were doing all this stuff.
Then it expanded to the point where I was doing Performing Tree,
Music Center on Tour. Then Orange County Performing Arts Center also
has a—because the administrators from the Music Center went to
Orange County and they started it up. So I was on their roster, and
I also was on the roster of this thing called ICAP, Intercultural
Appreciation Program, through L.A. city schools. It was a fairly
funded program in which they paid you $100 or something like that
for you to go out and do this thing in a school or something like
that, and you had to block off, like, three weeks, performed every
day for three weeks. So that was interesting, and I did that for one
semester. Then after that, I was still with the group for, like,
about two or three years after that, but I told them I only
anticipate on, like, maybe a week at a time, and I laid out the
weeks so I could do this and stuff, so that worked out fine. I also
was on the roster of—in Santa Barbara—Children’s Project?
*(CORRECT?) Anyways, run out of the school district up in the Santa
Barbara area. So coming from Santa Barbara, parts of Ventura, but
mainly Santa Barbara, north to Santa Maria, San Luis Obispo,
Templeton, and Paso Robles. So we did that for, like, about five
years. We’d go out there at least two or three times out of the
school semester from September to June, and we’d spend at least four
days up in that region at a time, do two in the morning and one in
the afternoon, two shows in the morning and two shows in the
afternoon while we’re there. So we’d drive up there on one day, do
two programs in the morning, in the afternoon, stay overnight, two
in the morning, two in the afternoon, stay the next day, do two in
the morning. Sometimes we’d come home after that or do two in the
morning, two in the afternoon, and then come home after that, or
stay over another night and do one in the morning and then come
home. So, San Luis Obispo, Santa Maria area, Santa Barbara, we
covered that.
So there was, like, about four or five groups that we were connected
with, and we would go out and do school programs and stuff. So it
worked out perfect because I wasn’t on the road, and we were just
doing all these school programs and stuff, so exposed taiko to a lot
of kids and stuff. That, and then recording sessions, which was
outside of Japanese Festival Sounds, but sometimes we did it as a
group. A lot of times more so, though, we did it as individuals and
hooked up with different number of composers. A lot of them were
independent, and so whether you ran stuff through the union
(American Federation of Musicians) or not, that was whatever helped
the financial situation here and there. Then I hooked into Hans
Zimmer, and so we were doing the play. As we were doing the play
Sansei in ’89 at the Mark Taper Forum, he had come to see a show and
had talked with Dan and June about doing some stuff for a movie
called Black Rain with Michael Douglas and N_____ *(NAME?) and stuff
like that, and so they did some music with that. Then from then on,
we obviously had this relationship with him. Then after that, I
worked with him. Eventually we did Pearl Harbor. That was really
interesting, him being of German descent, and it kind of showed both
wars, European conflict and the Pacific conflict. He said, “Why
don’t you come and see the movie first, see if you guys want to do
this.” So we went into his place and he showed us the whole movie.
It wasn’t that good of a movie, and it’s still not that good of a
movie. (laughs) Because of that, he says, “It’s your choice how you
want to do this.” Right? So we said, “Okay,” and we decided to do
it. So we did that.
The other film that was very, very, I think, very historical in one
aspect of it was The Thin Red Line, the newer version with
(Terrence) Malick as the director, which he hadn’t done a movie in
ten years up until that time we did that one, and that was a trip.
That was another interesting situation because it delved into the
minds of the soldiers on both sides of the war. So that was pretty
fun to do. Then we did a—he didn’t do it. Did he do it? I don’t
think he did. Or did he? I can’t remember if he did a Star Trek
movie or not. I can’t remember if he did. I don’t think he did, but
anyway, the band did a Star Trek movie. And then I did a number of
movies with him with Tom Cruise, his series of action movies.
CLINE:
Mission Impossible, maybe?
MORI:
No, the one before that one.
CLINE:
Don’t know.
1:51:07.5
MORI:
It might be Mission Impossible. One of those I did with him, and
that was fun too. Then he did one of the last geisha, (Memoirs of a
Geisha) *(CORRECT?) or he did The Last Samurai. One of the two he,
or something like that. So we jumped in and did that one also too.
So we had this pretty good relationship him, and he was very, very
understanding. He asked you to check it out before you want to
participate in it. He has no form of saying, “You want to do it?”
And if you refuse to do it, no big deal. He gives you that option
and stuff like that.
That was interesting for him, too, because he was in a dilemma, and
I think every composer is in terms of how much electronic music
versus live music that you had to put into your movie. I don’t know
whether or not—if there’s a percentage or if there’s an unwritten
rule or if there is a rule if you do X amount of a movie, you’ve got
to use live musicians or you’ve got to do this and do that. I’m not
sure what that deal is. But I remember going in there and he had
this track already laid out and stuff, and he just said, “Just play
on top of it. This is the feel that I have here for it, and so if
you want to play over it, go ahead, play over it. Or play over it
and just do it.” So we did that a number of different times. And I
know part of it, too—and he was pretty up front about it. He says,
“This is the feature of what it is, and for me sometimes it works,
sometimes it doesn’t.” This is not a long time ago when we started
playing. “But I tell you up front, I’m also capturing the sounds
because it’s not there. There’s no canned taiko yet.”
CLINE:
Right. Sample.
1:53:23.11:56:09.0
MORI:
“Sampled thing that I can just call up the library and get and stuff
like that.” Right? He said, “Part of it I’m just sampling all this
sound.” I says, “Fine.” So he gave me all the copies of the sounds
also, too, so I have that, which has changed over the years and
stuff like that. But he says he had it and stuff, so when I went in
there for the next movie, then I started cracking up, and he knew
that I knew that this was me that he had sampled and he put into the
track already, right? So he made it pretty simple, “I need this
feel, and this is kind of sort of what I have in mind, but why don’t
you play how you feel it right now,” and stuff like that. So I said,
“Okay.”
So that was part of Japanese Festival Sounds, and I’m still doing it
today. It’s an immediate reaction from the kids if they understand
it or don’t. It’s, yes, like I said, immediate reaction, and the
kids don’t lie. They like it or they don’t. Fortunately, they’ve
pretty much liked it through all the situations. Yes, so I’m still
doing it, although with the economy the way it is and school cuts
and teacher layoffs and stuff like that, it’s less and less of a
priority in terms of what it is. The good and bad of it, the schools
are still getting or still have to provide arts and cultures, and
instead of, unfortunately, hiring even a part-time music teacher to
go into the schools two or three times a week, they only can provide
mass assemblies, possibly. So the program that I have is pretty much
a performance and explanation and stuff, forty-five-minute format
and program. Whether or not I’m going to be getting a lot more
performance calls because you’re just affecting more masses at one
particular time than regular doing even a residency week or a
month-long or a four- to eight-session residency with a school. I’m
not sure whether or not that’s been—which I’m probably sure it’s
been cut out also, too, or depleted or reduced or something like
that. So usually September, October, November, December, January,
February, March, April, May, June, so that’s usually about a
nine-month session in terms of when school’s in. I used to get a
minimum of twenty, twenty-five schools on a year or even more,
thirty schools a year. Last semester that just ended, last school
semester I had mainly only did ten, eight to ten schools, twelve,
ten schools at the very, very most maybe once or twice a month or
something like that, maybe twelve schools, and that’s it. It’s
getting a lot harder for the exposure for arts in schools, so that
makes it tough. So that’s what Japanese Festival Sound’s about.
CLINE:
We’re getting near the end here, and I just do have time for a
couple of questions—
MORI:
Sure.
CLINE:
—but I can try to keep it concise. How did you get the job here at
the Japan America Theater?
MORI:
Oh, man. (laughter)
CLINE:
That interesting?
1:58:56.32:01:09.62:02:56.92:05:01.9
MORI:
It is, actually. I mean, whether or not I describe this or not from
the very beginning, but my association with the community, the
(Japanese American) Cultural (and Community) Center and its concept
grew out of a building that was on Weller Street, which is over here
on Weller Court, and where the Kyoto Grand (Hotel) is, more so
around there. Anyway, this building called the Sun Building, which
housed a lot of cultural institutions or cultural teachers and
social service groups, it was the rallying point for Little Tokyo
People’s Rights Organization, and so they were symbolically—this
particular building was one in which they were going to tear it down
and build this hotel. But where were they going to put these
cultural teachers and cultural classes and these social service
groups? So there was no place for them to go symbolically, and so
then a lot of young folks—because JACS office, Japanese American
Community Services Pioneer Project was in this particular building,
it became a symbol. So then they chained the doors. They refused to
open the doors when the sheriff’s department came and tried to evict
everybody out of the building. So it became a rallying point, right?
So this is a preface to saying that this particular building, this
particular organization grew out of that and the need and necessity.
So at the same time they decided they were going to build this
cultural center, and this particular cultural center was going to
be—and so all these negative or all these—and I was probably part of
it also, too, in that we said, “Sure, you’re going to tear down this
building, but are you going to be able to provide an affordable
facility for these groups to go to? Even though you’re going to
build this façade, it’s going to cost you a lot of money to build
this place, and after you get them in there, then are they going to
be able to afford the rent and stuff like that?” So then through
government subsidies and everything like that, they were allowed to
move over all this other stuff, over to the Japanese American
Cultural and Community Center, JACCC.
So then we were protesting this place also, too, to tell you the
truth. (laughs) It was crazy. At the time I was working at the
Amerasia Bookstore, and not that we were physically picketing or
protesting, but we were the young anti-establishment group that was
against everything that Little Tokyo had to do with reestablishment
and everything. So anyway, the place was built without our protest
and stuff. People moved in. So this place opened in 1980, ’81. I did
a taiko demonstration in what is now called the North Gallery or
Community Gallery, and I did a series number of them, because
there’s this woman that was in here had written this grant or
something like that, so they got some money to do these cultural
programs and stuff like that. I jumped into it, and then I was
giving these Little Tokyo tours some taiko. Then when I was doing
one, then they introduced me to the new executive director, which
the first one was Jerry Yoshitomi. He was a local Southern
California guy. But he had done some work and he was in New Mexico
working for the Western Arts Alliance. I can’t remember if he was
the executive—he was the executive director at the time. So he moved
back to L.A. and he became the executive director, and he started
introducing the community to funding through the LA (Los Angeles)
Department of Cultural Affairs, the LA County Commission of Arts,
California Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts and
all these other foundations, the Ford Foundation, the Doris Duke
Foundation, all these foundations and stuff that were happening, and
he got the ball the rolling for the JACCC.
I think around ’83 he asked if I would be an artist in residence,
and so I said, “Sure. Okay.” So there was, like, four of us that
were artists in residence at the time. There was myself; another
performer artist known as Nomoko (Nobuko) Miyamoto, she has a group
called Great Leap; a photographer named Patrick Nagatani; and a
playwright and an author, Momoko Iko. So four of us were the first
artists in residence at Little Tokyo. So I taught taiko to community
groups, already established taiko groups, gave workshops, as much
information and fundamentals as much as I can. So I was doing that
for, like, three—it was a three-year thing, and I think I did it
maybe for five years or something like that. They renewed the grant.
Then from that, my involvement, because I was at California Arts
Council, my involvement became more and more with CAC. Then there
was community groups headed by (Bernard) Jack Jackson out of Inner
City Cultural Center, and he was pretty much the godfather of the
minority arts movement in Southern California, along with a
different number of other organizations, Plaza de la Raza, Watts
Towers, John Outterbridge, Jack Jackson—Bernard Jackson, Jack
Jackson. And then Jerry Yoshitomi was part of the mix also, too,
now. So they had all kind of got together, and they nominated me to
represent Southern California on the California Arts Council, and
they were talking about multicultural arts grants. So I was on the
committee for the very, very first multicultural arts advisory
committee panel, developed the multicultural grants and all these
new starting kind of grants and stuff like that.
So then I was helping out with the Center through the eighties and
nineties. Late eighties, early nineties, I kind of stepped away from
the Cultural Center. I was on tour with the band. It was the band’s
heyday and stuff like that. Middle to late eighties, nineties, I
started co-producing or helping out the Center producing shows,
getting acts onto the stage, and developing artists and stuff like
that. Then I was co-producing some stuff. And then unfortunately,
the executive director, Duane Ebata, passed away in 2000, ten years
ago. So some people on the staff that I knew, and they knew what I
was doing, that I was co-producing shows, they asked me to help with
the programming. So I kind of sort of jumped in as a consultant.
That lasted for, like, about three and a half years as consultant.
Still doing stuff with the band. Then right around the end of 2003,
the middle of 2003, they asked me to be staff, so I says okay, but I
told them only, like, thirty hours. I mean, I was able thirty hours,
qualifying for full-time status and the whole bit. Then within that
year I had to make a decision, because I was co-producing some stuff
here and dealing with the band and dealing with the booking and the
touring of the band, working with a booking agency. For some-odd
reason—I can’t remember if I told the story. For some-odd reason
they double-booked, I double-booked myself a gig in Phoenix and
Vegas with the band and a show here in the Center, and I was
producing the show here at the Center. The booking agency actually
had changed the date and only told a few people in the band, and I
wasn’t aware of that until three weeks later after they had agreed
to the change.
So anyway, got a young guy to take my place, Shoji Kumera
*(CORRECT?), and now it’s history, and I pretty much retired from
the band in 2004. So for the last six years I started off as being
producing director of performing arts, so I was working in the
program area, and then about four years ago, three and a half years
ago, they had asked me to be general manager of the theater because
the individual that was the manager, he retired, so I’ve been doing
that since. The decision to make that change in ’84 was I had two
girls in college, going to be in college, one was in college, the
other one was going to be in college, and I needed a steady paycheck
in one sense. So that’s how my involvement got here into the JACCC.
CLINE:
Wow. You’ve had involvement in so many really influential aspects of
the Japanese American community here in L.A. Reflecting back on that
and how that makes you think about yourself and who you are, your
identity here and all that means, is there anything you want to add
here before we call it, before we end this interview? Because
clearly we could talk for months.
MORI:
Months.
CLINE:
Easily.
2:08:01.82:10:36.8
MORI:
I guess it just pretty much stems from the fact in terms of sharing
and of exposing the community, the broader community, to the voice
of the Japanese American community through whatever means I can.
There are newspapers in the community. There are voices on the radio
within the community. There are voices on television, certain
television outlets in Southern California that are able to squeeze
some Asian American news within their channel and stuff like that.
The presence of Asians within the media in terms of the news, local
news, is prominent or it’s there, it’s visible. Within regular
television programming it’s not there. It could be there. It could
be better. It’s there a little bit, but it could be better, like
anything else.
So just being able to help that particular exposure to where more
people know about a certain thing, the less misunderstanding they
would have about a particular issue or event or a person. So I try
to make it as personal, in one sense, as possible in terms of making
sure certain elements of the community don’t repeat itself in the
bad sense, but, unfortunately, it is and it does. The good and the
bad, unfortunately, circles itself, recycles itself. It just comes
up in a different form, so to speak. So not that it was a personal
crusade, but basically one would hope that you would be able to pass
something on to the next generation, and in my case, to the kids, my
kids, my daughters, so the whole same cliché, it doesn’t happen to
them. But more and more I’m thinking about it—and I don’t wish this
on anybody, but a form of this they’re going to experience in one
way or the other. So hopefully, the next generation would have more
understanding over it so that the degree in which it is presented to
them or they’re confronted with, that they’ll have the resources to
deal with it, that they will have the resources, whatever situation,
to deal with it, and that hopefully they could walk away from it,
the worst-case scenario, they could walk away from it or they’ll
understand it and they’ll be compassionate to another human being in
terms of how they deal with it. Before, it was not necessarily that
I was going to help save the world. Egotistically, you think that
you can make a difference, and one person can and possibly could
make a difference in one sense. But yet it’s possibly through age or
whatever, it’s just a situation where try the best what you could
do. But being able to pass along the better points of what you think
you have learned to the next generation or make it at least somewhat
easier.
There is signs that there is progress. Ten-year-old kids,
twelve-year-old kids have these particular fundamentals that I
didn’t learn until I was twenty-five or thirty years old, right, and
ideas and concepts of what it is. But I think there is a base
established by the different groups and different individuals that I
think is very strong, that has been developed, that those
individuals in the future will be able to see what the foundation
is, and then I could build on top of that and have the understanding
that there is this solid foundation in the base that they can move
on from but also come back to. I had did this Videolog with Huell
Howser.
CLINE:
Oh, yes.
MORI:
Yes. And I guess it turned into California’s Gold, and that was done
in ’89 also, too, I think. He had saw the play Sensei, and he had
come and we did an interview and he shot a whole day and even maybe
a couple days at Senshin. He was getting the drum and doing
performances and him following us to a school and doing a school
program, capturing all that and stuff, right? So part of that has
exposed as many kids as possible to taiko and also it exposed
Japanese American kids to have some kind of understanding of their
own culture and not feel bad that something weird and obscure is not
part of the mainstream, so to speak. So all those kinds of things
are included in, I guess, a summation of what this is all about and
stuff like that. So somebody may listen to this interview or read
the interview or whatever and gain a little more insight in terms
of, I guess, me, my life, and somebody growing up within this
particular environment in Southern California, which is fun.
CLINE:
Cool. Well, anything you want to add before we turn the machine off?
2:13:34.4
MORI:
Probably, but not right now, you know? Probably a couple hours from
now or tomorrow I’ll be sitting there going, “Oh, man, I should have
told him that,” or, “I should have told him this,” or whatever.
CLINE:
That’s how it always is.
MORI:
Yes.
CLINE:
Well, I’m sorry to have to end these, but we’ve reached that time.
We’re trying to keep the interviews that we’re doing now from being
just hideously monumental.
MORI:
Sure.
CLINE:
But obviously there’s no end to what we could mine here, but we’ll
end the mining expedition for now. Speaking for myself, thank you so
much for taking all this time and for sharing so much that’s of so
much value, and on behalf of the Center for Oral History Research at
the UCLA Library, thank you very much.
MORI:
Thank you. Appreciate it. (End of July 7, 2010 interview)