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Kira-Kira is a coming-of-age novel chronicling the adventures of Katie Takeshima as she adjusts to a new home in Georgia and confronts her beloved older sister’s terminal illness.

Things I liked:

• The Takeshima family moves from Iowa to Georgia and the majority of the story takes place in Georgia. This might just be a deficiency in my reading list, but this is the first book about Nikkeijin set in the South that I’ve read. Even in spaces supposedly dedicated to sharing stories about the greater US-based Nikkei experience, I don’t hear from many Nikkeijin living in the South, compared to, say, Nikkeijin based in California.
• Kadohata normalizes Nikkei practices by presenting them as taken-for-granted. For example, the Takeshima kids eat rice balls at their picnic and while waiting for their mom at the factory. It’s not depicted as odd or special – it simply is. While Nikkeijin are far from monolithic, I love seeing a fellow Nikkeijin take for granted what I myself also consider “the norm.” (For family road trips, my mom makes furikake musubi in plastic sushi containers saved from the store – because mottainai!)
• Katie’s simultaneous awareness and ignorance of social issues, from noticing how some white women won’t acknowledge her mother, to not understanding why Uncle Katsuhisa can’t get a job as a land surveyor, feels painfully familiar. I suppose it’s odd to list something painful as something I liked, but it really means a lot to know I wasn’t the only Nikkei kid navigating a weird balance of, “I think that’s bad” and “I don’t understand this but it doesn’t seem quite right.” In hindsight, as my fellow Nikkeijin can probably attest to, most of those things we didn’t understand as kids turned out to be bad, too.
• The portrayal of Katie’s parents feels very aligned with Nikkei/Japanese parenting values. For example, Katie’s mother’s tendency to harp on “little” things is very reminiscent of how my own mother and other Japanese mothers I’ve met often behave. I can imagine non-Japanese readers not understanding this or thinking Katie’s mother is too nitpicky, but it makes perfect sense to me in the context of Nikkei/Japanese values. The same goes for Katie’s dad – fellow Nikkeijin, did you notice anything familiar about his work ethic and perseverance, not to mention the quiet way he interacts with his family? This aspect of the book is definitely one of the “insider” qualities that I look for and love to find in the work of Nikkei authors. Not something an outsider could achieve!

Things I learned:

• There were and are Japanese Americans living in the South! (Ok, technically I knew this before reading Kira-Kira, but not too much before…probably only since college?) Considering that I have relatives in Colorado and Nebraska, this probably shouldn’t have come as such a surprise – if Nikkeijin live in the Midwest, why not the South? – but it did. Books like this inspire me to seek out information about Nikkei communities beyond my Bay Area/California bubble. I also wonder to what extent regional privilege shapes dominant Nikkei narratives. Same goes for bilingual/multilingual privilege and proximity to Japan via generation. Fellow Nikkeijin, you know what I’m talking about, even though it seems few of us ever actually talk about these things. 言い過ぎかもしれないけど何にも言わないとどうにもならないからちょっとだけでも聞いて下さい。
• Chicken sexing is a not-insignificant part of both Japanese and Nikkei history. I saw an article about chicken sexers on Discover Nikkei while I was reading Kira-Kira, but that’s the only other place I’ve seen it referenced so far. In Kira-Kira, it’s noted that some Nikkeijin went to Japan to learn chicken sexing before returning to the US to work. Seems like an interesting lens through which to examine Nikkeijin/Nihonjin interactions. Time to read up!

Questions I had:

• According to Kadohata’s website, she grew up in Georgia and Arkansas, so, as with Weedflower*, I can see how personal history might have shaped the writing of Kira-Kira. At the same time, I’d like to know what other factors, if any, contributed to Kadohata’s decisions regarding the character arcs and setting of Kira-Kira. For example, why does Lynn die and why specifically from leukemia? I’m not aware of any historical ties between the Nikkei community and leukemia, other than people with relatives who may have contracted it after Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
• Is Katie really referring to Uncle Katsuhisa as “Uncle Katsuhisa” in real life, or something more like “Katsuhisa-ojichan?” or “Ojichan?” Considering Sumiko uses “Jiichan” in Weedflower, I would assume the former, but I’m curious. Fellow Nikkeijin can probably relate to the weirdness (or funniness, in my opinion) of using different honorifics depending on whether the relative in question is Nikkeijin or Nihonjin. Also, I wonder how many of us break down honorifics along linguistic lines? Sumiko is described as not speaking Japanese, but still uses the word Jiichan. My non-Japanese-speaking relatives don’t use Japanese honorifics, so I’m curious to know how other Nikkei families determine this.
• At first I wasn’t sure what to make of the portrayal of Uncle Katsuhisa’s family. It seems like they get a lot of screen (page?) time even though their respective storylines don’t progress much. But when I compare them to, say, the island folks in ばらかもん, it makes more sense. Their presence enhances the atmosphere – or what I think of as the Nikkei-ness – of the story. In fact, I think Kira-Kira could be adapted into an excellent manga, especially with a mixed Nikkeijin/Nihonjin creative team. The deliberate pacing and nuanced moments would translate beautifully into images. I know US novels are sometimes adapted into graphic novels – I wonder if any Nikkei authors, including Kadohata, have ever considered pursuing manga adaptations of their work?

Follow-up:

• See if I can find any more books by Nikkeijin, especially fiction and/or memoirs, set in the South.
• Try to find some Nikkei sources on the history of chicken sexing in Japanese and Nikkei communities.
• Try to shock someone by casually dropping the term, “chicken sexing” into a conversation.

*Some of Kadohata’s family members were sent to the Poston camp during World War II, according to her website.