Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Mary Kageyama Nomura Interview
Narrator: Mary Kageyama Nomura
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Torrance, California
Date: July 9, 2009
Densho ID: denshovh-nmary-02-0011

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TI: Now, did you sing much with, like, Issei groups? Did you ever sing at functions for Isseis?

MN: When you say Issei, it goes way back to when I was five years old. I sang with a group of these men students that my mother had, and she would play the shamisen, the futo shamisen, while her students, the male students, would sing their operas. And I would mimic them by listening to them in their lessons. And then one day she put me on the stage and I sang the opera song that they, that she was teaching them, and I sang it. And I was only five. And the audience would start crying, and they'd throw money at me. In those days, it was okay to throw money on the stage. So I remember that. I never got to see any of the money, but I know they were throwing money on the stage.

TI: And you said, the audience, they would start crying?

MN: They would start crying, because I was just five years old singing the Japanese-style opera. They called it Gedayu, Gedayu, or now they call it Jorori. But I remember, I have pictures of that, sitting on the stage with my mother. [Laughs] But I guess I was a born ham, just like my mother, just always enjoying music.

TI: Now, when you said they cried, was it tears of, like, because it was like moving music?

MN: Moving, because it was this little five year old singing heavy opera stuff that the adults were singing before.

TI: But then would they still cry if, like, when the men sang the same song?

MN: No, no. It was expected of them because they were taught. [Laughs]

TI: But to see this five year old singing this...

MN: And I wasn't taught, I just mimicked them. I didn't know what I was singing, it was all in Japanese.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.