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BY: So meanwhile, now you're in Portland, you are heavily involved with the Japanese American community, redress, Day of Remembrance...

CH: Studying Japanese dance.

BY: Oh, studying Japanese dance. So talk about that a little bit.

CH: My first teacher was with the school Fujinami Kai, and the teacher came from Ontario every other month. She didn't live in Portland, and she only spoke Japanese. So I was learning Japanese dance in Japanese, but I didn't speak Japanese. [Laughs] So it was, I feel like I really had to access what that meant to move, and I had a fairly significant experience. I was dancing and she was teaching, but I did the movement before she taught it to me. So I did this whole sequence of movements, and it freaked me out. Because I was like, how did I know how to do that? Because I knew how to do that, and kind of rationalized, "Oh, because I've studied so much modern dance." And I'm like, no, I knew that. I knew what to do.

BY: Interesting. So were you then involved in a Japanese dance group, or you were just studying?

CH: I performed with Fujinami Kai.

BY: And so that was also in kimono, right?

CH: Oh, totally.

BY: It was traditional?

CH: With everything, yeah. Fans. All in Japanese. [Laughs]

BY: Wow, that's amazing. So you told me at one point that you decided to take a break from your involvement in community activities and devote yourself to your artwork. Can you talk a little bit about that decision and what you did?

CH: I have to tell you this one little part about the Japanese dance.

BY: Oh, okay.

CH: My children came to a performance I did at the Japanese gardens, and I was a young, the character was a young girl, so I had a really long ponytail and a lot of makeup, you know, white. And they came backstage and said, "Do you know where my mom is?" and I was right there. [Laughs] Yeah, they didn't recognize me. It was quite interesting.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.