<Begin Segment 7>

HH: To what extent do you feel that your sense of values or beauty or religion or whatever has been affected by your Japaneseness?

WW: Well, to what extent has my sense of values been affected by my Japaneseness.

HH: Values, beauty...

WW: I would say substantially. It's intellectual more than emotional. But I have a feeling for [inaudible] and asymmetry as opposed to symmetry. And beauty, which arises entirely from everything I've learned and seen and experienced of things Japanese. Japanese paintings, their homes, their culture. All these things I learned as I grew up, although they were not immediate, direct experiences. I grew up in a standard Victorian-style house, like all my friends did. And it was not until much later in life that I began to see these things firsthand. And indeed, I have never been comfortable in any fully Japanese environment, but I know what it is, and a lot of the sense of values I have, I recognize. Oh, the most important influence, obviously, are my parents, my father and mother. And their sense of morals, what is right and what is wrong and what kind of obligations are expected of you and what you can do and what you cannot do. All these things are very strongly instilled in me, and there's no way I can get rid of them. So this is Japanese. It's their sense of values, so it's there.

HH: Well, thank you very much, that concludes our...

WW: Fine, thank you very much.

HH: It was wonderful.

WW: Pleasure.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 1994 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.