Just like most people can recall their exact location when news broke that President John F. Kennedy was shot or suicidal terrorists were attacking the World Trade Center, Emiko Gerber distinctly remembers what she was doing when a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami wreaked havoc on Japan.
“It was just devastating,” Gerber, who has family members living in Tokyo and the southern islands, said of the March disaster. “My grandmother gets the Japanese news stations on satellite. When [news of the earthquake and tsunami] started coming in, we just sat and cried.”
In response to the disaster, Gerber and a handful of other concerned individuals, including Rev. Anna Camphouse of Christ United Methodist Church and members of the Santa Maria Japanese Community Center, founded Japanese Earthquake Tsunami Support (JETS).
The organization held its first fundraiser on May 14 at the Santa Maria Town Center, during which people enjoyed Japanese-American musical performances, a kimono exhibit, and more.
Next up, JETS will partner with Anime Five Cities to present the area’s only anime convention on June 18 at the Ludwick Community Center in San Luis Obispo.
The purpose of the event—and others like it—is twofold: to raise money for survivors of the earthquake and tsunami while exposing people to Japanese-American culture.
“So far, we’ve raised over $5,000. Our hope is to up that with the convention,” Gerber said. “We want to help people in Japan cope. Even though I know we have tornadoes and fires and other disasters here, we don’t want people to forget what happened.”
All money raised by JETS at the event will go to four different sources: the United Methodist Committee on Relief, the Asian Rural Institute, Buddhist Churches of America, and the Japanese Red Cross.
Anime Five Cities’ colorful world of Japanese slang, wild costumes, and obscure anime references is dizzying, but once inside, who could possibly leave? The annual convention, which started just last year at the Avila Beach Community Center, drew upwards of 250 enthusiasts, quickly filling the small venue and taking the convention’s limited staff by surprise. This year, organizers are expecting close to 500 people.
“There are some anime clubs that are around,” said convention founder Paula Angeles, citing Cal Poly’s Mino no Anime, a fan club in its 20th year. “So you would think that there would be a lot of people who would be aware of anime and of Japanese pop culture. But nobody started one here. So we said, ‘You know what? Let’s start one.’”
Such a convention typically features a cosplay contest—in which contestants are judged for their craftsmanship in making their own anime-inspired costumes and for short scenes they perform. Attendees will also get a chance to meet guests of honor Irene Flores, a local manga illustrator, and voiceover actress Lauren Landa, known for her role as the sexy Litchi Faye Ling on the video game BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger and its sequel BlazBlue: Continuum Shift.
JETS, for its part, will auction off anime and costume play stuff—donated by Cosplay in America and Pacific Media Expo—as well as an autographed photo of Japanese-American activist and Star Trek star George Takei.
Anime is just one form of Japanese culture to transplant itself on the Central Coast. Japanese immigrants first came to California in the late 19th century, bringing with them a kaleidoscope of cultural treasures.
In an effort to preserve the Japanese culture and language, local families founded the Gakuen School, which later became the Santa Maria Japanese Community Center.
“The whole valley became part of its service area,” said Robert Yochioka, a sociology and Asian ethnic studies scholar and outgoing treasurer of the Santa Maria Japanese Community Center.
Labor disputes and the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor sparked a wave of anti-Japanese sentiment, which eventually led to the internment of countless Japanese-American families.
“After the war, former residents returned to the area—mostly farmers,” Yochioka said. “They were very fortunate that the people they had signed their property over to decided to return it.”
For years afterward, the local Japanese culture thrived. But then, Yochioka said, “the local children went off to college and became professionals and they left the area.”
But in the last few decades, Yochioka said he’s seen growth in the area’s Japanese-American and other Asian-American populations.
The Santa Maria Japanese Community Center and JETS are encouraging people with Asian heritage, and even those who just have an interest in various cultures, to come together as one community. Some events currently in the works include a series of Japanese language workshops and a concert.
“I think there’s going to be a resurgence on the part of the young people to explore their heritage,” Yochioka said, adding that his hope is to recruit representatives from different Asian-American groups to create a non-religious, non-political organization focused on personal relationships.
Events like the anime convention, he said, inspire “an intergenerational opening up and sharing. It keeps the old folks on their toes and teaches the kids that their grandparents aren’t a bunch of old fuddy-duddies.”
Anna Weltner, arts editor for the Sun’s sister paper New Times, contributed to this article. Contact Managing Editor Amy Asman at aasman@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jun 16-23, 2011.