Product Reviews: Staying at Home in Style

Mudras – Hand Seals for Happiness

Let’s begin with an exercise. Either seated or standing, take one long, conscious breath–one deep inhale and exhale. Now, make a strong fist with both of your hands and hold it for a moment. Take a mental note as you squeeze your hands. How are you feeling? How is your breath? What feelings arise?

The World’s Greatest Athlete

How Olympic Decathlete’s Japanese Heritage Led Him to Gold

Bryan Ezra Tsumoru Clay is an Olympic Gold and Silver Medalist, three-time World Champion, and four-time U.S. National Champion in the decathlon, ultimately earning himself the title of “World’s Greatest Athlete” at the 2008 Olympics. Clay was born in Austin, Texas to a Japanese mother and an African-American father who divorced when he was in elementary school. Raised in Hawaii, he moved to California after high school and eventually became a standout athlete on the Azusa Pacific University track team. Clay discussed his entrepreneurial ventures and his African-American/Japanese heritage with Tokyo Journal’s Editor-in-Chief Anthony Al-Jamie.

Yoshie Kris, Making Performance Accessible to All

Inclusion in Tokyo’s Olympic Games

Yoshie Kris is a director of Slow Label, an innovative company based in Japan that creates art and creative opportunities to help diversify the community. She is also one of seven creative directors in charge of organizing the opening and closing ceremonies of the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games. Kris is responsible for facilitating engagement between the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games and for ensuring that the opening and closing ceremonies for both events are accessible to all attendees. She has taken inspiration for these tasks from personal experience. She was diagnosed with malignant fibrous histiocytoma (a type of malignant tumor) in 2010, which has cost her the use of her right leg; she has to walk with a crutch. Her passion for the inclusion of all people in society has led her to travel the world to learn about diversity everywhere. Her education and experience brings an innovative and unique perspective to the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games and the ceremonies that will reflect Japanese culture on a worldwide stage. Kris was interviewed by Tokyo Journal’s Editor-in-Chief Anthony Al-Jamie. Kris now waits with the rest of the world for the Olympics to commence.

Being Like a Rock in a Tea Garden

Shadows

Hiroshima Survivor Hideko Tamura Snider

Educating the World on the Consequences of Nuclear Weapons

Hideko Tamura Snider was a child when the atomic bomb hit Hiroshima in 1945. She later moved to the United States to earn a B.A. in sociology and an M.A. in social work. She has written two books: When A Peace Tree Blooms, a children’s picture book about creating peace in the world, and One Sunny Day, a memoir of her life before the bomb, during the explosion, and afterward in both Japan and the United States. Tamura Snider runs the One Sunny Day Initiatives, an organization that educates the public about the consequences of nuclear weapons and seeks to plant seeds of peace, hope, and reconciliation. Tokyo Journal Editor-in-Chief Anthony Al-Jamie sat down with Hideko Tamura Snider to talk about her experience.

Life after Hiroshima

Mike Kawamura: A Survivor’s Dreams for World Peace

Ikunosuke “Mike” Kawamura is a survivor of the 1945 Hiroshima bombing. He joined the Kyocera Corporation of Kyoto, Japan in 1969. He is known as one of the “Five Samurai” who established Kyocera’s North American manufacturing operations in San Diego. Kawamura has also served as Kyocera’s president in Europe and Brazil, as well as general manager of education and planning at Kyocera International, Inc. Now retired, he promotes peace building through community organizations including Green Legacy Hiroshima and San Diego-WISH. Tokyo Journal Editor-in-Chief Anthony Al-Jamie sat down with Kawamura to talk about the Hiroshima bombing and the 2015 Peace Tree planting ceremony at San Diego’s Japanese Friendship Garden, which used saplings grown from trees that survived the Hiroshima atomic bomb 75 years ago.

MacArthur and Me

I once met United States General of the Army Douglas MacArthur. I had seen him before, from a distance, when he was driving in and out of the gate of his big white house in Tokyo, or when he strode up the steps of the Dai-Ichi Building and disappeared inside those large heavy doors to his headquarters during the occupation of Japan after World War II. But this was the only time I met him face-to-face.

The Warlord and the Wimp

In this excerpt from his Japan Journals, Donald Richie learns what separated leaders from losers.