Gwen Muranaka Sparks Conversation and Creativity in ‘Drawing by Heart’
By AMELIA INO, Courtesy of Discover Nikkei
Gwen Muranaka is one of those rare individuals who is doing exactly the job they dreamed of as a kid.
“I think as a kid I either wanted to be a cartoonist or a reporter,” she said, “and I’ve kind of been able to do both. So I’m really grateful to do the two things I’ve always had a love for!”
Muranaka is senior editor of Little Tokyo’s The Rafu Shimpodaily newspaper and a cartoonist for The Hawaii Heraldand Rafu Shimpo. She recently published a book of her cartoons, aptly titled “Drawing by Heart” — a heartfelt example of colorful visual storytelling that draws on her own life experiences and presents themes of identity, culture, and cross-cultural living that will resonate with readers of all ages.
From cartoons depicting a packed commute on a Tokyo train to a visual homage to “Spam Super Bowl” snacks, Muranaka’s cartoons depict all things Japanese and Japanese American with a healthy dose of cuteness mixed in.
The book, a compilation of cartoons drawn across years and even continents, has been a long time coming for Muranaka.
“I’ve been wanting to do a book of cartoons for years and years and I have so many of them,” she said, noting that it felt daunting to know how to organize cartoons that she drew for various publications both in the U.S. and in Japan.
In the end, she realized the organization of the book ended up mirroring her own life trajectory:
“I didn’t intend to, but the cartoons sort of trace my own personal journey going from working at the Pacific Citizen, moving to Tokyo working at The Japan Times, and then coming back working at The Rafu Shimpoin Little Tokyo. It’s kind of in its own way autobiographical in that sense, but not super-duper like a serious autobiography or something, but just some of the issues I dealt with, the things I saw living in Japan as a Japanese American, and then having to do a cartoon once a week for The Japan Timesforced me to do a lot of them for quite a while.”
More recently, Muranaka’s cartoons have been inspired by her father and his three adopted cats, whose adventures together form the basis of the cartoon “Dad’s Three Cats,” published in The Hawaii Heraldand The Rafu Shimpo.
Though many of her cartoons in the past focused on the experience of being a Japanese American living in Japan, she has found that now she is drawing cartoons that are, as she puts it, “more about a Japanese American identity.”
With “Dad’s Three Cats,” she said, “I’m kind of looking at — I’m not even sure if you’d call it aging — but maybe celebrating some of our elderly in a way through my dad.”
Muranaka wondered if she wouldn’t be doing as many cartoons now if it weren’t for her dad and his cats. “It’s been kind of fun to do those [cartoons],” she said, “and reconnect with him and with cartooning.”
Even as her cartoons tell Muranaka’s personal story of being Japanese American, they are also eminently relatable to anyone who has ever lived abroad, had the experience of being a “foreigner,” or navigated a bi- or multi-cultural identity.
“I guess I always thought it was for people like me who’ve maybe had these experiences, and it doesn’t necessarily mean they have to be Japanese American, but it probably helps,” she said, noting that really the book is for “anyone who has kind of struggled with feeling in a different culture or finding these issues that come up.”
Though Muranaka’s cartoons often deal with heavy and complicated subjects — aging, navigating cross-cultural living, identity, and history — she feels that cartooning can bring a unique and oft-needed lightness to these situations. In a way, she hopes the cartoons can provide a “fun entryway” into discussions about Japanese American identity, culture, and traditions.
“I guess talking to maybe more Sansei generation, they really feel like [they] want to pass on a lot of these things to the younger generation, and I feel like this is a good way to do it,” she explained. “I guess many of us have had experiences going to Japan and feeling like you don’t quite fit in, having these things happen, and so maybe it’s a way of kind of laughing about some of these things that we’ve all experienced.”
Beyond providing a way to laugh about shared experiences, Muranaka also hopes that her book of cartoons will generate conversations for a multigenerational audience. Though her book has not circulated widely yet, she has found that it has already been well-received by perhaps the harshest of book critics — children. This response encourages Muranaka:
“I’m hoping that it kind of helps kids see their own culture in some way … that they find ways where they can identify with JA stuff without being real serious.”
Muranaka also notes that the book may inspire children — or adults — to share their own stories:
“Everyone has these things that we deal with, and I just hope it kind of sparks something, that people say, ‘Hey, I need to put something down,’ if it’s cartooning or writing or whatever … I hope it sparks some of that.”
Muranaka’s own journey as a cartoonist started when she was a kid. “I’ve always been a cartoonist, I don’t know. I was always one of those kids who liked to draw … and I just kept doing it and doing it, and I went to the newspaper and said, ‘Hey I wanna try drawing a cartoon! My first efforts weren’t great or amazing or anything but I just kind of kept at it, and I had editors who were willing to let me keep working on my skills.”
Her advice for aspiring cartoonists, writers, and storytellers? “I think you just keep at it, and you’ll find your voice. You just keep at it, be persistent, and tell your story. The more you do it the better you get, I think.”
While Muranaka’s work as a cartoonist has paralleled her career as a journalist and editor, she finds it helpful to separate the two roles. “Because I’m a writer at a newspaper, for the most part everything I do is very serious,” she said. Rather than take a similarly serious, perhaps more editorial cartoonist approach, she sees her cartooning as a way to bring some much-needed fun:
“I think we also need times of levity, times of just having fun, and I think a cartoon is good for that.”
When asked what she felt cartoons could express that her writing could not, Muranaka explained that cartooning is sometimes able to communicate visually what it may take a profusion of words to convey:
“I mean I think cartooning is such a direct thing, that it can go both ways — you can do things that are very emotional and joyful and you can capture so many different things in a cartoon.”
Now, she says, a little levity seems to be exactly what’s in order for her community.
“These days I think, we’ve had such a tough go of it as a community in the last few years, I look at my cartoons as a way to just kind of bring a smile — just as simple as that, to bring a little joy, because you know as a reporter we’ve done all this anti-Asian hate and a lot of heavy, dark topics, so I think the cartoon is sort of a relief from some of that.”
To both kids and those who are kids-at-heart, Muranaka’s fun and genuine book of cartoons is sure to bring just this sense of joy — and, undoubtedly, some great conversations over Spam musubi snacks, as well.
Gwen Muranaka’s “Drawing by Heart” is available for purchase at http://JTownBeat.com, in the Japanese American National Museum Store and at Amazon.
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Chris and Lisa Aihara’s ‘One Musubi for Me’ Delightfully Combines Culture and Counting for the Youngest Readers
By MIKEY HIRANO CULROSS, Rafu Arts & Entertainment
My son has always loved storytime, from his earliest days of awareness. Even now, as a high school senior navigating the unpredictable sea of college applications, he took a break from the pressure of the process and we took a few minutes of comfort in one of his old picture books.
As any parent who has ever picked up a storybook soon learns, the content on the page invariably takes a back seat to the dynamics of the interaction. Time was never more well-spent.
It is within these kinds of magic moments that “One Musubi for Me: Counting Things in Japanese,” the new board book from writer Chris Aihara and illustrator Lisa Aihara, shines so brilliantly. Beyond its mission as a culturally-aware primary counter, the book’s inviting colors and gentle rhythm are worthy of a place alongside classics like “Goodnight Moon” and “Big Red Barn.”
“A lot of what I’ve been interested in and committed to is maintaining culture for the generations who are trying to define Japanese American culture,” said Chris Aihara, whose 1998 book “Nikkei Donburi: A Japanese American Cultural Survival Guide” was aimed at helping third-, fourth-, and fifth-generation Americans of Japanese ancestry better connect to their heritage. “I kind of wanted to redo it, because now I’m a grandmother and there’s a next generation of kids in whom you’d like to see the culture retained.”
On the advice of a friend, Aihara considered the idea of focusing on a much younger audience.
“She said, ‘You know, Chris, do a book for kids and not for parents,’ because the parents would read to the children, and she felt that was something that was missing.”
Of course since this was to be a work heavily dependent on pictures, Aihara needed a top-drawer illustrator, one with not only a keen visual sense, but also someone intimately familiar with the culture.
She didn’t have to look far, teaming up with her daughter-in-law, Lisa.
“We had a few ideas on the table,” Lisa Aihara explained. “We knew that this was going to be sort of a long-term relationship, that we’re probably going to do a lot of books. But with this first one, we wanted it to be simple. We want it to be something that you know is easy to read, what felt like an introduction.
“My son actually loved counting book growing up – those were the simple board books that hold up to grubby hands, you know, he just loved opening it over and over. And that sort of simplicity felt like a really good way to introduce like cultural items, and a really fun way to do that.”
With brief explanations of the objects being counted, “One Musubi” is a delightful introduction to everyday items common to Nikkei households and communities, colorfully presenting them to children (and likely some adults) of all backgrounds.
“I love the specificity of it, where you look at the box and manju and you’re like, ‘Oh, these are the ones Brian [Kito at Fugetsu-Do] makes,’” she said.
While the charm of “One Musubi for Me” is fixed firmly in Japanese American culture, Chris said its emphasis on the local community was key to developing the ideas.
“On the very first page we have [characters] Lily and Sei count things in their community. It’s very much based on what we see in our community in Little Tokyo,” she pointed out. “I hope that resonates with other kids, because their community can be San Francisco, it can be Hawaii or it can be a virtual community, or your community of family and friends. Very much, it was reinforced to me by what we see in what we experience here in Little Tokyo.”
Little Tokyo has long been fertile ground for generations of artists. Chris, who has put together an impressive career working on countless projects with the Little Tokyo Service Center, feels the environment has certainly had bearing on the look, feel and content of her latest work.
“I really believe in the power of the place. Ideally, you come to Little Tokyo, and those things are reinforced and you can look at it online or you can have people talk about it. But here is a living community. where you can see the signs in Japanese, you can see the food, you can go to the temple, it’s where it’s sort of nurtured and you know, kept going. So it’s really important, the physical space.”
One particularly vexing challenge that popped up during the book’s development was the complex structure of counting in Japanese. It’s based on the different shapes or uses of the objects being counted, and requires a whole sub-vocabulary in itself.
“We thought it was just gonna be really simple, but we realized that in Japanese language counting is really complicated,” Lisa recalled. “There’s counters, and numbers don’t stay the same, right? And it’s a children’s book, it has to be accurate.”
After plenty of consideration and gathering feedback, Chris and Lisa realized for this book and its audience, starting simple was the best approach.
“That’s why there’s no kanji, nor does it say that number in Japanese,” Lisa said. “If you were to translate it, you’d have to actually redo it all, in a different book.”
With a background in finance, Lisa has spent the last several years focusing more on her work as a freelance illustrator. For her, the connection to the new book is far more than academic. With two small children and a third on the way, she said “One Musubi for Me” has already earned a special place in her kids’ hearts.
“They were very excited when the book was coming together, since they saw some of the illustrations coming around. I think unknowingly – or maybe it was very conscious – the kids in the book look like my kids, and so they call it their book, actually. They’re like, ‘Oh, that’s our book!’ which has been really special.”
“One Musubi for Me” by Chris Aihara and Lisa Aihara is available at http://mikanpress.org and in the Japanese American National Museum Store.