Pittsburgh-born enka star Jero to make New York debut, June 9th.

From music-lounge.jp

Not exactly local news, but the Japan Society says enka star Jero---who was born in Pittsburgh in 1981 and graduated from Pitt in 2003---will be performing in New York City on June 9th.

Pittsburgh-native, Tokyo-based enka superstar JERO makes his New York debut at Japan Society! With his smooth voice and hip-hop stylings, JERO has breathed new life into this sentimental Japanese music genre often associated with themes of one’s hometown, lost loves and sake. Often referred to as the “Japanese blues” or “Japanese country music,” enka’s melodies and required vocal techniques make it a quintessentially Japanese musical style.

Tickets are $22 for Japan Society members, $28 for non-members, and can be purchased online. Here's a sample of Jero live:

US troops in Okinawa "WWII leftover", Post-Gazette says.

A thoughtful editorial in Tuesday's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on the announcement that the Marines will reduce their presence on the Japanese island of Okinawa by nearly half. A couple of excerpts from the short piece, which concludes by saying this limited withdrawal should be the "first [step]" toward removing the military presence from Japan:

U.S. taxpayers are still left pondering the logic of keeping 90 bases and 40,000 Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and U.S. civilians on Japanese territory. World War II ended 67 years ago; it's hard to argue that the United States must still "watch" Japan. Japan also has the world's third- largest economy, behind the United States and China, and is capable of paying for its own defense. The latest evidence is it has offered $3.1 billion to help finance the cost of moving the U.S. forces off Okinawa.

. . .

The claim that the United States must maintain forces in Japan to stand watch over China also doesn't hold water. In fact, U.S. troops there serve as a provocation to China.

Our country's fascination with war and its obsession with militarism is extremely troubling, not only for peaceful Americans but for the rest of the world. It's especially ironic when we consider that seven decades ago the United States sought to punish Japan for those very same tendencies.

The Marines really aren't leaving---they'll still be all over Japan, and these 9,000 will be just be moved to other islands---and this shift isn't really a victory for pacifism, or for intelligent foreign policy. After all, the editorial really tries to appeal to America's wallet, and not to its conscience. Nevertheless, reading an editorial like this is refreshing: a positive step, but it should be only the first one toward building a culture that considers peace, not war, as the true victory.

Korean food and culture festival in Pittsburgh, May 5th.

The Korean Central Church of Pittsburgh (피츠버그한인중앙교회) will host its annual Korean food bazaar on May 5th from 10:30 to 4:00pm. As the advertisement says, the menu will include bulgogi, naengmyeon, kimbap, kimchi, pajeon, yukgaejang, and other well-known Korean items. It might be your only chance to try kimbap for under $10 in Pittsburgh.

The church is at 821 S. Aiken Avenue in Shadyside, a block south of Walnut Street, the trendy shopping district in the neighborhood. The Korean festival will coincide with the annual "Walk on Walnut", benefiting local victims of domestic violence, and running May 4th through 6th.

Update: The Tribune-Review has a profile of the 2012 festival now.

2012 Silk Screen Asian American Film Festival, opens May 11.

Pittsburgh's 2012 Silk Screen Asian American Film Festival will open May 11th with The Lady, starring Michelle Yeoh as Aung San Suu Kyi. The festival will run through May 20th, with 24 films at three venues throughout Pittsburgh: the Regent Square Theater, the Harris Theater, and the Melwood Screening Room.

Ugh. So the 65-year-old allegedly responsible for sending threatening emails to current and former University of Pittsburgh professors, and the man behind some bat-shit crazy ramblings against Pitt on his Facebook page and another website, was an English as a Foreign Language teacher in China (here he is on a Chinese EFL jobs site). It's the oddballs, eccentrics, and misfits that Asian EFL attracts that help give the rest---the motivated, the curious, and the sincere---and the industry itself a bad name.

Stats on Asians seeking permanent residency in Pennsylvania, 2011.

Via Nullspace comes a set of links from the Department of Homeland Security about the numbers of, and certain trends among, internationals seeking permanent residency in the United States. Incoming residents from Asia and Oceana to the Pittsburgh region has gone up from 2006 to 2011, Nullspace writes, culminating with 1,826 last year. In 2011 there were 9,197 to the Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington area, according to the DHS's Supplemental Table 3.

Looking at Pennsylvania as a whole in 2011, which had 12,071 from Asia based on Supplemental Table 1:

* 159 from Cambodia
* 2,247 from China
* 120 from Japan
* 13 from Laos
* 48 from Malaysia
* 584 from Philippines
* 481 from South Korea
* 94 from Taiwan
* 190 from Thailand
* 940 from Vietnam

Pittsburgh Sakura Festival, April 29.

The First Annual Pittsburgh Sakura Festival will be held April 29 at Pittsburgh's North Park. A short press release published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Saturday reads:

The Sakura Project, which has been planting cherry trees in North Park for three years, will plant more trees and hold a Cherry Blossom Festival from 3 to 5 p.m. April 29 next to the boat house in North Park.

Activities will include folk dancing, musical performances, kite flying, a tea ceremony, a raffle and an appearance by Takumi Kato, a world champion taiko drummer from Japan.

The Pittsburgh Sakura Project has been planting cherry blossom trees in North Park for several years.

The trees have been planted near the boat house, though I think they would look nicer planted closer to the water. The trees are still quite small, but have yielded some blossoms already.

A rainy day on March 24, 2012.

This festival won't coincide with a viewing party, as blossoms in Pittsburgh---like the ones at larger festivals in Washington D.C. and Philadelphia---have come and gone thanks to an atypically warm March. The Pittsburgh Sakura Project plants trees twice a year, spring and fall, so check their website for details and how to get involved.

Students deal with the University of Pittsburgh bomb threats in different ways:

Annmarie Grant, also an engineering major, said that she hasn’t been able to focus on her schoolwork with all the threats.

“It feels like everything is so surreal at this point. We aren’t focused on homework,” Grant said. “I colored all day and watched Korean television.”

lol wut?

Japanese film Anpo: Art x War at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Art, April 12.

The Japanese documetary Anpo: Art x War will be showing April 12 at the Frick Fine Arts Building Carnegie Museum of Art in Oakland. (The location was changed on April 9th due to repeated bomb threats to the Frick Fine Arts Building and other locations on campus.) The University of Pittsburgh Center of International Studies writes:

The 1951 US-Japan Mutual Security Treaty (ANPO) gave the U.S. the right to maintain armed forces on Japan’s soil. This sparked a protest movement in 1960 in which millions of Japanese citizens took to the streets. The film uses the work of Japanese artists, photographers, and filmmakers to guide the viewer through the opposition to the government response and the presence of U.S. military in Japan.
The director, Linda Hoaglund, is a filmmaker, raised in rural Japan by American missionaries.

Round table discussion with the audience to follow, with speakers Linda Hoaglund, Geralyn Huxley (Curator of Film and Video, The Andy Warhol Museum), and Charles Exley (Assistant Professor, East Asian Languages and Literatures).

Free lecture on "traditional" "Korean" fusion music, April 13.

The University of Pittsburgh Department of Music presents a lecture by R. Anderson Sutton "on Fusion Music and Contemporary Korean Cultural Identity". An excerpt from the abstract:

The notion of cultural purity is demonstrably a myth, as any careful historical analysis of cultural expression anywhere in the world can reveal multiple origins, blends, syncretisms, hybridities that are the inevitable result of human contact. Yet in Korea, as in many countries around the globe, some forms of cultural expression have come to be recognized as “pure” or “authentic” indigenous forms, often celebrated in official discourse as invaluable assets, to be nurtured and preserved against the perceived onslaught of foreign mixture and “pollution.” Korean official discourse on the arts and government-supported cultural policy in Korea has strongly favored the forms with the least evident influence from other countries and cultures, but the vast majority of Korean people today and in the recent past have felt remarkably little appreciation for many of these forms. While most would not deny that these forms are indeed part of their cultural heritage as Koreans and are clearly and unambiguously identifiable as “Korean arts,” they also feel culturally “estranged” from them. That they enjoy other forms of music in almost all contexts presents us with a challenge as we try to come to terms with Korean notions of identity and music. Korean fusion music, a broad and somewhat controversial category of diverse musical practices, all of which involve at least some perceivable cultural mix between unambiguously Korean elements and other elements with foreign origins that are readily apparent, is becoming an increasingly important response to the unsettled cultural terrain on which musicians find themselves in contemporary Korea. This paper considers examples of Korean fusion music, both mainstream and marginal, in an attempt to illuminate aspects of contemporary Korean cultural identity and its discourses in music.

These discussions on "pure" Korean---and "pure" anything, really---are not new among people who pay attention to contemporary South Korean culture, but it's nonetheless nice to see the discussion happening close to home, too. The lecture is free and will be held on April 13, 4:00 pm, in room 132 of the University of Pittsburgh Music Building.