Intergenerational Conversations

LOCATION:Amy’s Beauty Salon, 165 East Taylor Street (to the left of Jack’s Bar)

DESCRIPTION: Intergenerational Conversations can be found near the corner of 4th Street and Taylor, where my aunt’s shop, Amy’s Beauty Salon, has been for over 40 years. Japantown was and still is built on a foundation of family-owned businesses that makes this community unique in a world of corporations. You will experience a floating cloud of Tanzaku (colored tags) that surrounds you. The content of the tags are inspired by and contain my aunt Amy Okagaki’s watercolor paintings, my own art, and family stories archived and published by my uncle, Robert Saito. The tags also contain questions I’ve had that have carried me through the past year of working on Hidden Histories and reflecting on my family’s experiences growing up in Japantown, spanning the generations from Issei (first), Nisei (second), and Sansei (third). Many of these questions I have yet to discover the full realm of answers to, but I hope that they inspire curiosity and dialogue regarding your own personal histories. This installation is very personal, celebrating the creativity that runs in my family, and honoring the roots that all families bring to San Jose Japantown.

SAMPLE:

ARTIST’S STATEMENT: What does the Japanese American identity and experience look like between two different generations? How does a Nisei artist and a Sansei artist use their craft as a medium to connect with their history? When I started working with Hidden Histories, these were the questions that I originally wanted to explore through the development of my AR piece. A few years before the pandemic hit, I was just starting to reconnect with my aunt, Amy Okagaki, a long-time Nisei Japantown resident and business owner, remembering that she is also an artist like I am. I was inspired by this connection through art as a starting point, but along the way discovered that there would be a lot more conversations and relationship building needed to be able to illustrate what I originally envisioned in one art piece. This installation is a reflection of that amorphous journey, as well as honoring my family’s roots as I currently have come to understand it.

Tanzaku are colorful tags that are strung onto trees during the Tanabata festival traditionally held during the summer Japan. People will write out wishes on the tags and hang them on bamboo trees. I was originally drawn to creating an installation inspired by the Tanzaku tradition because of my own wishes as a youth of wanting more knowledge and awareness of the Japanese American experience. As one of the youngest in my family and having to grow up without a Japanese American community, I have often felt isolated from my identity and did not know how to tell my story to others. Being the token kid with a Japanese last name in the early 2000’s meant facing a lot of inquisitive questions about Japan and Japanese pop culture– nothing about internment camps. It wasn’t until college that I learned the difference between being Japanese and Japanese American, a history that gradually filled in the blanks for me as to why I felt so detached from the common perception of Japanese identity. Through learning about my own history, being empowered to have vulnerable conversations with family, and making art as a means to process, I have been able to build a deeper relationship with my Japanese American identity. With Hidden Histories, I want to share a bit of that journey, aiming to create a contemplative experience illustrating the lifelong process of understanding one’s own identity and history.

ARTIST PROFILE:

Maylea Saito is a 2.5 generation Chinese and Japanese American mixed-media artist, muralist, and filmmaker from San Jose, CA. Whether behind a camera or in front of a canvas, Maylea often uses art as a channel for introspection and story-telling. Through her work, Maylea explores the themes of identity, cultural memories, and the intimacy of shared experiences. Hidden Histories is her first foray into AR art.