Our Events
Serica Storytellers at the Noguchi Museum: Poetry, Memory, and Remembrance
Begin with a guided tour of The Noguchi Museum. Stay for poetry, memory, and conversation. Join us for a special Day of Remembrance Serica Storytellers program honoring Japanese American history through tanka poetry, archival materials, and live dialogue.
Feb 21, 2026, 2:00 PM – 4:30 PM
Noguchi Museum, 9-01 33rd Rd, Astoria, NY 11106, USA
Virtual Only sign up: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Z-4tpeZMQcasClH_jbNpWQ#/registration
In honor of February 19 Day of Remembrance, The Serica Initiative presents a special site-responsive edition of Serica Storytellers, hosted live at The Noguchi Museum and held in dialogue with the Museum’s new exhibition, Noguchi’s New York, opening February 4.
The afternoon begins with a guided tour of the Museum, inviting participants to engage with Isamu Noguchi’s profound relationship to New York City—a place that shaped his artistic vision and political consciousness, even as he navigated racism, exclusion, and the legacy of wartime incarceration.
The program then turns to an intimate conversation with the book’s editor, translators, and contributing scholars to discuss By the Shore of Lake Michigan, the award-winning English translation of a 1960 collection of Japanese tanka poetry written by Tomiko and Ryokuyō Matsumoto, a first generation (Issei) couple forcibly incarcerated at the Heart Mountain prison camp during World War II and later resettled in Chicago.
Translated and edited by the poets’ granddaughter and a team of scholars, this collection represents a rare first-generation point of view. Through the tanka form — one of the oldest styles of Japanese poetry — the Matsumotos document 17 years of upheaval, displacement, grief, resilience, and rebuilding in the shadow of incarceration.
Through poetry, translation, and conversation, don’t miss this event that explores how language becomes a vessel for memory, survival, and dignity for Japanese Americans.
EXPANDED SCOPE & SPECIAL FEATURES
Guided museum tour connecting Noguchi’s art, politics, and legacy to Day of Remembrance
In-person and virtual conversation about Tanka poetry with the book's editors, translators, and scholars
On-site display of photographs and original Japanese-language materials relating to By the Shore of Lake Michigan, courtesy of Nancy Matsumoto
Book sales on site, coordinated with the translators
Dialogue over wine & snacks across disciplines: art, poetry, translation, history, and memory
PROGRAM DETAILS
2:00–3:00 PM — Guided Museum Tour
A facilitated tour of The Noguchi Museum and its new exhibition, Noguchi’s New York, exploring how the city’s cultural, social, and political landscape shaped Noguchi’s work—and how the Museum itself stands as one of his most profound gifts to New York.
3:00–4:30 PM — Serica Storytellers Program
Opening remarks and Day of Remembrance framing
Reflections on By the Shore of Lake Michigan
In-person conversation with Kyoko Miyabe and Mariko Aratani
Virtual participation by Nancy Matsumoto and Eri F. Yasuhara
Discussion of tanka poetry, translation, incarceration, and legacy
Audience Q&A
ABOUT THE BOOK
By the Shore of Lake Michigan
UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press (2024)
Winner, Before Columbus Foundation 2025 American Book Award
By the Shore of Lake Michigan is an English translation of a 1960 tanka poetry collection written by Tomiko and Ryokuyō Matsumoto, Issei immigrants who endured forced removal from Los Angeles, incarceration at the Heart Mountain prison camp in Wyoming, and resettlement in Chicago after WWII.
Written in the five-line tanka form (5-7-5-7-7), these poems document 17 years of upheaval, grief, and rebuilding, offering an extraordinarily rare first-generation account of Japanese American incarceration and its aftermath.
SPEAKER BIOS
MARIKO ARATANI - Translator & Editor
MARIKO ARATANI was born in Nagoya in Japan. She is a Japanese instructor, translator and editor. A graduate of Tokyo Geijutsu University of Fine Arts and Music (musicology major) and University of Wisconsin (M.A in Japanese literature and Japanese pedagogy). She recently retired from teaching Japanese at Fordham University. Her publications include The Ink Dark Moon, the English-language translation of poems by two women of the Heian-era ninth-to twelfth centuries CE) court, and White Flash/Black Rain, a collection of poems and articles by women victims of the atomic bomb.
NANCY MATSUMOTO - Writer, Editor & Granddaughter of the Poets
Writer & Editor, Based in Toronto
NANCY MATSUMOTO is a third-generation Japanese American writer and editor who is based in Toronto. She writes about food and drink; agriculture; Japanese American culture, art, and history; and the environment. In addition to By the Shore of Lake Michigan, books she has written or contributed to include: the James Beard award winning Exploring the World of Japanese Craft Sake: Rice Water Earth; Unforgotten Voices From Heart Mountain: An Oral History of the Incarceration; The New Traditional; Displaced: Manzanar 1942-1945: The Incarceration of Japanese Americans; and The Race: Tales in Flight. Her latest book is titled Reaping What She Sows: How Women Are Rebuilding Our Broken Food System (Melville House Publishing, October 2025).
Links:
Website: https://www.nancymatsumoto.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nancymatsumoto
ERI F. YASUHARA - Contributor & Scholar
Specialist in Japanese Literature & Issei Writing
ERI F. YASUHARA immigrated to the U.S. with her family when she was a child. She studied Japanese language, literature, and history at UCLA, where she received her Ph.D. in 1982. As a graduate student, she participated in the Japanese American Research Project and authored the literature section of the Project’s annotated bibliography A Buried Past. Her areas of interest are eighteenth century Japanese haiku and Issei literature. She has published articles on the Lemon Notebooks (Remonchō), a haiku journal published in the first two decades of the twentieth century by Issei living in Southern California. She was Professor of Japanese at California State University, Los Angeles and retired in 2013 as Dean of the College of Arts and Letters at California State University, San Bernardino.
KYOKO MIYABE - Translator, Artist & Scholar (Moderator)
KYOKO MIYABE was born in Yokohama, Japan and received her Ph.D. in English Literature at Cambridge University, U.K. She is Chair of the Humanities and Sciences Department at School of Visual Arts, New York. Her publications include, “Henry James and John Singer Sargent,” Critical Companion to Henry James (2009), “Staging the Drama, Framing the Beholder: Milly Theale and the Paintings in The Wings of the Dove,” Alizés: Revue angliciste de la Réunion (2003), and "Elizabeth Bishop and Poetics of Self-Escape” Q/W/E/R/T/Y (2002). As a practicing artist, she has exhibited in galleries and art institutions in New York and Philadelphia, including Cerulean Arts, Woodmere Art Museum, Stevenson Library at Bard College, New York Hall of Science, and Philomathean Society Gallery at University of Pennsylvania. A selection of her pen-and-ink drawings was published in Celia Bland’s collection of poetry, Cherokee Road Kill (2018).
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
The Serica Initiative thanks the New York State Council on the Arts for the generous grant support. The opinions, results, findings and/or interpretation of data contained therein are the responsibility of the Serica Initiative and do not necessarily represent the opinions, interpretations or policy of the State.
This is a free event - sign up to attend in person at the Noguchi Museum Website: https://noguchieducation.wufoo.com/forms/p24xx170zgojil/
