Our Events
Serica Storytellers: Poetry, Memory, and Remembrance Live & Virtual Event
An intimate Day of Remembrance Serica Storytellers gathering in the Flatiron District featuring Japanese tanka poetry, archival materials, food, and community dialogue. Hybrid live/online format.
Feb 24, 2026, 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Flatiron District, W 18th St
In honor of Day of Remembrance, The Serica Initiative presents a special salon-style Serica Storytellers gathering exploring Japanese American incarceration through poetry, translation, and community dialogue.
Hosted by AAPI community leader Julia Azuma, the evening brings together art, food, and memory. The program centers on By the Shore of Lake Michigan, the award-winning English translation of a 1960 tanka poetry collection written by Tomiko and Ryokuyō Matsumoto — an Issei couple forcibly incarcerated at Heart Mountain during World War II and later resettled in Chicago.
The evening will feature:
Japanese food, drinks, and a community potluck
A live + virtual conversation with editors, translators, and scholars
On-site display of archival photographs and original Japanese-language materials (courtesy of Nancy Matsumoto)
An extended community discussion to reflect collectively on remembrance, resilience, and responsibility
This event moves beyond lecture format. It invites shared reflection in a space intentionally designed for conversation.
PROGRAM DETAILS
6:00 – 7:00 PM: Guest Arrival, Japanese Food & Drinks, Networking
7:00 – 8:00 PM: Webinar / Live Presentation (VIRTUAL PORTION HERE ONLY)
Featuring:
Nancy Matsumoto
Mariko Aratani
Eri F. Yasuhara
Moderated by Kyoko Miyabe
Includes readings, reflections, and discussion of tanka poetry, incarceration, translation, and intergenerational memory.
Question & Answer section will be for those joining virtually as well.
8:00 – 9:00 PM: Facilitated Community Discussion: Open reflection and dialogue among in-person attendees.
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.
To Attend Virtually - Sign Up HERE: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Z-4tpeZMQcasClH_jbNpWQ#/registration
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