In Kimiko’s Pearl, a young girl finds a diary inside an old family trunk, and the pages she reads vitalize into balletic, symphonic echoes of her grandparents’ and parents’ lives through the state-sanctioned incarceration and dispersal of Japanese Canadians during and after WWII.
The story is expressed as a multi-generational communion: Kimiko, the young Japanese Canadian yonsei, laces the dance of her curiosity, sympathy, and sorrow into a re-envisioned narrative of her family legacy.
The evening’s performance opens with a taiko trio from Nagata Shachu. Their taiko performance is like a meditative cleanse before the transcendental experience of the ballet; Nagata Shachu’s hypnotic, rigorous beat sets the stage for the wordless beauty of Kimiko’s Pearl.
The diary in Kimiko’s Pearl traces an issei’s immigration from Japan to Canada and his marriage to a “picture bride,” their separated incarceration in a prisoner-of-war camp and an internment camp, their nisei daughter’s relocation to Toronto and her marriage, and their sansei granddaughter’s continued experience of alienation and ‘marrying out’ to a white man. The next in this generational line is the yonsei great-granddaughter, Kimiko.
Kimiko weaves herself through the choreography of her family history–marching helplessly against the officers who enforce evacuation orders and twirling in synchronicity with her ancestors’ moments of union. Throughout the performance, I felt emotionally rooted in Kimiko’s witnessing and processing. Kimiko epitomized the yonsei consciousness: our simultaneous distance and closeness to our elders’ trauma opens space for a sober emotional intimacy with the injustice they endured. When her great-grandparents must trudge forward through piercing racism, Kimiko embodies a doubled-over pain.
Just as traumatic histories are often wordless in survivors’ memories, Kimiko’s Pearl is a textless script. The story is instead told as an all-consuming sensorial experience–a synergy of visuals, movement, and sound. I intuitively connected each step of Kimiko’s family journey to the timeline of shared history. Surely, though, those audience members who are not aware of Japanese Canadian history had a different and perhaps less attuned experience.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police march towards the ballet’s issei and nisei generation at every major WWII turning point. The officer caricature is always wearing a blank white mask, while all the other characters (who are all Japanese Canadian) dance unmasked.
But near the end of the performance, Kimiko’s mother becomes surrounded by darkness and a taunting chorus of white masked persons. I felt as cramped and contained as Kimiko’s mother, who stands alone and plays out a tension with a white mask of her own until she finally adopts it onto her body. I understood this backdrop of masks as a dominant white culture pressuring Japanese Canadians into assimilation, and also as a persistent intergenerational trauma–a sea of ghosts taunting lost culture and spirit.
The ink, acrylic, and digital artworks of Norman Takeuchi, Lillian Yano Blakey, and Emma Nishimura backgrounded the performance as digital projections, setting the atmosphere of each scene. Both Norman and Emma contributed collage works, merging traditional Japanese prints with modern visuals. This weaving and layering of past and present reflects the larger intergenerational story of the ballet, as well as a broader Japanese Canadian story of embracing a uniquely blended cultural identity.
Kimiko’s Pearl activates collectivity in both the content of its story and the way it is told. After the government pressured Japanese Canadians to isolate themselves from each other, JCs began making taiko drumming groups, photography exhibits, theatre performances, and arts festivals within a framework of ‘group shows’ rather than individualistic ones. The collaboration of various Japanese Canadian artists in Kimiko’s Pearl carries on this tradition of reclamation through communal artistic creation.
Mitsuko Noguchi
June 22, 2024 at the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre in St. Catharines, Ontario