California Sushi, Joel Sanderson; Roger Shimomura

The series of seven short performances that compose California
Sushi are an autobiographical examination of post-WWII racial and
discriminatory issues faced by Asian Americans and personally
experienced by Shimomura. In Make Rice, Not War, the actor Tony
Allard is dressed as a high-ranking military officer and methodically
makes rice while “The Stars and Stripes Forever” by John Philip
Sousa plays. Valeda Daze refers to a Japanese American Greek
society at the University of Washington, Shimomura’s undergraduate
school, and features Shimomura played by Tony Allard. K.I.K.E.
(Kinky Immature Kimono Empress) addresses the harmful power of
language by using an offensive term for someone of Jewish descent
in response to the acronym J.A.P (Jewish American princess), which
is a negative slur when referring to someone of Japanese ancestry.
As the artist asserts, kike is “the foulest thing you can call a Jewish
person” and should not be used in any situation. The mock interview
staged in Tai-Pan Cappy—which is a 19th-century term referring to
culturally insensitive businessmen working in Asia and is played by
the first director of the KU Center for East Asian Studies, Professor
Cameron “Cappy” Hurst—interrogates manifestations of cultural
imperialism. He is a complex work in which an Asian women played by
Keiko Kira interacts with symbolic objects representing biographical
aspects of the artist’s life. Better Homes, taken from the magazine
Better Homes and Gardens, contrasts idealized images of American
popular culture with the stark reality of the Japanese American
experience in internment camps. Finally, Yellow No Same confronts
the narrow-minded discriminatory premise that all Asians are the
same by contrasting differences between Japanese and Chinese
cultures. By filtering popular culture through a lens of parody and dark
humor, California Sushi underscores racial attitudes as a strategy for
imparting greater degrees of cultural sensitivity.