Entangled Memories

This is one of the most elaborate and intricate collage works Mirikitani created toward the end of his life. The collage is made on a tabletop using a range of images, photographs, photocopies, and fragments from magazines and newspapers—a clear indication that he continued to use salvaged and readily available materials creatively, even after moving off the streets. 

Surrounding a drawing of a large turtle—a symbol of longevity, fortune, and immortality—are photographs of his friends and community members whom Mirikitani connected or reunited with through and after the film The Cats of Mirikitani. Its director, Linda Hattendorf, appears multiple times, and one of the pasted Japanese inscriptions reads, “now, a big star.” Together with images of his friends are early photographs of himself, as well as images of Picasso, President Obama, and Queen Elizabeth II, alongside iconic representations of Japan. In the upper left corner appears a black-and-white image of Emperor Meiji and a portrait of the Romanov family, overlaid with a faint image of a Japanese woodblock print depicting the 1904–1905 Russo-Japanese War. All of these elements point to Mirikitani’s unique way of narrating his life stories, intermingling his personal history, media representation, artistic lineages, and global politics. 

Janice Mirikitani (1941–2021) was a poet, educator, and activist whose work gave voice to the injustice and resilience of Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II. The cousin of Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani, she shared with him both familial ties and a deep commitment to art as a vehicle for healing and social justice. Like Jimmy, Janice drew on memories of wartime incarceration to advocate for empathy and remembrance, themes reflected in her poetry and community work at Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco. 

This collage juxtaposes a 2001 New York Times article about Janice’s reflections after September 11 with one of her poems, “Why is Preparing Fish a Political Act?” In this poem, Janice transforms a simple act of preparing fish into an intergenerational meditation on memory, survival, and inherited labor. Through her grandmother’s careful, ritualized cooking, she reveals how domestic acts—often dismissed as ordinary—carry the weight of cultural continuity and resistance against assimilation and erasure. The inclusion of a handwritten Japanese inscription and images of Janice herself echoes Mirikitani’s collage practice, blurring lines between public memory and personal testimony. Together, their works illuminate an intergenerational dialogue about survival, identity, and compassion amid historical trauma.