By the Shore of Lake Michigan: Recovering WWII Prison Camp & Resettlement Stories through Poetry

2025 is the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, and as part of this commemoration, Japan Society is honored to present a book talk and signing focused on By the Shore of Lake Michigan, a translation of Japanese tanka poetry written by Tomiko and Ryokuyō Matsumoto, a first-generation Japanese American couple who were incarcerated in one of the ten wartime prison camps. This event will feature speakers Nancy Matsumoto (granddaughter of Tomiko and Ryokuyō), Mariko Aratani, Eri F. Yasuhara and Kyoko Miyabe.

Tanka is the oldest form of Japanese poetry, and still widely practiced today. Five lines in length, with a 5-7-5-7-7 meter, it is two lines longer than haiku. Unlike haiku, which usually describes the natural world and the feelings evoked by nature, tanka covers a wide variety of themes from politics and public events to the most private feelings. In part because of this, it was the form chosen by first-generation (Issei) Japanese immigrants to share their feeling of loss, dislocation and trauma they experienced in prison camps during WWII.

Published by the UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press, By the Shore of Lake Michigan is now accessible to English-language readers for the first time. The Matsumotos’ poems chronicle their lives over a 17-year period, from their 1942 forced relocation from Los Angeles to the Heart Mountain prison camp in Wyoming, through their resettlement in Chicago at war’s end. While many second- and third-generation Japanese American voices have told the story of wartime incarceration in fiction, on stage and in film, very little of the Japanese-language writings of this era have been translated into English. By the Shore of Lake Michigan is a rare account of the events of WWII and its aftermath from a first-generation point of view.

Nearly 15 years in the making, the book is a collaboration between editor Nancy Matsumoto, granddaughter of Tomiko and Ryokuyō, and accomplished translators Mariko Aratani and Kyoko Miyabe. 

Speakers:

Nancy Matsumoto
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.

Mariko Aratani
Mariko Aratani was born in Nagoya, Japan. She is a Japanese instructor, translator and editor. A graduate of Tokyo Geijutsu University of Fine Arts and Music and University of Wisconsin, 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 court, and White Flash/Black Rain, a collection of poems and articles by women victims of the atomic bomb.

Eri F. Yasuhara
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 18th century Japanese haiku and Issei literature. She has published articles on the Lemon Notebooks, a haiku journal published in the first two decades of the 20th 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
Kyoko Miyabe received her Ph.D. in English Literature at Cambridge University. 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” in the Critical Companion to Henry James; “Staging the Drama, Framing the Beholder: Milly Theale and the Paintings in The Wings of the Dove,” Alizés: Revue angliciste de la Réunion; and “Elizabeth Bishop and Poetics of Self-Escape” in Q/W/E/R/T/Y. 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.

UCLA Asian American Studies Press
The UCLA Asian American Studies Press is the only press in the world committed to publishing scholarship on the histories of Asian Americans. It serves as the publications arm of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center and publishes award-winning books, memoirs and anthologies on race relations, war and peace movements, religion, politics, gender and sexuality, community history, art, literature and the Asian diaspora.

Autographs and Book Sales
Attendees will be able to purchase copies of By the Shore of Lake Michigan at this event or bring books from home for a signing session following the talk.

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Japan Society’s 120th anniversary initiatives and related programs are generously supported by Champion Sponsor, MUFG Bank, Ltd.

Japan Society programs are supported by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Additional support for cultural programs is provided by an anonymous donor, the Sandy Heck Lecture Fund, and Anime NYC.