Yet another American wartime atrocity – the internment of Japanese people living in the United States during World War II – is given voice in Portland Opera’s world premiere, Shizue: An American Story. It opened Oct. 4 for a short run at Portland’s 200-seat Brunish Theatre.
After three Portland performances, the opera company will pack up the clever folding-panel sets designed by John Kashiwabara. One panel side portrays a vivid Hood River orchard scene shadowed by Mt. Hood. When flipped, the other side shows grayed-out, monotonous detention centers, though the mountain remains (hope for the homeland is never lost). Along with the sets will go the simple props, the cast, pianist/music director Gyan Singh Maria and cellist Casey Johnson, among other essential opera workers. The group will travel to Oregon and Southwest Washington schools for 50 or so performances.
The effort is part of the 25-year-old Portland Opera to Go (POGO), recently focused on Oregon stories and history about people and cultures who have been under-represented in the mainstream arts. Students in the fourth grade and above will be able to see the performance, and they will be lucky. As short and simply presented as this one-act 50-minute opera is, it packs a powerful poetic punch. And though small-scale with four singers, it’s well performed and absorbing for all ages.
The central character, Shizue, is played by two singers. Japanese mezzo-soprano Chirhiro Asano performs the role of the elder Shizue, and soprano Lindsay Nakatani sings the younger Shizue during her life as a young woman in Hood River before, when she is proposed to by Kamegoro (Chinese tenor Jietong Fu) in Japan. He promises his poetic bride, who loves flowers and knows the art of ikebana, that he will give her “a good life” in America where he owns 10 acres of orchard land.
The elder Shizue, whom we see reflecting on her life, is widowed after her husband is paralyzed and dies part way through the opera. Eventually, she visits Japan and wins a prestigious Japanese award for one of her tankas (a 31-syllable Japanese poem, traditionally written in a single unbroken line, though often you see the lines broken). She is often onstage with her younger self, usually dressed in pink. The older Shizue wears glasses and a slightly dowdy skirt and cardigan, but the glamorous singer doesn’t look very old despite the costuming efforts.
That’s OK. Use your imagination. She sings and acts well. The fourth character is The Man, (baritone Edward Tavalin) who multi-tasks as numerous guys: a neighbor, a shopkeeper, a military enforcer, a doctor, a postal worker. He changes his jacket or shirt or dons a hat, alters his voice a bit, and his portrayals are believable and economical.
At the opera’s heart is the atrocity. About 120,000 Japanese Americans, mostly on the West Coast, were incarcerated during World War II beginning in 1942 after the Pearl Harbor attack. The Supreme Court upheld the forced internment decision in 1944, claiming in a much criticized 6-3 decision that it was necessary for military and security reasons. In 1984, the court ruled that the decision was unconstitutional. This was not explained in the opera; the incarceration was simply called illegal, which eventually it was proved to be.
Shaped over two years by writer/librettist/director Dmae Lo Roberts – a prolific cross-cultural writer and producer whose podcast “Stage and Studio” is hosted by Oregon ArtsWatch – with the help of consultant Linda Tamura and the PO’s education staff, the story follows the family of Shizue and Kamegoro, who settled in Hood River, Ore. before World War II. But because of the Pearl Harbor attack and the ensuing war in the Pacific, in 1942, new laws forced the family into internment at Pinedale Assembly Center in sweltering Fresno, Calif. They were then transferred to Tule Lake near the Oregon border and finally to a third camp, Minidoka, until the end of the war.
The couple had raised several children on American soil and tended their 10-acre orchard and strawberry patch for years before the war. Even in the wake of anti-alien laws that endangered their Hood River ownership and other rights, Shizue learned to drive and speak English. Much of the story is told by the elder Shizue’s flashbacks prompted by such props as a wedding picture and her ikebana arrangement of yarn, wire and sticks made in the detention camp.
The imprisonment lasted three long years, though son Harry worked as a translator for the U.S. troops and the family signed oaths of loyalty. After the war, they were urged not to return to Hood River, and 40 percent of the Japanese didn’t return home. Shizue’s family lost its land and had to start over again. In the 1950s, they rebuilt and replanted the Hood River orchard and eventually gained U.S. citizenship.
Certainly the 50-minute opera brought up memories of injustice and guilt, and many people of Japanese descent were in the audience to witness it. There were also people like me who remain disgusted at U.S. war policies and politics. Composed by Los Angeles’ Kenji Oh–on hand opening night, as was librettist Lo Roberts–the music incorporated a number of Japanese folk songs and some “sawari” (“buzzy sounds” of the shamisen, a three-stringed Japanese instrument) by putting paper clips into the cello. The music, produced by musicians playing a single piano and single cello, fit beautifully and lightly with the libretto, and captured some traditional Japanese sounds.
Aside from injustice and pain, triumph prevailed in this story, which makes it remarkable and memorable. The often repeated word ,“gaman,” which roughly means perseverance and persistence in times of suffering, capsulized the story’s meaning and tone. The opera’s subtitles translated concepts like gaman, so though the opera was in English, Japanese vocabulary and cultural touchstones are conveyed, a plus for school kids and adults as well.
Another concept, portrayed by Shizue’s skill with ikebana, is the three-way construct of “heavens, the earth and the middle.” Ikebana is a Japanese flower-arranging technique based on three contrasting heights of flowers. In this opera the people are the middle, and they reassure themselves that the stars – or the heavens – are the same from Hood River as they are from Japan.
The opera portrays part of the real-life story of Shizue Iwatsuki, who lived from 1897-1984. She eventually won Hood River County’s Woman of the Year, taught ikebana and Japanese tea ceremony, and ran the family orchard. Her poetry is inscribed on boulders at the Japanese American Historical Plaza in Portland and on a marble column along the Columbia River at the History Museum of Hood River. Talk about resilience, gaman and the power of memory and story. This opera illustrated each of those.
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Also see “Portland Opera To Go’s “Shizue” brings a stirring Oregon story to stages and schools around Oregon,” Brett Campbell’s “Art of Learning” story about the POGO program and the making of “Shizue.”
Angela Allen writes about the arts, especially opera, jazz, chamber music, and photography. Since 1984, she has contributed regularly to online and print publications, including Oregon ArtsWatch, The Columbian, The San Diego Union-Tribune, Willamette Week, The Oregonian, among others. She teaches photography and creative writing to Oregon students, and in 2009, served as Fishtrap’s Eastern Oregon Writer-in-Residence. A published poet and photographer, she was elected to the Music Critics Association of North America’s executive board and is a recipient of an NEA-Columbia Journalism grant. She earned an M.A. in journalism from University of Oregon in 1984, and 30 years later received her MFA in Creative Writing/Poetry from Pacific Lutheran University. She lives in Portland with her scientist husband and often unwieldy garden. Contact Angela Allen through her website.