週刊NY生活

2019年（平成31年）2月2日（土）VOICES From

THE NEW YORKERS
Picture Brideby Dan McDonaldJapanesereaders of thiscolumn likely
came to America
for a variety ofreasons: work
assignment,
school or perhaps
to experience a
different culture.
American readers may recall family
stories of ancestors fleeing persecution,
poverty or war in search of a new startin the land of opportunity.
During the holiday break, I
watched Picture Bride, a 1995 independent film about an orphaned girlfrom Yokohama who immigrates toHawaii in the early 20th century. Riyo
(Youki Kudoh) is the picture bride ofan older Japanese man who labors inthe sugarcane fields. Her visions of an
American paradise are quickly shattered on her first evening with her husband in their small, isolated shack.
Hearing the faint sounds of a woman
singing, her husband Matsuji tells her
the ghosts of the cane fields have cometo welcome her.
The city girl from Japan struggles to adjust to the backbreaking workin the fields, but Kana (TamlynTomita) befriends Riyo. Together they
wash laundry for a white family andKana confides that she sleeps in thecane fields to escape an abusive husband, singing her baby to sleep. When
the workers burn the sugarcane at harvest time, Kana perishes in the firesearching for her baby, who wanderedoff.
Wishing to escape and return toJapan, Riyo runs away one night andfalls asleep on the beach. In a dream,
Kana tells her she is going home.
When Riyo says she wants to go withher, Kana replies “Who’s waiting for
you there?” and wades into the sea,
fading from view.
The film ends with Riyo, Matsujiand other Japanese workers dancing at
an Obon festival. An older Riyo tells
us that she still sometimes hears thefaint voice of a woman singing, only toawake from a dream and realize it isher daughter singing lullabies to herown children.
(Dan is a newspaper columnist, editor
and Japanese translator. Interestedreaders can contact him atdan9605@hotmail.com)

THE

SHUKAN NEW YORK SEIKATSU

JAPAN VOICE[English Edition］ (22)Tidying Up andSparking Joy!
Marie Kondo’s Method
Goes Viral

COOL JAPAN from New Yorkers’ Viewpoints
States.
Takashi Uono, president of Uosho Co., Ltd.,said, “I cannot wait to introduce to New Yorkers ourwagyu beef.” They are currently waiting for a vendor’spermit.
Zene Flinn, chef at
the Park Avenue Winter,
served original dishes madewith ingredients fromNiigata. Mr. Flinn visited
Niigata last summer for abusiness venture to invite
buyers, and while he wasthere he learned about ingredients used in the local food.
Governor Hanazumi
introduced sceneries of the four
seasons in Niigata as well as their
special method of making Kanzuri(Japanese cooking paste) in aslideshow presentation. He hadsake with participants at the sakesection. (Photo and Article byintroduced a traditional aged soy Ryoichi Miura/Translated bysauce which had been stocked for a Chikako Iwasaki)
long period in a room covered insnow, as well as wagyu beef and Specially made titanium cups fromgluten free noodles. Some of these HORIE’s collection attract New
products are available in the United Yorkers at the reception.

Top Sales from Japan

Governor of Niigata Prefecture Hideyo Hanazumi
Visits New York to Promote
Niigata’s Local Products and Tourism
Niigata Prefecture sponsored a tasting
event to introduce their famous agriculturalproducts, including sake, in New York on
January 11. About 100 people in the foodindustry participated in the event. Hideyo
Hanazumi, governor of Niigata, visited New
York to promote Niigata and made a presentation at the event. The venue was the Park
Avenue Winter (near East 26th Street) andvarious types of Japanese sake originallymade in Niigata, including Hakkaisan andKubota, were served with specially madehttps://www.yomiuri-info.jp/daily_yomiuri/nys/titanium cups from the collections of HORIECorporation. The day before the event twolavish parties had also been thrown: one wasfor NEW YORK NIIGATA KENJINKAI’s
30th anniversary, led by Chairman Kenji
Otsubo, and the other was for the 8thanniversary of NIIGATA NIPPO’s international exchange branch with President
Toshizo Oda at the Nippon Club.
At the tasting event, Uosho Co., Ltd.

Kondo at a book signing that took place
in a New York bookstore. (May2015/Shukan NY Seikatsu)

Since Marie Kondo, a worldrenowned tidying expert, started her newNetflix show in the beginning of the NewYear, the Konmari organizing methodhas gone viral in the United States.
The show has eight episodes aired
globally. In every episode Kondo visits afamily in the United States, helping
clients de-clutter and choose joy. Rightafter the first episode was aired, millennials Began going on Instagram to show
off their de-cluttered drawers and aresaying things like, “When I put all myclothes together, 90% of them didn’t
spark joy,” and, “I’m very much into theKonmari method.”
On January 11 the Washington
Post reported that donations to Goodwill,a thrift store chain, were up about 66%
from the previous year, and auction
houses have been incredibly crowdedwith furniture pick-up reservations.
According to their article, one of the reasons this is happening is because people
were trying to clean their houses following the government shutdown.
Kondo published “The Life-Changing
Magic of Tidying Up” in 2011. The
English version was later released in2014, after which it became widely
famous all over the world. She currently
lives
inCalifornia.
(KaoruKomi/Translated by Etsuko Noda)

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