by J.K. YAMAMOTO
Hokubei Mainichi

Consul General Yasumasa Nagamine and his wife, Ayako, recently honored San Francisco-based storyteller Brenda Wong Aoki and composer/musician Mark Izu for 30 years of multicultural performances.

Aoki and Izu, who are married, have collaborated on productions inspired by everything from old Japanese ghost stories to contemporary Asian American issues. They started their own arts organization, First Voice, in 1995.

"The city of San Francisco is so rich and famous for hosting many classical Western performances such as orchestra, ballet, opera, stage plays. But there are also so many live performances from different cultures," Nagamine said during the Nov. 3 reception at his official residence. "Thanks to a large population of Japanese Americans living in the Bay Area, there are numerous Japanese American artists actively performing ... and we are very fortunate to have some of these artists with us tonight.

"When we saw Brenda and Mark on stage for the first time, her storytelling and Mark's music, a kind of fusion of Japanese instruments and Western instruments together, it immediately captured our hearts. What is more, Mark's music added such depth and added quite harmoniously with Brenda's story so that I could almost visualize the scenes she was describing on stage."

The consulate recently hosted a noontime concert at Yerba Buena Gardens by Izu, who plays the bass, sho and sheng (Japanese and Chinese multi-reed instruments), and other musicians, including Anthony Brown on drums and Shoko Hikage on koto.

Nagamine announced that Aoki and Izu will present "Return of the Sun" on Saturday, Dec. 5, at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, 3200 California St. Aoki will combine her noh and kyogen training with music and dance by De Rompe y Raja Cultural Association, Ensambles Ballet Folklorico de San Francisco, Northern California Korean Dance Association, and Shreelata Suresh. (Info: www.firstvoice.org, www.jccsf.org)

The production is based on the Japanese legend of Amaterasu, the sun goddess. Nagamine explained that the concept of a sun goddess "is not a monopoly of Japan, but is appreciated in other parts of the world, including the Americas, Asia and Africa. Brenda's idea is to exhibit the universality of the sun goddess story."

The consul general praised the couple for helping to "make the arts and culture the centerpiece of our lives in San Francisco."

Commendations From City

U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson, board chair of First Voice, presented a certificate of honor from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to the Nagamines "for your warmth and generosity to the people of this city ... for your deep understanding of contemporary global culture, for building bridges between communities, and for bringing noh, kyogen, kabuki and bunraku to America."

Henderson also presented a certificate to Aoki and Izu "for contributing 30 years of music and story to the people of San Francisco and beyond" and "pioneering the first Asian American jazz festival in America." The certificates were signed by Supervisor Eric Mar of District 1 (Richmond District).

"The mission of First Voice is to create and develop stories and music of people living between worlds," Henderson said. "Critical to this mission is the notion that personal experience ... the voice of hard-lived experience, as Brenda describes it, is essential to authentic pan-world culture. In a very real way, Mark and Brenda's work represents the changing cultural face of the United States, indeed of the world."

He added, "Brenda and Mark are truly extraordinary in the range of things they do. It boggles my mind. Film scores, symphonies, plays, recording artists, authors, educators, pioneers in multidisciplinary performance art. Their work has been performed at the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, on Broadway ...

"Mark Izu was the director of the Asian American Jazz Festival. The festival began in 1981 to serve as a bridge between Asian and African Americans living together in the Fillmore District (and resulted in) a whole new genre of music."

Family History

Aoki noted that her family has deep roots in America. She is a relative of Viscount Shuzo Aoki, who was the Japanese ambassador to the U.S. in 1906 and 1907, and her grandfather, Father Peter Aoki, was an ordained Episcopal priest and one of the founders of San Francisco Japantown.

"But we all fell from grace ... because both sides of the family married white girls," she said. "At that time, it was not a good thing to do. Viscount Aoki married a German baronness, and not my grandfather but his brother Gunjiro ran away with the daughter of the archdeacon of Grace Cathedral ...

"I'm Chinese, Japanese, Spanish and Scots, and always felt that if one body can contain all these different kinds of cultures, then one world can live peacefully with all those different kinds of people. That's really been the inspiration for our work."

Aoki and Izu were asked to perform their play "Uncle Gunjiro's Girlfriend," which deals with California's decades-long ban on interracial marriage, during a conference of the Anglican Church as a way to counter sentiment against ordaining women, gays and people of color as priests. The play's message, Aoki said, is that "things would be different if the church had said 100 years ago, ‘Marry whoever you love.’ ”

The couple performed "The Queen's Garden," a play about Asian Pacific street gangs and tribal warfare in Los Angeles, at the Smithsonian for the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, which includes non-Asian members of Congress who represent districts with large Asian populations. The goal was "to give them a window into the lives of contemporary Asian America," Aoki said.

Aoki added that she and Izu were honored to be the American representatives to the Adelaide Festival of Arts in Australia. "To be among all these artists from all over the world ... just felt so good."

Borrowing a term often used in warfare, Aoki said that First Voice seeks to reach "the hearts and minds of the people."

The reception included a dance performance by Kai Kane Aoki Izu, Aoki and Izu's son, and Emma Lanier, granddaughter of San Francisco sculptor Ruth Asawa. Choreographed by Kimi Okada of ODC, the dance was an excerpt from First Voice's "The Legend of Morning Glory," which was performed at the De Young Museum on Nov. 20.

A jazz concert followed with Izu on bass, Brown on drums, Hikage on koto, and Lewis Jordan on saxophone. In recognition of the common plight that Japanese Americans and African Americans shared during San Francisco's redevelopment era, Aoki asked Jordan to recite a Langston Hughes poem, "The Ballad of the Landlord."