Contrary to common belief, I appeared in Little Tokyo frequently during the height of my career. Most years, I visited the Buddhist temple in conjunction with the summer O-bon Festival. And when important visitors were in town from Japan, I was often invited to functions in their honor. Many of them—I am thinking now of the young Crown Prince, as well as the opera star Yukari Irabu— specifically requested my presence. Most of these events were unexciting but pleasant—delicious food interspersed with conversation about life in Japan and America, preceded by much picture-taking and autograph-signing. But occasionally they grew rather tiresome, and sometimes people would regrettably embark upon topics inappropriate for social occasions.
I remember one such event in September of 1917, a dinner in the honor of Dr. Ishii, the Japanese foreign minister. Dr. Ishii had sailed from Tokyo to San Francisco and then taken a train to Los Angeles, where he would spend two days before boarding a cross-country train to Washington, D.C. The dinner took place in the beautiful home of Ichiro Matsui, the president of the Japanese Association. Mr. Matsui and his wife were, as everyone knows, among the most prominent members of the community. He had been one of the original backers of the Little Tokyo Theater, which is how we came to know one another; now he ran a successful floral distributing company, which helped finance his civic activities. The Matsuis’ home was a large Craftsman bungalow not far from my own first house in Pico Heights, tastefully decorated with a blend of Japanese and American furnishings. The guests were ushered at first into a large drawing room, where we were served cocktails by a young kimono-clad woman who giggled when she handed me my drink.
It was a midsized gathering of perhaps twenty-five people, intimate and rather unremarkable. Dr. Ishii, a tall and fit-looking man whose hair was just starting to gray, spoke to the small group of people gathered around him with the air of someone who is accustomed to being heard. He had the self-assurance of a man whose privileged background and careful schooling have instilled in him an utter belief in his own importance. Something about him—perhaps his similarity to some of the prominent guests who’d stayed at the Ishimotos’ inn in Karuizawa when I was a boy— made me feel immediately on guard. His wife, a handsome woman in her middle fifties who was almost as tall as her husband, looked equally aristocratic, but the laugh lines around her eyes and a softness at her mouth suggested a warmth that seemed lacking in her husband.
In contrast to the Ishiis, the Matsuis were more inviting, moving from person to person to ensure that everyone was comfortable. Mr. Matsui—a short, rotund man whose flushed cheeks and ready smile always reminded me of a wooden Buddha—had successfully expanded the influence of the Japanese Association, which worked to increase the standing of the Japanese population in the eyes of city leaders. The Association had led the effort to boycott gambling houses in Little Tokyo, and was now engaged in attempts to Americanize recent immigrants by offering English classes and encouraging people to get driver’s licenses. Mrs. Matsui, who was equally as round and cheerful as her husband, did her part as well; she’d organized a cooking class to teach recently arrived Japanese wives how to prepare Western meals for their husbands.
There were others in attendance that evening—the head of the Japanese Business Alliance, two more members of the Japanese Association, the pastors of two churches, the head of a Buddhist temple, and a local painter named Kato who was beginning to make a name for himself, along with his lovely fiancée, Miss Kuramoto. The Matsuis’ son Daisuke was there as well, a handsome lad of perhaps eighteen, who had his parents’ happy demeanor but not their rotundness, and who stared at me unabashedly all evening. Hanako Minatoya had not been able to attend, as she was appearing in a play in San Francisco.
After a pleasant prelude of perhaps thirty minutes, during which I spoke briefly with most of the guests and took photographs for the Association’s newsletter, the entire party moved into a Japanese-style dining room with tatami mats, two long, low tables, and brightly colored seating cushions. Dr. Ishii was seated at the head of one table, with Mrs. Ishii directly to his left. Mr. Matsui sat across from her, and I to his right; his wife sat next to Mrs. Ishii. One of the pastors—a Mr. Hara—was seated on my other side. Across from him was Kato, the artist, along with his attractive companion. Young Daisuke Matsui sat at the end of the table.
The food was excellent and had been prepared by the finest chef in Little Tokyo, who’d been hired by the Association for the event. I believe we had just begun our third course—raw tuna and halibut arranged delicately on handmade ceramic dishes—when Dr. Ishii turned toward me and said, “I hear that Nakayama-san’s most recent film represents a departure for him.”
I lowered my chopsticks and nodded. “Indeed. I am playing a hotel proprietor who is hiding American soldiers from the German spies who are trying to kill them.”
“I see. Perhaps the war has influenced the kinds of films being made here in America. It appears that prior to now, Nakayama-san has been most adept at portraying villains and fools.”
I turned toward him but looked beyond his head, trying to quell my irritation. “I would humbly offer, Dr. Ishii, that all of my characters—even those who appear, as you say,
