Landscape architect Keiji Uesugi takes us around the James Irvine Japanese Garden, originally designed by his late father, Dr. Takeo Uesugi. Located in the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo, this garden has unique features centered around the Japanese American story in the United States.
The Nichi Bay Cafe crew while in Southern California for our films of remembrance visited the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center and it’s James Irvine Japanese Garden where we caught up with Ki Usugi, son of landscape architect Dr. Teo Uugi, who originally designed the garden. Well, we’re in the James Irvine Garden at the Japanese American Cultural Community Center in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles. Its Japanese garden name is Saduin. This means clear water garden. And so my connection to the garden um is that it was designed by my father uh Dr. Pakot. He passed away in 2015. In terms of uh our family’s legacy, he was a 14th generation Japanese garden designer. Uh so his grandfather uh was a Japanese gardener. And so uh by my work I do as a 15th Japanese 15th generation Japanese garden designer. It’s been going uh for hundreds of years in our family. Uh but uh he designed this uh around the time when I was born uh in the mid 1970s. Uh during that time when there were efforts for community redevelopment. Um, part of that was like the little Tokyo Towers being constructed for uh to provide affordable housing and then also the JACCCC providing uh this cultural community center uh really uh started to gain momentum and as part of that community center having a Japanese garden uh being uh uh articulating and symbolizing the legacy of the Japanese American community experience uh was part of that plan. And so um there were uh various uh leaders of the community that came together and uh decided on who was going to design the garden, how would they fund it and as far as a designer was concerned uh they uh spoke with my father uh and then uh he developed various concepts and then uh um it came to a design that was uh created here. In terms of the saduang here, uh this was they didn’t want to build or design a a Japanese garden that was just a copy paste of a garden from Japan. That wouldn’t really make sense or tell the story of the Japanese American experience. And so um my father uh being a shin is a first generation uh wasn’t uh all that familiar with the Japanese American history um that predated World War II. They did a lot of research study and uh spoke with various people to learn about the multigenerational legacy of the Japanese American community. And so he designed uh this uh garden here with Japanese garden design principles but based on the history of the uh Japanese American community. And so that makes it a very unique and the first of its kind uh uh Japanese garden of North America. What makes it a Japanese American uh uh garden in that respect as well, the basic concept of this garden is based on the uh multiple generations uh that go to the immigrants uh back from the late 19th or early 20th century coming to the United States for their first time primarily through California and then going along uh the west coast. If you go to the very top where there’s a very tremendous waterfall, a lot of noise and this ripple effect uh very mountainous but then it represents challenges that this uh that the isay the Japanese immigrants went through in terms of adversity in terms of trying to financially make it here not because they weren’t working hard but a lot of the discriminatory practices systemic racism you know that they had to face um including the Alien Lamb law act you know there was an immigration act of 192 before that stopped immigration from Japan alto together. And so there were this uh and then of course sent anti-Japanese sentiment was very rampant you know um across uh the coast and the country as well. That’s that first part of the garden here. But then it splits into two and that represents uh the challenges and the trauma that the nay, the second generation faced um as we come to World War II and uh the dividing row that happened as you have those who patriotically uh fought in the 442nd um in the European campaign, but also you have uh those who uh who stand who are standing up against the injustice of being incarcerated in the incarceration camps. And then you had the no no boys, you know, who uh were uh uh had another level of uh uh that type of uh um negativity that that they had to try to um fight against because you know a lot of people saw them as being very unpatriotic and for decades you know they had to live with that stigma. Uh why does it come back? It comes back together just right here right behind me uh to uh symbolize the optimism for the next generation, the third generation, the sun who um in the 1960s and 70s. Many of them learning for the first time uh what happened to their parents, their grandparents in the incarceration. Uh many of them were in college when they learned that they were born in incarceration camps. It’s just camp. uh the fact that uh they took that as inspiration to fight for their parents and their grandparents uh the injustice that happened and for as that Asian-American movement going into uh the redress you know movement and I think uh that connection and the streams coming together to show that the Japanese American community coming to back together again and then the optimism as that water goes under the maple bridge here and turns the building off to the side right here to show that the story is not complete yet and so to show that you know like the uh the community story is still to be written and to uh see it with hope. The garden is not regularly accessible to the public but contact the JACCCC at 213-6282725 or send an inquiry to [email protected]. org. This is Greg Voria for the Ni Bay Cafe. [Music]