Oral History Interview with Hiroko Sato Pijanowski, 2003 May 13-15
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Oral history interview with Hiroko Sato Pijanowski, 2003 May 13-15 Funding for this interview was provided by the Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America. Funding for the digital preservation of this interview was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service. Contact Information Reference Department Archives of American Art Smithsonian Institution Washington. D.C. 20560 www.aaa.si.edu/askus Transcript Preface The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Hiroko Sato Pijanowski on May 13-15, 2003. The interview took place in Honolulu, Hawaii and was conducted by Arline M. Fisch for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. This interview is part of the Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America. Hiroko Sato Pijanowski and Arline M. Fisch have reviewed the transcript and have made corrections and emendations. The reader should bear in mind that he or she is reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written prose. Interview MS. FISCH: This is Arline Fisch interviewing Hiroko Pijanowski at her home in Honolulu on May 13, 2003, for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. This is disc number one. Hiroko, I think of you as a truly binational person, both Japanese and American, but I wonder how you think of yourself. How do you define yourself? Are you a Japanese person who lives in America, or a person who is of both cultures? What do you think? MS. PIJANOWSKI: I am a Japanese who lives in the United States. But I have a mixed feeling about it, because when I think about am I really truly Japanese, I'm not; and when I think about am I really Americanized, partially, yes, but mostly no. But I'm not Japanese-American or American-Japanese. And when I go back to Japan, I don't feel like I'm a Japanese. MS. FISCH: You don't. MS. PIJANOWSKI: Not 100 percent. And when I live in United States, of course I'm not American, but more feel like Japanese. So I myself don't know who I am. [Laughs.] And once my friend said, "You're not Japanese," in Japan. I've been told by my friend that I'm not Japanese anymore. So I asked her, "Then what am I? What do you think? Am I American? Am I American-Japanese?" And she said, "Well, you are"-what did she call me-"You are international person." MS. FISCH: And does that make you comfortable? I mean, are you happy with that definition? MS. PIJANOWSKI: In a way, I thought she is right, because I don't belong to either any longer. MS. FISCH: I see. MS. PIJANOWSKI: And I don't [feel] sad. MS. FISCH: It doesn't make you sad. MS. PIJANOWSKI: No, it doesn't make me sad, because I know what part is still Japanese, and I know myself that I'm more towards Japanese than American. And if I feel that I am American, I will be taking American citizenship. MS. FISCH: I see. And you haven't done that. MS. PIJANOWSKI: I just can't. No, because I just don't feel 100 percent that I'm American. If I feel 90 percent I'm American, I will. It doesn't have to be 100 percent. MS. FISCH: Can we talk first about you family and your childhood and youth in Japan? What was your family like? Where were you born? MS. PIJANOWSKI: I was born in Tokyo. MS. FISCH: In Tokyo. MS. PIJANOWSKI: Yeah, 10 days after the Second World War started. And I was the first grandchild to my grandparents. Also - I don't know what to talk about, what you mean by this. [Laughs.] MS. FISCH: Okay. Who were your parents? MS. PIJANOWSKI: Who were my parents? MS. FISCH: What was their background? What did they do? MS. PIJANOWSKI: Okay. My father was a medical doctor. My mother was a typical housewife. And I didn't have any brothers or sisters. I was only one child. And so I was being loved a lot and I was spoiled. MS. FISCH: I see. MS. PIJANOWSKI: And I didn't know that I was spoiled. MS. FISCH: Was there an extended family, with other children from aunts and uncles and so on? MS. PIJANOWSKI: No. We are not a big family. And my uncle doesn't have any children. I'm talking about my mother's side now. My uncle doesn't have any children. My aunt has only two. They lived in Kawasaki, which is south of Tokyo, for a while. And my father's side, only two cousins. And now I have two more, but I already left Japan, so I never even met one of them still. I don't know who. MS. FISCH: So you were a very small family, you and your mother and father. And where did you live? MS. PIJANOWSKI: We lived in Tokyo, but then when the Second World War started, we moved out of the city. And when we came back to Tokyo, we didn't have any house, so we moved to Yokohama and found a fishing village to live in, and lived there. And I started going to elementary school. But the fishing village did not have a good school system, so my mother found one school which is basically run by the-Christianity? MS. FISCH: By a Christian group? MS. PIJANOWSKI: Christian group, which was quite far from where I lived. It took me about one hour to get to the school. And that was starting in my third grade. I made lots of good friends. I still correspond with them. MS. FISCH: I know. I noticed that you talked yesterday about how you are still in contact with your schoolmates at different levels. MS. PIJANOWSKI: Yeah! MS. FISCH: And I think that's really unusual in this country. MS. PIJANOWSKI: But why? [Laughs.] MS. FISCH: Well, it's unusual in this country, I think, because we move around so much. But it must be quite-is it quite normal in Japan? MS. PIJANOWSKI: I don't think so. MS. FISCH: But it's normal for you. MS. PIJANOWSKI: It's me. Yeah, it's me. Because I didn't have any brothers and sisters, so the friends are more important, right? So I think it's very unusual that I kept contact with elementary friends, high school friends, university friends. And the reason why I'm saying [that] is that once I went to a party with 40 university friends there, and one guy said to me that "You know, my friends at work envy me so much." And I said, "Why? And he said, "Just because I have such a great relationship with my colleagues." And I said, "What do you mean?" And he said that most of the people don't have. MS. FISCH: So it isn't all that common. MS. PIJANOWSKI: No. MS. FISCH: But it's important for you. MS. PIJANOWSKI: Yeah. MS. FISCH: I think that's wonderful. Were your parents artistic? MS. PIJANOWSKI: My father was a Sunday painter. That's how I started oil painting, when I was very young. My mother was not doing anything physically, but she, I think, had more sensibility. MS. FISCH: Sensitivity? MS. PIJANOWSKI: Sensitivity for the arts. And she can criticize, and it's quite severe, but it's also, in a way, very true. My father likes to do physically, but he was a terrible painter. [Laughs.] And their relationship wasn't great. MS. FISCH: Between your mother and father. MS. PIJANOWSKI: Right. That's why I have a job now-and it's very unusual to have a job, for my generation particularly, in Japan-just because my mother had a terrible life with my father. MS. FISCH: Yet you loved them both. No? MS. PIJANOWSKI: Yes and no. I loved my mother, and I used to dream-could I talk about something like this? MS. FISCH: Of course. MS. PIJANOWSKI: I used to have a dream of my mother going to leave me, every night when I was little. And I didn't know why I was having such a dream. But every night? I thought that was very unusual. MS. FISCH: Is this when you were very young? MS. PIJANOWSKI: Very young, like maybe first grade or a little before, for a long time, even [when] I went to high school. I had a dream every night my mother is leaving me. And always she is going away and I am standing and calling my mother's name, and she never turned around to come back. And I found out later why. It's because my father was having affair with quite a number of ladies, but a particular one-we found out, after he died, he still kept the relationship. So he actually had a second wife all year[s] long. MS. FISCH: Did he have other children? MS. PIJANOWSKI: No. That was good thing, my mother said. That was a good thing that he did not have, he didn't make any children. MS. FISCH: And probably good for you, as well. MS. PIJANOWSKI: Right. I think so, too. And one day I was walking with her and I said to her, "Oh, that is the lady my father took me to the beach and I thought 'I don't like her.'" That was a time when my mother was thinking of leaving home and leaving me behind and she'd just take off so that he would get married with this lady and would take care of me.