Lon Kurashige
Lon Kurashige is professor of history at the University of Southern California, where he teaches classes on immigration, race relations, and Asian Americans. He has received multiple awards to teach and research in Japan, including two Fulbright fellowships and an Abe grant, sponsored by the Social Science Research Council. His books include the prize-winning Japanese American Celebration and Conflict: A History of Ethnic Identity and Festival in Los Angeles, 1934-1980; Two Faces of Exclusion: The Untold History of Anti-Asian Racism in the United States; and Pacific America: Histories of Transoceanic Crossings. He has authored numerous scholarly articles, as well as college-level textbooks on US history and Asian American history.
Born and raised in southern California, he is father of two adult sons, and a lay practitioner of Zen who descends from nearly 500 years of Buddhist priests in Japan. He is currently writing a memoir with the working title “Home Leaver: A Japanese American Journey in Japan.” Write to him at kurashig@usc.edu and follow him on Facebook.
Updated April 2023
Stories from This Author
Chapter 8—The Way Home
Nov. 24, 2023 • Lon Kurashige
Yayoi and I walked across a university campus admiring its historic gate, patinaed statues, and path replete with fallen yellow fan-shaped leaves. We had passed through here before on our way to her house, but this time she invited me to take the lead, testing whether I had paid attention and remembered the many shortcuts she took that made an already difficult route even harder. I failed. Once we exited campus, Yayoi was forced to lead the way as I …
Chapter 7—Home Leaver
Oct. 27, 2023 • Lon Kurashige
I once met a travelling monk from Japan. After a full career and family life, he retired from both to embark on a spiritual journey. He received Buddhist ordination and uprooted himself from the soil of his familiar. His new life chapter had recently begun when we crossed paths in Los Angeles, where he was in between stays at Zen practice centers in Oregon and Iowa. “What about you wife and kids?” I asked. “How are they doing without you?” …
Chapter 6—Three Nuns
Sept. 29, 2023 • Lon Kurashige
Haunting drumbeats from the soundtrack of Lost in Translation put me into a nostalgic trance as I sped through the Japanese countryside at 178 miles per hour. I had just met a woman who worked on this film about two Americans stranded in Tokyo, and we planned to dine at the stylish Shinjuku hotel where Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson’s characters fall in love. But before our date could take place, I was scheduled to live like a monk for …
Chapter 5—Japan as Number One
Aug. 25, 2023 • Lon Kurashige
I was waiting near the entrance to the third university in Tokyo where I was to teach as a visiting lecturer. One of the school’s graduate students offered to show me around the sprawling community adjacent to campus. I had met Naomi a few weeks back at a reception for Japanese fellows who were soon to leave for various destinations in the US, which for her was New York City. She was studying for a Ph.D. in international relations and …
Chapter 4—Globalization
July 28, 2023 • Lon Kurashige
The University of Tokyo was the second school where I taught as a visiting lecturer. Known as “Todai” (short for Tokyo Daigaku), it is widely regarded as the nation’s top university—the Harvard of Japan. You might think that the country’s best and brightest students would be eager to challenge themselves by taking a course in English offered by a foreigner like me. In fact, they avoided my classes, save for a few who had grown up overseas and were fluent …
Chapter 3—The Missionary
June 30, 2023 • Lon Kurashige
“So what kind of person do you think the author is?” I asked the students in my class at an elite women’s college in Tokyo. Crickets. “Does the text suggest her ethnic or class background?” More crickets, faces cast downward or blankly staring at me. “How might our interpretation of the reading change if she was Asian American, black, or a mixture of both?” Crickets drowned out by cicadas, whose rhythmic pulse-buzzing resounded on this hot-sweaty Japanese summer day. I’m …
Chapter 2—Role Reversal
May 26, 2023 • Lon Kurashige
Yujin’s was the first familiar face I saw after arriving in Tokyo. Our reunion was on a street lined with stores selling Buddhist merchandise. I was looking for a round meditation cushion called a zafu. I had left mine at home because it took up precious luggage space, and I was sure that I could find one online once in Japan. But none showed up in my internet searches, no doubt because I was using English and not Japanese. The …
Chapter 1—Passing Time
April 28, 2023 • Lon Kurashige
As I strode down the station corridor past the ticket gates, I became nostalgic for my childhood in Southern California. It was dinner time, and in the four months I’d been in Japan I had tried nearly every bento type in the supermarket. I wanted to eat something different, and so suddenly I veered out from the flow of traffic and found myself standing under a large overhead menu. I studied it, sounding out the choices one katakana symbol at a …
