Yōkai Banzai!: Modern interpretations by three Chicagoland Japanese Americans

The second in our two-part series on yōkai, join us from 6:30-8:00 p.m. on Thursday, August 19th for a conversation with Chicagoland creatives Jami Nakamura Lin, Cori Nakamura Lin, and Kiyoshi Mino.

Registration for this event has closed.  A recording of the program is available on the JASC Youtube channel at https://youtu.be/xqj8SJx7my0

Are you feeling creative yourself?  Try your hand at writing, drawing, or felting with these prompts from Jami, Cori, and Kiyoshi!  Don’t forget to share your work with us by posting on social media with the hashtag #yokaibanzai and tagging JASC (Facebook: @JASCchicago, Instagram: @jasc_chicago, Twitter: @myJASC) and our panelists (@jami_lin, @cori.lin.art, @kiyoshiminofelt).

The Lin sisters are currently working on a soon-to-be-published collaborative project titled The Night Parade. The memoir, written by Jami and illustrated by Cori, uses yōkai (the supernatural monsters, creatures, and spirits of Japanese myth and folklore) as an organizational framework. The book draws on the Japanese myth of the hyakki-yagyo —the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons— to tell the braided stories of 1) Jami’s grief after her father’s illness/death and 2) her experience with bipolar disorder, driven by the question: how do we live beside the things that haunt us? These linked essays also reflect on other haunted topics: miscarriage, coronavirus, racism, and Japanese American incarceration, in order to investigate how what we fear shapes who we are.

Kiyoshi Mino, a Chicago-based needlefelt artist, will share a work-in-progress inspired by Jami and Cori’s work and the Covid-19 pandemic.