Soji Kashiwagi and the Grace of a Traveling Theater Company
By Elise Takahama
Soji Kashiwagi was 13 years old when the idea hit him.
He was sitting in a Berkeley theater, quietly watching a play his father had written. The story was set in one of several incarceration camps where more than 120,000 people of Japanese descent – two -thirds of them U.S. citizens -- were imprisoned during World War II.
It was one of the first plays to draw attention to that piece of history at the time, so most eyes were glued to the stage – but Kashiwagi’s attention was on the audience.
“The Issei (first-generation Japanese) were sitting there laughing and crying and laughing and crying, having a great time,” Kashiwagi said. “I remember at that moment, I thought, ‘That’s what I want to do.’ I want to have that effect on people.’”
Decades later, the feeling has not faded. Kashiwagi is the co-founder and executive director of the Grateful Crane Ensemble, a Los Angeles-based traveling theater company dedicated to telling the Japanese American story through deeply moving songs, animated dance and colorful costumes. The nonprofit turned 20 years old in 2021, performing up and down the West Coast and in Japan along the way, and has no plans of slowing, Kashiwagi said.
“We need to express our thanks and gratitude to our Issei and Nisei for everything they did to pave the way for us younger generations to follow,” he said.
“And we’re telling our history in an easy-to-digest form – with music and humor, so it’s not like you’re reading a history book.”
Although Kashiwagi was introduced to musical theater at a young age, he didn’t make his way back to the art until after he graduated from college.
A Bay Area native, Kashiwagi moved to LA shortly after completing a journalism degree at San Francisco State University. For years, he worked for public health and service nonprofits within the Asian American community, including the Little Tokyo Service Center and the Asian Pacific Health Care Venture.
Keiko, Soji and Scott Nagatani after a Grateful Crane performance for the seniors at KeiAi Los Angeles Nursing Home.
Even then, he often gravitated toward storytelling roles. While working for Asians for Miracle Marrow Matches (A3M), which recruits new bone marrow donors within communities of color, Kashiwagi spent time writing pieces about those who needed marrow matches in hopes of inspiring others to join the registry.
In the summer of 2001, though, a new project changed the trajectory of Kashiwagi’s life and career.
The idea started as a one-time visit to Keiro, a Japanese American nursing home in L.A., to sing traditional Japanese folk songs to the residents in hopes of bringing back fond childhood memories, Kashiwagi said.
The performance was a hit — and became the foundation of Grateful Crane.
“They immediately started singing along,” Kashiwagi said. “It was so well-received by the seniors that they asked us to keep coming back.”
Soji with his bride, Keiko Kawashima
The group — which included Kashiwagi’s wife, Keiko Kawashima, a talented and experienced singer — started visiting Keiro once a month with new ideas each time. They soon were not only singing well-known favorites, like “Haru Ga Kita,” but also re-enacting children’s stories, like “Momotaro.”
“Eventually, that led to doing Japanese American stories,” Kashiwagi said. “For me, that meant doing research on Japanese American history and stories we could tell in skit form — including [World War II] camp stories and what these Nisei went through.”
More than 20 years later, those feelings of appreciation and recognition remain at the heart of Grateful Crane, he said.
Grateful Crane’s first full musical, “The Camp Dance,” debuted in 2003, sharing stories of Japanese American WWII incarceration camps, particularly ones about the high school dances held behind barbed wire in the barren deserts.
“It was about how they tried to make the best of a bad situation,” Kashiwagi said. “So much of our history, because it was painful, wasn’t spoken. But we’re telling our stories so younger generations will know.”
“Camp Dance” went on to become one of the group’s most popular shows, though it just marked the beginning of Grateful Crane’s storytelling journey.
“It blossomed into something much larger than we originally envisioned,” said Kawashima, who’s been one of Grateful Crane’s lead performers and singers for the past two decades.
A couple years later, the group developed a show that celebrated the 100th anniversary of San Francisco’s Nihonmachi and paid tribute to small businesses in other Japantowns along the West Coast — including LA’s 100-plus-year-old Fugetsu-Do confectionery.
Cast and crew from Grateful Crane’s “Nihonmachi: The Place to Be” at the Aratani Theater
Grateful Crane traveled through California to perform “Nihonmachi,” eventually taking it to the Japanese American Citizens League’s (JACL) national convention.
When a massive earthquake triggered a tsunami in Tohoku, Japan, in 2011, killing thousands of people and devastating the area, the group started raising money for local relief and thinking up ways they could help.
When Kawashima visited the area a few years later to help Japanese families, she promised she would return. The following year, about 15 Grateful Crane members embarked on their first goodwill tour to Tohoku, where many families were still living in temporary housing complexes.
“We sang similar songs that we’d always sung, but the context was completely different,” Kashiwagi said. “And yet the songs resonated the same way. There’s something that happens when you sing together — you form a bond and a friendship.”
Grateful Crane made trips back in 2016 and 2018, each one tinged with emotion, Kashiwagi said.
Grateful Crane’s 2018 Tour members had dinner with a group of local Tohoku friends and presented them with Angel baseball caps.
“The way we were brought up is with the idea that everyone is in the same boat, and that in order to survive, we need to help each other,” he said.
Still, the work of his father -- acclaimed Nisei poet, playwright and actor Hiroshi Kashiwagi – inspires Grateful Crane’s mission and many of the group’s performances.
Soji’s parents, Hiroshi and Sadako Kashiwagi in 2019
“My father was also a Tule Lake ‘no-no boy,’ which was a large part of his life,” Kashiwagi said, using a term that describes those who answered “no” to two questions on the U.S. government’s Application for Leave Clearance form, more commonly known as the loyalty questionnaire.
The two questions asked if Nisei men were willing to serve on combat duty wherever ordered, and if they would declare loyalty to the U.S. and renounce allegiance to the Emperor of Japan. Those who answered “no” to both were shipped to the Tule Lake incarceration camp in Newell, California, unjustly labeled as “disloyal.”
“For the longest time, those who resisted the loyalty questions had been stigmatized, marginalized, forgotten, written out of our history,” Kashiwagi said. “But now, that story actually connects with what’s happening today, in protests and resistance. People understand that they had a right to protest what was happening to them.
“That’s where I feel I need to continue my dad’s work,” he added, “to make sure that story is included in the stories we tell.”
Soji with his brother Hiroshi f. Kashiwagi and parents, Hiroshi and Sadako Kashiwagi
Kashiwagi’s father died in 2019 at age 97, but not before he got to see his son and Grateful Crane perform one of his plays, “The Betrayed” – a story of a couple that fell in love while incarcerated at Tule Lake.
“I think he was proud,” he said.
While the COVID-19 pandemic has postponed performances and trips in the past two years, there are signs the group is ready to start back up. In April 2022, Grateful Crane held its first in-person show since the pandemic began, traveling to Sacramento to honor legendary singer, actress and entertainer Misora Hibari.
In a recording of the performance, excitement is evident both on stage and in the crowd as familiar sounds of pounding on a Taiko drum begin the show. More than 400 people filled the theater.
