Introducing Japanese Culture to Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Introducing Japanese Culture to Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget 

When I was the Youth Services Librarian for Monterey County California, I organized workshops around the County to introduce young teens to introduce young teens to Japanese culture.  Monterey County is the size of New Hampshire and Vermont put together. 

I drove a lot from Big Sur to Pajaro (the farmworker side of Watsonville, the organic strawberry capital of the United States).  All of my Hispanic colleagues at the library told me that they wanted more programming about cultures besides their own.  They wanted me to come to Salinas Valley festivals and do library outreach, of course, but they loved it when the Chinese magician-acrobat who performed at summer reading also told them about the traditions of the Shanghai Circus.

The publishing world had recently described young teens (middle schoolers) as tweens due to their developmental needs (i.e. junior versions of graphic novels, manga, and manwha – Korean graphic novels).

I went to Jo-Ann Fabrics in Monterey (CA) and bought some gaily-patterned origami paper to make little farmers with triangular hats, sofas and samurai hats.  All of these items are part of Japanese culture.  The book I used was written in Japanese, but had illustrations, so I could still make the origami.

Florence already knew how to do origami from her Japanese class at the Waldorf Charter School she attended as a young girl.  In her Japanese class, the children learned Japanese songs, dances, listened to haiku poems in Japanese, wrote haiku poems in English, did calligraphy with Japanese ink and rice paper, and learned ikebana (flower arranging).

I had some qualifications to teach these workshops on Japanese culture as well.  I had lived in Japan as an exchange student with the Youth for Understanding program on a scholarship from Chrysler Corporation.  I wrote a young adult book about this experience called Eating Soup with Chopsticks that is available on Amazon Kindle (the print version by iUniverse was taken out-of-print by the author).

My family hosted exchange students from Japan, Belgium, and Spain through Youth for Understanding, Sister Cities, and People-to-People International for long- and short-term stays.  I also helped Japanese nurses, who were studying at Wayne State University, learn English through People-to-People. 

I learned all about Mexico and Latin America at programs with speakers at Wayne State University as part of my political science requirements for high school at Cass Tech in Detroit. (Our government teacher said, “Anything with a budget is political science.”)  So, I went to every political science meeting held at Wayne State University with permission from my school principal and wrote up what was happening in the world.  

I had Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Bolivian, Greek, Hungarian, and African-American friends who invited me into their homes for home dance parties and sweet sixteen parties.  Detroit is also like Chicago in that every nationality of the world has restaurants and bars in their “ethnic’ neighborhood there.  They all cater weddings, baptisms, and other special events.

When I went to the University of Chicago for college, I studied East Asian Studies, which allowed me to study Buddhist art, the Japanese language, East Asian history (China and Japan), and study art of the West at the same time.

I did several activities while I worked at Ernst and Young to help me build my skill base.  I helped build the telephone list of potential donors to call for the First Japan Festival in Chicago that staffers at JETRO (Japan External Trade Organizations) could contact for funding.  I lived across the street from where I worked and would go home to Marina City for lunch to fundraiser.  

I put together my telephone list and would meet with the Number-2 in charge at JETRO about twice a week to give her the list of names with phone numbers and addresses of people I had found.  (You can do a lot in downtown Chicago, if you are strong enough to walk in all weather situations.)

Another volunteer project I did was to help publicize the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program in the program’s first year by doing presentations throughout downtown Chicago, including at Youth for Understanding Returnee workshops run by returnees and program volunteers.  I made several friends at these returnee workshops, who remain my friends today.

I also showed the tweens at the Japanese culture workshops images of the Tokaido Road between Kyoto and Edo (modern-day Tokyo) that the Japanese painter Utagawa Hiroshige painted.  I used information from the book How to Look at Japanese Art by Stephen Addiss to structure my discussion.

I showed Monterey County children books about Chinese landscape painting, so they could compare Japanese and Chinese art as well.  We looked at some Japanese manga (cartoons) and anime (cartoons using the techniques of film on paper) to see how the Japanese artists Hiroshige and Hokusai influenced Japanese manga techniques..

I had some library books about Japanese gardens (notably Kumamoto in Kyushu and Ryoan-ji in Kyoto), ikebana flower arranging, kimono books, and the Japanese tea ceremony that I showed the tweens, too.

We had a ton of art books that showed children how to draw manga and other art projects.  I ordered an art school of nonfiction books for these talented children and made sure they all knew how to get the books from other branches through online ordering.  (There was a music school of “how-to” books in the Monterey Country Free Libraries that I bought for the kids, too.)

The artist Jose Ortiz, who painted Chicano murals in Salinas and has exhibited in museums, did drawing workshops for the Monterey County Library kids and teens as part of summer reading, too.

When Florence and I left these Japanese culture workshops, all the kids were drawing buildings in perspective it seemed.

There were also origami clubs in several of the branch libraries of the Monterey County Free Libraries.

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks, Teen in China, and Marrying France

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