Nikkei Student Union 26th Annual Cultural Night
Monday, 7 p.m.
Royce Hall Auditorium, Free

For decades, the culture nights held by the Nikkei Student Union (NSU) have featured performances such as Japanese drama, taiko drumming and modern Japanese hip-hop. NSU will hold its 26th Annual Cultural Night on Monday – not just as a celebration of Japanese American history and heritage, but also as a celebration of the Japanese American present and future.

It is especially dedicated to the Japanese generation known as the Shin-Nisei. The name translates to “new second generation,” and people in this group can be classified as Japanese immigrants who arrived in the United States after World War II. Matt Ichinose, a UCLA alum who is the current president of NSU, said he hopes that the focus of this year’s culture night on the Shin-Nisei will create a bridge of understanding between Japanese Americans and modern Japanese.

“This year’s Annual Cultural Night is centered around that where we tie the new second generation into the Japanese American community that’s existed here for a hundred years,” Ichinose said. “It just shows the different cultures and how kind of different we are, but yet we’re similar as Japanese Americans.”

According to Hiromi Aoyama, the event’s producer and fourth-year communication studies student, culture night is not just about Japanese American communities, but it is also about individual identity as well. The theme for this year’s culture night is identity, and it is meant to both acknowledge and welcome the steadily increasing diversity of individuals within Japanese American society.

“If you go to a lot of conferences, you’ll learn that the Japanese American community is getting diverse as well as growing,” Aoyama said. “It’s growing because it’s getting diverse, and so there’s a multi-ethnic group that’s leading to a mixed population in the Japanese American community. We wanted to portray that through college students.”

Christine Imazumi, a third-year marine biology student who is also a producer for culture night, said she believes that the play “Our [I]dentity,” which discusses the importance of individuals within the greater community, will help to generate more discussion about the issue and what it means for the future.

“A lot of our other plays focus on the history of Japanese Americans. ‘Our [I]dentity’ will focus more on modern Japanese Americans and how the community is changing today,” Imazumi said.