Interview with author, artist and filmmaker Sachiko Hamada
By Walter McElligott
www.chicagowrites.org

I'm happy to present to Chicago Writers Association members this interview with Sachiko Hamada, a New Mexico resident and one of our newest writers, who was born and raised in Japan. Ms. Hamada's first novel, "Forest in F Minor," is especially interesting for Chicago readers, as her book moves her characters into Hyde Park and the University of Chicago. I believe the reader will fall in love with Sachiko's book. I know I did.

Her novel follows Mizuo, a young Japanese artist struggling to find her way in her new strange land. The story is semi-autobiographical and its moving first-person narrative offers a sense of what it must be like to suddenly find yourself in a culture that is so very different from the one you know. As a reader, I sure didn't envy her position as a student from Japan attending the University of Chicago, which didn't seem to prepare her and others like her for the culture shock awaiting them. At least she and her husband became familiar with school security, and learned some very lively English vocabulary.

Readers will immediately discern from Ms. Hamada's use of colors in her writing that she's an artist as well as an author. Sachiko studied French Literature at Keio University in Tokyo, and after graduation, she wrote poetry, fiction, and nonfiction and became a founding editor of Japan's first mass-market feminist magazine, Watashiwaonna. After she established her career as an editor at Watashiwaonna, she came to Chicago in 1979 with her husband, who had gained admission to the University of Chicago. While he studied at the U of C, she attended the graduate sculpture program at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Chicago Writers Association: Please tell us about your first novel,Forest In F Minor.

Sachiko Hamada: "Forest in F Minor" is a story of a Japanese woman who is like a nail that sticks out from her country's repressive culture-a nail that refuses to be hammered down. A journey of transformation amidst Chicago's south side. It is a companion story to the screenplay for my feature film, "The Nail That Sticks Up," which was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Council on the Arts.

CWA: Were your intriguing characters in "Forest in F Minor," like Annie, Diane, and Sky, based on real people you met in Chicago?

Sachiko: I became friends with many intriguing people in Chicago. I was so excited with our interactions; I later combined what I had observed from them to create characters in the book.

CWA: I'm sure readers would like to learn more about your experiences in Chicago.

Sachiko: I came to Chicago as a sculptor, and while studying at the Art Institute of Chicago's graduate program, I began my performing art and film career. Everything I saw in Chicago looked colorful and intense and I was busy absorbing it. I was fearful and thrilled at the same time living in the dangerous south side of Chicago. I shot my first two 16 mm films, "Blurred Circle," and "Nomad" in Hyde Park. I was invited to be an associate editor at Primavera, a women's literary magazine based in the University of Chicago. I loved Chicago jazz and blues, discos and various ethnic foods.

CWA: Did you write other stories while in Chicago?

Sachiko: Yes, I wrote a short story, "Chromatic Body Workshop," in English while I was waiting for the classes at the Art Institute to begin, because I wanted to communicate with American people. The idea came from my bodywork experiences in Tokyo. I published it at Primavera, two years later. When the classes began, I forgot about writing.

CWA: Was your art work professionally exhibited?

Sachiko: Yes, I was fortunate to have my sculptures exhibited at the Randolph Street Gallery in Chicago and at the Julie Artisans Gallery in New York. My performance pieces, "Ritual Prelude," "Transparent Time" and "Sky And Doll" combined with poetry, music and dance movements were featured at the University of Illinois in Chicago, the Art Institute of Chicago and Ox-Bow in Michigan.

CWA: I know that you returned to your home in Japan when you finished your graduate work. After living in America for four years, what was that experience like?

Sachiko: I returned to Japan after I got my MFA, but I had difficulty readjusting to my culture. I suffered from a profound cultural shock. After having experienced the thrill of creative freedom and sexual equality, I couldn't go back to Japan's rigidly defined women's roles and traditional restrictions. I decided to leave my home country to realize my dream to be a film director. At that time in Japan, there were almost no female directors in narrative feature filmmaking.

CWA: And, you returned to the states, of course.

Sachiko: I came to New York City. As soon as I arrived in the land of the American Dream, I experienced a feeling of displacement. I became desperate. One day I was wandering around the lower east side and saw a group of homeless people living in a tent on an empty lot. After a moment of hesitation, I walked in. They were eating tuna fish from the can with their fingers and drinking wine from the bottle. They offered me eat and drink, so I did the same way they did. The wine tasted horrible. The main guy laughed with abandon and said, "Thunderbird. American Classics." My encounter with them was like a love affair. I was emotionally connected with them. Their problem became mine. At that time, I was working for NHK, Japanese National Television and had an access to a video camera, so I started filming their lives on the street. This documentary represents not only their struggle to survive, but also my own struggle to adapt and
survive in America.

CWA: Where has your film screened?

SH: I had produced "Welcome To Shantytown" for WNET in New York, "Manhattan in Transition," a cultural feature for NHK, and "East Village Beat," a music video collaboration with musician Jamaaladeen Tacuma, which was shown in Japan, Italy and Venezuela. I'm very proud of "Inside Life Outside," about a group of the homeless people I had mentioned before. This documentary received a USA Film Festival Grand Prize, and was shown at the Berlin International Film Festival and Whitney Museum of American Art's Biennial. It also appeared on PBS, The Learning Channel hosted by Bill Moyers, and the television networks throughout Europe.

CWA: What other writing experience have you had?

Sachiko: In 1989, I conceived a film, "The Nail That Sticks Up" and started writing a screenplay funded by the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. "The Nail That Sticks Up" is a dramatic and traumatic cultural crash between American and Japanese cultures. By making "Inside Life Outside," I emerged from the physical survival level into a more intellectual and emotional level, but while I was writing the screenplay I remained on the margin, with the same sense of alienation. I was always conscious of being suspended between two cultures.

CWA: Did you produce "The Nail That Sticks up"?

Sachiko: After I finished writing the screenplay in 1992, I tried to direct and produce the film independently; concentrating on fund-raising for several years, but funding became a continual frustration. Nevertheless, I kept going until I was completely consumed by it, then I fell into a deep depression. When I took on the challenge of writing a novel, "Forest in F Minor," a companion to the screenplay, with the intention of getting it produced into a movie, I slowly came out of depression. Because I was writing in English, my second language, and writing a novel is an entirely different endeavor than writing a screenplay, it took me a long time to finish it. But, the process became a transformational work that was astonishingly profound. I consider "Forest in F Minor" one of my most important life works.

CWA: What differences did you discover between your Japanese language and the English you had to learn?

Sachiko: I realized English is an inherently more flexible language that allows me to express what cannot be expressed in Japanese. Specifically, a female's transformation from dependence and subservience to independence and true personal integrity.

CWA: Why did you decide to leave New York?

Sachiko: I've lived in America for almost 25 years. In August 2006, I had an irrefutable feeling that my life in New York City closed a circle, so Igave all my furniture away and left New York City with the minimum belongings that fit in my small Honda Civic. Since then I traveled wherever the road took me, looking for a new home. In August 2007, I drove into Taos and decided to stay. Right now, I feel as though I stand at the confluence where many small rivers meet to become one. I'm filled with quiet passion. With any medium that is available for me, I'll keep singing my own songs of painful and joyful experiences, transcending the personal and reaching universality.

CWA: Many thanks, Sachiko, for your time, and best wishes to you as you spread your artistic wings.