Odori

When I was around twelve, Mom had a dream: for me to learn Odori, the classical Japanese dance of Kabuki theater. It was her cherished hope, a thread connecting us to her own past and culture. So, each Saturday morning, she would pack my kimono and fans, pull my hair up into a tight bun on the top of my head.

My teacher, as it turned out, was mom’s teacher from the “camp” days. Her name was Madame Fujima Kansuma, but her students call her Oshosan.

Oshosan was a classically trained Japanese dancer of the Kabuki genre. She was one of only a few Japanese Americans who studied Kabuki with the grand masters in Japan. It was a radical achievement for a woman to study Kabuki at the time, but Oshosan was a radically unique and impressive individual. She was only a few years older than mom, but she could have been decades her senior in the way Mom revered her.

At 12 years old, I hated going to Odori class, and Oshosan scared the crap out of me. She sat very still, with a white powered face, and painted red lipstick that covered only a small portion of her permanent half smile, like a porcelain doll. She moved slowly, spoke intentionally, every word seemed to be crafted with dual meaning. Her eyes were deep black pools, and I knew she saw right through me, my every intention. I knew she could hear me cursing at her in my head. It was suffocating. I hated sitting on my knees and bowing like a subservient geisha, I hated wearing a kimono and walking tiny lady like steps. I really did not relate to the traditional Japanese culture thing at all.

And I couldn’t understand why Mom acted like such a submissive child around this tiny, pretentious woman. She became almost giddy in her presence. I hated the way she acted around her, it made me feel gross. But what I didn’t know at the time was that when Mom was with Oshosan, she was transported to a time in the desert, in Poston, Arizona when she was a teenager, living within barbed wires and tarpapered barracks, with watch towers and armed guards who were ordered to shoot any Jap who tried to escape. Mom would never talk to me about camp, so how could I have known?

It turns out that Oshosan was a woman of privilege in camp. She must have mesmerized someone of great authority because she was one of only a few Japanese Americans who were free to travel from camp to camp, visiting Poston on occasion to enliven the prisoners with her dramatic performances. She’d enter the camp sitting high and proud in the back seat of a USMC jeep. She brought to the dry, barren desert the scent of gardenias, the lavender colors of wisteria, enchantment, and grace.

At the time, none of that mattered to me. Odori was a source of humiliation. It amplified my feelings of alienation as a Japanese girl in a predominantly white prep school. The mean girls didn’t need much to target me—my slanted eyes were more than enough. While Mom wanted me to embody grace and tradition, I wanted to be cool. I wanted to kick ass like Bruce Lee, not mince around in a flowery kimono, bowing like a servant.

I rebelled. I skipped classes, smoked behind the bleachers, and swallowed quaaludes before Latin just to spite her—or maybe to numb myself. I thought I was breaking free, but in reality, I was binding myself to anger and misunderstanding.

Still, Mom insisted. Her silence spoke louder than words, her pain etched in every glance she cast my way. Each Saturday, I’d drag my feet to class, sulking, rolling my eyes, doing everything I could to communicate my disdain. And every week, Oshosan would look at me with that same steady, knowing gaze, as if she could see past my defiance to the wounded child within.

“Anna Mae, is this your daughter?” she would ask Mom with her enigmatic half-smile, the words cutting through my bravado like a blade.

Weeks turned into years. The more I studied Odori, the more I understood how much I could never truly be Japanese. And yet, in learning the dance, I began to glimpse the weight of my heritage—the resilience of my mother, the silent strength of our shared history.

By my twenties, I was attending class twice a week. Somewhere along the way, Mom started dancing again, and Odori became our shared ritual, a bridge between our two worlds. Together, we performed at cultural events, bowing side by side, our kimonos and dance moves binding us in a way words never could.

In time, I earned my Natori—a master’s title—and was granted the name Madame Fujima Kansumari. But the title was never truly mine. It was Mom’s. It was her unspoken legacy, her sacrifice, her silent love that propelled me toward this achievement.

Now, when I kneel and bow, I feel the strength of generations coursing through me. I see my mother’s dream realized not in the dances I perform but in the woman I’ve become—a woman shaped by her resilience, her silence, her hope.