Description

Drawing by Heart: Cartoons from the Pen of Gwen Muranaka (Collector’s Edition)

For as long as I can remember, I’ve drawn cartoons. It’s been a solace, a way to express who I am, my quirks and my sense of humor. This book is a compilation of some of the work I have done and the journeys I’ve taken. I am a Yonsei (fourth generation) Japanese American, born and raised in Southern California. My dad, Tomio Muranaka was a Nisei, second generation, while mom Julia, was Sansei, the daughter of parents who grew up on the plantations in Hawaii years before it became a state.

They were both incarcerated in concentration camps during World War II, along with 120,000 other Japanese Americans forcibly evacuated from the West Coast. Dad was in Rohwer, Arkansas; while Mom spent her youth in Gila River, Arizona. Like so many, that experience heightened the sense of their American identity. They both attended USC, where Mom was a founder of the Sigma Phi Omega sorority, an organization founded by Japanese American women excluded by prejudice from joining other campus clubs.

Mom and Dad didn’t speak Japanese but they sent me to J-school in Long Beach anyways. I hated it. It seemed like I wasn’t “Japanese” enough and couldn’t understand the lessons or ask my parents for help with homework when I got home. But I learned just enough to want to continue studying Japanese at UCLA in addition to majoring in English literature. After UCLA, I continued my Japanese studies for a year at Waseda University in Tokyo.

Writing and journalism has been my other passion. I became a reporter and editor, first at the Pacific Citizen, the national publication of the Japanese American Citizens League and then in Tokyo for the Japan Times. For the Pacific Citizen, I reported on civil rights, incidents of bias and interviewed politicians and leaders of the Japanese American community. At Japan Times, I was fortunate to interview Haruki Murakami on his thoughts of a changing Japan in the wake of the 1995 Aum Shinrikyo attack on the Tokyo subway system that left 13 dead.

All along the way I have drawn cartoons. I’ve been extremely blessed to work with editors who have been open to my attempts at cartooning. I usually worked at night on a green cutting board that I purchased at a department store in Shibuya. So many years later, I still draw on that cutting board, although now the finishing work is done on computer.

I returned from Tokyo to work in Little Tokyo. For more than 20 years I’ve been working as a reporter and editor in Little Tokyo at The Rafu Shimpo, a newspaper with more than 100 years of history chronicling the ups and downs of Japanese and Japanese American society. During my time as editor, I’ve reported on the changes in the JA community and Little Tokyo, both from the political perspective to the granular — profiles of storeowners, basketball kids and leaders who make Little Tokyo such a special neighborhood. I believe with all my heart that independent journalism connects and ties a community together and makes it stronger.

Looking back, cartooning has been the constant and taken me places I would have never imagined as a little kid who hated to go to Saturday school to learn nihongo.

It’s been a fun journey, please come with me!