Okaeri (Welcome Home):
The Nisei Legacy at Shofuso
Okaeri (Welcome Home): The Nisei Legacy at Shofuso was a site-based multimedia exhibit telling the story of the Nisei (second-generation), American-born persons of Japanese descent, and their unique connection and contributions to Shofuso Japanese House and Garden. Located on site at Shofuso in West Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park, the exhibit focused on the early 1980s to late 1990s, and explored the Nisei leaders who organized the Friends of the Japanese House and Garden, a volunteer-led non-profit organization that oversaw the restoration and maintenance of Shofuso until its merger with the Japan America Society of Greater Philadelphia in 2016.
As lead curator of the exhibition, Rob oversaw all aspects of the project from research to installation as a project of the Japan America Society of Greater Philadelphia.
Funded by Japanese American Community Foundation, UCLA Asian American Studies George and Sakaye Aratani Award, and Japanese American Citizens League, additional funding and in-kind support was provided by Densho digital archive.
The in-person exhibition ran August 2023 to August 2024, and the exhibit website can be viewed below.
https://okaeri.japanphilly.org/
The main on-site interpretive element for the Okaeri exhibit was a three-channel video projection installation. Situated in the 10-tatami mat room at Shofuso, the left-hand channel projected 8mm footage shot by head carpenter Isao Okumura in 1954-1957 when the house was first built in New York City, and later brought to Philadelphia. On the opposite wall the righthand channel projected the work of videographer Keiichi Kondoh, who documented Shofuso’s roof restoration in 1999. The center channel featured a slideshow of digitized still photographs showing the daily activities of the Nisei Friends of the Japanese House and Garden. This was accompanied by a 30-minute oral history clip loop featuring audio from over a dozen local Japanese American community members recorded in 1994 and 2023. These oral history soundbites were played aloud on speakers along with original audio from Kondoh’s footage of the roof restoration.
While this was a temporary installation at Shofuso, the audio and video components can be experienced separately on the exhibit website, along with the self-guided audio tour featuring additional oral history clips.
https://okaeri.japanphilly.org/
https://okaeri.japanphilly.org/Audio