The recently acquired Ashizawa papers highlight activities of
Hokubei Butokukai (the North American Military Virtue Society), branch of the
Dai Nippon Butokukai (the Great Japan Military Virtue Society) in California in the 1920s and 1930s. The North American branch was founded to train the second generation Japanese American
Yamato-damashii (Japanese spirit) through martial art.
It organized study tours for Nisei to visit Japan, Korea and Manchukuo. The collection includes numerous photographs of Hokubei Butokukai activities in the United States and abroad and family gatherings and Ashizawa’s immigration records and speech manuscripts to promote emperor worship and militaristic training upon his return to Japan.
Kaoru "Kay" Ueda PhD
Curator of the Japanese Diaspora Initiative
Kaoru “Kay” Ueda (B.A. Kawansei Gakuin University, MBA, University of Chicago, Ph.D., Boston University) has unique experience both in business and academic worlds.
Kaoru Ueda
Curator of Japanese Diaspora Collections / Research Fellow
Kaoru (Kay) Ueda is a research fellow and the curator of the Japanese Diaspora Collections at the Hoover Institution Library & Archives. She holds a B.A. from Kwansei Gakuin University, an…
