Discover Nikkei is JANM’s community-based web project sharing stories and the experiences of Nikkei around the world. “Nima” are members of the Discover Nikkei online community. Hailing from all around the world, they each bring unique experiences and perspectives to the site’s rich archive of stories. 

Nima Voices is an interview series where we uplift our Nima through brief, but enlightening, interviews. Join us for our sixth episode! Christine Piper is an award-winning, mixed-race Japanese-Australian author. She will be interviewed by guest host Emily Anderson, Project Curator at JANM and a specialist on modern Japan. She will be talking to Christine about her writing, the history and communities of Japanese in Australia, and her experience as a field research facilitator for the Global Nikkei Young Adult Research Project.

CHRISTINE PIPER

Christine Piper’s debut novel, After Darkness (Allen & Unwin 2014), is a story about a Japanese doctor interned as an enemy alien in Australia during World War 2. It won The Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award and was shortlisted for the prestigious Miles Franklin Literary Award, and is currently studied by Year 12 English students in the state of Victoria. She also won the 2014 Guy Morrison Award for Literary Journalism and the 2014 Calibre Essay Prize for her creative non-fiction essay “Unearthing the Past,” about civilian activists in Japan and the nation's conflicted wartime memory. In addition to her participation as a field research facilitator for the Global Nikkei Young Adult Research Project, she also served as a facilitator for Discover Nikkei’s What Does It Mean to Be Nikkei in 2021? program earlier this year. Read her stories on Discover Nikkei before tuning in for this live interview and Q&A on the Discover Nikkei YouTube channel.

EMILY ANDERSON

Emily Anderson is Project Curator at the Japanese American National Museum and a specialist on modern Japan. She received her PhD in modern Japanese history from UCLA and was assistant professor of Japanese history at Washington State University before going to New Zealand as a postdoctoral fellow at University of Auckland in 2014. She has authored several books, articles, and book chapters on religion and imperialism in Japan and the Pacific. 

The term “Nima” comes from combining Nikkei and nakama (Japanese for “colleagues”, or “fellows”, or “circle”). Join our Nima-kai community and share your stories about the Nikkei experience! Find out more at DiscoverNikkei.org.

We encourage you to subscribe to the Discover Nikkei YouTube channel so you will be notified when the video is streaming live. The program will be also be live-streamed on Facebook.