二度と(NI DO TO): a transplanted pilgrimage
April 19, 2025 - July 13, 2025
二度と(NI DO TO): a transplanted pilgrimage is a transformative lobby experience of shared connection that journeys through ancestral joy, historical trauma, and community resilience with the narrative of Japanese American incarceration through various interactive technologies: film, hologram, video game, and visual art.
Creator
Yayoi Kambara
Yayoi Kambara MFA (she/they) is a multi-hyphenate artist working in movement as a critical form of expression. She was a company member with ODC/Dance from 2003 to 2015 and danced as a freelance artist with numerous Bay Area dance companies. Yayoi was honored as lead artist for the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Hewlett 50 Award and premiered IKKAI means once:a transplanted pilgrimage in February 2023 at San Jose Buddhist Church Betsuin. Weaving together modern dance, Japanese American Obon dance, and taiko, IKKAI explored the unjust incarceration of Japanese Americans.
Fortune Tellers Project
In Spring 2025, students in Dr. Yvonne Y. Kwan’s Asian American Studies (AAS) 192 “Japanese American Experiences” course participated in a collaborative storytelling and memory project as part of the Ni Do To exhibit at the Japanese American Museum of San Jose (JAMsj). In partnership with choreographer and artist Yayoi Kambara, students created interactive paper fortune tellers as both artistic and political artifacts—offering a contemporary analysis of and creative connection to memory, incarceration, and identity.
Project Overview
Students were tasked with creating two eight-sided fortune tellers accompanied by a critical reflection. This project challenged them to bridge historical narrative with personal experience, inviting them to step into layered stories of trauma, resistance, and resilience.
Fortune Teller #1: Drew from the Densho Digital Repository, where students closely examined oral histories, photographs, and documents to better understand the everyday and extraordinary experiences of Japanese Americans forcibly incarcerated during WWII.
Fortune Teller #2: Asked students to reflect on their own double consciousness—that is, the fractured feeling of living between two (or more) cultural worlds. Drawing from W.E.B. Du Bois’ Souls of Black Folk (1903), Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (1952), Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera (1987), Lisa Lowe’s notion of “heterogeneity, hybridity, and multiplicity” (1996), and Karen Ishizuka’s "Arts Saved Us...from What?" (2002), students explored how their lived experiences of being the “other” in relation to systems of race and power.
Each paper fortune teller became a compact storytelling device—both historical and personal.
Identity, Reflection & Community Power
This project was not just about looking back—it was about leveraging memory to act now. Through this creative endeavor, students explored their own complex racial identities and how inherited silence and generational trauma shape them today. Many stories wrestled with visibility, surveillance, and the contradictions of being American “enough.”
The resulting fortune tellers offer profound reflections on loss, return, hope, and the cycle of displacement—whether through the eyes of Japanese Americans in WWII or undocumented immigrants navigating contemporary borders and politics. These stories remind us that "never again" is not a passive historical slogan—it is a present-day call to action.
Our Hope for the Audience
We hope that audiences engaging with this installation are moved not only by the courage and vulnerability of these stories, but also by a renewed sense of commitment. As we collectively reflect on state-sanctioned violence—past and present—we are called to leverage our privileges, amplify marginalized voices, and build cross-community solidarity.
May these fortune tellers inspire us to fold, open, and unfold stories that matter. Stories that refuse erasure. Stories that remind us: Never Again Is Now.
If you would like to view all of the fortune tellers, you can do so here. If you would like to make your own, you can try using this Canva template.
AAS 192 - SJSU Spring 2025 (Dr. Yvonne Y. Kwan)
Students: Aljhecia Alolor, Alyssa Bui, Gladis Caldera, Nancy Cao, Vania Castro, Ethan Chi, Tiffany Chou, Rico-Ricardo Crudo, Paige Davis, Anika Dubb, Evan Gomez, Addison Liu, Cole Louie, Stacy Lu, JJ Montano, Chloe Nguyen, Cindy Nguyen, Gabriel Ortiz, Rowan Ranjani, Tyler Roceli, Allen Terry-Grey, Carolina Torres, Karla Valtierra Palacio