Fiction – Jay-Shiro Tashiro

Novels

Tashiro’s first two novels are a duology focused on the complexity of how a Japanese-American family developed and then tried to resolve linked traumatic disorders. A central character in both novels is Kazuo Hiratsuka—a Nisei World War II and Korean War combat veteran struggling with PTSD, but before a time when this spectrum of trauma disorders had a clear diagnostic category and sensible treatment options. In the first novel of the duology—PeaceBoy Come Home—Kazuo tries to reconcile with his son and parents in 1970. But he’s been estranged from his family for eight years and his son Mark is about to be drafted into the American War in Vietnam. Each seeks to understand why all family members remain trapped within their own emotional battlefields, bloodied by trauma, racism, and abandonment. An excerpt from the first novel in the duology—PeaceBoy Come Home—can be accessed through the link below.

Screenplays

While a visiting professor teaching a seminar in the Kenyon College American Studies Program (2003-2008), Tashiro wrote No Way Home—his first feature screenplay, which explored the impacts of America’s relocation and incarceration on people of Japanese Ancestry during World War II. This screenplay evolved from archival research (Densho, Japanese American National Museum) as well as from Tashiro’s interviews of family members—especially a series of interviews with his second cousin Shigeki Hiratsuka, who had been incarcerated in the Santa Anita Detention Center and then the Amache Camp (Granada, Colorado). His screenplay No Way Home reached the semifinalist list in the 2006 Zoetrope Screenplay competition (judged by Gus Van Sant).

This screenplay was later rewritten as two screenplays: A Long Way Home and No Way Home. A Long Way Home plunges into the life of Kazuo Hiratsuka, a Nisei World War II and Korean War veteran who struggles with PTSD, but is set in 1970 prior to PTSD having a diagnostic category and reliable treatment. The second screenplay—No Way Home—is the story of Kazuo in the 1980s. He and his oldest granddaughter travel to the site of the Leupp Citizens Isolation Camp and the Colorado River Relocation Center (known as the Poston Camps 1, 2, and 3 to those incarcerated there). Below you will find a link to an excerpt from No Way Home.

Plays

August Wilson’s Centennial Series strongly influenced Tashiro. In 2010, he decided to develop a series of plays that capture Japanese-American familial and individual experiences within America from 1930-2020.His first play in the series is A Long Way Home.

Act 1 is provided at the link below.

Short Stories

Tashiro has written 90 short stories. He adapted 60 stories about complex patients into short screenplays, directed filming of each with professional crews, actors, and healthcare experts, then nested 3-4 videos for each patient (totaling over 800 edited minutes) into online healthcare simulations he built: a virtual hospital, a virtual medical office, and virtual patient encounters with first responders, EMTs, and Paramedics. These simulations have been published by Elsevier Incorporated in 170 accompanying textbooks, study guides, and online teaching-learning environments (Tashiro’s royalties now total over $4.3 million USD).

The other 30 stories evolved from multiple sources, including research conducted for the Kenyon College internment seminar Tashiro taught (2003-2008), but also from studying archival materials in sources like Densho and the Japanese American National Museum, material uncovered while working for the Quality Education for Minorities Network, and life experiences in several countries. Each of these 30 stories explores different facets of individuals and families, with major thematic elements evolving from the diversity and complexity of individual experiences as other in the United States but also in Canada, Mexico, Hong Kong, Mainland China, and Taiwan. Tashiro currently is submitting these stories to literary journals. A link to one story is provided below—the Editor’s Choice Award in a volume of the literary magazine Fiction Fix.