Students Found First Japanese Club

at Fordham

Fordham Lincoln Center’s Japanese community reflects on the club’s presence during the fall 2022 semester

By KIA FATAHI Staff Writer

Since its inception in the fall 2022 semester, members of Tomodachi, the Japanese cultural club at Lincoln Center, have organized a variety of meetings and events with the goal of raising awareness about Japanese culture.

The visionary behind Tomodachi is founder and President Karen Watanabe, Fordham College at Lincoln Center (FCLC) ’24. As a Japanese American, Watanabe created the club as an opportunity for Fordham students of Japanese descent to be actively involved in preserving their identities and exchanging their culture with the campus community.

When entering Fordham, Watanabe said she was disappointed that Fordham did not have a Japanese culture club, unlike other New York City schools. Both New York University and Columbia University have Japanese student organizations which have hosted numerous events on and off campus. Additionally, Fordham’s Japanese program consists of limited course offerings covering history, language and literature.

“I realized that there is not a place on campus for people to go beyond taking a language course at Fordham. There is not a lot of educational presence about Japanese culture,” Watanabe said. “But there are definitely a lot of people who are interested in the culture, and I’ve also met several Japanese students who want to get in touch with their cultural roots.”

Born in Japan and raised in the U.S., Treasurer Maria Komiyama, FCLC ’24, said she wishes to “reconnect more with her identity and being surrounded by other Japanese students,” especially in a university that claims the core values of diversity, equity and inclusion in all dimensions.

Working with three other founding members, two of whom are also Japanese, Watanabe and Komiyama channeled their ambitions into biweekly meetings and outings that showcase Japanese traditions, food, art and history. Fordham students, both Japanese and non-Japanese, have since participated in multiple activities, including a trip to the Noguchi Museum, making traditional rice-balls (“onigiri”) and a tie-dye event (“shibori”).

In the one semester that it has been active, Tomodachi has rapidly garnered more than 120 members on its email list, as well as an average of 10-15 members at general meetings and 25-30 attending outings.

Tomodachi has three primary objectives in its contribution to the Fordham community, according to Watanabe. First, education is necessary to steer away from common misconceptions and stereotypes about Japanese culture. Watanabe and Komiyama made it clear that Japan, like any other nation, possesses far more complex cultural and historical aspects than most people think.

“When one thinks about Japanese culture, they make assumptions like ‘You eat sushi?’ or ‘You watch anime?’” Watanabe explained. “Although there is no denial that such elements do exist in Japan, there is so much more to Japanese culture beyond what we might have thought we knew.”

Supporting Japanese-owned businesses around New York City is another important goal for the Tomodachi Club. Watanabe and Komiyama attributed this ambition to the two years of COVID-related closures of Japanese su- permarkets and restaurants, specifically those located on the corner of Stuyvesant and East Ninth streets in the East Village, popularly known as Little Tokyo.

“What I like about our club is how we develop strong relationships with small businesses,” Watanabe said in reference to Face Records, a Tokyo-based vinyl records store that the club visited on Dec. 3. The store, which is located in Brooklyn, is renowned for its importation of vinyl records and CDs consisting of different genres from Japan, such as city pop, funk and soul.

“Both offices (Brooklyn and Tokyo) followed us on Instagram,” Watanabe explained. “So it was amazing to see how we started as a small club last semester, and then, all of a sudden, we are establishing connections with Japanese businesses in this city and outside.”

Komiyama concurred, expressing that “getting the word out and making many people aware that these businesses do exist in New York” is of utmost importance to the Japanese community.

The Tomodachi Club’s final goal is to create a welcoming and inclusive environment among students with varying levels of knowledge on Japanese culture. According to Komiyama, hands-on activities are an effective way to teach them in a short period of time.

For example, Tomodachi held a general meeting focused on making “yokai” (Japanese term for supernatural beings and folktale creatures) origami on Oct. 24. Komiyama reiterated that the executive board should never assume that everyone already knows the basics of Japanese culture.

“There’s a lot of non-Japanese members who come to our meetings,” Komiyama said. “So we like to first do introductions, make informative slideshows explaining how activities like this (origami) are important in Japanese culture and how they are integrated in a lot of childrens’ upbringings in Japan, just so that everyone can understand.”

Active club member Cat Magtibay, FCLC ’25, was learning Japanese prior to joining the club. As a non-Japanese member, she found it as an inclusive space for students like herself to interact with Japanese students and educate themselves on unfamiliar aspects of their everyday lives.

Isabella Conley, FCLC ’25, expressed similar sentiments. She described the atmosphere of Tomodachi as “welcoming” and “immersive.”

Tomodachi will resume meetings on Thursdays from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. every week starting on Feb. 9, when a haiku and origami event will be held to celebrate Valentine’s Day.

Bill Aguado’s Legacy: A Leader of Supporting and Empowering Artists

Bill Aguado has dedicated his life’s work to showcasing the histories of hidden communities and their cultures

By MARIA AKOSTA GKALINTO Staff Writer

Bill Aguado, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) ’73, is a Bronx legend who has been a champion for the arts in many communities around the city. On Oct. 19, 2022, he was honored with the Bronx Council on the Arts (BCA) lifetime achievement award.

After graduating from Hunter College, Aguado received a scholarship to GSAS to complete his master’s degree in teaching and sociology. With the help and leadership of the directors of the program, Aguado and his peers committed their studies to create an alternative school in the South Bronx. The school worked with middle school- to high school-aged students who were or had been involved in the juvenile justice system, in need of supervision or involved in gang violence or drugs. The school aimed to provide a nontraditional classroom environment that fosters the student’s creative interests and talents.

“We wanted the program to be in the community,” Aguado said.

More importantly, the school offered these students an education away from the traditional classroom — one that allowed them to use their hands, get out from behind their desks and be creative. While they dedicated an hour to reading and an hour to math every day, the students also learned to farm with the help of a Puerto Rican farmer who volunteered at the school, as well as to write poetry under the guidance of another volunteer. Due to the overwhelming success of the school, four more were created with support from Fordham.

“The kids were so involved and engaged,” Aguado said.

Teaching at the alternate school was a catalyst for Aguado’s lifetime dedication to the arts and his community, facilitating the conditions by which he “realized the value and importance of the arts.” After completing his master’s degree, Aguado worked alongside a Fordham professor, the Rev. Joseph Fitzpatrick, S.J., on a field study in the South Bronx.

Aguado searched for art and artists within the community. He confronted rich cultures, histories and stories that transformed his passion for the arts. According to Aguado, sitting on stoops and talking with residents of the South Bronx and Harlem “was an extraordinary experience.” He heard music, admired the graffiti, and swayed to the rhythm and culture of the spoken word of those in these admirable communities.

Aguado touched on the history of the “Bronx is Burning” period, where Black and Puerto Rican residents in the Bronx during the ’70s battled daily to save their neighborhoods from racist pol- icies and neglect that ravaged homes and uprooted families. He explained the admiration he had for the people there because “when they could have given up, ... they stayed and they fought.”

During these encounters, Aguado’s respect for the people only grew as he learned more about the community. Inspired and impacted by the art, culture and history of these communities, Aguado said, “I was impressed, and so I wanted to continue to empower and affirm the voices and values of the community.”

“The soul of the people is the community,” he said.

Aguado retired in May 2009 after almost 30 years as the director of the BCA, where he promoted and supported local artists and advocated for the culture of the Bronx neighborhoods. Even so, Aguado continues to donate his time to En Foco, a nonprofit that supports U.S.-based photographers of African, Asian, Latino, Native American and Pacific Islander heritage.

Over the past seven years, Aguado has focused on sorting and digitizing an inventory of over 350 artists’ works in hopes of preserving and presenting a parallel cultural history of hidden stories and moments of minority communities in New York City. This project is called Nueva Luz, an ongoing art publication that addresses social and cultural issues at the forefront of pho - tography with an emphasis on narratives from artists of color. Aguado said he hopes to continue preserving and showcasing important history so that it is not lost. “This is what matters to me,” he said.

Aguado’s lifetime achievement award is a testament to his dedication and passion for the arts and the needs of the community, but when asked about how he felt receiving this honor late last year, he replied. “I don’t particularly like awards.” Instead, he redirected the conversation to the colleagues and artists who attended the awards ceremony and highlighted their work in “the front lines of the cultural battle.”

In spite of this recognition, Aguado confessed that he is not an artist. Aguado, who is colorblind and deaf, joked that when asked his favorite color, he “will always say black.” Nevertheless, he has dedicated his passion and talents to the preservation of the arts throughout New York City for decades.

Aguado wants to continue looking forward: “Let me go find another group of artists and tell them it’s your vision that matters. There is no right way. There is just your way.”