He thoroughly enjoyed the festive evening routine in the after hours of his father’s watch repair shop that involved friends, drinks and shigin. In the evening, friends came over to practice shigin. In 1969, at the age of 29, Seki fondly recalled repairing watches with his father.
Seki’s passion in shigin was deeply rooted in his relationship with his father. Patrick Seki’s passion for shigin reflected reverence for his father Upon his honorable discharge in 1968, Seki went to Southern California’s watchmaking school in Southgate, graduated and took over his father’s business in jewelry and watch repair. Seki served for eight years as a radio technician but left the service after his father suffered a stroke. Seki graduated from high school in 1959 and the next year enlisted in the U.S. Returning to Los Angeles in 1954 at 14 years old, Seki had fond memories of listening to his father teach shigin in the after hours of their newly established jewelry and watch repair shop. In 1954, after eight long years of purgatory in Japan, the Seki family finally came home to resettle all over again. Then, the passage of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act reversed previously racist means of barring the Seki family from returning to the U.S. In a sardonic twist, the Seki family endured discrimination and ostracization from Japanese locals because of their American roots. government deported them to Yamaguchi prefecture in Japan, where Seki’s father continued to repair watches for a living. Seki initially spent two years at the Manzanar camp and then another two years at Tule Lake.Īfter the war ended, the Seki family no longer had a home in Los Angeles and begrudgingly renounced their U.S. Along with 120,000 other people of Japanese descent, mostly American citizens, the Seki family lived in America’s concentration camps for four years from 1942 to 1945. In 1942, World War II changed everyone’s lives. Seki’s father also studied advanced horology and eventually became the first Japanese American certified watchmaker from the Horological Institute of America. In 1940, they had Patrick Seki, their third son. Initially, Miki Seki was not interested in shigin because he was busy with the hustle and bustle of daily life while raising a family with his wife, Chisae Rachel.
By the 1930s, Ara masterfully blended his opera techniques with shigin to start his own style of shigin known as kokusei-style shigin.ĭuring this period, Seki’s Nisei father, Miki Seki, befriended Ara.
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One of Anzai’s disciples was a San Franciscan professional opera singer, Sadao Ara, who was the first Japanese opera singer in the U.S. In the early 1900s, Anzai had a following of more than 150 shigin practitioners. started in 1899 in Los Angeles by a Japanese immigrant, Shuusui Anzai. Shigin’s beginnings in the U.S., circa 1900s Although shigin in Japan is mostly popular among elders, there has been a resurgence among the younger generation as shigin competitions grow from the city to national levels. Popular shigin themes are love, death, war, nature, and the four seasons of the year. Other styles focus on specific poetic themes. Some shigin styles use musical instruments such as the biwa, shamisen, or even a keyboard. Akin to various martial arts styles, shigin has a plethora of different styles. Today, shigin is prevalent throughout Japan and there are several schools that teach it. The samurai class often recited shigin during rituals, ceremonies, and festivals. Shigin was popularized within the samurai class starting in the early 1600s during the Edo period throughout the Tokugawa shogunate. The river of melodramatic vocals has the power to thrust its listeners back to the feudal era when samurai once flourished. Listening to shigin is a mesmerizing experience that puts one into an awe-inspiring trance due to its sheer gravitas. Shigin is an ancient Japanese art form of reciting poetry in a chant-like, vibrato-filled drawl.
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