[J!-ENT] J!-ENT Celebrating its 15th Year Anniversary - Starting off with 1986-1987

It’s amazing to see how man years have past since starting J!-ENT back in 1993.

A lot of people have asked how I got involved with promoting Japanese and Asian pop culture and immediately people would think it’s because of the Japanese girls or the cute pop idols at the time but I guess to explain things, I have to go back as early as 1986.

The ninja - Sho Kosugi

As a teenager, I was living in a diverse community, I grew up with very few Asian Americans and the majority was Filipino, there were Chinese families that lived in the area with relatives who worked on the railroads in California and pretty much, in the 80’s, everyone of my friends was into pretending they were ninjas and watching Sho Kosugi films.

Watching Kung-Fu theater and years before that enjoying “Transformers”, “Robotech”, “Voltron” and before that “Shogun Warriors”, “Gatchaman” (”G-Force”, “Battle of the Planets” or whatever it was called back then) and the Japanese American community were mainly farmers that owned vineyards nearby or the few who were in the military.

But a situation happened around 1986 that was surprising. It was during the time when Japanese companies were purchasing companies in the US, and there was a backlash by those who felt that their way of life and their jobs were being threatened. So, Asians were being picked on because people thought they were Japanese.

Although I am Filipino American, unfortunately our family was targeted.

I remember waking up and my parents were upset and the police were called to our home. Our water and electricity were shut down. Nails in our tires, sugar put into our gas tanks of our vehicles and painted on our house were the words “GO HOME JAPS!”

It didn’t make any sense to my parents and the police felt it was a targeted hate crime. Another family had that happened to their home (which the wife was Japanese) and to my knowledge only our two homes were targeted.

But for my father, he didn’t understand why… but he saw that because I had a Japanese friend and because I had friends coming over practicing martial arts, throwing ninja stars and we would surround the TV when “Super Ninjas” was shown on Kung-Fu theater, that the reason our home was targeted…was because of me.

And to make matters worse, a lot of other drama going on the background and this was a final straw and next thing you know, I am now attending high school my junior year at a high school in Los Angeles County and now living with relatives.

As mentioned before, I grew up in a diverse small community with very few Asian families but being in Southern California, I’ve never been in a situation where there were many Asians, let alone ethnicities that I’ve never heard of.

And to make matters more interesting, I saw a few guys walking by the home I was staying and we became friends. They taught me a lot about the city and what to be careful of because of the dangers that existed, especially near the area I was now living in.

I found myself curious about Japanese culture because of the incident that happened back at my home but also trying to discover more about Asian culture and learn from the friends around me.

For Japanese pop culture, my passion for it developed back in 1987 when every Saturday night, because my grandparents were so strict of the area we lived in and the people that I hung around (she really didn’t approve anything, including girlfriends), without the use of a phone and couldn’t go out all that much, the only station that seemed to come clear was KCSI (Channel 18) in Los Angeles which showed international programming.

On Saturday night, I found myself hooked on Japanese dramas. Subtitled and I would record it on television. My relatives thought I was crazy but I told them that I was recording it for school purposes, so as long as it was to further my education, they were cool with it.

The drama that hooked me was “Tsumatachi no Kagaijugyo”. I’ve always heard of the Japanese educational system but what I enjoyed about this was the drama focused on teen issues but more importantly, how their parents cope with trying to get their kids prepared for their high school entrance exams.

From that point on, I became a big fan of Japanese entertainment through Japanese dramas and to be fascinated and learn more about Japanese culture.