1st Lt. Misa Matsushima becomes Japan's first female JASDF fighter pilot. She will be flying the F-15J. Japan had only recently lifted a ban on female pilots flying fighter jets and reconnaissance aircraft in 2015.We at American Mishima wish her great success and for those future women pilots she will inspire. がんばって ください!
When I think of #JohnMcCain's passing, I recall his bravery in the USS Forestal incident during the Vietnam War and horrors he endured as an American POW in the infamous Hanoi Hilton. I can not say I have always agreed with his politics or how he split from his first wife but at this time of his passing, I am left with a sense of emptiness and sorrow for an American Hero who has left us behind. I will always respect his service to our country. If I could offer one thing to surmise his sense of duty, loyalty, and service to this country, it is this final clip from The Bridges of Toko Ri.
Of my dear friend Mr. Hiroshi Furukawa aka "Mr. Daijoubu," I will miss his smile and our conversations as he crosses the sea of life and death to reach the shores of liberation. He had recently passed and the news just reached us. He was a quiet man who smiled a lot and would often sit with us to recite the sutras at the Koyasan Buddhist Temple in Little Tokyo. I imagine him as he was with his coke-bottle glasses, blue & white plaid shirt and black slacks happily walking on an oceanside pier as we once met him walking towards a fog towards a bright light. With each step, he would become younger, happier as he would soon be joined by friends and family along the way to greet him. I would hope he would see Mr. Soji Kanogawa along the way until we could see him walk into the light. He along with Mr. Kanogawa were one of the first people to welcome us to the Koyasan Temple and one of the few of the old-timers who became our friends. I remembered asking him about the war and him telling me how he was too young to fight at 14 but remembered the American bombings and yet despite that experience, he still came to this country and fell in love with it. We would often speak in my limited Japanese and his limited Spanish. He would often call me his Maestro. He was a good man, dear friend, and a jolly old Tomodachi I will miss and hope to one day to see his smile again.
We have re-released our original epic The Soldier and the Samurai. Thanks to some new editing software and newly aquired skills, we were able to go back and make some fixes on our first ever if we dare say ambitious generational epic. For those unfamiliar with our story, it is based on a real life rumor that surfaced in 1965 about a reported encounter with the famous lost Samurai Harada Sanosuke of Shinsengumi fame. Where rumor meets imagine, fiction takes over and the result is a generational tale of adventure and one of grattitude. Please enjoy!
“American Mishima” is the work of Louis Rosas, the son of Mexican Immigrants, whose father served in Vietnam for the US Army and who grew up on glamorized war films and military aviation in the sleepy seaside plains of Oxnard, Calif. With an early fascination of the Second World War embedded in his young mind during the post-Vietnam era, it was his exposure to Akira Kurosawa's samurai epic Ran (Toho, 1985) that changed his views of war while creating a lasting impression of Japanese culture and history. Further inspired by the works of Japanese writer Yukio Mishima, Rosas would go on to study Japanese language and swordsmanship, which led him to the practice of Shingon Buddhism and Shinto. Rosas is also a former student of Shinkendo, the ideal and practice of the samurai code of Bushido in the modern world, which helped shape the creative force that is “American Mishima.”
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