Meet the Crew: Masami Kiyono
By Joy Ma
Masami Kiyono found us through her alma mater School of Visual Arts where Director Lulu Men also attended. A graduate of SVA’s Master’s Visual Narrative Program based in New York City, her experience as a storyboard artist and illustrator brought us together. Masami is inspired by anything, in her words, involving monsters, magic, and/or cats.
We both have a passion and soft spot for graphic novels. Masami is action-driven, even in the manga she creates. Raised as it were on shonen manga, her stories deal with the conflict and ultimate resolution of struggles her characters encounter. In her rich worlds of fiction, the characters mirror what she experiences and what she observes.
But it was her awareness of the challenges her family went through that brought her to us. Her grandfather was interned in Tule Lake from 1942 to 1946. Her great-grandfather, Shinkichi Kiyono, won a carpentry contest held within the camp and won a woodworker's plane featured in the camp’s promotional and seemingly propaganda photographs.
Shinkichi Kiyono at Tule Lake, Internment Camp.
Masami’s illustrations bring the survivors' memories to life. Brooding, yet accessible, the depictions of Deoli Internment Camp delve into the still-vivid recollections of the camp.
When we met we talked about manga, what we like to read, film, the creative process and how she gets into the emotive depth of the illustration.
“When working on any creative project, I need to know whose story we're telling, and who we want to tell it to,” she said. “My job as the illustrator is to make the audience emotionally connect to the content, not so much through realistic drawing but through creating a visual language that hints at what the watcher would be feeling if they were in the character's shoes. To do this, I need to know what that feeling should be, and what would make that obvious to anyone watching.
Film still: Illustration of an internee’s beard being pulled for survival.
Film still: Illustration of an internee before being beaten on the head by a guard.
As for the most important information she needs when she’s working on Illustrations like the ones in “Voices of Deoli” she says, “As the illustrator, my greatest challenge on the project has been to capture the emotional power behind events that I myself have not lived through. Because of this, I've heavily relied on the recorded interviews of everyone from Deoli, and on the stories told by Japanese Americans who underwent internment in the United States. As a grandchild of Japanese internees, I've seen how this form of imprisonment can affect communities for generations. This knowledge combined with the firsthand accounts of the Chinese Indians from Deoli makes it possible for me to understand and communicate their experiences.”
Film still: Illustration of inside the Black House, a place internees being taken to for punishment.
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