Blog #6

“The Cats of Mirikitani”

The documentary “The Cats of Mirikitani” was quite a bitter sweet film to witness. It is about an old Japanese man named Jimmy Mirikitani, who experienced the japanese internment camps in California as a young man. The documentary takes place during 2001 when Jimmy is 80 years old and homeless in Soho New York. Jimmy is an artist and spends his time painting at a street corner by a supermarket up until 9/11. Linda, the filmmaker of this documentary as well as a neighbor in the street, has begun to videotape Jimmy a few times on the streets, had looked for him and taken him in. As time passes Linda questions Mirikitani’s art as well as past and pieces things together. By the end of the film Jimmy gets a place with the help of social welfare, goes back to the internment camp to a healing pilgrimage, and reunites with his sister who he was separated from decades ago as a young man.

Throughout the film Linda struggled to get Jimmy to take any welfare or “government” help whatsoever. He would say the government took everything from him why would he want their help. Jimmy did not trust the government and how could he with what he has experienced in his past. It is clear he has built up trauma that he doesn’t know how to describe with words but in his paintings. Though beautiful, we can see how much it had affected him by how much he paints it decades later. The beauty of the story is the relationship formed between Jimmy and Linda throughout this process. She helps him get back on his feet having him teach an art class and eventually finding him a place of his own with the help of the government that he was so defensive over. Then having him visit the internment camp he was in at Tule Lake, in a way he was coming to terms with what happened to him and moving forward. Then the end we see Jimmy reunite with his sister and her family, was truly a beautiful and emotional moment. You are basically watching a seed sprout and bloom to a beautiful big flower. It is painful to see how the wrongful actions of the country and government affected a big group of people and to see how they are still continuously affected decades later living in their trauma is truly heartbreaking. “The Cats of Mirikitani” though may seem like a simple documentary, shines a light on a much deeper issue on how the terrible decision of Japanese internment camps decades ago is still affecting the japanese community directly till this day.