The Cats of Mirikitani / ミリキタニの猫

A couple of nights ago I watched The Cats of Mirikitani (2006), a documentary by Linda Hattendorf about Japanese/American painter "Jimmy" Tsutomu Mirikitani. My old boss at the store in San Francisco had told me about it when it first came out, but I never had the chance to watch it until now. And at the risk of sounding trite, I must say: Boy do I wish I had seen this film earlier.

Watching the film is a process of getting to know "Jimmy"—an artist who lives on the street in New York and has fierce pride for his art and himself as an artist. And getting to know "Jimmy" becomes an exercise in getting to know one man's experience as a Japanese/American during World War II. Yet as we follow the story, the obvious but unexpected happens: 9/11. And then it's a whole 'nother story from there.

The film doesn't necessary present Jimmy as a victim, nor does it try to sugarcoat his person. (He can be a sweet, but sometimes difficult, person—and the camera doesn't hesitate to show both sides.) But we see Jimmy's fierceness in pointing out what he sees as an injustice: the internment of the Japanese and Japanese-Americans during World War II, and the subsequent treatment of "enemy aliens" by the United States—which continues through, and is resurrected after, 9/11.

In documenting one man's life—born in Sacramento, raised in Hiroshima, taken to Tule Lake, lost among the records of American social security—the film presents a gentle critique of U.S. racial, social, and foreign policies. At what point does it become justified to racially profile a whole group of "dangerous" people? How can a city, as thriving as New York, in a country as powerful as the United States, be unable to help its homeless? And how do we justify waging a "War on/of Terror", without addressing the criticisms lodged against U.S. policies toward other nations?

More than any other film about internment I've seen, this film deftly weaves a story that is at once complicated and deeply human: losing a home (more than once) and then finding family again, where one least expects it. Yes, the comparisons among 9/11, Pearl Harbor, and Hiroshima are there; but the striking images of Jimmy's paintings endure far more in my mind than any shot of smoke and destruction can.