This episode presents a candid conversation with Toronto novelist Kerri Sakamoto. Her latest book Floating City traces the life of Japanese Canadian protagonist Frankie Hanesaka. Growing up on the West Coast, Frankie’s family life is up-ended by internment during the Second World War. Later, as a young man, Frankie heads to Toronto, where his path intersects with R. Buckminster Fuller’s. Sakamoto’s story draws on Fuller’s urban planning proposal for Toronto in 1968, which featured floating housing pods in Toronto Harbour. These plans were created for the city the same year that Fuller travelled to London, Ontario.
In this conversation with producer Braden Labonte, Sakamoto discusses her practice and Floating City, including her research into Fuller’s life and how Fuller figures in the novel.
Christina:
Welcome to from remote stars. This is the second of her full length interviews. We wanted to publish these interviews with little editing because we were really taken with the content of these talks. Both Ava Diaz, who heard from in the last interview episode and Carey Sakamoto in this episode, spent a considerable amount of time going through Buckminster Fuller’s archive, and we learned a lot from them in these interviews. The second interview is with novelist Kerry Sakamoto. Sakamoto is writings often draw on personal family experiences as part of the Japanese Canadian diaspora. In her most recent novel Floating City, Buckminster Fuller hovers through the novel as a sort of spectral figure whose futurist imaginings influence the novel’s protagonist, Frank Hannah. Back in March, one of our producers, Braden Labonte, had a chance to meet with Kerry over Zoom to talk about her most recent book and her research into the life of Buckminster Fuller. This episode is from that conversation.
Braden:
Thanks again, so much for doing this. It’s it’s really great that you can take the time. I think I, first can we start just by an intro just who you are and what you’ve created?
Kerri:
Ok. My name is Kerri Sakamoto. I’m a novelist based here in Toronto, and my books have generally explored the experience of diasporic Japanese in Canada and in Japan as well. And my latest book is Floating City, which was published in two thousand eighteen, and I would say that my books have. Mainly dealt with psychological residue of state perpetrated racism and namely that of the internment of Japanese Canadians and floating city continues that exploration, but also brings in more ideas around the idea of home and homeland where people are allowed to live and how they’re allowed to live.
Braden:
Can you give us a sort of brief summary of the book, like what you would tell people the book is, is about if they’re about to read it?
Kerri: You know, that’s one of the hardest questions I always find, it’s like, oh, I’ll tell you in three hundred pages, but that I guess in a nutshell, it’s it focuses on the experience of a Japanese Canadian man who’s born in Canada, in Vancouver Island, to his immigrant parents who who came from Japan seeking a better life. Of course, as so many immigrants have done and they go through a series of displacements, first they build a house near the waterfront poured out burning, actually, which is where my mother’s family, where they landed. And they are they they built a home near the water, but are quickly expropriated, their properties expropriated by the city that wants that waterfront land. And the novel has a sort of tinge of magical realism. And what they do? They’re very poor. They just push their house out onto the water and live on the water. And then they are. They are again evacuated, displaced because of World War Two and the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the perception that they are going to collaborate with the enemy, namely the Japanese, and they’re removed. They lose their home again and are sent to two internment camps in the interior of British Columbia. And then eventually they come out to Toronto. And this is where the main character, Frankie sets out on this quest to become a sort of waterfront developer. He sort of determined to be in the position where he can’t be swindled of his land ever again, so he will own the land, and it sort of envisions an alternate history of the Toronto waterfront landscape. It’s kind of a it’s kind of a fable about what happens to this, this man and his quest.
Braden:
I was really interested to learn the sort of crossover with your own family history. Can you tell us a bit more about that?
Kerri:
Yes. Well, well, as I mentioned, my mother’s family settled in Port Alberni, which is on Vancouver Island. My grandfather was a boom man, one of those men who pushed the logs and towards the sawmill and their land was expropriated. They didn’t push it off onto the water, but they built another house. And then that was seized by the B.C. government, the custodian of enemy alien property. And they were sent to a camp called Tashi, which is the camp that I portray in the book in Floating City. And they come out to Toronto and try to make their lives anew.
Braden:
So where did the idea of the floating city come from?
Kerri:
I have a friend, Bruce Kabera, who is a well-known architect, Japanese Canadian, and he happened to mention to me about this proposed development. Back in 19, it was proposed back in nineteen sixty eight for this floating kind of community in Toronto Harbor, which seemed so, well, literally outlandish to me. But the context was the fear of the city bursting at the seams from an influx of new immigrants. And so there was this proposal and it actually went through to City Council to be presented to them. It was commissioned by John Bassett, who’s quite a well-known industrialist, and I was so shocked that it got that far. There are pictures of it being presented to council members, and of course, this was in the heels of Expo sixty seven and the American Pavilion. And so Buckminster Fuller was an awesome figure, really. So there was all this kind of future looking sense of possibility. So I kind of connected, and I guess it’s because people did feel like that was like my agent. I lost my agent over this idea because he said, how does that connect with a Japanese Canadian multigenerational tale? But I think because I’m descended from an island culture and then my grandparents landing on Vancouver Island again and the sense of water and and the search for a homeland, it sort of always reaching across the ocean to find a sense of home. And then the landlocked internment camp being the ultimate dystopian community, right? So this floating city as this utopian kind of place and ideal. It just struck a chord with me. And then I started finding out about Buckminster Fuller, and he’s such an intriguing, fascinating figure.
Braden:
Yeah. Maybe we can talk about how he kind of figures into the novel itself, like what sort of how you use sort of his history and how he plays as a character?
Kerri: Yeah, I mean, I wouldn’t say he’s not a full bodied character. He’s kind of a presence that hovers through the novel and over the life of my protagonist, Frankie, as a kind of model, which I think initially he misconstrues his ethos a little, but he’s deeply inspired by him because he he had this notion of he designated himself as a guinea pig b that he would make an experiment of his life to see what an ordinary man could achieve to benefit all of humanity. And so Frankie being in a way less than an ordinary man without voting rights, without citizenship in the wake of the war. He’s inspired to to see what he can make of his life, and he designates himself guinea pig F. So and I wanted to infuse this story of this quest of Buckminster Fuller, who I think is kind of a universalist. I wanted to imbue that that storyline with the specificity of the Japanese Canadian cultural experience and the historical fact of the internment.
Braden:
I think it’s I mean, this is for radio, even though we’re looking at each other over the computer right now, but you did sort of quotes, as you said, ordinary man, as you described Buckminster in comparison to your to your main protagonist and was wondering if you could explain that a bit.
Kerri:
Yes, we’ll Fuller was born into a very prominent New England family. He was supposed to go to Harvard and he dropped out a couple of times. He sort of took for granted his privilege. But but he was also such an unusual person that you could see that a traditional path was not for him. But still, he he was. He was anything but ordinary. His aunt was a famous intellectual, a transcendentalist. Margaret Fuller So yeah, I mean, fuller. I think he presumes a kind of universal everyman, but he’s not insensitive to to those to differences and to disadvantages. But in the most well-meaning way, he he actually I read in an article from nineteen sixty six, I think it was. He told the the journalists that he believed that he had been Maori in a past life, and he I think he idealized Asian and Pacific island cultures, island culture specifically. He believed that they were. He described these figures as priest navigators navigating by the stars because they were on these remote islands and they they needed resources, so they set off. They were also able to to return home, which was the big trick. Yeah, you can go forth, but how do you get back? And that was such an incredible touchstone for me that that idea, because it’s it’s really about migrating and looking and trying to find your way home. And when you’re a disparate person, you’re always searching for an elusive home and trying to find trying to read the stars and find your way back and find an ideal place. And the floating city in my book embodies that ideal.
Braden: This is sort of jumping ahead in our list of questions there, but I feel like it touches on the last point, you said just the idea of Bucky being tied to ideas of utopia and if that figured into how you thought about it as you wrote the book.
Kerri: Oh, yes, absolutely. I mean, he always talked about, you know, that that people are all entitled to a certain quality of life and shelter, that it was ridiculous that we were building these skyscrapers and there was enough room for people to all the people in the world to live in these skyscrapers and still be able to dance side by side or know he was deeply humane. That was what his life was devoted to, really. And, you know, he looked at things in such really inventive ways, just and just the idea that we’re all vying for land to plant our homes down on land when so much of the earth, the most of the earth is water and and there’s the air above us. And why can’t we come up with homes on water and in the air? And then why are we rooted to one spot? So it’s just interesting in light of migrations that are undertaken under such dire circumstances today. He was just a really fascinating character to me.
Braden:
Yeah, I found that interesting in this idea of the future. Where has this could be sort of like drop down anywhere and everyone would be constantly traveling. It just seems such like a fantastical idea of the future and when exactly?
Kerri:
And there are these like seafaring communities that are ideal and and, you know, it’s really literally taking your home where where you want to be carrying your home with you on your back.
Braden:
But in a way, as you said, that isn’t isn’t in his vision. It isn’t out of sort of political strife, desperation of some kind. It’s sort of like as a way that people should be, which always seem funny to me when I read it.
Kerri:
Yes, right? Yes. So idealistic. And you know, in a way, he and it goes back to his privilege. He was untethered by those kinds of concerns in a way and just thought about these. An incredible, idealistic conditions, but they had all these real world implications, which was also what interested me.
Braden:
I was wondering about researching for the book where you found the research like what? What sort of levels you went to?
Kerri:
Well, I should say from the from the outset, I’m not a scholar. Fiction writers can afford to be a little surrender to their instincts and intuition and to serendipity. But I did. I did go, of course, into the Toronto archives to look at the proposal and and I just, you know, read as many books as I could. People had stories about meeting him, you know, just people. I randomly met a friend of mine, lived in a in a geodesic dome in the in the desert, in the seventies and know just it was just interesting to hear. And I know he had this chrono file photo file. I never actually went to to see it physically, but you can access it online. But he he just he he documented and collected every little aspect of his life and his travels. So from little receipts for restaurants to his plane ticket stubs. He was really, I mean, I guess it’s part of the self-mythologizing and and building the legend. But it’s it’s interesting because I think I was thinking about it yesterday. And, you know, it’s sort of like it’s a record of his his touch on the land and on the on the on spaceship earth. It’s just this kind of record. And he had a kind of magical light touch on the world. I think know and and he has these these little scraps of evidence that chronicle that.
Braden:
Yeah, I think it’s interesting that you say that because I feel like the exhibition itself is kind of that is kind of his touch on the world, like leading to all these things that are, you know, maybe influenced by it, maybe reacting against it in some way. But I think the kind of feel like you said is like a document of that touch that kind of we all have on people and things that maybe we don’t necessarily see.
Kerri:
Yeah, I mean, and we collect receipts for our taxes.
Braden:
That’s everyone’s cronofile that they’re forced to do every year.
Kerri:
Haha That’s right. So, yeah, and I wish I could have met him. The other personal aspect of it was that I really felt that he I felt that he would honor my father and the way my father lived and his hardships and how he may do. And he, Buckminster Fuller, famously said, You do as much as you can with little until you do everything with nothing sort of that idea, right? And that was so, so true of my father. And I think so many of that generation of immigrants and those who underwent hardship and had setbacks in their lives. And they just went on and they made the best of very little or even nothing. And I have seen in the book Where Bucky Helps Frankie Frankie is breaking this kind of dry garden in the backyard of the home where he he lives in as a gardener, and Bucky’s looks at his rake and he says, You know, I can fix this to make it more efficient. I can make it so that you don’t have to labor so hard by placing the the pegs in a certain way. And he figures that out. Any kind of crafts that for Frankie, and that was the kind of thing that my father would do. And I think that’s typical of a certain generation, you know?
Braden:
Right, Yeah. Look for the efficiencies in the stuff that you can fix on your own to make your life a bit easier for anything.
Kerri:
Yeah. And he had such an affinity for the Japanese culture. Mm hmm.
Braden:
Can we can talk a bit about the lectures that he gave so many of them, and I think you said something like they were almost like performance art in a way.
Kerri:
Yeah, I guess from what I can imagine and and little bits of tape of film film footage. But he would just stand up and talk and talk and talk for a day and just for hours and hours, and people were really mesmerized by his ideas and his fervor. You know, just thinking about the period he lived through building skyscrapers or going up, he recounts going up in an airplane for the first time with the billionaire Vincent Astor anyway. But that possibility, and not that kind of faith in technology to make life better and easier. Here for people and then and then going into the sixties and seventies and counterculture and and around communal living, he lived through those formative times that sort of suited his ideas and and vice versa. You know?
Braden:
Yeah, it’s interesting. We’ve been talking to a lot of people about this and sort of the sort of traveling lectures being sort of like a sales pitch for what the future could be like. He was so genuinely excited about it and he would just go in like you said, these like for a day at a time, just talking about everything from like particles to big infrastructure projects to just everything.
Kerri:
Yeah, he was. I really wish I could have been there. You know, and I wonder what his grandson Jamie remembers of him. I guess I’ll wait and hear the podcast. But yeah, he was kind of evangelical right. And he and I’m sure he wanted to live for as long as possible to see what would come, what would come to fruition.
Braden:
Yeah. The last question I want to ask you is something that Christina and I, the host of this podcast, have been talking about a lot. And I think we’ve been talking about it for the whole sort of run that we’ve been putting together. And it’s just kind of like the. The Times, I think the late sixties when he gave this talk and was doing the proposal for Toronto and now basically like the parallels and differences sort of lay out our theory and you can sort of agree, disagree or add to it kind of thing. But just at the time, as you said before, was so sort of precarious and hopeful sort of the Vietnam War was going on. The Cold War was going on. Space race was going on. But also, you have people like Bucky traveling around and sort of giving this vision of like, we’re advancing so quickly, but humanity is learning so much. Be hopeful for the future, like we’re going in a good direction. Despite all this, this is going to sound a bit bleak, but we don’t know if we have that right now. We feel like there’s a lot of sort of chaos going on, but I don’t see the same messenger. And I was wondering what you thought about that?
Kerri:
No, it’s very I mean, there’s so many things that are distressing going on. I mean, I feel personally that the racism that’s happening, the racist violence that’s happening, the while there’s so much the disparity in wealth. One thing that’s interesting about Bucky is that he was not an Elon Musk because he didn’t profit. From all of this, and I think that’s the important distinction, all these people who are sort of visionaries now, they’re extremely insanely wealthy and Bucky was not so he was not driven by that. And in fact, he was very anti-capitalist. He called those people in caps. Financial capitalists and them being ruthless and and just motivated by money. So it would be so interesting if he were here today. But no, I mean, it is a bleak moment. I have to say this is it’s very hard to say. But he he also spoke to young people. You know, those were his followers. And what hope I have today for the world is so much. I feel like an old fogey saying this, but there’s so much youthful activism right now. And against gentrification, of course, with racism, incarceration, there’s just so much energy that I really envy. And and there has to be hope not, but I don’t know if I’m answering your question, but no,
Braden:
That’s that’s great. I feel like similar to other people’s democracy.
Kerri:
Well, I’m glad that’s hopeful, isn’t it?
Braden:
Yeah, I was, as you were saying it, I was thinking that exact thought that it’s hopeful that we’re all sort of, you know, not not blinded by the situation, but can see the bits of light. I think it’s good. Thank you so much again for your time.
Kerri:
Ok, well, thank you for the thoughtful questions. I enjoyed talking about it.
Christina:
Thanks for listening to this interview episode from remote stars and thanks to Kerry Sakamoto for taking the time to meet with us. Our theme music is by Adam Sturgeon from Remote Stars as a production of Carleton University in partnership with Western University, with the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.