I write for change, so that one day I might walk down any American street and not have someone look at me and try to guess which country I’m from,” Nishikawa says of his unique vision which continues to have a profound influence on younger generations in particular through his tours of college campuses and theaters throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe, as well the PBS broadcast of “I’m on a Mission from Buddha” in the early 1990s.
“I write pieces that give an inside view, a sense of the truth about the Asian-American experience – what it’s like to breathe in my skin. No less powerful, his trilogy of films – “Forgotten Valor,” “When We Were Warriors” and “Only the Brave” – celebrated the unparalleled courage of the Nisei soldiers who voluntarily fought in World War II while many of their families were imprisoned in internment camps back in the States. His celebrated play, “The Gate of Heaven,” portrayed the unlikely lifelong friendship between a Japanese American soldier and the Jewish survivor he liberates from the Dachau concentration camp – and the racial injustices both have endured.Īnother, “Gila River,” followed the dreams of a young Nisei baseball star from his internment during World War II to becoming an American soldier and finding himself face to face with his brother who is fighting for Japan. Through his trilogy of critically-acclaimed one-man shows, Nishikawa tackled such sensitive issues as the plight of Asian American writers who can’t get published (“Life in the Fast Lane”), the despair of Asian American actors who are excluded from mainstream roles (“I’m on a Mission from Buddha”), and how the media has stereotyped those who did succeed (“Mifune and Me”).
His acclaimed body of work over two decades has continually broken new ground in examining the human condition of the Asian American experience. Upon seeing one of Nishikawa’s one-man shows, the esteemed Los Angeles Times theater critic Sylvie Drake declared that “his core is molten lead, his language all friskiness and abrasion…Nishikawa is a poet first, an actor second, a presence always…Nishikawa is at his best when the language takes over and we’re exposed to a tumbling profusion of culture images racing by…” Lane Nishikawa – who makes his feature film directorial debut with “ ONLY THE BRAVE” – has been called “one of Asian America’s most compelling voices” by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Steven Okazaki – who noted that “his work is funny, angry, and deeply moving.”
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