Japanese Student Association embraces all ethnicities

By Douglas Sulenta
The Collegian

Contrary to what some may believe, the Japanese Student Association is not only for Japanese students.

In fact, only about 30 percent of the members of the JSA are Japanese while the other 70 percent of the membership is comprised of students from all different ethnicities.

JSA was established 32 years ago, but it wasn’t until the last couple of years that the group has really become active.

Featuring many students of other nationalities, including American, the JSA gears its events more toward a general crowd rather than just Japanese students.

“Our events are not really focused on Japanese culture,” said Yukio Kemmotesu, president of the JSA.

“We put some information about the Japanese and Japanese culture into the events so that the American members hopefully will know more about the Japanese culture.”

Some of the events the JSA takes part in are movie nights, car washes and yard-sales, the latter geared for raising money for the club.

“We’re short of money right now. We always like to put on an event each semester and this semester we did a culture night. We had performers on stage and they needed costumes and the costumes are expensive,” Kemmotesu said.

The culture night Kemmotesu speaks of featured 14 Fresno State student organizations that gathered to give ethnic performances and put their culture on display for an evening.

With 70 members, the JSA is looking for more members. They actively seek membership by posting flyers at Fresno State, Fresno City College and other places throughout the community.

Mostly, the JSA is around to serve as a social group to provide camaraderie and to educate. Kemmotesu said they are proud to display what is great about Japanese culture.

Comment on this story in the Features forum >>