‘The folks I’d seen in kimono didn’t have as a lot melanin as I do’

Even earlier than she knew that Japan was a factor, Kara Harris had a factor for Japan.

As a Eighties child, the American discovered one thing interesting in regards to the cartoons she grew up with, like “Star Blazers” and “Voltron,” however she could not fairly put her finger on what it was. It wasn’t till later when she got here throughout movies like 1962’s “My Geisha” with Shirley MacLaine, and 1986’s “American Geisha” with Pam Dawber that this fondness started to crystalize. Specifically it was the clothes that the characters in these movies would put on that struck Harris as lovely, elegant clothes that reminded her not a lot of Japan however of royalty.

“I did not know these clothes have been kimono,” says Harris, an elementary faculty teacher in her 40s now residing in Chiba Prefecture. “I simply thought the characters have been princesses. And, like little ladies in every single place, I wished to be part of that.”