Yoshio Kishi and Irene Yah-Ling Sun Collection
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Abstract
Yoshio Kishi was an award-winning New York City-based film and sound editor. For four decades, Kishi has been an avid collector of materials that trace the depiction of Asian Americans in U.S. intellectual and popular culture, and of materials produced by Asian American activists to counter such cultural stereotypes. This collection contains movie posters, magazines, cartoons, comic books, films, sheet music, objects, and other items collected by Kishi that depict Asians and Asian Americans throughout the 19th and 20th centuries in America.
Biographical Note
Yoshio Kishi (1932- 2012) was an award-winning New York City-based film and sound editor whose credits include such classics as Jerry Schatzberg's "Panic in Needle Park" (1971), Alan Parker's "Fame" (1980), Martin Scorcese's "Raging Bull" (1980), and Wayne Wang's "Dim Sum" (1985). For four decades, Kishi was an avid collector of materials that trace the depiction of Asian Americans in U.S. intellectual and popular culture, and of materials produced by Asian American activists to counter such stereotypical images. His compulsion for collecting Asian Americana began in the mid-1960s when, in the midst of thinking about his identity, he began to regret not knowing more about his ethnic heritage. A second-generation Japanese American, Kishi grew up in a mainly Irish and Italian tenement neighborhood. During World War II, to avoid being labeled as enemy aliens, his father, a houseman, and his mother, a seamstress, had avoided speaking Japanese and joined a local Lutheran Church. In an effort to reclaim his ethnic heritage, Kishi, with the help of Los Angeles-based veteran actress of film, television, and commercials and friend Irene Yah Ling Sun, began to scour flea markets to purchase any materials that related to Asian Americana. Over the years, his collecting efforts preserved and amassed over 10,000 items showcasing both the demonization and activisms of Asian Americans, and to trace their depiction over two centuries of American history.
Arrangement
The Yoshio Kishi and Irene Yah-Ling Sun Collection in broken up into eleven series, which reflect Yoshio Kishi's own system of arrangement:
Missing Title
- Series I: Asian Americans
- Series II: History and Politics
- Series III: Curricular Studies
- Series IV: Hollywood Films, Television, Theater, and Actors
- Series V: Literature
- Series VI: Yoshio Kishi's Files
- Series VII: Audio
- Series VIII: Video
- Series IX: Film
- Series X: Collectibles
- Series XI: Data Storage
The materials are arranged alphabetically in all series, with the exception of series IIB-IIF, VIB, and VIC, which are arranged chronologically.
Scope and Content
The Yoshio Kishi and Irene Yah-Ling Sun Collection contains books, racist kitsch, paper ephemera, movie posters, magazines, cartoons, comic books, films, sheet music, objects, etc. that depict Asians and Asian Americans throughout the 19th and 20th centuries in America. While there are materials from the late 1800s, the bulk of the collection is from the twentieth century.
Further descriptions of scope and content are available at the beginning of each series.
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Topics
Conditions Governing Access
Materials are open to researchers. Please contact the Fales Library and Special Collections, fales.library@nyu.edu, 212-998-2596.
Conditions Governing Use
Copyright (or related rights to publicity and privacy) for materials in this collection was not transferred to New York University. Permission to use materials must be secured from the copyright holder. Please contact the Fales Library and Special Collections, fales.library@nyu.edu, 212-998-2596.
Preferred Citation
Published citations should take the following form:
Identification of item, date (if known); Yoshio Kishi and Irene Yah-Ling Sun Collection; MSS 292; box number; folder number; Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University Libraries.
Location of Materials
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Transferred from Kishi's home when he moved to nursing home in October 2011. The accession number associated with this gift is 2011.292.
Provenance
The Yoshio Kishi and Irene Yah-Ling Sun Collection was purchased from Yoshio Kishi by NYU's Asian/Pacific/American Studies Department for NYU's Fales Library in 2003. A small amount of material was added by Kishi in 2011.
Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
Audiovisual and born-digital materials have not been preserved and are unavailable to researchers.
Separated Materials
The book portion of the Yoshi Kishi/Irene Yah-Ling Sun Collection was separated and is being catalogued into both Fales Special Collections and the main Bobst circulating collection. Duplicate materials were returned to the A/P/A Institute. Modern works of fiction and non-fiction, mainly post-1950, were folded into the circulating collections. Works pre-1950 deemed too fragile or rare were folded into special collections, along with 19th and 18th century works and oversized and Japanese-bound materials. Books can be found by searching the Bobst library catalog using the name of the collection as a search term.
About this Guide
Processing Information
In February 2019, box 90 was rehoused in preparation for offsite storage. In October 2021, box 8 was replaced and split into smaller boxes, with additional materials in boxes 87 and 88.