[KS] Jazz in Korea

[Frank Hoffmann]

>>  I have heard a few times that Josephine Baker 
>>also performed on the peninsula.


Josephine Baker toured JAPAN in April 1954, where 
she was doing some fundraising (through her 
performances there) for mixed-raced children 
("occupation babies") for the Elizabeth Sanders 
Home. That institution had been founded in 1948 
by Kiki Sawada who had been a close friend of 
Josephine Baker in Paris. In 1932 Kiki's husband 
had worked as a diplomat at the Japanese Embassy 
in Paris. Baker was also a good friend of Léonard 
Tsugouharu Foujita, by the way ... Fujita was at 
the time the most famous Japanese painter in 
Paris, and in the early 1940s the most famous war 
propaganda artist in Japan (scattered lives 
....). Anyway, this just as a side note. Baker 
also adopted two mixed-race children during her 
stay, Akio Yamamoto and Teruya Kimura from that 
Sanders orphanage, the first of her "rainbow 
tribe" (her term). The first boy, Akio, so 
Josephine was told, was half Korean, born in July 
1952. However, there are various stories about 
his birth mother, and some Japanese research 
indicates that his mother was actually a Japanese 
woman (who abandoned him at a tabacco shop, whose 
owner then brought him to the Sanders Home).

I do not think Josephine Baker ever stayed in 
Korea. For sure she did not before 1954. Did she 
later? When should that have been, and on what 
occasion? Not to long after her Japan tour she 
got into financial troubles and also was not 
anymore so active as a performer. I do not think 
there was any other, second visit to East Asia.

Best,
Frank

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Frank Hoffmann
http://koreaweb.ws