How Social Worker Kenji Kuramitsu Connects with his Japanese-American Identity and Masculinity
Every man understands masculinity through his particular cultural point of view. I enjoy learning how cultural traditions and perspectives influence how men and masculine-identifying people navigate the world.
I had the pleasure of chatting with Kenji Kuramitsu, M.Div, LCSW, CGP, a Japanese-American clinical social worker specializing in LGBTQ+ healthcare in Chicago. In the conversation below, Kenji and I delve into how his Japanese-American identity and early cultural experiences have influenced his worldview and the mental health work he is currently involved in, especially within the realm of group therapy.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
SURAJ: Hi Kenji! Thank you for being here with me today. I started The Multicultural Man to learn about the intersections of multiculturalism and masculinity. I have been looking forward to interviewing you and learning more about your experiences. Do you mind sharing a little bit about your cultural background?
KENJI: I’m grateful that you thought of me and reached out. Yeah, I am Japanese-American and identify as mixed-race or multiracial as well. My father’s family is from Hawaii. My mom and her family are white American, with German, Serbian, and Italian ancestry. I grew up in the Chicago suburbs. I think I most closely identify as Japanese-American but some texture there.
SURAJ: How integrated were you with the communities around you, culturally speaking?
KENJI: You know, growing up, I really wasn’t as integrated with the Japanese-American community. As I became older, it was an important part of my early twenties to connect with the community in a pretty deep way. Growing up, my connection to culture was around food and the stories that my grandparents would tell us, particularly about World War II’s history of Japanese-Americans and the legacy of my grandmother’s siblings who were war veterans and fought with this Japanese-American army unit in the Second World War. I didn’t really get that explicit political education or grounding of my racial and cultural identity in that context until going to college and developing a deeper consciousness of my identity and what it means to me.
SURAJ: What aspect of college helped you connect more to your racial and cultural identity? Was it the people you met, the courses you took, or something else?
KENJI: I went downstate, a few hours from my family of origin. College, for me, was a time of trying to find out who I was in the world. It was a crucible of trying to discover who I am in relationships with others, but also with myself in my own identities. I ended up helping start student groups for multiracial students. Getting involved with some kind of affinity spaces for Asian Americans was really meaningful.
SURAJ: How did this period of self-discovery influence your identity as a man or your understanding of masculinity?
KENJI: Oh, that’s interesting. I have never really thought consciously about masculinity as part of my identification or cultural affinity or development. A lot of how I came to learn about my culture would have been through my grandmother in the stories that she told. There were cultural scripts that I was expected to follow as a Japanese person and as a cisgender male.
SURAJ: Can you share more about these stories and scripts?
KENJI: I often think about how many of the Japanese-American community members experienced trauma, indignities, and the humiliation of the camp experience during World War II. I think about how many of them felt that they had to mute or internalize their response. There are stories that people tell in the community about the reparations campaign of the 1980s and how, for the first time in decades, elders shared about what they had gone through during the war. And, if you talk to people who witnessed the public hearings, they will often reference the Issei or Nisei men, first or second-generation men, crying openly. That level of emotion was anathema to the cultural norms of the Japanese-American community of that generation. Something about these men’s tears unlocked a way that the community was able to access the pain of this event in a new way.
SURAJ: That is really powerful. I can see how this would influence one’s identity as a man.
KENJI: Yeah, I have always been moved by that story. I don’t think I grew up with a really toxic model or version of what masculinity has to be like, but I think I did internalize a lot of scripts about not showing vulnerability. I’ve had to try to unlearn this over the years. Those historical and community models have been really meaningful.
SURAJ: I really appreciate you sharing more about this. I can see how those hearings served as opportunities for the men and others of that time period to access their emotions. Do you feel like this shifted how messages around masculinity were communicated to you growing up?
KENJI: You know, through my father and grandfather’s love of cooking, their deep connection to their faith, and their tenderness, they were able to model different examples of what masculinities could look like. I think we also had in our family our own version of strictness from the older generations. My grandfather grew up quite traditional, which we had to interrogate and question over time.
SURAJ: Was there ever a time when you felt that your understanding of masculinity conflicted?
KENJI: That’s a good question. Unconsciously, yeah. Even the intersection of gender, masculinity, race, and culture, I think there were conflicts. With the same family member, there were times I saw a different side to how they expressed how they held their own sense of masculinity depending on the role they were in or the setting they were in. My faith or connection to spirituality was a place to have some refuge and develop my own expression of what this could look like.
SURAJ: What did this expression look like to you?
KENJI: I feel I’ve learned so much about masculinity from the sharp edges of the playground. I identify as bisexual. I knew growing up that there was so much shame and pain around queerness. There was pressure around performing straightness or toughness that I imbibed from growing up in a mostly white, somewhat conservative suburb.
SURAJ: I know you work in mental health care and with LGBTQ+ individuals. Would you say your past experiences and your identity drew you to this field?
KENJI: I imagine so, consciously or not. I’m a clinical social worker, working in LGBTQ+ health care. I also have a background as a healthcare chaplain. I do think my upbringing, valuing inner life and interiority, narrative stories, meaning-making, being in community with others, and creating spaces of reflection or openness, inclusion, and understanding played a role. It hasn’t been a smooth path, but I think I have drawn from and connected some of those earlier experiences to the work that I am trying to do in the world now.
SURAJ: I would love to hear more about the work you do.
KENJI: Yeah, I have a small private practice with group and individual therapy patients. I also just changed jobs. For the past three years, I have been managing a group therapy program, coordinating and managing a group therapy program at an LGBTQ health care, serving the Midwest.
SURAJ: Can you tell me more about group therapy?
KENJI: Group therapy is a big passion of mine. It’s a really meaningful way of creating spaces in the world where folks can access community and witness solidarity, healing, and understanding, especially for populations that bear a lot of hurt or trauma.
SURAJ: Why do you think group therapy is so effective?
KENJI: I love talking about this. I just read this article. It said that if 10% of unmet needs for psychotherapy in the US were met with group therapy rather than individual treatment, we could serve 3.5 million more people, reduce the need to add 34,473 therapists to the workforce, and save over 5.6 billion dollars in mental health care costs. I’m passionate about group therapy because it’s an extremely effective way of providing mental health treatment for a variety of mental health disorders. Folks have different identities and I love how there are unique things that can happen in a group.
SURAJ: Because you get to hear from other people’s experiences as well?
KENJI: The group frame is a rich tapestry for engaging in our life and working through patterns that may be invisible or unconscious to us, but they get evoked as we spend time in a group that may remind us of our first groups or our families. It provides opportunities in a unique way to address social issues. Group therapy is one of the most complicated forms of treatment, but often doesn’t have enough of a reputation.
SURAJ: It seems like group therapy works because we, as humans, operate in groups for most of our lives.
KENJI: I’ve had life-changing experiences since childhood in groups, friend groups, groups at summer camp, therapy groups, professional peer network groups, social groups, and family groups. We live our lives, in some ways, in group systems. I like working in mental health in this way.
SURAJ: In group therapy, do you draw connections between people’s identities, such as their cultural or gender identities?
KENJI: The groups I have the most experience with are called process groups or interpersonal process groups. Those are more unstructured. They focus on open expression or emotion, saying what comes to mind, and being aware of patterns that are being replicated in the group. In our multicultural society, we see groups of mixed gender, men’s groups, women’s groups, and affinity groups for folks with trans experience. And, in many of these groups, it can be really important to introduce reflection on how race, culture, gender, and other social forces are at play in the group.
SURAJ: How does that work?
KENJI: You know, a new member may come in and dominate the group. What would it be like to help that member get feedback on what that behavior is like? It might be related to gender or race. It also helps the group understand what might be operating for the group to cede their power or to consent to a monopolizer. We reflect on how we as a microcosm of these wider social systems are also wrestling with racism, sexism, and to your point, feeling a constrained emotional repertoire. They may be feeling inherent competitiveness with other heterosexual men, or maybe the need to please or prove something to the women in the group. I think all of that is so rich and group therapy provides a space where the unspeakable can be spoken about, reflected on, and worked out with attentive leadership. I strive to create those kinds of groups. It’s really meaningful to engage in those conversations.
SURAJ: What impact have these group therapy sessions had on you, either as a person or a healthcare worker?
KENJI: It’s meaningful for me as a facilitator or as a member to be able to give voice to my own frustration or pain. An example of this is when a group member who is from a minority background is able to give voice to the pain of a racial microaggression from a white member or another person of color in the group setting. In the workplace, they might have brushed it off or felt that they had to have a steely exterior, but in the safe space of the group, they feel safe enough to share how it impacted them. Another group member called the real world the ‘wild’, which is the space outside of the group. It helps me to be able to imagine what they might be going through, even if I don’t get to hear the internal scripts that may be running for them out in the wild.
SURAJ: It’s important to provide safe spaces for people to process and address the challenges they are facing in their lives. When people have developed the language or obtained the tools from these sessions to handle challenges, they can enter the wild prepared. Therapy also seems beneficial since it is continuous. Anytime a person needs support, they can feel comfortable rejoining the space since a relationship with the group has already been built.
KENJI: That’s exactly right. We hope our group members will take what they need and internalize the goodness or the support, which creates insulation against the slings and arrows of the world.
I should also say that groups can also be really scary places in the world. Groups can get whipped into hysteria. Groups that claim supremacy of one culture. We’re talking about masculinity. You could type masculinity and a couple of other words in a Google search and go to some dark corners of the internet. I am talking about the good parts of groups. Not to say groups are always good, but if we’re hurt from or in groups, even if we are afraid to bring parts of ourselves to others, I do think it’s in groups that we can also begin to experience healing.
SURAJ: That’s an interesting point. Outside of mental healthcare, there are people gathering in groups for many reasons. They may be connecting over shared traumas, but not processing them in healthy ways. In the media, we see groups forming to engage in acts of violence and terror. It seems these people are using groups to deal with their internal struggles but in unhealthy ways. It’s important to have trained mental health workers facilitate those gatherings of people to ensure the conversation is headed in a healthy direction.
KENJI: Heading in a healthy direction is a good way to put it. I do think it’s important for group therapy professionals and all mental health professionals to be in regular supervision and training, get feedback about their work, and always seek to be curious about who or what may be left out of the clinical picture.
SURAJ: Absolutely! I want to thank you so much for sharing your personal and work experiences with me. It was wonderful getting to know you better.
KENJI: Thank you for having me!