1. Five years ago today, a group of 3 protesters showed up at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts to protest a 6-week event called “Kimono Wednesdays” designed to celebrate the return of Monet’s La Japonaise to Boston following a touring exhibit. 
2. I didn’t hear about Kimono Wednesdays or the protests until I received an email from an Asian American reader on July 2nd, linking to a 6/19/15 post on the MFA’s Facebook page & the protesters’ Tumblr.
facebook.com/mfaboston/phot…
facebook.com/mfaboston/phot…
3. What at first glance seemed to be a highly offensive event turned out to be something much more complex with ties to Japan.
4. I thought I would write just one blog post about it, but as July went on and I talked to more and more Japanese and Japanese American people I ended up covering the protests for the rest of the month through the finally protest on 7/29/15.
5. I learned very quickly that people from all over the world were reading my posts. I didn’t have a presence on any major social media sites so all the sharing of my writing was happening because other people were finding and sharing it.
6. I started spending time exploring Google Analytics and learned that I had traffic from 60+ countries, with the most traffic coming from the US, Japan, Germany, the UK, Canada, Australia, and France.
7. After spending a month immersed in the rhetoric of the Kimono Wednesdays protests I couldn’t stop thinking about it and was struggling to make sense of what I had witnessed.
8. I ended up publishing a 3-part postmortem on the protests on 8/31/15, looking at the roles of everyone involved and the effect on local communities and the public at large.
9. The 2015–2016 protests at Mizzou garnered national attention. I was tracking them and protests at other schools because I saw so many similarities to the Kimono Wednesdays protests.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015%E2%8…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015%E2%8…
9. Part of why I’ve been entirely unsurprised about where we are today is because I’ve seen it before.
10. I thought I would share these posts now because they’re a look back at where we were five years ago that may help people understand how even small protests like Kimono Wednesdays (largest protest pictured below) got us to where we are now.
11. The writing is dense and academic but I provided a lot of links for terminology, in part because during the course of my coverage I learned that those in my audience who didn’t speak English as a first language were having difficulty reading my posts.
12. Unfortunately, I haven’t checked any of the links in years so I am sure that many no longer work. When Google got rid of Picasa I never updated links to photos. If you find broken links and can’t find where it’s been moved to, leave a comment or reply and I’ll try to find it.
13. Please do not tag the MFA or any protesters if you know who they are. If I see that anyone has done this, you will be blocked. I didn’t name those who weren’t named in the media or publish photos with their faces clearly visible in an effort to reduce harassment.
14. Please keep in mind that these posts are five years old. While I still largely agree with what I wrote, if I were to write it now I would likely cut or modify how I wrote about “white structural racism” and related concepts.
15. If you’re not familiar with what happened, you can start with my first post, published on 7/7/15 after 4 days of non-stop research and writing.
Monet's La Japonaise Kimono Wednesdays at the MFA
japaneseamericaninboston.blogspot.com/2015/07/monets…
Monet's La Japonaise Kimono Wednesdays at the MFA
japaneseamericaninboston.blogspot.com/2015/07/monets…
16. The postmortem was written as one piece but it was too long for one blog post so I broke it into three.
Part 1: Kimono Wednesdays protest postmortem: media, public, critics
japaneseamericaninboston.blogspot.com/2015/08/part-1…
Part 1: Kimono Wednesdays protest postmortem: media, public, critics
japaneseamericaninboston.blogspot.com/2015/08/part-1…
17.
Part 2: Kimono Wednesdays protest postmortem: protesters
japaneseamericaninboston.blogspot.com/2015/08/part-2…
Part 3: Kimono Wednesdays protest postmortem: MFA, my role, final thoughts, further reading
japaneseamericaninboston.blogspot.com/2015/08/part-3…
Part 2: Kimono Wednesdays protest postmortem: protesters
japaneseamericaninboston.blogspot.com/2015/08/part-2…
Part 3: Kimono Wednesdays protest postmortem: MFA, my role, final thoughts, further reading
japaneseamericaninboston.blogspot.com/2015/08/part-3…
18. @shaunodwyer’s writing is cited in part 1 of my Kimono Wednesday’s postmortem.
japaneseamericaninboston.blogspot.com/2015/08/part-1…
japaneseamericaninboston.blogspot.com/2015/08/part-1…
