The Asia Society Seattle Annual Event was held at the Seattle Asian Art Museum on Sept. 12, to celebrate and mark the one-year anniversary of Asia Society Seattle’s launch as the 16th global center. As a global nonprofit and non-partisan organization, Asia Society builds understanding across Asia and the U.S. by strengthening partnerships and engagement across policy, business, education, and arts and culture.
Gary Rieshel, chair of Asia Society Northern California and Asia Society Seattle, led by Executive Director Margaret Conley, described the programming success and support in Seattle, which shared and provided over 60 programs this past year. Rieshel thanked the Seattle Art Museum and Seattle Asian Art Museum for their major work and involvement in integrating arts and culture. He spoke of opportunities here, saying, “Over time, Seattle has really taken advantage of that mix of technology, business, arts and culture that we have here.”
The event covered topics of Indo-Pacific relations, policy, and representation in arts and culture. Secretary of State Steve Hobbs discussed his role in reviving international relations through trade missions, representing the state of Washington, and hosting global dignitaries. Last year, he conducted an international trade mission to Japan, and this past May, his office joined the economic development board in Japan for the Cultural and Trade Mission.
Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs (Photo by Northwest Asian Weekly staff)
“Here in Washington, we have a great diverse group of AAPI community members and businesses,” Hobbs said. “This is an exciting time. And the Indo-Pacific is very critical to Washington state and the United States. It’s an economic driver for the world.”
A panel discussion followed featuring together three Consuls General in Seattle: Eunji Seo, Consul General of Republic of Korea, Makoto Iyori, Consul General of Japan, and Prakash Gupta, the first Consul General for the new Consulate General of India in Seattle. Moderated by Ambassador Michael W. Michalak, former ambassador to Vietnam, the panel discussed technology, economic growth and impact of Seattle, and the importance of global partnerships.
From left: Michael W. Michalak and Consuls General Eunji Seo (Republic of Korea), Makoto Iyori (Japan) and Prakash Gupta (India). (Photo by Northwest Asian Weekly staff)
Consul Gen. Prakash Gupta of India first welcomed his colleagues, saying, ”I’m also very happy to share this space today with my colleagues from Japan and Korea because… it’s a very important piece of our individual bilateral relationships with the United States that connects us.” He described positive developments across artificial intelligence (AI), as well as in agricultural, space cooperation, biopharma and quantum computing technologies. Gupta gave context of India’s growth and global impact as the world’s fastest growing economy, stating its economic GDP growth rate last quarter was close to 8.1%, significantly above the global average. He said that of India’s almost 1.4 billion people, 65% are less than the age of 35, emphasizing it is not only the world’s largest democracy, but a very youthful one.
“We have a lot of positive growth stories to share, and it’s in that spirit we look forward to building on the convergences that we developed in the technology space both in Japan, Korea, and the United States.”
Consul Gen. Makoto Iyori of Japan described Seattle’s growth and significance across global partnerships, including as a center for aerospace and fisheries industries, as a hub for the AI revolution, and for the importance of having military installations such as Joint Base Lewis-McChord and Naval Base Kitsap here in Washington. He recalled his first time in Seattle back in 1986 as a university student, when it was considered a “Boeing and lumber” town. Upon coming back as the Consul General of Japan, he was impressed with the growth of global companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, Costco, and Starbucks—all from this same town. In addition, he acknowledged the breadth and “significant growth of startups operating in Seattle, not only in IT, but across life sciences, space industries,” as well as in nuclear fusion and hydrogen energy companies.
Consul Gen. Eunji Seo of the Republic of Korea spoke to strengths in global solidarity and bilateral partnerships with countries, including Japan, India, U.S., Australia, and Canada, who “share the vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific.” She described Korea’s contributions of leveraging democratic, economic, and technological capabilities to lead in areas of comparative advantage and develop new policy norms. For example, in May, an AI summit was hosted by the UK, with Korea, India, and Japan to adopt commitments towards safe, innovative, and inclusive AI practices. Recently this past week, South Korea held a global summit attended by over 90 countries, to adopt a “blueprint for action” to guide the responsible use of AI in the military. Consul Gen. Seo said, “With the unique development of the Korean experience, we are rising from the ashes of war” to now being among the top economies of the world. “We can take advantage of building partnerships… in a way that differentiates us from other advanced countries.” She highlighted Korea’s commitment to a strong Korea-U.S. alliance with top economic investments over $27 million last year, creating 180,000 jobs.
In a compelling presentation on the importance of representation in arts and culture, Janet Yang, the President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and Emmy and Golden-Globe winning Hollywood producer, presented the historic rise of symbolic AAPI films beginning with The Joy Luck Club (1993), which was considered groundbreaking at the time because of its first all-Asian cast and storytelling from a studio film. Following were explosive successes of romantic comedy, Crazy Rich Asians (2018), and the Korean film, Parasite (2019), a non-English movie winning Best Picture at the Academy Awards for the first time in Oscar history, as well as other Oscar wins including Best Director. Another all-Asian cast, independent movie, Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), won the Oscar for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actor, and swept other major award ceremonies.
Yang also expanded on AAPI successes in television, including last year’s multiple Emmy-award winning show, Beef, featuring two Asian leads, but with characters and a storyline of which being Asian was incidental to the story, which she noted as “real progress” in the entertainment world. This year’s Emmys would feature Shogun, a Japanese-language show that historically received the most nominations of any series ever. It consequently won 18 Emmy awards, including outstanding lead actor and lead actress in a drama series. The first Asian actor to previously win the Emmy for Best Lead Actor in a Dramatic Series was Lee Jung-jae, from the hit Korean series, Squid Game, which achieved wide success as the most-viewed show on Netflix ever. Yang said, “This is really incredible for our community… 10 years ago, it would have been unimaginable to witness this level of high profile visibility for the AAPI community.”
Janet Yang explained these wins came about because of instinct and gut, as few studios and distributors willingly took chances on the success of these films. She contrasted this with entertainment’s new “power player” of streamers, extremely reliant on data and algorithms to drive decisions. Despite progress of leveling the playing field for content and reducing barriers such as normalizing acceptance of subtitles, she said “nevertheless, the phenomenal wins for our community… did not come about through algorithms. Algorithms would not have been able to foretell the appeal of these unique works… The current practice of allowing data to be prescriptive from what should be made for future audiences is frighteningly dangerous.” Yang explained the need for creativity, saying, “We must always keep trying to push the envelope, we must experiment, we must step into the unknown,” and that all artists should be given freedom to create without overdependence on data.
Greater opportunities still remain, as Yang referenced a recently published McKinsey study, which found that $2-$4.4 billion are left on the table due to the entertainment industry not sufficiently tapping into the Asian Pacific Islander market. “We must keep up the momentum of the great progress we’ve made in the last several years,” she said. “We must not return to being invisible in the public eye.”
The Annual Event program concluded with a special live performance from Grammy-award winning violin maestro Ganesh Rajagopalan. Considered a child prodigy having performed concerts at the age of 7, Rajagopalan has composed music for film and dance, and is the only Indian violin player to have won a Grammy. He performed a spirited violin solo, one of his first compositions when he was 16 years old, which landed overwhelming applause from the audience and an inspiring reminder of the power of music and the positive impact of diverse representation in the arts.
Violin maestro Ganesh Rajagopalan (Photo by Northwest Asian Weekly staff)