In honor of Family History Month, UC Santa Barbara Professor of History Luke Roberts will present a lecture on the life of samurai Yoshiki Mori (1768–1807), who was a retainer for the Yamauchi lord of the Tosa domain. The talk will draw from Mori’s diary, his letters, and historical records, and will include a discussion of challenges faced by Roberts while researching samurai family history.

Roberts is a specialist in the history of the Japanese islands from ancient to modern times, with a focus on the period between the 1500s and the early 1900s. The lecture will be followed by a panel discussion with two members of the Nikkei Genealogical Society (NikkeiGen). Melinda Yamane Crawford, the daughter of a MIS veteran, co-founded NikkeiGen in 2013 to help people of Japanese ancestry explore their genealogy through education, research, and networking. Barbara Horiuchi is a third-generation Japanese American writer and artist who creates pictorial, video, and installation work that addresses her own family history as well as sociopolitical issues related to the history of Japanese immigrants in America.

Free with museum admission. RSVPs are recommended.

Presented in partnership with the Nikkei Genealogical Society.

Read about the Nikkei Genealogical Society on Discover Nikkei: The Journey to Discovery