Tag: Jewpanese Project

Dylan Akira Adler part of JFL festival

Jewpanese comedian Dylan Akira Adler performs Feb. 18-19 at Revue Stage. (photo from Jewpanese Project)

“Soy vey” and “mazel tofu” are just two of the word mashups created by Jewpanese comedian Dylan Akira Adler, who is coming to Vancouver’s Just for Laughs with his show Haus of Dy-Lan, Feb. 18-19 at Revue Stage. He will likely open for Atsuko Okatsuka’s Feb. 21 performances at Queen Elizabeth Theatre as well, also part of JFL, which runs Feb. 12-22.

Born in 1996, Dylan grew up in a predominantly white San Francisco neighbourhood, where both he and his identical twin brother thought they were Asian Buddhists, until his mom explained they were also Jewish, like their dad. 

Adler’s obaachan (Japanese grandmother) didn’t experience incarceration during the Second World War, but her uncle’s family was sent to Heart Mountain in Wyoming. At 14, Adler’s ojiichan (Japanese grandfather) had signed up to be a kamikaze pilot, but the war ended a month before he was old enough to enlist.

Adler’s mom was born in Tokyo, but, because of the air pollution, the family moved to California, where they grew carnations. Meanwhile, his dad was born in Los Angeles into a Polish and Ukrainian Jewish family that fled the 1800s pogroms. His parents met at University of California, Berkeley, “where Jews and Asians procreate to make kids who put on one-man shows about being biracial,” as Adler jokes.

Adler was interviewed for the Jewpanese Project in October 2022. At the time, he was a writer on James Corden’s show, where he also had his late-night stand-up debut. Since then, he has been touring as the opening act for Okatsuka, as well as with his own show. The Canadian tour of Haus of Dy-Lan includes stops in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. I caught up with Adler this month, in anticipation of his Vancouver visit.

CT: On Dec. 1, 2025, I dropped a 68-page report on the Jewpanese American experience, one finding of which was: “The two most common ways for Jewpanese couples to meet were through either academic settings or chance encounters, often with the help of mutual friends.” How does it feel to now have one of your most popular jokes backed by research?

DAA: It makes me feel very good and scholarly…. I just know a lot of other Asian and Jewish couples who met at UC Berkeley because my parents are friends with them. They’re like my secondary aunts and uncles and their half-Asian and -Jewish kids are like our cousins.

CT: How does your Jewpanese identity inform your comedy? And how has it evolved over time?

DAA: My Jewpanese identity definitely informs my comedy. I love talking about the difference between spending time with my mom’s family and my dad’s family. But I also love to subvert expectations. My mom and her family don’t behave like a typical “Japanese” family because they are very loud and crazy. 

CT: In your 2022 interview with me, you mentioned that you had yet to go to your ancestral homelands (Japan, Poland and Ukraine) and that you hadn’t been out of the United States at that point. Where are you now on that journey?

DAA: I’d never been out of the country until 2025 and, that year, I went to 20 different countries. It completely changed my life. I’ve officially caught the travel bug. This year, in April, I’m going to go to Japan with my family and meet relatives I’ve never met before. I’m truly so excited. We’re going to Kyoto, Osaka and Tokyo. I don’t have plans to go to Eastern Europe yet, but would absolutely love to.

CT: Tell me more about Haus of Dy-Lan. Who is this show for? What should we expect?

DAA: I will be performing parts of my solo show Haus of Dy-lan along with some newer material during this tour. There will absolutely be material about being half-Japanese and -Jewish. I love talking about my racial identity because some people are already trying to figure it out when I walk onstage, so it addresses that curiosity. In the audience, you can expect there will be Asians, mixed-race baddies, queers and some straight women who forced their boyfriend to come to the show.

CT: Atsuko Okatsuka, who is an incredibly hilarious Japanese-Taiwanese-American comedian, is a major mentor in your comedic career right now. What Jewish influence do you also have guiding you in your journey?

DAA: Atsuko is the absolute best. She is so brilliant and kind and I truly am so grateful to have her as a friend and mentor and even surrogate mother. When it comes to Jewish influences, I’ve always admired Joan Rivers, Chelsea Perretti and Rachel Bloom, to name a few. 

CT: Do you remember when you shared with me that you made contact with your Jewish ancestors, while on a healing psychedelic trip on bufo (toad venom)? Have you been in contact with them since? How is that work coming along? 

DAA: I was actually just thinking about that this morning. It’s true, in 2022, I did a toad venom psychedelic trip, and I woke up in a village in Eastern Europe and felt my ancestors’ inherited trauma but also their light and resilience. I haven’t done it since, and I am still on a healing journey for myself. But I’ve always been very interested in ancestors and how we are profoundly affected by people who we may have never met in our lifetime. I want to continue that work and figure out a way to incorporate it into a creative project in some way. 

For tickets to one of Adler’s JFL shows and/or for Okatsuka’s performances and those of other Jewish community members, go to jflvancouver.com. 

Carmel Tanaka is the creator of the Jewpanese Project, an international community initiative at the intersection of being Jewish and Japanese. Check out the archives of oral history interviews and a research report on the Jewpanese American experience at carmeltanaka.ca/jewpanese-project-archives. She is still collecting interviews from Jewpanese Canadians.

New archive launched

The Jewpanese Project Archives was launched online earlier this month.

I grew up in a mixed Jewish and Japanese Canadian family. My Jewish grandparents were Holocaust survivors from Poland and what is now Belarus, and my Japanese Canadian grandparents were survivors of the New Denver internment camp here in British Columbia.

Earlier this month – which is Asian Heritage Month and Jewish Heritage Month – I launched on my website the Jewpanese Project Archives, which highlights a selection of 35 US-based interviews, which were collected between May 2022 and April 2025. (See carmeltanaka.ca/jewpanese-project-archives.)

The collection phase of the interviews was funded by my year-long fellowship with the Anti-Defamation League – the Collaborative for Change Fellowship – and the aggregation of data from the US-based interviews was funded by a Jews of Colour Initiative research grant.

Each profile in the Jewpanese Project Archives contains the name of the interviewee and a photo of them; the place and date of their interview; their Jewpanese connection and birthplace; a link to a short video and a written paragraph on being Jewpanese; a link to the full audio and written interview; a link to the Instagram writeup with pictures; and archive notes.

The Jewpanese Project evolved organically. In my early 30s, I started to learn about what happened to my families (as I didn’t know much) and, then, the opportunity fell into my lap to find and interview fellow Jewpanese in Canada, the United States, Japan and Israel. Originally intended to be a 20-interview endeavour, it turned into an 85-plus interview community archive.

The project also has grown into a comic about a kimono heirloom in my Jewish family, an animated film about my journey to Białystok, and a play about being Jewpanese, for which I received an artist grant from the Japanese Canadian Legacies Society (JCLS). I also received an intergenerational wellness grant from JCLS to record the forgotten Japanese Canadian history of the Okanagan Landing Station House in Vernon, BC, which is also available on my website, carmeltanaka.ca.

Growing up, I thought it was just my sister and me who had Japanese and Jewish heritage. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be connected to 230-plus Jewpanese community members worldwide. And there must be more, which is an exciting thought. Many of us in North America hadn’t met another Jewpanese person – other than our siblings – until this project, which was birthed out of our monthly community Zoom calls during the pandemic.

While you peruse the archives, I welcome you to listen and read through the interviews and Instagram highlights to learn about the experiences of being mixed in Japanese and Jewish communities in the United States, which are comparable to those in Canada. Whether it’s language, culture, rituals, identity or traditions, Jewpanese people have a wide spectrum of lived experiences, but one thing is pretty constant – our love of food. We have a number of Jewpanese fusion recipes!

One of the questions I ask in the interviews is whether or not participants have done “roots trips,” going to their ancestral homelands. Many of us haven’t, and many of our parents (including mine) haven’t either, especially here in North America. My first trip to Japan was last year, at the age of 37, as part of this project, and it was life-changing. Even though the collection phase funding has ended, I have used my Avion points to go to Europe to retrace the steps of my Jewish family – and that’s where I am now. I experienced firsthand how healing my Japan trip was for me and for my dad, whom I dragged along virtually, as his health is declining, so I am doing the same for my mom, whose health is also deteriorating.

My journey to Japan inspired a number of Jewpanese and Nikkei people to seek out family members there through a process to obtain one’s koseki (family register document), and I hope that my journey to Poland also will motivate my Jewpanese and Jewish communities to do the same. It can be inspiring to know our history and where we come from.

Many Jewpanese families are asking when the rest of the interviews (all the non-US-based interviews) will be processed, and my answer is “when I get funding.” I never expected this project to blossom as it has. It’s been the project of a lifetime and deeply personal. If you are in a position to support it, please do reach out. It would be wonderful to have the Canadian, Israeli and Japanese interviews processed for the archives, as well. 

If you are a Jewpanese person, couple or family and would like to participate in this project, I am still accepting written interviews. Please contact me for an interview package. 

Todarigato! (Toda + arigato, “thank you” in Hebrew and Japanese!) 

Carmel Tanaka is the founder and executive director of JQT Vancouver, and curator of the B.C. Jewish Queer & Trans Oral History Project (jqtvancouver.ca/jqt-oral-history-bc) and the Jewpanese Oral History Project (Instagram: @JewpaneseProject). A version of this article was published in the Victoria Nikkei Forum.