Her arm locks like a robot's, then pops from the shoulder, sending a wave through her body. Michael Jackson's Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough blares from a boombox in the Times Square subway station as a crowd of onlookers, heads bobbing, cheer on the performer.
The break dancer is female, which is unusual enough. Even more eye-opening is the fact that she is a 26-year-old Japanese woman with cornrows in Float Committee, the crew of young black men with whom she is performing on this day.
Her solo builds as she glides around the concrete floor, limbs electric, torso fluttering as if from some subterranean wind. In another instant, she is back in line with her crew, grinning and rocking to and fro as sweat pours down her face.
To her family in the city of Nagoya, she is Kumi Naito. In her New York life and in the break-dance world, she is simply Q, and a wild departure from the stereotype of the Japanese immigrant, or issei, that New Yorkers have known in the past: the salaryman from a Japanese corporation with a wife in tow.
Q also typifies how the Japanese immigrant of today -- young, artistically inclined, open to risks and twice as likely to be female than male -- differs from the bulk of immigrants to New York, who come to take advantage of the city's economic opportunities.
These Big Apple issei, as they could be called, are cultural refugees, drawn to New York's creative clamor and in search of freedom for their spirits.
This was certainly true of Q, who is thrilled to be able to pursue her passion for dancing on the streets and in the city's subway stations; she even tours the country and Europe with a professional company.
For her, this independence is everything. "I can't imagine being in Japan," she said. "I couldn't break dance there."
A PLACE FOR PURPLE HAIR
In the last two decades, thousands of young Japanese like Q have come to New York in search of the custom-tailored lifestyles that are hard to carve out in a homeland, where johshiki -- traditional ways and morality -- still exert a powerful influence. Such young people make up the majority of their fellow countrymen, or rather, countrywomen, living in the city.
Census data from 2000 show that 63 percent of the 16,516 foreign-born Japanese living in New York are women, and 64 percent are 20 to 39 years old. That percentage of young people is nearly 23 percentage points higher than it is for Chinese or Koreans, the two largest Asian immigrant groups in the city.
Hiroko Kazama, who is 42 and came to the city in 1987, said that young Japanese, especially artistic types, come to New York because they find that other American cities are too much like Japan. "Japanese society doesn't have an understanding for art," explained Kazama, who lives in the East Village and works for City Lore, an urban folklore center on East First Street. "Traditional art is accepted, but edgy art is not. Hair that's red and purple is hard to accept. Young people are not comfortable with that."
This is probably an understatement; young Japanese have ample cause for wanting out. As early as fourth grade, many are sent to jukus -- cram schools -- to begin preparing for the country's highly competitive college entrance exams. A child's mother packs up two bento boxes each morning, one for lunch and one for dinner. When the regular school day is over at 3pm, the children are off to jukus, where they work until 10pm.
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