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This is Fresh Air.
I'm Tanya Mosley, and my guest today is comedian Atsuko Okatsuka.
Her origin story might sound like the set-up for a drama.
She grew up undocumented, was raised by her grandmother who, she jokes, kidnapped her and brought her to the States, as they both dealt with the instability of watching her mother suffer from schizophrenia.
But Asko has made a career by turning that story on its head, mining it for sharp, hilarious observations about mental illness, identity and navigating adulthood with few life skills.
Here she is in her first comedy special, The Intruder, where she reflected on the unconventional family dynamic that shaped her.
I've never heard, try to look different.
No, it was always, blend in, Atsuko, blend in.
Keep your head down and blend in as much as possible.
At least that's what my family would tell me.
And then they named me Atsuko Okatsuka.
And then they went on to choose English names for themselves.
I know.
Thanks, Mom.
Or Linda.
That's betrayal, Uncle Paul.
In her new special on Hulu called Father Atsuko, goes even further, reflecting on her relationship with her father in Japan, who was largely a distant figure in her life after she moved to the States.
In 2022, Atsuko became the second Asian-American woman after Margaret Cho to release an hour-long comedy special on HBO with The Intruder.
And she became a social media darling a few years ago thanks to her viral videos and dance challenges, like the one where she walked around LA with her grandmother dancing to Beyoncé.
Atsuko Akatsuka, welcome to Fresh Air.
Oh my gosh, Tanya, it is a pleasure.
It's an honor.
This is too good to be true.
Well, it's a pleasure to be sitting in front of you, Atsuko.
And I have to ask you about your name and the spelling.
So there's a U in both your first name and your last name, but the U is silent.
What's your relationship to the letter U?
Because you're always probably correcting people like, it's silent.
Right, right.
It's there to trip you up because, yeah, I mean, you know, it's a Japanese name.
So in Japan, it's not like we're walking around being like the U is silent.
There is no U. Right.
It's just when I saw it spelled out in English when I moved here I said really that's interesting.
I guess we'll keep it that way.
And then that will be sort of my lifelong story of having to help people figure out how to say it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it's interesting.
So when it's written in Japanese, the translation added the U to it.
Language is wild.
Right.
You know what?
There's a few more words like this.
Various like foods, for example, like tempura in English is spelled T-E-M-P-U-R-A.
In Japanese, it's T-E-N-P-U-R-A.
Tempura.
There's no M. Right.
Where did that M come from?
I know.
No idea.
We just added it.
Yeah.
You know what it's done for me as a Japanese immigrant coming to America?
When I try to order my own people's food from Japanese people here, they don't understand what I'm trying to order.
Does that make sense?
Because I'm trying to do it the correct way from Japan.
They're like, it's Tempura.
Yeah.
Well, your story is incredible.
As you mentioned, you immigrated here from Japan.
You were born into a Japanese Taiwanese family, spent your early childhood in Japan, moved here to the United States when you were eight years old.
Your grandmother basically kidnapped you, and you joke about this, but it sounds pretty traumatic.
Yeah, but you know, what I found about trauma is, while you're going through it, you're not going.
This is trauma.
This is trauma.
This is not good.
Right.
I didn't have time to feel that, I'm realizing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so, in a strange way, as I like, processed it over the years.
I guess you know whether it was like depression that I was hitting or sadness that I was feeling.
I didn't know.
That was maybe the trauma that I was like processing.
And then, now that it's been really a longer time and I'm able to joke about it, I've sort of started to heal without even realizing it.
Does that make sense?
Well, it does because so much of your comedy, it feels like you're working it out on stage.
I also want to know though, about those first years when you arrived here, because the three of you your mother, your grandmother and you you arrived, and you were staying in your uncle's garage.
Was it a real garage?
Describe this garage.
So it was a garage that he then extended for us so that there would be a bedroom attached and then a toilet shower and then a kitchen unit in where the cars were originally would go.
Yeah.
I don't think that was legal for him to do, to deck it out like that.
But it happened to be that the garage was behind this sort of gate that you open to go to the backyard.
So it was kind of hidden away from the streets.
You joke when people ask you, like, what's wrong with you?
You say, well, I was raised by a 50-year-old woman when that's your only friend.
You have talked about this quite a bit on stage before.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
That it's not good.
But what did your grandmother tell you about the choice to bring you all here?
And really, you spent your childhood in that garage.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
So my grandma and I hadn't really talked about it in depth until kind of Ira Glass, which was just 2023.
Yeah.
Yeah, just two years ago.
I mean, this whole time I just needed someone to be like, do you want to do it for radio?
And I'm like, yes, yes, yes.
Now I would like to uncover what's going on or else, you know, I'm fine with just not knowing.
The truth hurts, right?
And so I want to do it not alone.
And it helped that I got to do it with Ira and the thousands and thousands of thousands of listeners at the same time.
Then I'm really not alone.
It wasn't funny, though.
I mean, you told it in a very matter-of-fact way and a very moving way as well.
As someone who is always used to bringing in that That little bit of humor into it.
What was that like for you to share that story in that way?
I always say there's like a kind of aura of sadness around me.
You know, because the truth is, my mom, as we're speaking, is.
I can picture her right now.
She's sitting upstairs in the house that my uncle owns my other uncle and she is laying in bed and she hasn't left that house in a long, long time.
She, you know, doesn't have any friends.
She is severely depressed.
And all my life, my mom has suffered.
And I think about that all the time.
As I get to do things like tour and travel, see the world come to here, the West Side even, you know, as I go out drinking with friends, my mom can't do any of those things.
She's suffering so much, right?
And so I have the ability to tap into that.
I guess being present and real, especially when dealing with heavy topics, you know.
When I'm trying to protect an audience, when I'm trying to protect other people, which is why I became a performer.
I love people and I love the arts because of that.
Yes, I'm going to do it with humor.
People pay tickets to come see me.
I'm not going to just tell you sad stories.
I'm going to make sure you laugh so you can forget your problems, right?
It's so interesting you use the word protect.
As a way to entertain.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think that's what it is.
I mean for me, for me as a performer.
That's what I want people to have is to feel seen by the end of my shows, but also that they got to have a good time, because then they're going back to their regular life.
And I don't know what that's like.
What's interesting is your mother was not diagnosed with schizophrenia you share until she was much older.
She was in her 30s.
So, growing up, when did you become aware that she was suffering and that maybe she wasn't like other mothers?
I think that I was always in denial a little bit.
I still am.
I still think that I think this of everyone that is going through mental illness, because I think it is true.
I truly believe it that like, however much you know, there is chemical imbalances going on.
Underneath that is the real you that loves dancing, if you're my mom.
My mom was a ballerina when she was young or loved to put on plays with her neighborhood friends when she lived in a small village in Taiwan.
Whatever your story is, whatever you're into as a person before bipolar or depression or whatever that you have come across I truly believe that about each person.
I knew before I even moved to America.
In Japan, all of my classmates, their parents, were still together.
So I did notice, you know, at like school plays or parental meetings, it was always both parents present for all the other kids.
When I would go have play dates at their house too.
It was both parents there on the weekends and stuff.
And so was it your grandmother who would take you to those things?
Right.
So it would be my grandma.
Yeah.
And, you know, sometimes it would be like whispers like, who is she bringing this time?
Is it grandma?
Is her mom going to show up?
What's her mom look like?
We don't even know.
Does she have a dad?
What would you tell people when they'd ask you about your mom?
Well, I remember one time telling my second grade teacher because she knew that my mom was sick.
That was the word I would use.
My grandma told me she was sick and I knew something was off.
So I was like, oh, she's sick with something.
And, you know, my mom also has seizures.
So that was the part that she understood.
She was like, oh, wow, she has seizures and then she'll just fall.
Okay, that's intense.
Yeah, I could see why it's hard for her to physically be at the school or get places, you know.
I didn't know how to quite describe her mental state.
Yeah, because, you know, I was... A kid.
A kid, yeah.
What was revealed in this American Life piece and what you've gone on to reveal, is that your grandmother really just wanted to have you.
She wanted to protect you, but she knew that maybe circumstances weren't the best in Japan and she knew you alone with your mother.
Maybe wouldn't have been the best, so she brought you here.
But I found this really fascinating, this relationship that you all have, because It's such a deep, profound relationship.
You did this wonderful documentary when you were in college where you documented sort of a day in the life of you and your mom and your grandmother and you called them Laurel and Hardy.
And there was sort of a humor there just in watching them do day-to-day activities.
But that was like a twosome.
But in reality, your childhood was a trio.
What was your role in that sort of trifecta?
Well, you know, I felt like I was super an observer.
That's kind of I didn't really think about it till now when you brought up.
You know me documenting them.
Right.
So that was an art school where I was, you know, playing with documentary filmmaking.
Which meant that I was behind the camera when I was filming them.
So you know, being behind the camera, I realized oh, I was kind of going back to, I guess, my childhood, where I was observing a lot.
I was observing my mom, my grandma.
So I didn't know how to fit into the picture of the trio quite yet.
Yes.
Because, you know, it seemed unstable.
Yeah.
I was like, do I go in this trio?
Do I want to be a part of this trio?
When I was 17, I started dating someone for the first time in my life and I took off with him to go live with him.
And so I was like, I'm out of here.
Here's my new family, this boy.
And so it's not until more now that I really know that I love this trio, and I've always been a part of this three-generation peas in a pod.
Yes.
Yeah.
I was thinking about that your mother's diagnosis and what it was like growing up with her.
But she was diagnosed with schizophrenia in her mid 30s.
Was that a relief to know a name for what you had been experiencing throughout your childhood?
Did that offer anything to you by the time that happened?
Oh, it did not because I think I didn't super look into it on my own.
I was afraid for more, probably, truth.
Yeah.
What do you mean by that?
So I used to go to church when I first got to the States.
And my uncle, who we were staying with, and his wife, my aunt and uncle, were going to church.
What kind of church?
It was a Chinese Baptist church.
Okay.
And that's how you end up going there, right?
If you're an immigrant, it's very easy for them to be like, well, you need friends, right?
And you like free food?
I was like, yes, yes.
We do outings.
Sometimes we go play basketball at the park.
I like that.
So, yeah, I ended up there.
And, you know, because of that, and then I became super Christian, right, like on my own.
I think, you know, right, I needed something to believe in or something.
It was community, all these things.
And I was still confused about why we didn't go back to Japan and my mom's condition and in that garage.
So I took it very seriously to the point I even like signed up for Jesus camp on my own.
Usually, you know, churches sign up together.
Like the youth group will sign up together.
One year, nobody from my church signed up.
But I was like, I'm going to do it on my own because that's how much of a believer I am.
Yeah.
What an insane thing.
I had no group representing me.
It was just me on my own.
And one night it was like me and like 30 people in a prayer group.
And I asked for them to pray for my mom.
Pray for my mom to get better, to be freed from the voices in her head and all these things, from the suffering, from severe depression, from the seizures, from feeling so isolated and down all the time.
And then I remember, like when 30 people are praying for you out loud and you're like in Big Bear, it's almost like a vacation, right.
We were outdoors overlooking like forests and mountains.
It was so beautiful.
I truly thought that it was going to work.
When I go home, she's going to be healed.
So by the time your mother got that diagnosis, where were you in that realm?
Had she already gotten the diagnosis or did that come later?
Yeah.
My uncle, who is OBGYN in Taiwan, is the one that helped figure it out.
And my grandma wrote out the word OBGYN.
I think I think that was after this Jesus camp incident, because when I came home I was super disappointed that she had not changed.
Right.
And feeling really down and hopeless.
So I think by the time I saw that word schizophrenia on a napkin, that that's what my mom had.
I was like, would it even help to even figure out what that is?
Because like the prayers didn't help.
Like what would help?
Because to this day, you know.
She still hears voices.
Even with medication?
I mean, yeah.
We had to choose.
Do we treat the seizures more or the voices more?
Because those two kinds of medications cancel each other out.
So we decided to treat the seizures more because that's more, you know, immediately fatal and scarier just because it's physical.
What a choice to have to make.
Did you ever try to make your mom laugh growing up?
I did, yeah.
But for a big chunk of my life, I was very scared of her.
So I would try to avoid her.
Sometimes I would entertain her.
What did that look like?
So I would take toys that I had in the house.
I would give her one, and I would have the other one.
And we would sort of play out scenarios where maybe we're battling bad people that are coming to us.
Get them over here to the left, to the right, Mom, behind us.
We're surrounded.
We're always surrounded by evil spirits.
I don't know.
And so I would fight it off with her.
And you know that was one way we could hang out, was pretending there were other things going on instead of just us, you know, sitting down for a chat or whatever.
You found out while dating your husband was it very early on that his mother also has schizophrenia?
Yeah.
Yes.
I can imagine there are things that you all just don't even have to say to each other, that you sort of just know implicitly through your actions, through your decisions and things like that.
When did that become clear to you that not only do we both share in this same experience of having a mother, but there are things that now I see in you and you see in me that maybe you hadn't seen in anyone else before.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's very true.
You know, I saw glimpses of it very early on, right?
We both love to entertain.
We both love to make other people laugh.
He's very funny, my husband, and he's a natural caretaker too.
For example, he tours with me.
He makes sure that I don't feel left out by making sure other people can pronounce my name.
Things like that that he'll do for me on the road.
Yeah.
And then, you know, on one of our earlier dates, we were having drinks outside.
It was like a bar with a patio outside.
And there was an unhoused man who was talking to himself and kind of scaring the people at the bar.
And I knew what was going on with him, you know.
And my husband, I think it was our second date.
I should have known.
Because it was until like a third date that we found out we had this in common.
But he knew how to deal with it too.
He was also a manager at a coffee shop.
So, you know, people were kind of scared of this man kind of stumbling.
And is he going to walk into this establishment, whatever?
My husband knew to like look at him calmly and sort of talk him, you know, out of like being in that area.
But, you know, very kindly because we know that's schizophrenia that's going on.
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My guest is comedian Atsuko Akatsuka.
Her new stand-up special, Father, starts streaming on Hulu later this week.
We'll be right back after a short break.
I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air.
Hi, this is Molly C.V.
Nusberg, digital producer at Fresh Air.
And this is Terry Gross, host of the show.
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And I'm a newsletter fan.
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I want to talk a little bit about this latest stand-up special, because you talk about reconnecting with your father in it.
And he's always lived in Japan.
So essentially you grew up here in the States, in L.A., where you all arrived without him.
And I want to talk more about that in a moment.
But he has brought up the idea of you and your husband having children.
And I want to play a clip.
Here's what you had to say about that in the special.
I have reconnected with my dad, and we're very close.
But he really wants me to have kids because he thinks that's how you undo a traumatic past.
And I always have to be like, oh, dad, I think our family should stop.
Should stop.
In fact, Ryan has a vasectomy scheduled for the end of the year.
Yes.
Oh, yes, yes.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I booked it.
Thank you.
That was my guest today, Atsuko Akatsuka, in her new Hulu comedy, Special Father.
What I love about that is that it's very singular because it's your experience, but I think that a lot of people can also feel that way.
Like, we're not passing down this generational trauma here.
Right.
But was not having children something that you always knew for yourself that you didn't want?
Or did that come with you and Ryan together making that decision based on your history?
Yeah.
It's something I never really wanted, you know, and then Ryan happened to feel the same way, too.
So when we came together, it was an easy thing to, you know, come to a conclusion about.
We were just like, this is how we feel.
Yeah.
Margaret Cho, you tell the story about how being at this Baptist church, someone gave you a DVD.
Did they give you that DVD because they already could see you were funny?
Or was it just a coincidence?
Yeah, we would joke around a lot about stuff.
And, you know, she said she was older than me, this girl who passed me the DVD.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And she said, I think I think you'll like this.
Yeah.
And she gave me an example of a joke that Margaret Cho had, which was oh she, you know she's, she's really prolific.
It's amazing.
She has a joke about how, like you know Hello Kitty, you know she's Hello Kitty, that's her name, but she doesn't have a mouth.
So how does she say hello or something like that?
Yeah.
And I was like, well, that's, you know, as a kid, I found that to be so funny and neat.
Yeah, I think it's because she saw that I would enjoy it.
Many years later, you're face to face with Margaret Cho.
I was really touched.
I think she said about you that when she looks at you from the moment she first became acquainted with your work, that you just knew who you were immediately, because she didn't know.
And I think that's just she didn't know for herself when she first started off.
I think that's so powerful because you know who you are in part.
Because you were able to see her do it.
Oh, for sure.
Without Margaret Cho, there's no me.
There's without even Bobby Lee, who is one of the first.
Without Joe Coy, you know, there wouldn't be me.
Without a lot of people, right?
And we can go on with the list, without Anna May Wong, who is an actress and not a comedian, but there wouldn't be me.
Yeah, we talk about the first.
You said, you know, in 2025 there's still the first to do this and the second to do this.
Margaret really was the first Asian American female stand-up.
And they were mean to her.
They were not kind.
She talks about it in her stand-up from having eating disorders to having to audition for her own TV sitcom, for her own character, only for them to say you're too fat, so go and lose weight.
What does that do to a person?
And I've really...
I watched her go through it, but to still be doing it and crushing it, too, and she's my friend, that's, yeah, it's truly an honor to know her.
Let's take a short break.
If you're just joining us, my guest is comedian Atsuko Akatsuka.
Her new Hulu stand-up special is called Father.
We'll continue our conversation after a short break.
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One of the things I think I heard you say is that there's a three-prong approach to your comedy.
It's your voice.
It's the material.
And it's also what you do with your body when you're standing on the stage.
That each of those by themselves, you actually don't think.
It's kind of funny.
You think it's like all three of those things that is actually the magic.
It's the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Yeah, I guess so.
Right.
Yeah.
That's how I express myself.
How did you discover that, especially when it comes to your aesthetic?
I mean, your fashion game is what you are known for, secondary to you being funny.
You wear these bright, beautiful colors.
Your hair is on point.
How did you come to that look?
Had you always been a fashion person?
I don't think I was.
I used to even wear like my grandma's clothes as a kid, whatever she got her hands on.
And you know when someone 50 years older than you is dressing you, sometimes it was like plaid on plaid on plaid.
What is going on?
Or her idea of what a kid would wear.
So sometimes it was like Hello Kitty top, Hello Kitty pants, bright red shoes, polka dotted shoelaces right.
Yeah.
And I think the randomness of that was kind of it pushed me to, you know, be out there looking wild.
So I think when I finally started trying to tailor my look, maybe 10 years ago, I was able to be more bold, because it's like hey, I used to wear grandma's slacks.
You know what I mean?
To school.
I could wear anything.
Yeah.
Where did the bowl haircut come from?
Well, this bowl cut.
In history?
I don't know.
No, it is your ball here.
I'm like, did friars?
I feel like friars had this, right?
In like Europe or something.
Yeah.
But they would keep the middle bald.
But I noticed in the documentary with your mom and grandma, you had a different cut.
You had like sort of emo look going on.
I know.
Gosh, because I was behind the camera.
When I was a kid, I had this bowl cut too.
A lot of Asian kids have it when they're a kid.
And I do love fashion.
I love the arts.
And so I love looking like an art gallery owner a little bit.
But also, you know, a lot of Asians say, hey, I had the haircut as a kid.
It was a nightmare.
Everyone made fun of me.
I think it's so ugly.
And I like challenging that a little bit to be like well, the things that made me feel like a freak.
Right.
Right.
I'm going to own.
Now I get to choose my own look.
Right.
And it's chic now.
And it's fashion.
Right.
And people show up wearing wigs of my bowl cut to my shows now.
I've started a movement.
I'm thinking about you as a little girl wearing your grandma's clothes.
And I want to play a clip from your latest special Father where you talk about growing up the way you did.
Let's listen.
Because I grew up with some kids, some classmates, whose parents blindly supported them growing up.
And they are pretty well-adjusted people.
Are they interesting?
No.
Are they on stage right now?
No!
Those people will never be on stage.
You know why?
You know why?
Because they don't have a hole in their heart that they have to fill with the validation of strangers.
That was my guest, Atsuko Okatsuka and her new Hulu special, Father.
And we talked about this whole idea about how stand-up is for people who don't want to process their feelings.
Oh, sure.
Which you said.
But how did you get into comedy?
How did you decide this was a career that you wanted to get into?
Sure. left home, living with this boyfriend, you decide to go to college.
And how did comedy become the direction?
Well yeah I, you know.
And it was him.
You know, other comedians have asked me how did you find comedy or how did you find music if you didn't have older siblings?
Because music's a big part of your life, too.
Yeah.
But my mom and grandma didn't listen to music when we were growing up in the garage.
It was just silence.
My grandma will cook to silence.
My grandma will live in silence.
My mom, too.
It was just me trying out things on TV, just whatever I found.
That's what I would be influenced by.
Or my classmates, I would hear them talk about Spice Girls or something.
In the household, there wasn't a lot of pop culture going on.
So...
There was no way I thought it could be me.
When I watched Margaret Cho on the DVD, I was like, this is neat.
I didn't know this was a job.
That's so cool.
I love that she does this.
This is good for her.
Awesome.
I love that this exists.
But I never thought that's gonna be me one day.
I didn't have the self confidence.
I didn't dare to dream big.
At the time, they really made you feel like there was only 20 comedians at a time.
Yeah.
So how did it happen?
You were in college.
Was it a class?
It was a filmmaking class.
And then me and my teacher started dating.
It was not very healthy, to be honest.
But because he was older.
You know, I was 19 and he was older.
He just knew comedy and He said oh, you're very funny.
Have you thought about doing stand-up?
And I was like, I know stand-up.
I love stand-up.
I love watching it.
But, oh, gosh, no one's ever told me.
And so then I decided to try taking it.
I found a class on Craigslist for women because I didn't think going to open mics would be how I would excel.
It was mostly guys and they were very late at night.
Sometimes it's like 10 p.m. to 2 in the morning.
Sometimes you're waiting to get up on stage and then you're coming out to dark alleys.
I was like, that's how you go missing, right?
Right.
Do you remember that first set, what you joked about?
Yes, I do.
Yeah.
I remember one of my first jokes.
What was it?
Oh, this guy found out I was Japanese.
And he said, Japanese, huh?
Well, I have a really good friend who works at Mitsubishi.
Do you know Gary?
And I go, Gary?
No.
No, I don't know Gary.
I know Tom.
That was my first joke.
Yeah.
So much of your comedy is...
It's light and observational.
But there is an element where you're also subversive, where you are sitting in your identity as an Asian American woman, but you're also challenging the stereotypes.
There was this video on social media where it's you and several Asian American celebrities and you're asked about inside clothes and wearing your shoes inside.
And everyone's like...
Never wear your shoes inside.
I always change my clothes when I lay in the bed, except for you.
You come at the end and you say, oh yeah, I walk around my house with my shoes and I go get under the covers with my outside clothes on.
Yes.
Yes, that was me.
I cannot believe you found it.
Tonya, you were trying to cancel me.
No, but that is out there.
But the reason why it's so funny actually is because while you're leaning into who you are, you're also really giving us another lens into what it means to be an Asian American.
Because we start off thinking about those early Asian American comedians and the things that Often they were pushed and forced into.
And then here you are talking about here's what I'm not.
Thank you so much.
I couldn't have said it better myself.
And that is why I still wear shoes in the house sometimes and outside clothes on the bed.
Did you get some hate from that?
Yeah, people were like, jail, jail, put her in jail.
But, you know, yes, I didn't have a conventional upbringing.
So there's various reasons why, you know, shoes in the house became a thing.
Like, you know, my grandma's 90 now, okay?
And, you know, they both wear diapers, my mom and grandma.
And so we just found it easier to wear shoes, for example, you know, around the house.
Yeah, it's just, you know, no family is the same.
No Asians are the same.
We're not a monolith.
Of course.
Yeah.
If you're just joining us, my guest is comedian Atsuko Akatsuka.
Her new stand-up special, Father, is streaming on Hulu.
We'll continue our conversation after a short break.
This is Fresh Air.
Support for this podcast and the following message come from Fisher Investments.
SVP Judy Abrams explains the importance of education and resources when it comes to planning to, and through, retirement.
It's interesting.
People put money into their retirement accounts for years, but they have no idea what's supposed to happen when they have to start taking money out.
When I'm speaking to a prospective client for the first time, one of the ways that I work to establish trust is to listen to them.
Is there anything we should know about their spouse or their children, or plans to move or their health?
Our job is to get the full picture.
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It's far more comprehensive than just managing the money.
When clients realize that we have the resources and the competence to be able to handle a wide array of financial questions, they know they're in good hands.
You produced this documentary you were talking about where you followed your mother and grandmother.
We got to see some of the realities of their lives.
And one of the things that really struck me is that, as you said, like your mom's always on your mind.
And as they age, I wonder how you are, how are you dealing with it?
It's something I think I'm thinking about as I'm touring with my new show After Father, and those are the themes.
I'm actually talking about more because I am going through it and thinking about my grandma's mortality, for example, because she is 91.
And, you know, she's getting physically sick a lot more.
I gave her a bath for the first time recently.
You know, I'm learning these new things.
Yes.
And so it is something...
I'm thinking about and more and more I think you could see that like on my socials my social media I don't we're not able to do those videos as much anymore they're they're more tired and it was a fun family time it used to be for us where we my grandma looked forward to it dancing and stuff but she doesn't have the energy as much anymore so yeah I'm in that phase that you were talking about where you're like oh when maybe there's trauma happening you don't know it yet So in a year, it'll be funny or I'll be able to talk about it.
Right.
But right now, you know, it's like I got my therapist and then you know, we're figuring out more medical stuff with my mom, and you know medical stuff with grandma too.
Tell me about this new show.
Well, this new show is it is about like, you know, caretaking.
And now I have I also recently met my brother for the first time.
Your brother from whom?
My dad's side.
Because my dad's side is full of surprises too, I'm finding.
And I just realized we might have like skipped right past this after I mentioned your father.
But when you moved here at eight, you lived with your mom and your grandmother.
And you had so many questions in your mind about your father.
Why didn't he intervene and stop you from coming here to the States, even when you all forged a relationship?
You never asked those questions until you were on this American life, and he shared with you that.
He felt that maybe it was best for you to be with your mom and grandmother, but he felt a lot of pain about it.
But he had two children older than you when you were born from a previous marriage.
Right, and I didn't even mention the third one.
There's another brother, and that's the brother I met recently.
There's an oldest brother that was also from his first marriage before my mom, and that brother was taken from him too.
So, yeah, my dad's gone through a lot.
But so this past Christmas, when I went to go see my dad, I got to meet this brother too for the first time.
They had also reunited for the first time in decades.
And me and my brother got to meet.
And so I talk about that in this show, too.
This new show.
That's right.
Can you say publicly what this new show is yet?
Or is it still under wraps?
Oh, yeah.
No, I'm touring it now.
I just came out with a tour title.
It's just called the Big Bowl Tour, where my bowl cut is four times bigger than it is right now in the poster.
Yeah.
How do you brace yourself for these surprises?
Because, you know, I think when we turn 18, we turn 21, we kind of We know who we are.
We're set.
We understand our origin story.
But your origin story keeps evolving.
Yeah, I know, because people be wild.
No one was ready to have a kid is what I'm realizing, right?
All of our parents, everyone was improvising, hence secrets, right?
And so how do I embrace it?
Oh my gosh, in my unhinged ways, right?
So when my dad, you know, was like, well, your brother is here in Japan and we just reconnected.
Would you want to meet him?
I said, well...
Every time I come back to Japan, it's like a new piece of information.
What is up with my family?
What is up with you guys?
Every time I have a new sibling?
Okay.
Yes, of course I want to meet him.
But I said, if we're going to meet, do something dramatic like that.
It's got to be under my terms.
What were your terms?
We're going to meet at a ninja samurai theme park.
What?
Near my brother, where my brother lives near.
And so he lives in Nikko, which is like a few hours away from Tokyo.
And I said, you know, there's a Ninja Samurai theme park that I want to go back and revisit.
It's really fun.
It's mostly like 12 year old kids and white guys that go.
How did you know about it?
Was it a place you knew before and you're like, I got to get there?
I went there once with my dad when I was like 20.
Okay.
Yeah.
When I got my green card and I could go visit him finally, I went and we went to that park together.
And this time I had Ryan with me.
I was like I want to enjoy, you know this, you know running away from like ninja actors and samurai scare actors.
And there's a performance every 30 minutes.
There's a lot going on where I was like, we will never really have to communicate.
Yeah.
You can meet your brother but you guys don't have to deal in feelings.
That's right.
Yeah, it's me running away from feelings.
Yeah.
I was just wondering, like, you know that saying, laugh to keep from crying.
It's my favorite saying.
But this moment that you're in right now, where you are dealing with your aging mom and grandmother and all the realities of that, and yet you're also in this show and making jokes about it.
Is there ever an in-between of you processing where you are crying so that you can get to the laugh?
Oh, yeah.
More lately, you know, with the career sort of going and, you know, in a fast pace with the touring.
When I'm touring, I'm away from the family.
It feels like the opposite of what I was trying to do.
But because I tour, I can make money, you know, so that medical bills are not cheap.
Because you're paying for all that.
I've got two elders.
They're in diapers.
And so, yeah, I've cried more than before in the past.
And I didn't cry.
I don't cry a lot.
If you ask my husband to describe me or ask him how often I cry, he'll say like oh gosh, maybe like twice a year.
But that's already a lot for me.
And I've surpassed that this year, I would say.
So yeah, this is definitely while I'm writing this new show, about some of it being about caretaking.
I'm definitely going through the cries right now.
I'm listening to you and I'm just thinking about wow, I mean, how far we've come, not only just you, but just in general that, like your mother, suffered for so long not knowing, not having a diagnosis.
And now we're in this moment where every little bit of our day-to-day feelings, emotions, we can clock, we can kind of dissect, we can find a solution for.
Do you think about that often?
How does that feel?
You have control over yourself.
That's something I talked about with Ryan, my husband, recently.
And I got really sad thinking about it, actually, where I go, oh, I wish...
The people before us got this.
I just wish our parents or grandparents, all of them got to do this.
I always think, gosh, the people before us were so strong.
The matriarchs, like, you're alive?
What?
I would have ran into a tree a long time ago.
So it's cool that we have these things.
I have apps that can help us meditate and things like that.
They didn't have that back then.
Yeah.
Atsuko Akatsuka, this has been such a pleasure.
Thank you so much.
Oh my gosh, thank you so much for having me.
Atsuko Akatsuka's new stand-up special is called Father.
It debuts on Hulu June 13th and she's currently performing her new stand-up as part of her Big Bowl tour.
Tomorrow on Fresh Air, Molly Jong Fast on her memoir.
She writes about the issues she faced as the daughter of the famous novelist Erica Jong.
It's also about the worst year in her life 2023, when her husband was diagnosed with metastasized pancreatic cancer and she put her mother and stepfather in a nursing home because of their dementia.
Jong Fast is a political analyst for MSNBC.
I hope you can join us.
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