Office at Institute of Japanese-American Cultural Research

88th and Park Avenue, New York City

Kochiro Koso

  Young Kiyoyuki Furuno, intent on cutting through cultural barriers, appears at our first open house, standing tall over a cluster of American students, six-foot apparition from an ancient No-drama—face, snow-white, brows, two jet black calligraphy strokes brushed over eager, dark eyes; hardly pausing to breathe, racket-balling disjointed English sound bites with awesome tenacity; an anguished attempt to connect, no matter what it costs him.

  The American students seem fascinated, straining to understand him, the more courageous attempting to break through his wrenching display.  Most Japanese university students I’ve met have attempted to speak English only to demonstrate good form, but not Kiyo.  As I approach him, he catches his breath, cutting off the barrage of English, evaluating my presence; starts to bow, then straightens, reaching out for a handshake—western style.

  “Furuno, Kiyo—“ correcting himself, “Kiyoyuki Furuno,” first name before surname, western style.  A late arrival at the  open house, he’s missed my own fractured attempt at Japanese taught me by Father Sasaki to welcome our guests: Yokoso, irashaimashita.  Kore kara wa, koko o, anata-no o-uchi-to omote-kudasai.  “Welcome, from now on, please consider this your home.”

  Little did I realize Kiyo would help jumpstart what had developed as a vital project, English language programs, if we were to win financial support. We’d had a painful six months of trying to raise money for vaguely manufactured “cultural exchange” programs, suffering the typical dilemma of nascent non-profits—which comes first, the chicken or the egg?—fund raising before developing programs, except for one successful sponsorship of four rebellious artists from Kyoto.  But exchange programs would not justify receiving large grants from giants such as Ford or Carnegie Foundations.  Japan Society already was getting grants from them for their cultural exchange programs.

  Sasaki has insisted we should first raise funds, then worry about programs.  I suspect his real objection is his desire to develop a kind of social services center for wayward visiting Japanese students, with parochial overtones—read Roman Catholic—hardly an enterprise that would justify non-profit tax exemptions.

  In our first one-on-one English language session, Kiyoyuki settles in front of me, a warm Wednesday afternoon in July, sun filtering through office windows overlooking Park Avenue, lighting up my Spartan office with its bare floors, one plain desk—actually, a table—and a few straight back chairs; behind me on the wall, a large abstract red and bronze canvas loaned to us by John Powers.

  How shall we begin?  First and foremost, speak English only.  Kiyo doesn’t hesitate, in fractured English confessing he’s not yet enrolled at a university as most of our “intake” students have.  I’m relieved to know he’s been spared the painfully ineffective, practically worthless lessons offered by New York University, and others, to improve their English—earphones and grammar; methods practically worthless for Japanese.  As with most male university graduates from Japan, sent by their families (read, “fathers”) to enroll in business administration, they unexpectedly are forced into these language programs; an ability to communicate in English is an absolute necessity.

  His family, Kiyo tells me, owns Furuno Electronics, headquarters in Osaka.  They hope to develop markets—not only in America but around the world, as was the desire of many Japanese companies in the early 1960s.  Kiyo begins relating his adventures in New York with his own unique methods for mastering English. “I go on subway—not a map, and am lost—“

  “I get lost.”

  “Ha!  Yes, I get lost.  I take no map, try to go back to where we start, asking questions in English—“

  “To where I started from, or from where I started,” thinking this is no time to get into the rule, never end a sentence with a preposition—nor its exceptions.  Luckily, he didn’t ask me to explain.

  “From where I started—”

  He also lingers at Greek belly-dancer bars on Eight Avenue where he talks to strangers—not a few bewildered New Yorkers and American tourists, I imagine.

  He explains that Furunos are descended from a Samurai clan originating three hundred years ago, each son’s name prefixed with Kiyo, which he says means “pure.”  Kiyoyuki means “pure snow,” he says.  (Well-named with that snow-white face.)  The Furuno’s original home was Nagasaki on the southwestern island of Kyushu where the Portuguese began their brutal Christian conversion attempts in the fifteen hundreds, and were later expelled.  He is not a Christian.  He was born near Mount Unzen, close to Nagasaki, and saw the bomb fall in August, 1945.  As with all Japanese artists and university students I’d met, he tells me this without emotion.  If there’s any bitterness, it’s well hidden.

  The Furunos remained Buddhist during their long history—never fully embracing “Shinto” or ancestor worship.  His telling me this might have been a cover since Shinto was unpopular in the west at the time, largely responsible for religious fanaticism which fueled Japanese aggression with its worship of the Emperor as descending from the Goddess Amatarasu.  As if to underscore his belief in Buddhism, about which I know next-to-nothing, telling me about Bonen Kai , a ceremony of lighting candles in tiny straw boats and sending them out to sea with the tide.  He touches on Zen archery and the art of kara-te, which means “empty hand.”

  Quite a bundle of information to absorb in one hour of an uninterrupted first session, Kiyo eager to tell his story.  He explains how his family developed their business manufacturing radar and sonar equipment especially for fishermen to locate their catch.  (I thought it best not to ask if this included hunting whales, or tuna fishermen ensnaring dolphins in scatter-nets.)  Now, he tells me, they are developing sonar for use in pleasure vessels—yachts and sailboats.

  While expressing pride in his family and their achievements, he seems not at all interested in pursuing business as a career.  His passion, it would seem, is to learn English, and all he can about Americans, family obligations notwithstanding.

  He gets up from the uncomfortable, straight back chair, unfolding his tall, thin frame.  “Thank you,” he says, walking to the door.  Opening it, he turns and says with a smile, “Arigato gozaimasu.”  I suspect he’d like to teach me some Japanese and about to respond, on impulse I repeat a phrase I’d learned which translated roughly as No, it is I who should be thanking you, “Kochiro koso.”

  He spins around in the doorway, dissolving into a deep bow, gasping, “Ahhhhh!” straightens up, face beaming and full of wonder.  Startled, I offer, “Then I used the phrase correctly?”

  “Ha! Yes!” bowing again, straightening, turning and walking quite tall out the door.

  By fall of 1963, partner Frank Dunand and I were comfortably nested in a ground floor garden apartment on West 70^th Street and I’m working full time with an insurance company on Wall Street—a real bore—time to find more rewarding work, in public relations perhaps, or advertising, taking a rest from the obstacle course of finding work in the theatre.  An employment agency advertising in the Times is offering work in “Direct mail advertising for a publishing company.”  Just the ticket!

  Elaine Krieger, tall backpacker, lanky, light brown hair and spectacles—Girl Scout Troupe Leader—ushers me into a small glassed cubicle where I’m sure she spends most of her days, unwillingly indoors, rather than hiking through green woodlands.  She doesn’t belong in this small enclosure, head and shoulders slumped into my résumé, legs askew.

  “Do you like challenging and difficult situations?” she asks, eyes lowered.

  “Sure.”   (You think I should say no?)

  “The ad’s a front,” she says, “there is no direct mail advertising job here, although it is more or less with a publishing company.”  She hesitates, eyes still focused somewhere between her knees.  Slowly, she raises her head, looks directly into my eyes, conspirator ready to lead me into dangerous, troubled domains.

  “Do you like Orientals?” she asks.

  “Yes .  .  .” (Mmmm . . . Red China?)

  “Japanese? – You were in the war .  .  .”

  “Yes, I have no problem with Japanese.  I was on Okinawa—after the war ended.”

  “Yes, I see, in the Infantry.”

  “Well, I didn’t kill any Japanese, got there too late for that, and in high school there was Tom Ikeda.  He was an Olympic swimmer.  They sent him off to an internment camp.”  I’m clutching at straws.

  She looks at me as if to detect sincerity or deceit, playing professional and relishing it, meditating her next move, pursed lips, turning her head to scowl at the glass wall.

  “We have here one of the most extraordinary job opportunities that I’ve run across in a long time.  We—I must be careful whom I send for interviews.  You will meet some of the most important and influential men in New York, but only if you clear the first hurdle successfully.”  Another penetrating look.  “You think you can handle it?”

  “What’s the job?”

  “You’ll have to get a haircut.  You must appear absolutely Madison Avenue.  Do you have a Brooks Brothers suit?”

  “No, but close.  What’s the job?”

  “You’ll find out on your first round of interviews, starting with Lou Ordini, personnel director of Prentice-Hall Publishing.”  She hesitates, gives me the address. 

  ”It’s in Fort Lee, New Jersey—you know  where that is?  Across the river, the George Washington Bridge.”  She unwinds from her chair.  The interview is over.

  So, what the hell, it’s only a month after Kennedy’s assassination.  I guess I can revert to gray Eisenhower 1950s, short hair look.  The musical “Hair” is still four years away; John V.  Lindsay, still-to-be Mayor of New York City and yet to meet with the Mattachine Society, opening up Central Park to Barbra Streisand’s Sheep Meadow concert; the park now foot-patrolled at night by frightened cops in pairs, New Yorkers continuing to avoid its dimly lit pathways; Andy Warhol, Lichtenstein prints and advertising’s Peter Max revolution still to reach full bloom.  In 1963, flower children, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, tie-dyed shirts and moustaches are only dreams of frustrated teenagers, in spite of Kennedy’s “New Frontier,” and now that he’s gone .  .  .

  So I get my hair cut, stuff myself into starched white shirt and most conservative suit and tie, shined Florsheims, and drive our coughing Plymouth over the George Washington Bridge to Fort Lee, arriving on time spic-and-span at the personnel offices of Prentice-Hall, Inc.  I know something about the firm from sister Alice, CPA; they’re well-known publishers of books covering the whole spectrum of tax laws and regulations.

  What I don’t know, but am about to learn, is that Prentice-Hall’s current President, John G.  Powers, has single-handedly revolutionized the firm’s list; has “fallen in love with Japan,” and is an avid collector of art, anxious to bring four young artists from Kyoto to New York.

  Lou Ordini, solid, heavy-set, savvy Italian, orders coffee from wide-eyed, unstyled sandy-hair, plain and obliging Maryann, Lou’s mistress, as it turns out; smiling, moving in and out of Lou’s office with ease.

  “I’ll come right out with it,” Lou says.  “We are conducting these interviews for our President, John G.  Powers.  He’s got a keen interest in the Japanese.  Prentice-Hall is one of the first American publishers to co-publish in Japan.  We have headquarters in Tokyo and Kyoto.  Mr.  Powers goes there often.  He’s on the board of directors of this Japanese-American cultural institute here in New York.  We’re looking for an Executive Director.”

  At this rarified level, personnel directors don’t sift through minor details such as “can you type?” or “are you known to be prompt and reliable?”  Rather the application asks such questions as “What is the last book you read?”  (The Will of Zeus, and The Mask of Jove, by Stringfellow Barr, is my answer.)  Lou’s questioning is more probing than Elaine Krieger’s.  “Why do like the Japanese?” he asks.

  “I’m not sure.  I’ve always had a feeling for, you know, Japanese art—and Chinese painting .  .  .”

  “Read this.”  He hands me a small, three-fold brochure.  “Take a look at our list of directors, all prominent men and women.  Each of them has promised a thousand dollars to get us started,” a John Powers fantasy, I will learn.

  Shuffled to an anteroom to “think it over,” I’m in a daze, staring at the hastily printed brochure in brown ink, beige background.  The ink itself seems to shout its vague content—sepia toned, describing a proposal to build a cultural center in Sendai, Japan where American scholars and artists can visit to exchange ideas with their Japanese counterparts.  I haven’t the foggiest notion what’s expected of an Executive Director—and will I have to move to Japan?  I’m an actor, damn it! What am I doing here?

  At the top of the brochure’s first page appears the name of the Institute’s President, Father Peter N.  Sasaki, and its Vice President, John G.  Powers, President of Prentice-Hall, Inc.  Following these, an impressive list of Board Members:  a Catholic troika composed of Mrs. Mannis, a wealthy woman in White Plains; a teacher-priest in the Bronx, and layperson, Tom Brady, and another priest, Father MacGowan; Ambassador Akira Matsui to the U.N.  (also  Catholic); Harold Bache of brokerage firm Bache and Company; Robert W. Dowling, President of City Investment Company which owns the Carlyle Hotel among other prime real estate, and Parke Bernet Galleries, later Sotheby’s; Douglas MacArthur II, nephew of famous and controversial general Douglas MacArthur; Robert D. Murphy, cloak-and-dagger diplomat preceding the Allied landings in North Africa in World War II and author of recently published Diplomat Among Warriors, now President of IBM International; John Ducas of Gaynor and Ducas, New York based public relations firm; Joseph C.  Wilson, president of Xerox; and not-so-famous but influential philanthropist, Mrs. Nathaniel Singer.

  Lou Ordini swings around in his chair.  “Interested?” he asks.

  With a gulp, “Yes.”

  “Good.  Just to relieve your mind, all that stuff in the brochure about a center in Sendai—forget that—that’s dead.  You can’t raise tax-deductible funds for projects outside the U.S.  and John Powers got Father Sasaki his non-profit tax status—he’s well-connected in Washington, so things have started to happen.  Some of the programs are in place in the United States.”

  Affecting casual, I stare at him.  Lou nails me with a look, “I’m surprised you’ve  never considered a position like this before—with your background.”  He flicks an intercom button.  “Maryann, get me Father Sasaki,” turning to me, “Your first interview is with the founder of the organization, Peter N.  Sasaki, the President.  He’s about your age, I’d say.  You should get along fine.  If he likes you, we’ll set up interviews with other board members—just a few, starting with John Powers.”

  The phone rings.  “Hello, Father Sasaki?  We’ve got another candidate,” ticking off highlights from my résumé.  “No, Father, he’s not married,” winking at me, “but then, Father, neither are you.”

  The Reverend Peter N.  Sasaki in white priest collar, black suit enclosing a thin frame, cloaked, not offensively, with the smell of pipe tobacco, sits behind an antique desk at the far end of north-side penthouse atop the Parke Bernet Galleries at Seventy-sixth and Madison, which I will learn, serves as board room, art gallery, and headquarters for The Institute of Japanese American Cultural Research, Inc.  A wall of glass french doors look out on a roof garden, leafless trees in pots, white, wrought iron benches grayed from autumn rainstorms.

  I would never see Sasaki in civilian clothes, except in photographs with other priests taken on vacations in Hampton Bays and Shinnecock, always holding a small, ebony pipe.

  He gets up to great me.  He doesn’t bow, but shakes hands with a rather defensive air.  His hand is delicate, feminine, but firm.  He takes my résumé and gestures for me to sit.  He’s a bit shorter than I, maybe five-eight.  He’s wired, seldom relaxed—and I will learn, with an ulcer to  prove it.  Lou Ordini has told me Sasaki holds a black belt in karate.

  Once more ensconced behind the small, spindle-legged and fragile antique desk (Louis Quatorze or Empire, who knows?) he bends his head down to the résumé, still clutching the pipe, grunting now and then as he reads, exclaiming “Okinawa!?”

  “Yes, army of occupation, got there too late for combat.”

  “But you did you not go to  Japan?  Okinawans are only hillbillies.”

  “Our  troop ship didn’t even stop at the Hawaiian Islands—going, or coming home.”

  “I met American troops in occupation.  Went up to them to show them my arm next to theirs.”  Smiling, he pushes back his sleeve and thrusts it out toward me.  “You see?  Not yellow—pink, like yours.”

  How could I answer that one, except to smile, and nod yes.

  “I fired a machine gun at your bombers when they flew over Sendai,” he says,.   The smile has vanished.  He pulls out the sepia toned brochure, pointing with the pipe stem, to the list of board members.  “Each one of these men promise a thousand dollars to get us started.  That will pay first year’s salary for you.  John Powers got us our tax exemption with his connections in Washington.  What annual salary do  you expect?”

  “I was hoping ten thousand, but I understand from Lou Ordini, that may not be possible.”

  “M-m-m .  .  .  well, it will perhaps be seven thousand.  We are only starting out.  Everyone must make sacrifices.”  (I flash on kamikaze planes plunging into our ships off Okinawa.)  “What is your plan to raise money?”

    I hand him the outline.  He growls, turning to my references, a skeptical look, as if I might have made them up.  Squinting at me, he says,“  We will be in touch with each of these and you must get approval of Father Clark, Mister Brady and Mrs.  Mannis—my original  sponsors.  But first you must meet John G.  Powers, and then John Ducas—they are the toughest.  I will call Lou.”  (Mmm, first name only.  Is he trying to impress me?)

  Second visit to Prentice-Hall.  Maryann leads me through a  wide, empty hallway on the top floor, its walls covered with large paintings in muted colors, except for one canvas which explores a violent red spectrum from florid scarlet to ruby and delicate pink; three-dimensional blocks of wood hammered to its surface.

  “I’ve never been up here before,” says the deprecating Maryann.  This does not put me at ease.  What ogre awaits me behind those doors?

  Ann Main is not an ogre.  As Maryann reluctantly abandons me to the executive suite’s outer office, Ann, a tall, handsome woman, is just closing a door to the inner sanctum, greeting me with a benevolent smile—the professor about to challenge a graduate’s thesis proposal.  She’s fair-haired, perhaps forty—keeper at the gates, no doubt, prepared to protect her boss from unworthy candidates; I will quickly discover, a woman of substance with no time for trivial amenities.

  She performs a quick and subtle appraisal.  Her gracious reception cannot be caused by my conservative attire and short hair.  Perhaps it’s the tranced look in my eyes.  Whatever sparks Ann Main’s eased reaction to my presence, we become instant compatriots, both in service to that man behind the door.

  “J.G.P. will be with you shortly . . . Tea?”  She moves to a sideboard tucked into the wall, set with kettle, teapot and small porcelain cups with no handles.  “I hope you like Japanese green tea,” she says.  “I myself can’t stand it. Tastes like medicine to me, but,” with a sigh, “everything around here is Japanese.”

  “I don’t mind—I mean, yes, the tea would be—“

  “It’s not required, you know.   You don’t have to drink it.”

  “No, it’s okay.”

  “Where are you from?  You’re not a New Yorker.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Your speech.”

  “I’m from California.”

  “San Francisco?”

  “No, Los Angeles.”

  “I took a trip out there once—San Diego, with my son.  We have relatives.  Everybody grins and smiles all the time.”

Laughing, I say, “Yes, I guess we do . . .”

  “No offense.  We could use a few more smiles back here.  I’m from New Jersey, I guess you can tell from my way of speaking.”

  “I  like the change of seasons—back here, I mean.  My father was born in Portland, Main.”

  “You like all this cold weather?”

  “It’s supposed to build character.”  (Now, I’m smiling.)

  “There ought to be a better way to do that.  Have you met Father Sasaki?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you think of him?”

  “He’s, well, he’s an interesting man.”

  Ann smiles with an expression that suggests conspiracy—sharing secrets.

  “You were in Japan?”

  “No . . . Okinawa—occupation.”

  “Did Father Sasaki tell you he fired a machine gun at American bombers?”

  Laughing, “Yes, he did.”

  “He says he may have shot one down.”

  A buzz from the intercom.  Ann says “Yes,” firmly into the intercom.  A pre-arranged signal  of approval? suggesting that “No” would’ve signaled, I’m sorry, something came up.  Mr. Powers can’t see you today.

  “I’ll bring the tea into you,” she says.

  J.G.P.’s office is much smaller than Ann’s, and more darkly lit.  Tiny sculptures, silver filigree metal figures are scattered on desks and tables, each with a pewter plaque naming artist and title, too small to read.  Cool air drifts from a whispering dehumidifier in the corner near the door.  A signed picture from John F. Kennedy hangs behind his desk.

  Tall and formidable, John G. Powers, President of Prentice-Hall Publishing, gets up, comes around his desk and shakes my hand.  Sunshine from windows overlooking a Japanese garden with seedling pine trees, a bridge over a dry brook,  backlights his thick, graying hair. A ruddy complexion signifies W.A.S.P., White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, I’m guessing from anywhere in Connecticut with an apartment in the silk stocking district of Manhattan’s eastside.  My guess turns out to be correct.  J.P.G. is a graduate from Yale’s law school.

  He returns to his desk and sits, reaching across to take my résumé and a fund raising proposal, including an opera benefit Frank had helped me prepare.  Ann enters carrying the tea tray.  He pushes a sheaf of papers towards her and says, “Take care of these, will you?”  She exits silently.

   J.G.P. is studying the résumé.  “It looks to me from this you don’t like selling,” he snaps.  His voice is mellow—more baritone than bass.

    “If you’re referring to that job with the fire extinguisher company in Culver City, selling for them meant sitting around in dirty back rooms with owners of hole-in-the-wall hardware stores, swapping dirty jokes over pint bottles of cheap whiskey.  They hired me as sales promotion manager to develop brochures and other materials for the sales force, and work with the engineers on cost runs for bidding proposals.  After a few months, their Sales Manager Vice President decided they didn’t need a promotional manager, so it was out into the field—“

  He stares at me, a smile trying to wipe away a questioning frown.  He turns to the fund raising proposal which includes staging a benefit with the Metropolitan Opera’s National Company—“Madama Butterfly” of course.  Frank’s idea.  Frank could connect me with the right people at the Met.  And so could John, I would discover.  Little did I know I had struck the mother lode.  John Powers was a devoted opera buff, and listed in Met programs under Patrons (at one thousand dollars a month).

  Later, another discovery—John was living with his own Madama Butterfly, Kimiko Maeda, in an apartment on East Eighty-third Street, a block away from the Metropolitan Museum of Art which had on loan several of his treasured Japanese screens.

  Quickly scanning the proposals, he says, “This shows initiative.”  He triggers the intercom.  “Ann, get me Father Sasaki.”  He gets up, hovering over me and smiling.  I get up.  He shakes my hand.  “Peter will arrange for you to meet Father Clark and Mrs. Mannis.  Once you make that hurdle, I’ll arrange for you to meet John Ducas.”

  The interview is over.  It has taken about ten minutes.

  Father Eugene Clark receives me in his digs at Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx.  He’s a carbon copy of William F. Buckley—the ultra conservative commentator, founder of National Review Magazine in 1995—flicking tongue and bulging eyes to make a point.  He had met Father Sasaki at Fordham University where they were both studying, and reveals with more-than-a-hint that Father Sasaki’s enterprise has lost his full support, and adds the same is true for Mrs. Mannis;  and Charles Brady, a Catholic layman and attorney they’ve brought on board, close friend of Mrs. Mannis.

  Bulging eyes and flicking tongue notwithstanding, Father Clark does not mince words.  “When Father Sasaki asked me to come on board to help organize an inter-cultural study center in Sendai, Japan, I was more than interested and got Mrs. Mannis and her friend Charles Brady to join with us.  Then Father Sasaki met John G. Powers at Kanayama’s, former Japanese Counsel in New York.  Everything changed.  Powers has connections in Washington, I suppose because Prentice-Hall publishes books on the tax codes, etcetera—he secured Sasaki’s enterprise non-profit tax-exempt status and is now promoting a cultural-exchange program with Japanese artists; four young rebels from Kyoto, as I understand.  This is not what we signed up for.”

  No tea to sip here—nor coffee.  Father Clark speaks non-stop, occasionally licking his lips, Buckley style.  “I don’t know from which source you’re going to get your first year’s salary.  Seven thousand, I understand.  I suppose you can raise that amount, perhaps from John Powers’s Board of Directors.  I don’t believe you’ll get any monetary support from Mrs. Mannis or Charles Brady.  As for the others, well, good luck with that.“  He rises from behind his desk and looks out the window.

  “I’ll arrange for you to meet Mrs. Mannis.  I’m sure she’ll approve of you, if not the project, such as it is.  But you should meet her—and Charles Brady.”

“Thank you.”

  He reaches out to shake my hand.  So much for Father Clark.

  Mrs. Mannis, Charles Brady hovering nearby, greets me with some grace in her huge, oppressive living room in the Mannis mansion isolated on a hill in White Plains; a recently named American Catholic Mother of the Year with countless grand and great-grand children.  Brady, a robust Irishman, is grinning.

  “Father Sasaki deceived us,” she says.  “We were told he was planning to develop a cultural center in Japan.  Sendai, we are told has a large Catholic population—it’s where Father Sasaki was ordained.  He’s in the United States only for an advanced degree at Fordham.  And then,” she continued petulantly, “he met John G. Powers—“ interrupting herself with a sigh.

  “At a reception given by former Japanese counsel general in New York, Ambassador Kanayama,” Brady explains.  “Mr. Powers has extensive interests in Japan—not only in publishing, but in artists’ colonies and the like.  He’s a big art collector.  I suppose you can raise money for Father Sasaki, and perhaps, it’s not for me to know, you can raise your first year’s salary, but I wouldn’t count on it.  Nobody here cares about Japanese artists.”

  What could I say to that?  Ignorant as I was, I could hardly argue with them, and thanked them for taking the time to see me.

  John Ducas of Gaynor and Ducas guides me into a large, windowless board room with bare walls and intimidating, dark-polished conference table which could host easily a dozen or so associates.  Ducas is indeed as tough as Sasaki has warned, a short, tight package of a man who displays no emotion as I answer his terse questions, non-committal in his responses.

  I have, by now, formed some general notions about Father Sasaki’s objectives for his Japanese-American cultural venture, suppressing a suspicion that his primary motivation is to build a haven for himself in the United States.

  “What is it you’re going to do with Father Sasaki?” Ducas asks.  “His agenda is not at all clear to me.”

  “Japanese university students,” I respond with assumed certainty, “that’s his main concern. . . get them together with American students.”

  “But not political!” Ducas snaps.  “If you are in any way political, you will lose your tax-exempt status.”

  “Yes, certainly, I understand that,” wondering why he’s taking such a strong position.  Later on, it will become clear in a meeting with another friend of Sasaki’s—Harry Kern of Time Magazine:  Conservative forces in New York, Roman Catholics especially, and Ducas himself is a  devout Catholic, are concerned about the developing “Soka Gakkai, Value Creating Society” in Japan, a Nichiren Buddhist sect of laypersons, currently on the rampage, winning seats in the Parliament.

  Fear also existed among large American corporations that Soka Gakkai could harm irreparably Japanese-American relations because of its strong emphasis on fostering and regaining “Japanese identity,” rooting out westernization and influence, all of which would inhibit investments by American business.  Fifteen years later, in 1976, I would learn that Soka Gakkai had no such intentions, at least, not in the west.

  In the mid-1960s American expertise and technology were eagerly sought by the Japanese—encouraging American investments, and the Americans walked right in with little or no guaranty for future participation offered by the Japanese, virtually giving away patents and financial advice.   One remarkable exception to this was Sony Corporation which eventually would find a real “home” in the United States, thanks to the efforts of its founder, Morita.

  “Are you married, have a girlfriend?” Ducas asks, and I’m ready for it.

  “No, I’ve never married; never found the right girl.”

  He gives no indication of approval or disapproval—nor rejection.  Three days later I get a call from Sasaki.  “John Ducas is sold on you,” he says.

  So it will be.  I have become Executive Director of the Japanese-American Cultural Institute, Inc. starting January 2, 1964.

  In the beginning it’s just the two of us, President Father Peter N. Sasaki and I, tucked into a corner on the second floor of French and Company, dealing in art and antiquities, at Seventy-sixth and Madison Avenue.  A subsidiary of French and Co., Antiquities, Inc., owned the building, and in turn City Investing Company (President Robert Dowling, on our Board), owned approximately eighty per cent of French & Co.  The building, built in 1949, was generally referred to as the Park-Bernet Galleries, an auction house and tenant for many years with a thirty-two year lease.  In July, 1964, the world famous auction house, Sotheby & Co. of London, would gain controlling interest of  Parke-Bernet.

  Robert Samuels, who managed French and Company, placed Father Sasaki, quite appropriately and not by accident, in front of a niche opening on a red painted, wooden Donatello sculpture of a saint; my antique desk nearby.  Was the Donatello genuine?  Probably not, but French & Co. boasted many genuine museum pieces, sculptures and paintings which found their way to Parke-Bernet’s auction block.

    The vision of Sasaki seated in front of the Donatello no doubt impressed several French & Co.’s clientele, including Paul Newman and wife Joanne Woodward who wandered through now and then; the first time we saw them, venturing across the room to speak to Sasaki.  Unfortunately, they were not potential financial contributors.  Contributors to what?  Our enterprise, a vague one, to say the least..

  What could we tell them? tat their donation would benefit Japanese-American relations led by a Japanese Roman Catholic priest sitting at a desk in front of a Donatello saint?  Fortunately, had convinced Sasaki that his dream of a center in Sendai was a white elephant and Sasaki was beginning to accept existence of the real problems for young Japanese in New York, mentioned above; the possibility that students from Japan, graduates of such universities as Keiyo, Sophia, and Tokyo, might find themselves trapped in a language nightmare when they enrolled at N.Y.U. or Columbia, forced into taking special language classes adding to their expenses with a serious delay in completing degree work.

  As noted, mostly these were young men sent by their families to get graduate degrees, Masters in Business Administrations to strengthen the development of American markets.  Some went underground, jeopardizing their student visas.  Others simply returned to Japan to face the wrath of their fathers.

  No time, however, to explore these problems, caught up as I was in a giddy, glamorous whirl of activity which gains not a penny; meeting a few of our “Who’s Who” board of directors; lunches at the St. Regis or, shoeless, legs tucked, beneath a tatami table at Madame Saito’s restaurant, served by waitresses in traditional geisha kimonos, inhaling warm saki and relishing mizo soup and sukiyaki; Madame Saito herself, often sitting with us, chatting with Sasaki and businessmen—even finding myself with Sasaki in Madame Saito’s gaudy apartment above the restaurant pitching for funds, the three of us watched over by a green and red parrot.

  First big potential donor and member of our board—we had yet to organize a board meeting—Robert D. Murphy, president of IBM International.  Sasaki calls him, “Bob.”  Murphy has recently published, “Diplomat Among Warriors,” retelling his cloak and dagger adventures in North Africa, appointed by  F.D.R., as one of the President’s “Wise Men,” to meet in secret in 1942 with the  French in North Africa, some of whom may have been “Vichy” French; i.e., loyal to the Germans, opposed to invasion.  Murphy’s mission succeeded, as  history shows.

  A large, barrel chested man, rough-cut face, mellow voice expressing a touch of the benign, arched eyebrows questioning, Bob Murphy reaches out a hand to welcome Sasaki and me in his office on Madison Avenue, south of 42^nd Street, a truly executive venue with a view north of Manhattan towers.  He listens politely to my not-yet perfected account of student woes, frowning, smiling, and affirmative nodding, as I catalogue “their plight and need for Americans and Japanese to get together—to bridge the chasm of understanding existing between our two peoples”—the kind of stuff originated by Eisenhower in the 1950s with his “people-to-people” rhetoric and popularized by J.F.K. with his Peace Corps.  (Sadly, this did not apparently include people of Southeast Asia, about whom the State Department seemed to know practically nothing.)

  Murphy promises he will bring our request for funds to the attention of those at IBM, International responsible for considering such matters; then suddenly, he nails me with, “And what about you?”

  Caught by surprise, I fumble an explanation . . . from California, recently moved to New York, to which Murphy interrupts, “So you’ve come east with Nixon?”  It’s more than a year since Nixon had been thumped badly by Pat Brown, Sr. for Governor of California, migrating to Manhattan after his well-remembered parting shot at the press: “You won’t have Richard Nixon to kick around anymore” – his move to Manhattan not looked upon favorably by New Yorkers.

  Is Murphy trying to lure me into revealing my politics?  All I could do was smile.  Adding to my display of clumsiness, as Sasaki and I are leaving, the lid of my unlatched black briefcase falls open, spilling papers all over the floor.  Altogether not an auspicious first meeting with the big guns.  A year later we would receive a one hundred dollar contribution from IBM, International, then a giant in Japan; but this was after our programs with English language programs for university students were well underway.

  And how could I ever forget Murphy’s arrival at our welcoming cocktail party for the four young artists from Japan, stepping off the elevator into the penthouse board room at Parke Bernet, Robert W. Dowling at his side—another big man, their formal white shirt fronts almost blinding me.

  After this initial meeting with Dowling in 1964, others followed, including a taxi ride down Madison Avenue with Robert W. Dowling—our “landlord” at Parke Bernet, one might say—fervent supporter of the Kennedys; President of City Investment Company, which along with shopping malls and other enterprises in Canada, owned the elegant Carlyle Hotel on Fifth Avenue.

Carlyle Hotel

  John Powers kept prodding us, “Ask Bob Dowling for a donation,” but Dowling was a busy man, a big fellow like “Bob” Murphy, face carved in granite.  A voice like thunder, one could picture him as left over from Tammany Hall “Club House” Democrat days.  Whatever his interest in the Japanese, he was an invaluable resource for Sasaki, allowing us our small corner at French and Company; hotel suites at the Carlyle for visiting Japanese businessmen, served up with complimentary fresh strawberries and champagne.

  Sasaki and I confronted him, at last, in his offices at Parke Bernet, and he said in his rough, booming voice, “Come along with me—I have an appointment downtown,” rapidly finding ourselves riding in a taxi, doing our best to outline our plea for funds over the roar of traffic.

  He remained silent throughout our journey, and, hopefully, he was listening.  Arriving at a tall office building on lower Broadway near Wall Street, he called out to the driver, “Pull up here,” extracting a five dollar bill from his wallet, handing it to Sasaski.  “Here, Father,” he said, “this will pay for the taxi,” and bolting out into the crowd.  This would be the only contribution we got from Dowling, except, dutifully noted, our free rent and the use of the roof top board room for our infrequent board meetings, and for a reception and display of art from the four visiting artists.

  To his well-deserved credit, Dowling chaired the nonprofit Carnegie Hall Corporation which was to repay New York City for its purchase of the world-famous Carnegie Hall, saving it from demolition in 1960 through the successful campaign mounted by Isaac Stern and music patrons, Jacob and Alice Kaplan.

  I never was to learn how John Powers persuaded Dowling to become a member of our fantasy Board of Directors—most likely the “Kennedys connection,” both of them had known J.F.K. personally and were big supporters during his presidential campaign.  Also, John was a member of the Young Presidents Organization (Y.P.O.), but that couldn’t explain fully how he had gathered such a distinguished group of men, and one woman, Mrs. Nathaniel Singer.  Dowling’s interest in the Japanese probably compounded from Parke Bernet and John’s fine art collection—Japanese prints, some of which stood gracefully in the halls of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.

  But John—yes, I was calling him by his first name after he had done the same for me in our first active meeting at Columbia University, arranging for dorm rooms for the four Japanese artists we were bringing over from their art colony, “Kitasurakawa” in Kyoto—John was no dilettante collector.  Not only did he own several ancient Japanese screens and scrolls, but was a patron of Andy Warhol, Lichtenstein prints and other contemporary, known and unknown artists.

  The meeting with Board Member Harry Kern, mentioned above, was to have a prophetic ring.  At the Japanese Ambassador to the United Nations, Mitsui’s Park Avenue apartment, Sasaki had met Kern prior to connecting with John Powers.  Kern was also a Roman Catholic, a well-known correspondent with Time Magazine, hardly a potential contributor to our ill-defined cause.  Sasaki introduced me to him over breakfast at the St. Regis Hotel.

  A mild-mannered man—steel spine, my guess—Kern had been writing about the emergence of the “Soka Gakkai” as a real threat to Japanese Christians, most particularly Catholics; as well as American business interests in Japan because of their emphasis on a return to “Japanese identity and tradition.”  Fifteen years later, I would become a member of Soka Gakkai in the United States, known as “Nichiren Shoshu of America” (N.S.A.); but that’s another story.

  Certainly, we needed more well-defined programs, so I planned to visit student leaders, counselors, especially at New York University, hoping they would connect us with Japanese exchange students.  This pet project of mine, apparently but not assuredly supported by Sasaki, had to be put on hold, however.  John Powers had another priority, most likely his primary reason for hooking up with Sasaski in the first place—bringing budding Japanese artists and other professionals to the United States.

  In “competition” with Japan Society, solidly established in New York, we would offer a cultural exchange program of our own and sponsor four young Japanese artists who had formed their own art colony in Kyoto, “Kitasurakawa,” named for a nearby river.  John, an innovator, was defying ancient Japanese traditions dictating a disciple-master relationship, meaning nascent artists must first study, often live with, recognized “masters” for years, gaining recognition about age fifty.  This I was to learn from the artists themselves.

  Father Sasaki and I greeted the artists at, then, Idlewild, driven in a limousine by Jim, Prentice-Hall’s general “maintenance-transportation-mechanic” factotum, fiercely loyal to John, privy to skeletons and scandals, one of whom was sitting in the front seat—Kimiko Maeda, a complete surprise to both Sasaki and me.

  No one had bothered to explain who Kimiko was, but one thing she was not—a docile, kimono-clad Cio-Cio-san.  She eyed Father Sasaki suspiciously, perhaps his priestly garb would signal disapproval of her as John’s mistress, regarding me with equally defensive air.  Kimiko was, after all, vulnerable, defending her turf at an apartment with John on East 83^rd Street.

  It must be noted here that Kimiko would soon be married to John.  They were to have an exciting and productive life together, Kimiko surviving him, continuing to further their dedication to contemporary artists.  From the website, Powers Art Center, on its opening July 7, 2014 in Carbondale, Colorado:  “John G. Powers and his wife, Kimiko Powers, collected a broad array of contemporary artists and were also open to sharing their love of art and appreciation for the power of contemporary art with the public . . ."

Powers Art Center, Carbonville, Colorado

  Jim later would tell me —“John fell in love with Japan when he went there to secure joint publishing ventures,” this, at the time of his ascendancy as President of Prentice-Hall.  He was still married to a daughter of R. Prentice Ettinger, co-founder of Prentice-Hall and Chairman of the Board.  Powers, then a Wall Street attorney, Yale graduate, had come to Prentice-Hall eleven years before to set up the corporation’s retirement program and was soon made president.

  It was well-known that Ettinger ran the show at Prentice-Hall with an advantage of stock majority control—so Kimiko’s standing, one might assume, could evaporate at any moment.  John wasn’t about to let that happen.  As long as he and his wife kept up appearances of a successful marriage, Ettinger would be satisfied.

  John’s artists, four travel-frayed, red-eyed, young Japanese men came through the gate at Idylwild from customs: wary, defensive Shingo Kusuda, whose “red-on-red” three-dimensional painting I’d seen at Prentice-Hall; the rather chubby and docile Masami Kodama, who sculpted abstract contours into light, natural grained wood; eager Noriyasu Fukushima, a sculptor working in metal scrap soldered into singular pieces who two years later would stay with my younger brother and family at their home in San Fernando valley in California on his way back to Japan; and the wired Shingo Iwata, a dabbler in art whose real interest was cinema.

  Their English was practically non-existent.  Both Sasaki and Kimiko appeared  archly superior to the bewildered young men, looking down from Mount Fuji at the lowly, bewildered artists, barking orders at them in Japanese. My role is to  smile and shake hands.  We pile into the limo and head for International House at Columbia University where Powers, or more likely Ann Main, has found rooms for them.

  Powers greets us in the lobby, giving directions calmly, but with authority, addressing me as “Dana,” towering above the artists and students of other nationalities who swirl around him like disciples to a guru.  Soon he will be introducing me into his private world, taking me with him on visits to lofts and studios of young, emerging American artists. It will be several weeks, however, before he feels secure and knows me well enough to ask me to his apartment on East Eighty-third.

  I join him in searching for a studio for the painter, Shingo Kusuda.  Painter-Sculptor Fukushima, and sculptor Masami Kodama will create at Prentice-Hall—Fukushima in the boiler room with his metal and soldering iron; Kodama, sanding and shaping his blocks of wood in the Japanese garden John has created, a delightful, quiet area, as noted, viewed through the window of his small office.  We would not see much of Iwata, who spent his time filming in the streets with his eight millimeter camera.

  John G. Powers was proud of his life outside of the vigorous program to broaden the scope of Prentice-Hall far beyond that for which the publishing house had been famous—volumes covering the federal tax code, and other related publications.  His support of unknown and emerging artists was far-reaching and a passion, as the present day Powers Art Center in Colorado will attest. 

  For our first foray, ostensibly searching for a studio for Kusuda, he packs me into the limo, Jim   driving, for a trip to the Bowery and a large loft where I’m introduced to the artist Bob Thompson, a young, introspective African American, and his wife, a beautifully contrasting white and blonde young woman, quite obviously pregnant.

  So, I thought at the time, John is testing my degree of liberalism, observing my reaction to this racially mixed couple, which quite naturally for me, born in Los Angeles and with a mother and educated by teachers who were color blind, is no reaction at all, except to admire Thompson’s work and his lovely wife, striking paintings evoking both Gaugin and Miguel Covarrubias’s bright canvasses: Thompson’s bold and expressionistic, brown, earth-colored figures of men and women clothed in primary reds and greens in African village settings.  I sense that John is observing me closely, and I’m sure he’s not disappointed.

New York Metropolitan Museum of Art

  My first visit to the East Eighty-third Street apartment and John’s private domain shared with Kimiko (I doubt very much Father Sasaki had ever been invited here), presumably is to discuss fund raising programs, but I’m sure this is a privilege extended only to special friends.  He greets me at the door and asks me to take off my shoes; now to behold the more brazen, stunning, and sometimes quirky pieces of his art collection:  mobiles with electrically powered colored lights twirling and glittering; Warhol’s tomato cans; a painting of what appeared be a mass of pink and blue female genitalia, painted, surprisingly, by Clifford LaFontaine, whose wife I had met at an “Academy Award” party the previous April.

  On the wall in dining room, a nude woman looks down at the tatami table, a large, startling oil painting in charcoal colors, leaving nothing to the imagination, down to the minutest, finely etched hair follicle.

  Shortly after the arrival of the four Kitasurakawa artists, partner Frank Dunand and I escort them on a “field trip” to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Frank doesn’t have any more luck communicating with the boys than I; nevertheless, they practically stumble over themselves to get the words out, in true Japanese fashion, eager to please—a habit I would later try to break down in the English language programs.

  Over lunch at the Met, Kodama with a broad grin, looks me square in the eye and says, “You know, Mr. Skolfield, I saw the atom bomb fall on Hiroshima.”

  Startled, Frank almost chokes on his salad.

  Kodama, still grinning:  “I was at school, many miles away.  I saw the big flash.”

  Frank and I are speechless.

  Frank has had good fortune.  One day in early March, 1964, Bob Tuggle, Director of the Metropolitan Opera Guild (years later he would become Guild Archivist), announces to Frank, “We’ve had it with Louis Melançon,” (Metropolitan Opera’s long-enduring official photographer).  “From now on you are going to photograph operas in performance for the Guild, starting with Falstaff.”  Thus finding myself at the opening night of Verdi’s Falstaff in the dress circle, Frank in the broadcast booth capturing the production live.  Whimsically and delightfully designed and directed by Franco Zefferelli, conducted by Leonard Bernstein, it was a memorable opening night; Bernstein impressive, extracting sizzling, staccato trumpets in the overture.

  The Institute’s own “opening night” for the artists—a black-tie reception in the board room of Parke Bernet, displaying examples of their work:  Fukushima’s double-pronged, six-foot “open book” (or wings?) welded steel sculpture; Kodama’s soft, smooth, rosewood abstract sculpture; two of Kusuda’s works, brawling wood collages hammered into canvas; and a small, rather innocuous Iwata painting.

  John arrives with his wife—tall, blonde and austere, like the cold unforgiving wife in a Columbia movie classic.  Charles Brady and Father Clark, the “Catholic contingent”—Mrs. Mannis, notably absent; “Bob” Murphy and “Bob” Dowling, bursting out of the elevator like two huge penguins, their intimidating barrel-chested white shirt fronts glaring, faces shining.  Frank has asked one of his colleagues at the Opera Guild, “friendly Harriet,” to cater the affair.

  John gets us an appointment with John McCloy of the Rockefeller Foundation who listens to us patiently, making no commitments—an ability acquired through his long career as titular head of the “Wise Men” born in the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt, elder statesmen who represented the American foreign policy establishment, including “our own” Robert Murphy, and Dean Acheson, Truman’s Secretary of State, and Robert Lovett, a Wall Street investment banker and former Secretary of Defense.

  McCloy sends us off to the Ford Foundation and Herbert Passin, a distinguished scholar of Japan with a spectacular career still in the making; forty-nine years old at the time.  Fortunately our meeting with him was timed with the launch of my English language programs.  Now we had a definite program in the making!

  It’s clear we will have to convince all the foundations that money for English language programs for Japanese students in the United States are being misplaced.  We can do a better job.  French and Company is hardly the setting for this endeavor, so in June, 1964, Sasaki begins to shop around for space and we soon move from our baroque corner into six rooms on the third floor of a town house on Park Avenue at Eighty-eight Street, with elevator, formerly a doctor’s suite of rooms.  On Saturday afternoons we begin to hold open houses for Japanese and American college-age students, sociologists, and any other cross-cultural disciplines we can gather in.

  Enter the aggressively motivated Kiyoyuki Furuno.  By the time we have connected with Herbert Passin we have initiated once-a-week discussion groups, Saturday open houses, and one of our most successful field trips with a group of American and Japanese sociologists to study the prison system and law enforcement.

  Herbert Passin is a friendly, stereotypical professor, shaggy hair, wrinkled suit and mildly tenacious.  After a stint with the Congress of Cultural Freedom in Paris, he had served as visiting professor at the University of Washington in Seattle from 1959 until 1962 when he was moved to Columbia as a professor of sociology—and a good thing this was for us, as fate would have it.  From 1973 to 1977, he would become chairman of the sociology department at Columbia.  He had recently published a book, “Search for Identity” about the Japanese people.

  I was to meet with Passin several times, while  Father Sasaki was attending to his first love: “taking in” Japanese students for assistance with their visas and other problems—quite apart from developing their language skills.  He hires Sumiko Hennessey, and Ruth Doyle as resident counselors, both born in Japan and married to Americans; both with degrees in sociology.  And both Catholics.

  Some danger here:  we cannot expect to raise funds if we are seen as a parochial center for troubled students under the guidance of a Roman Catholic priest.  Also, it becomes clear that we will have to convince all the foundations—most particularly Herbert Passin at Ford, that current English language programs for Japanese students in the United States are ineffective, and that we’ve got the solution.

  At first Father Sasaki approved my zeroing in on the problems confronting university students from Japan, many of whom had been sent here to get advanced degrees in business administration, their studies seriously hampered by language, so they were shunted into classes replete with earphones and grammar lessons—precisely, I discovered, what they did not need.  Enter Kiyoyuki Furuno with his inventive approach to the problem.  He had the right approach.  It soon becomes obvious to me that it’s imperative to  motivate the Japanese to learn English using whatever technique we can think of to break through cultural barriers.  The Japanese can’t possibly do this without learning to argue and contend and chuck the rules of grammar out the window.  As an example of these “rules” I was to get into an argument with one of the students who was currently in one of the English language programs at NYU; his insisting that he could not understand why, if you said, “Lake Michigan,” you should say, “River Mississippi.”  “One says, Mississippi River,” I insisted, “and Mount Everest, not Everest Mountain.”  He frowned, not all convinced.

  We also were to learn from Herbert Passin that Japan Society’s English language programs for Japanese were ineffective, as well as methods in play at the International Institute of Education.  Ford Foundation had been funding these non-university based programs, and Passin assured me the money would now come to us.  To further support his enthusiasm, I prepared a prospectus outlining our methods, and the hope that other centers such as ours might be established in other major American cities.

  Included in the prospectus was Sasaki’s “intake” program, guided by our two sociologists—an advisory program as well as assistance in securing visas and making sure the Japanese are in the United States legally.  We try to take advantage of every opportunity to get the Japanese mixed into our culture in informal settings, group discussions, Saturday open houses with food cooked one week by Japanese; the next, by Americans.  We encouraged professionals in several disciplines, American and Japanese, to our open houses so that they might initiate field trips—one of the more successful, a group of sociologists to study the prison system and law enforcement.  We are able to effect exchange programs, bringing Japanese professionals to the United States.

  I conduct “business seminars,” always in English, prompted originally by a surprise visit of four business majors from Keiyo University, urging them to analyze both message and intent of full-page advertising in the New York Times, and to exchange ideas for marketing and promotion—in English.

Sasaski resists this informal, impromptu approach.  During our weekly night-time group discussions, he remains in his office; never participates.  His field is, after all, sociology.  He can’t comprehend results unless methods are formalized and sanctioned by professionals with PhDs.  He soon is proclaiming that I do not have a PhD and so am not qualified to supervise these programs; my primary function to raise funds.  Ironically, it is my attention to these “informal” programs that will result in a $100,000 grant from the Ford Foundation, after I am forced to resign.

Brooklyn Botanical Gardens

  Kiyo is a loner, seldom participating in student activities at the center, except for open houses; never involved in discussion groups or “business seminars”—not even in a field trip to museums or the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens in April  to view the plum blossoms.  Our one-on-one sessions each week continue.  He was required to explain in English experiences in and around town and this acted as a springboard for haphazard exchanges, covering everything from Japan’s political responsibilities in Asia, to the best way to get cross town or avoid muggers in Central Park.

  Our most telling “inter-cultural” encounter followed Kiyo’s no-show for an opera performance at the Met, the gift of an orchestra seat from Frank.  “You have embarrassed my friend,” I explained.  “Frank went to a great deal of trouble to get that ticket for you and was really upset when you failed to show.”

  Kiyo, without flinching, and without any display of anger, assumed a startled expression and looked directly at me, getting up and standing over me, speaking quietly, “Oh, then, we can no longer be friends.  I am sorry.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “In Japan, when you make mistake with friend, the friendship ends.  You apologize, but true friendship is not longer possible.”

  “No longer possible,” I corrected instinctively.  “Sit down.”

  He did.

  “That may be the custom in Japan,” I continued, but in the west we forgive and forget, and the friendship continues, in most cases, at least, and in this case, there’s no reason it should not.”

  “I. . . don’t . . . know . . .”

  “Kiyo, forget it.”

    So, our friendly relation continued.

  When I told these stories about Kiyoyuki to Japanese acquaintances some twenty-five years later (I had joined a Buddhist Nichiren sect of laypersons, Rissho Kosei-kai in Los Angeles), they smiled and tried to convince me Kiyo was “leading me on”—both in this “friendship vs. honor” episode, and when he seemed overwhelmed by my utterance of “Kochiro Koso” – “It is I who should be thank you.”   I accuse them of cynicism.  They charge me with delusion, but I cling to the memory stubbornly, sincerely believing Kiyoyuki Furuno was sincere—too self-confident and without motivation or need to resort to manipulation.

  Our one on one sessions continued; Frank and I invited him on motor trips up the Hudson.  Eventually, on his own, he met an American girl close to his age, perhaps a few years older.  We invited them to dinner.  Kiyo now had command of the English language—most gratifying—a real success story.  Their liaison seemed one of practicality rather than romance—Madama Butterfly in reverse.  When Kiyo returned to Japan, he left without her.

  Father Sasaki’s resentment of my increasing rapport with the Japanese intensified as language programs expanded and I began writing the prospectus.  With the exceptions of John Powers and Robert F. Seebeck, a vice-president at Smith-Barney, our board of directors took little or no interest in what the Institute was accomplishing, and could accomplish in the future.

  The dream machine was cranked full thrust, imagining budgets for mini-branches in major U.S. cities, each with its own staff of language consultants and sociologists with the grandiose objective of, once and for all, cutting through cultural differences between Americans and Japanese which had impaired our ability to  communicate and thereby deepen understanding; leading—who knows?—to expanded trade between our two countries, although this was not our primary goal.

  What a dream it was!  Too much of a dream for the 1960’s—perhaps for any time.  john Powers and Robert Seebeck were the only board members who bothered to read the prospectus.  Herbert Passin at Ford Foundation enthusiastically welcomed it as an effective tool to cut through the red tape and get us a grant.  Whenever Sasaki complained I was not qualified to teach English, I would remind him I was not teaching English, but trying to encourage two cultures to talk to each other.  Strong support came from Passin who reminded me the PhDs had failed and that our methods worked.

  Sumiko Hennessey and Ruth Doyle accelerated their intake interviews, and from these, two additional problems came to light—housing and money.  Without funds, no school.  Without school, no housing.  Working was out of the question.  Almost without exception, all of the Japanese who came to the Center for help were in the country on student visas which prohibited employment, even part-time.  One near comic situation developed when we placed a ballet student, Hiro, with Frank’s mother, whose English, to speak kindly, was not so good.  Nor was Hiro’s.

  Hiro was in the United States to study ballet, not to learn English or the intricacies of American business practices.  He needed a place to live.  Sasaki had become acquainted with Maria Dunand because of the recent death of Frank’s father, attending not only the wake, but a memorial mass held several weeks later.  Thus it is that the obliging Maria welcomed Hiro into her home.

  The problem of communication was, of course, insurmountable.  She could’ve helped him learn Spanish, if he’d been so inclined.  He wasn’t.

  Rice tied the knot at the dinner table.  Maria naturally assumed that Hiro, being Japanese, would enjoy eating all the rice she could steam in the pot, and thus Frank and I would find them, Maria and Hiro smiling at each other at the small table in the kitchen, Maria heaping Hiro’s plate with mounds at white rice to accompany an arroz con pollo, or frijoles negro; Hiro devouring it with gusto.  Frank told her she didn’t have to cook for Hiro, but that didn’t stop her.

  A more critical situation developed with Norio Inaba.  Since he didn’t appear altogether Japanese—perhaps not even Asian (he was Japanese to the core, however)—his native country easily be mistaken—eastern Mediterranean or Caribbean with his olive skin, eyes large and round—so he was able to fade into the Progressive Labor Party.  In our first informal conversation, he had asked me if I knew anything abut the party, or if I was aware of the plight of the American worker.  Admitting I knew nothing about the Labor Party, nor much about labor problems, although I knew they existed.

  A week later, Sumiko informed me that Norio had disappeared, dropping out of his classes at St. John’s University.  A visit from the FBI soon followed.  Norio had been photographed with a rabble of demonstrators in Union Square, carrying a placard proclaiming “Workers Join the PLP!”  An FBI informant revealed Norio’s connection with us.

  “Is this a political organization?” the square-jawed, crew-cut agent asked me and Sasaki.  “What is it you do here?”  When we finished explaining, Sasaki flaunting his impressive list of board members, the FBI knew more about us than the Board of Directors.

  Norio returned to the Center.  His student visa would expire unless he got back into school.  Sumiko got him enrolled at Seaton Hall in New Jersey, and all was well.

  Melodrama of another kind was unfolding.  Father Sasaki decided to get rid of Father Clark, Mrs. Mannis and Charles Brady.  Once again, John G. Powers to the rescue, putting me in touch with his attorney, Theodore Woodrow Kheel, New York City’s pre-eminent labor peacemaker.  When he died in 1996, Kheel’s amazing life as arbiter, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and bon vivant, required a five page obituary in The New York Times to chronicle his amazing life.  When I met him in 1964, he was riding high on the wave of an already long and distinguished career; arbiter of labor disputes for federal, state and city governments; a high-powered dynamo, surprisingly soft-spoken, circumspect, but not cautious.

  During the 1962-63 newspaper strike, settled a year before I was to meet him, ninety days into the walkout, Mayor Wagner summoned him.  Kheel arrived at City Hall with two bottles of Champagne to toast what he thought was an imminent settlement.  It book another month before an agreement was reached, requiring 868 hours of bargaining to negotiate what Kheel called “the 12^th resurrection of Humpty Dumpty.”

  It took him only one afternoon to outline for me exactly how to proceed to force out members of our executive committee and oust them from the board as well, grounding his strategy in New York State’s non-profit corporation laws, sub-paragraph:  “quorums and executive committees.”  That this extraordinary man would take even one afternoon to assist us personally without paralegals or secretaries present, speaks volumes about this man.

  He did not like opera, as did his friend John Powers.  The following year at our benefit with a production of “Madama Butterfly” by the Met’s National Company in the New York State Theatre to which he had subscribed, I ran across him wandering the empty halls as Act Two was about to begin—the last time I would see him—but certainly not the last time he would arbitrate for John, here foreshadowing, with another “Ted Kheel to the rescue.”

  In one afternoon meeting at our offices, Father Clark squirmed and hollered at Sasaki, but to no avail.  Using proxies of John Powers and Robert Seebeck, plus his own voting power, Sasaki had established a quorum and forced Clark, Mannis and Brady off the executive committee and the board of directors.

  Now Sasaki was unopposed.  He could take the Institute in any direction he wished without fear of anyone getting in his way.  As long as I went along with him, my position was secure, but our disagreements sharpened in ensuing months.  Sasaki wanted me out of the language programs.

  Then, without warning, in August, 1964, our first summer of existence, R. Prentice Ettinger, John’s father-n-law, forced him to resign as President of Prentice-Hall.  A week later, John invited Sasaki and me to a performance of “Two Gentlemen of Verona” at Shakespeare in the Park at the Delacorte Theatre.  Kimiko Maeda was with him.  During intermission he peremptorily sent Kimiko off for refreshments.

  We had ready seen the blazing headlines in the New Jersey papers, a smaller item in The New York Times.  John G. Powers, through his attorney, Theodore Kheel, has obtained an injunction against the profit-sharing plan advisory committee of Prentice-Hall to compel them to release his one-point-three million dollar share in the plan, due all employees upon retirement.

  “As long as Kimiko and I kept things quiet,” he told us, “there was no problem.  My wife and I were waiting for our children to get through college, but the situation at home became unbearable for both of us, and she filed for separate maintenance.  My father-in-law couldn’t tolerate what he considered a public scandal.  As long as we kept things quiet, Kimiko and I could live our lives the way we wanted.  My wife’s action caused him to demand my resignation.  As Chairman of the Board, he has the controlling hand.”

  An ironic twist emerged out of the attempt to deny John his retirement pension, having far-reaching repercussions for Prentice-Hall.  John, in addition to setting up the profit-sharing program at the start of his tenure as President had more than tripled Prentice-Hall’s profits, internationalizing and expanding Prentice-Hall’s publications list far beyond tax reference guides and handbooks, embracing fiction and non-fiction, “how-to” and children’s books, subsidiary specialty companies, so Prentice-Hall’s profit-sharing plan had grown fat, the envy of employees in other publishing firms.  This led to the failure of a planned merger with the broadcasting giant, R.C.A.

  On December 11, 1964, just four months after John was forced to resign, it was announced that merger discussions were underway between Prentice-Hall and R.C.A.  The following January, Kheel received assurances that the advisory committee would comply with the court decree and release John’s one-point-three  million dollars accumulated in his “retirement profit-sharing plan,” and Kheel withdrew the contempt citation against the Prentice-Hall Board of Directors and the Committee.  Fortunate for them; they had little choice in the matter.  They faced jailed sentences if they did not comply with the court decree.

  On April 2, 1965, the negotiations with R.C.A. were abruptly terminated with this terse statement to the press:  “The two companies were unable to agree on a mutually satisfactory basis for concluding the transaction.”  According to unnamed sources, the deal floundered on the issue of Prentice-Hall’s profit-sharing retirement plan, the very program John Powers had created.  Dr. Carroll v. Newson, who had succeeded John as President, unexpectedly resigned three weeks later, on April 21.  He had favored the R.C.A. deal which he said” blew up.”  R.C.A. and Dr. Newson wanted to dissolve the retirement plan because it might become an issue with envious R.C.A.  employees.  John and Ted Kheel’s success with the injunction established the precedent that money from a profit-sharing plan could be released after a firing as well at a retirement, thus making the plan prohibitively expensive for R.C.A.

  One wonders what might have been, had not Ettinger fired John, but it transformed his life.  He married Kimiko and eventually moved to Colorado and a year later inaugurated “Aspen: the Magazine that Comes in a Box.”  Ann Main maintained offices for him in New York, spending much of her time in the next few years as a kind of General-in-Charge of the logistics, moving his extensive art collection hither and yon to art galleries and museums across the country.  John’s name in The Metropolitan Opera’s program patron list soon changed to “Kimiko and John Powers.”  As mentioned above, the Powers Art Center, was opened on July 7, 2014 in Carbondale, Colorado, thanks to the efforts of John’s widow, Kimiko Powers.

Kimiko and John Powers
Painting by Andy Warhol

  The upheaval at Prentice-Hall had no affect on the Institute.  If anything, John now could devote more time to us.  Even before his ouster, he had organized a dinner hosted by the Japanese Ambassador to the United Nations, Akita Matsui, held in the Ambassador’s large apartment home on Park Avenue South.  John as head of the Young Presidents’ Association—corporate presidents, that is—attracted partners and vice presidents from many big firms:  Price-Waterhouse, Smith-Barney (“Bob” Seebeck, a Vice President with the brokerage firm now on our executive committee and very supportive), and others, eager to rub elbows with Ambassador Matsui, a man influential in the Japanese government.

  John made his entrance, effectively late, striding into the expansive living room after all others had arrived.  Expressions on the faces of our guests told its own story.  One man, who apparently hadn’t known Powers would be there, jumped to his fee, gasping with unabashed delight, “I didn’t know John Powers was going to be here!”

  The full-course dinner was a theatrical event—double entrees with different  vintage wines for each, candle light and a bevy of uniformed servants; seating arrangements themselves, calculated for full effect:  John at one head of the long table, the Ambassador at the other; on each side in the middle Father Sasaki and I.  When Sasaki spoke of  the plight of the young visiting Japanese students studying business administration in the United States, Ambassador Matsui with grave expression, would nod his head, an inscrutable face like an affirming Buddha; John nodding in my direction, indicating I should take the baton.

  All our guests, excepting Robert Seebeck, but including Ambassador Matsui, were surprised to find themselves in the midst of a fund raising dinner.  John announced the contributions of Prentice-Hall, using the not so subtle “get-the-ball-rolling” technique, but with pitiful results.  Our total take for the evening was two hundred and fifty dollars from the brokerage firm, Smith-Barney, and forty dollars from Price Waterhouse.

  By June, 1965, Kiyoyuki Furuno had broken through the language barrier, disagreeing with ease, arguing, informing with grace.  I hadn’t seen him in several months; his absence prompted no doubt by the coda to our last one-on-one session with Father Sasaki bursting out from his adjoining office, voice high-pitched like a Kabuki actor, “You are not to do this!  Come see me at once!” and quickly disappeared into his office, slamming the door behind him.

  Kiyo rose, smiling, exiting with dignity. Teeth clenched, I quietly opened the door to Sasaki’s office.  He at once shouted out his “no P-h-D” argument at me, countered by my own “no programs, no funds,” promising at the same time that I would try to spend more time fund raising.  For the moment, a stalemate

  Furuno got himself a job with a tofu maker on Columbus Avenue and,  fortunately, unlike several other students, didn’t get caught by immigration.  Before returning to Japan, he showed up at the center and I invited him and his American girlfriend to our apartment for dinner.  He wasn’t the same Kiyo I’d met a year ago, now able to exchange ideas freely without any difficulty.  It may be he would have achieved this end without the Institute, but we could claim credit for giving him a focus and encouragement during his stay in the United States, tipping our hats to the belly dancers on Eighth Avenue and the intricacies of the New York subway system—and certainly, to his own determination.

  Kiyoyuki Furuno wasn’t our only claim  to success.  We improvised from need.  On alternate Saturdays the Japanese, then the Americans, took charge of cooking and serving food—hot dogs, baked beans and salad one week; sukiyaki and rice cakes, the next.  We needed a brochure to promote the Institute and cajoled the Japanese students into taking charge to create it—writing, layout, art work.

  Kasuko Tanaka designed a logo—a modernized tai-chi (yin-yang) symbol, violet, square shaped, for the cover.  Saburo Takayama—we called him Sam—a small, tightly packaged hot shot, who reminded me of an American Midwestern drummer, got to Robert Kennedy for an introductory letter with a little help from John Powers, and sold advertising, nailing down Sumitomo Bank and Saito’s Restaurant, among others.  Tony Ellis, our Administrative Assistant of Lebanese descent, native of New Orleans, acted as staff supervisor.  Art Stevens, Prentice-Hall’s public relations director, offered editorial advice.  Frank Dunand photographed some of this activity for the brochure.  Frank was now official photographer for the Metropolitan Opera Guild’s education program, photographing all Met productions in both dress rehearsals and performance, capturing his images from the broadcast booth.

  The moving finger of fate was scrawling my epitaph, and in my enthusiasm, and lack of experience in such matters, I goaded it along, inaugurating, in the spring of 1965, my pet project—a benefit performance of “Madama Butterfly” produced by the Metropolitan Opera’s newly formed National Company which had premiered that spring in Indianapolis; Frank had flown out to photograph the premier.

  We bought out an evening performance at the New York State Theatre where the  bright new National Company was appearing—not at the old Met on Broadway, scaling tickets from thirty-five dollars for orchestra and first tier, down to ten dollars, for all others, hoping to realize a profit.  Orchestra and first tier seats at the State Theatre normally sold in the ten-to-twenty dollar ranged.

  Our first step was to call a board meeting to be held at our old stomping grounds, the penthouse at Park Bernet, Vice President John G. Powers chairing the meeting and introducing board member Mrs. Nathaniel Singer as Chairperson of the fund raising project; announcing that he was buying a block of thirty seats in the orchestra—with no response.  Later, however, Bob Seebeck came through with ten orchestra seats for Smith-Barney, and Price-Waterhouse, the same.  Several Japanese firms followed suit.

  In August that year, 1965, the Institute closed down for a three-week vacation, mine spent in Provincetown on Cape Cod (a story in itself), abandoning Mrs. Singer to carry on without our assistance.  Quite understandably she resented being ignored and began to lobby John Powers for Art Stevens of Prentice-Hall to take over my position as Executive  Director.  This did not enhance our rapport with one another, needless to say.

  Perhaps, as an omen, on November 9, 1965, sitting with Sasaki in his office discussing “things in general” just before 5:30  pm, the ceiling lights began sputtering, turning to a subdued yellow, and then, out altogether.  The largest power failure in history up to that time was in the making and would black out nearly all of New York City, parts of nine Northeastern states and two provinces of southeastern Canada, some 80,000 square miles, in which perhaps 25 million people lived and worked.

  Leaving our offices in the dark, I ventured westward toward Fifth Avenue and Central Park, to see that the only lights were from honking taxis, and coughing busses, fighting their way up and down Fifth Avenue without signals to control the flow.  Crossing Central Park behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art, into utter darkness, I assured myself that if any muggers were about, they would be as frightened as I was.  I had phoned Frank at the Guild and he told me that he called his mother, Maria, at her place of work in the garment district and there was nothing for it but for her either get a cab or walk up to our apartment on West 70^th Street. And there they were nested, sitting at the antique lion-footed dining table under a lit kerosene chandelier we had, fortunately, purchased recently from Bill Gallick, companion of our administrative assistant, Tony Ellis.

  Food was sent to ten thousand stranded subway riders after others had been led out, inching their way along precarious ledges to escape tunnels.  No riots were reported; looting, at a bare minimum.  “The City Glitter Goes But Not Its Poise,” proclaimed The New York Times.

  Two weeks before our big night at the opera benefit, Herman Krawitz, then business director of the Metropolitan Opera, asked for a meeting with us at the center.  “You are not selling,” he announced.  “Let us buy back the house and sell them for you at regular prices.  Otherwise, you are going to lose  money.”

  I stubbornly insisted we hold out, that it was too early to tell what results might accrue from our efforts.  Sasaki agreed.  We managed to get one Japanese bank to buy a block of seats, hoping for a domino effect with other Japanese businesses.  It didn’t.  We waited until the last two days before turning the seats back to the Met.  They got us a full house at regular prices, but we realized nothing.  Now Sasaki could make his move against me.

  “I am reducing your salary for next year to seven thousand dollars!” he announced a few days after the benefit fiasco and a few days before Christmas.  I had been raised to ten thousand at the beginning of the year.  “And you are not to conduct any of your language programs.  You are to spend all your time raising money!”

  “We are on the verge of a large grant from Ford Foundation as a result of those language programs,” I countered.

  “We will get someone else to run the programs, someone who is qualified.”

  “Father,” says I, “don’t do this.  I cannot give up my work with the students.  The Ford grant is dependent on that work—my work.”

  By this time our speaking levels had fortissimoed into a shouting match.  Self-righteous indignation had got the better of me, and in a word, I blew it. Not giving in, hanging on, even with a reduced salary, would have been the course to follow.  My second mistake was writing a letter to the board of directors—including John Powers, Robert Seebeck, and John Ducas—seeking to justify my personal participation in the English language programs with the resultant grant expected from the Ford Foundation, largely because of that personal creation of and participation in the programs.

  Ducas called me the following Saturday morning and asked me to come immediately to his apartment on the Eastside.  He greeted me dressed casually, offering me a cup of coffee.

  “Did you mail this letter to the entire board?” he asked.

  “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

  “That was a mistake,” he said bluntly.  “No matter how right you may be, you should not have gone public with your disagreements with Father Sasaki.  The board will support him, even if he’s wrong and no matter what he may wish to do with the Institute.  They will not support you.”

  I thanked him for his honesty and frankness, which he had offered without rancor, and in an avuncular, evenly fatherly manner.  It was clear to me, he believed I was right, and more importantly, I realized this man really liked me and was concerned for my well-being.  But his hands were tied.

  I did not return to Eighty-eighth and Park Avenue again, nor did Father Peter N. Sasaki and I ever communicate further.  In March, 1966, the Ford Foundation granted the Institute of Japanese-American Cultural Research an annual grant of one hundred thousand dollars, but made no stipulation that as part of the grant, my further participation was required.  The Institute held on for another year, and then dissolved.

  Masami Kodama, the sculptor, remained in New York for several years without sponsorship or legal status, fading into the art world which supported him.  Iwata and Kusuda returned to Japan.  Noriyasu Fukushima, the metal sculptor stayed with my brother Robert in a suburb of Los Angeles for several weeks, finally returning to his home in the Japanese province that bore his name, Fukushima, northeast of Tokyo—ill famed for the breakdown of its nuclear reactors after the earthquake and tsunami on April 11, 2011.

  John Powers didn’t desert me altogether.  Sporting a moustache and long hair, I ran into him and Kimiko in 1968 in the audience at a matinee for students at the new Metropolitan Opera House in Lincoln Center.  They were happily married, living in Colorado, and John, politely taken aback by my “new look,” advising me, “Protest, yes, but not violence!”

  Shortly after, I visited Ann Main who still worked for John, managing the logistics for his large, traveling art collection.  She had heard that Sasaki had married and had left the priesthood, and was still in the United States.

  The Japanese I met and worked with and became friends with in 1964, ’65, brought their culture with them.  It was our responsibility, not theirs, to cut through cultural barriers and differences.  Today, this effort to overcome our cultural differences has dissipated, it would seem—certainly in the world of business and trade; and more disappointing, in Japanese religious sects which attempted to take hold in the United States and succeeded, for a time, in the 1970s and early ‘80s.  In 1964 and ’65, the Institute of Japanese-American Cultural Research stood alone, in our attempt to perceive, to comprehend, to expand our understanding of one another.  Statistically, our success might have been unimpressive, but we were “on to something” with our language and interchange programs and activities.

  Unfortunately, Father Sasaki could not break free from his heritage, fiercely Japanese with no confidence in the uniquely American approach.  Common sense often outweighs “academic expertise.”  My own stubbornness and lack of finesse and political savvy and tact, was equally to blame fore the demise of the experiment.

  Other obstacles, of course, stood in the way of implementing our vision:  a widespread, negative attitude at the time toward the concept of shaping “English as a second language” programs to fit individual foreign cultures.  This attitude most likely persists to this day.  “Teaching English is teaching English,” no matter who is trying to learn it.”  Sadly, this attitude persists with Americans as well.

  At our time with the Institute, this attitude certainly was apparent from an interview Sasaki and I had with a State Department official in 1964, arranged for us by Douglas MacArthur II.  I do not recall the official’s name.  When later we tried to follow up with him, we were given the phone number of the Dixie Hotel, a well-known hangout in the Times Square area for male hustlers.

  In our D.C. interview with him, he waved a file at us which delineated in detail the State Department’s financial support of  the Institute of International Education (I.I.E.).  Both Sasaki and I could demonstrate that the university students from Japan who had “studied” English in their Japanese schools, literally fled from I.I.E’s program for the simple reason they were learning absolutely nothing that enhanced their ability to communicate in English.  Like many grandiose government programs of the 1960s, this one was staunchly defended with, “If we target enough money for the I.I.E. and hire qualified educators trained for conducting these programs, how can you say it’s a failure?”  No attempt was made to interview the Japanese or other nationalities who participated to evaluate I.I.E.’s their programs.

  Whatever success we had at the Institute resulted from a belief in possibilities; that language barriers between Japanese and Westerners could be broken down irrevocably and for all time through use of English in personal confrontations and exchanges, requiring us to gain a clear perception of Japanese hang-ups which blocked communication.

  Kiyoyuki Furuno, the artists, and other students were absorbed back into their homeland and culture.  There’s no way of knowing how much of their journey in the United States in 1964 and ’65 enriched their lives and aided their families businesses in trading with the United States.  But in the time of our friendships, the lives of Kiyoyuki and other Japanese, as well as Americans who participated, assuredly were enriched, simply because we believed such enrichment and genuine understanding of one another was possible.

  As for the Kitashirakawa artists, Frank and I had a gathering one evening in our ground-floor garden apartment on West 70^th Street with them and other students and artists.  The boy, Nagano, the flute player who had hopes of manufacturing pottery when he returned to Japan, used a pocket thermometer, which he always carried with him, to test the water for a particular variety of green tea he was preparing.  “Every variety of the tea must be steeped in water with its own special temperature,” he told us.  “You must never boil the water for green tea!”  Frank and Nagano developed a special rapport that evening, talking at length about world-class flute players—or rather “flautists,” as Frank would insist.

  Perhaps too many beers or too much saki that evening prompted me to sing the song I had learned from Kiki o Okinawa in 1946, some eighteen years ago:

  Naku-nai, imotoyo,

  imotoyo-o, naku-nai.
  Nakeba, osanai,
  futuri-i-shi-i-te.
  Kokyo-o-o su-te-e-ta-a,
  ka-e-ga-a na-a-ee.

  Fukushima, the metal sculptor, who was to visit my brother in California before returning to Japan, and the other artists, were quite impressed; they knew the song well, “a song of the country” they called it.  Fukushima, corrected one of the lines, and offered above is that corrected version.

  It’s possible our greatest success with stunning results evolved from Kiyoyuki’s time with us.  Check out the boat basin in Newport Beach, California.  The electronics and radar navigation systems installed on most of the yachts are revealed by FURUNO emblazoned on most of them in large black letters.  A few years ago, 2008 or so, I attempted to get in touch with the Furuno’s on their website, hoping I might connect with Kiyo—with no luck.  Must try again someday.

  This was not to be my last personal involvement with Japanese people. Twenty years later, I found myself embroiled with them in controversy of another kind, when I  joined Nichiren Shoshu of America and connected with the teachings of the Buddha in the Threefold Lotus Sutra.  The obstacles which prevented us from getting through to each other hadn’t changed in the slightest. This time, the stakes would be much higher, for the Japanese; and once again, we failed, at least on a personal level, to break through the barrier.