Interviews

1. Celebrating traditional Japanese New Years with family

2. Learning Japanese at school and at home with family

3. Developing an original kata

4. Introducing Taiko in Vancouver

5. The philosophy of playing Taiko

6. Defining a Taiko player

Hirabayashi,Roy

(b.1951) Co-founder and managing director of San Jose Taiko.

Learning Japanese at school and at home with family

Earlier in the elementary and junior high school, we were kind of forced to go to Japanese school and things just to learn. In high school, I really didn’t do that anymore. But still, my parents would speak a lot of Japanese to us. So I would be able to kind of understand that. And also, I guess when I was in junior high school and elementary school, my grandparents, my father’s parents, were living with us for a while. They definitely did not speak any English at all. So in order to communicate with them, it had to be in some kind of Japanese, broken English form. All of that was part of, I guess, my language understanding or education as far as Japanese.

I never, unfortunately, really embraced trying to learn it more, which I really regret right now because of the things we’re doing now and also just my relationship with things that’s in Japan. Although, fortunately, when I do travel in Japan, things kind of come back after a while.

education families languages

Date: January 26, 2005

Location: California, US

Interviewer: Art Hansen, Sojin Kim

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

Interviewee Bio

Roy Hirabayashi, managing director and co-founder of San Jose Taiko, was born in Berkeley, California in 1951 to kibei parents. The middle of five children, he was raised in Oakland, California. After graduating from high school in 1969, he attended San Jose State University where he received degrees in psychology and philosophy.

He has worked for the San Jose State University Asian American Studies Program, Japanese American Citizens League, the Pacific Asian Coalition, and the Buddhist Churches of America. It was through his work with the YBA (Young Buddhists of America) that he became involved with taiko. Reverend Hiroshi Abiko of San Jose Buddhist Church asked Dean Miyakusu and him to start something for the youth after being inspired by Kinnara Taiko. They started the group and it has since evolved into one of the most influential taiko groups in the Americas. (January 26, 2005)