ALUMNI IN ACTION
Taiko: Heartbeat of a Movement
By Julia Halprin Jackson
To tell the story of San José Taiko is to tell the stories of Roy and Patti Jo “PJ” Hirabayashi, ’77 MUP, community organizers who fell in love while collaborating with fellow activists to establish an Asian American Studies Department at San José State in 1970.
The word “taiko” is a Japanese word for drum. Fifty years ago, Patti Jo “PJ” Hirabayashi, ’77 MUP, and Roy Hirabayashi, founding members of San José Taiko, made their organization beat to a new drum — one rooted in an artistic, if not cathartic, way to represent an intergenerational blending of identities.
While the Japanese practice uses drums to communicate between communities, as founders of only the third ensemble in the U.S., the Hirabayashis have helped shape a distinctly Japanese American tradition.
PJ (left) and Roy Hirabayashi celebrate 50 years of creating dance, music and art with San José Taiko this year. Photo: Jim Gensheimer.
Like many Japanese Americans of their generation, both PJ and Roy are children of families who were incarcerated in camps during World War II due to Executive Order 9066. Born on the heels of the war, it wasn’t until they learned about Asian American Studies that they fully understood the trauma their families had survived.
“I was introduced to Asian American Studies as an undergrad at Cal State Hayward (now CSU East Bay),” PJ remembers. “That’s when I learned about how, when my parents talked about ‘camp’ at the dinner table all of those years that I was growing up, I had no idea they were talking about incarceration camps. I was 19 years old.”
The discovery that her family, along with an estimated 120,000 others of Japanese descent, were forced to leave their homes — including about a thousand San José residents processed in what is now San José State’s Yoshihiro Uchida Hall — inspired her to take an active role in the burgeoning civil rights movement. When she transferred to UC Berkeley, she participated in anti-war protests and built relationships with activists across the Bay Area. After graduation, she spent a year in Japan, an experience that she hoped would connect her to her ancestry, but made her even more conscious of her limbo between cultures.
Roy, meanwhile, worried about the military draft, fearing that as a Japanese American soldier, he’d be vulnerable to anti-Asian sentiments while serving in Southeast Asia: “I heard stories of other Asians and Japanese Americans who were drafted, wondering who’s going to shoot [them], the person in front or the person behind.”
San José Taiko performed at the San José Obon Festival in Japantown in summer 2023. Video: Jim Gensheimer.
Call and response
Roy first discovered taiko while serving as a youth leader at the Buddhist Church Betsuin in San José’s Japantown a mile from campus, and soon realized the potential of bringing people together through music, percussion and community. Together with PJ and a number of fellow Spartans, churchgoers and fellow community members, Roy noticed how the drum could empower people.
“The drum itself is a very strong instrument and voice,” he says. “A lot of people joined us because they were attracted to the sound. Our group was almost predominantly women for quite a while, and it was this sense of musical empowerment and finding your own identity, voice, body and movement that brought us together.”
Only two other taiko ensembles existed in the U.S. at the time that Roy and PJ set up shop in Japantown — Kinnara Taiko in Los Angeles and San Francisco Taiko Dojo. The Hirabayashis, as well as a few other ensemble members, briefly studied with Grandmaster Seiichi Tanaka in San Francisco. While they appreciated Sensei Tanaka’s guidance, the Hirabayashis learned in time to establish their own taiko approach and style, one informed by their experiences as Japanese Americans in California.
As San José Taiko expanded beyond the boundaries of the Buddhist church, the Hirabayashis embedded an educational philosophy in the ensemble that was inspired by the horizontal leadership model they learned as community organizers. Every new performer was encouraged to become an educator, and since many members, like Roy, were musicians, they composed their own pieces to accompany performances.
As for the equipment itself — because they had no access to the large Japanese drums traditionally used in taiko performances, the Hirabayashis had to improvise. When colleagues from Kinnara Taiko recommended they cut the ends off wine barrels and stretch hide over the exposed ends, Roy and PJ discovered yet another way to make taiko their own. Though these drums were later retired for practice only, replaced by professionally made instruments, they remained an important symbol for the organization.
“Growing up, and later living in Japan, I always wanted some expression of my identity, but I didn’t want to do classical Japanese dancing or flower and tea ceremonies,” PJ reflects. “So when taiko made the scene, it was like, ‘Oh my God, this is ballistic!’ It appealed to my sensibility. I wanted to move my body.”
In time, San José Taiko became a community resource and a professional touring ensemble. To this day, the 20-person ensemble tours nationally and internationally, reaching 75,000 audience members a year. The organization established the San José Taiko Conservatory to provide training for aspiring taiko performers of all ages and abilities.
“Growing up, and later living in Japan, I always wanted some expression of my identity, but I didn’t want to do classical Japanese dancing or flower and tea ceremonies. So when taiko made the scene, it was like, ‘Oh my God, this is ballistic!’ It appealed to my sensibility. I wanted to move my body.”
— PJ Hirabayashi
PJ Hirabayashi was quoted in a 1977 Spartan Daily story about the emerging Asian American Studies program.
Throughout the years, it has received numerous advancement and challenge grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Chevron Award for Excellence. The California Arts Council, Arts Council Silicon Valley and San José City Council have honored the company with commendations for community leadership in fostering cultural and ethnic diversity in the arts. San José Taiko has been recognized by the San José chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League, FedEx and Project Cornerstone for outstanding work in the community.
In 2010, the Japanese government awarded the organization the Foreign Minister’s Commendation of Achievement in recognition of its pioneering community work — only the second North American taiko group to receive this honor. A year later, the Hirabayashis were recognized as National Heritage Fellows by the National Endowment for the Arts.
The accolades continue, even after the Hirabayashis retired from their roles in the organization in 2011. This past April, Roy was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Rays by the Japanese government.
San José Taiko creates innovative performances and educational programs around the world. Photo: Mark Shigenaga.
Taiko for the next generation
The awards serve as ongoing evidence that the Hirabayashis’ legacy is alive and well, both in terms of building a taiko tradition and uplifting communities through artistic expression. While this mission has evolved throughout the organization’s five decades, current executive director Wisa Uemura says the terrifying uptick in anti-Asian hate crimes during the pandemic, as well as the 2020 murder of George Floyd, have reinforced San José Taiko’s core message.
“The recent racial reckoning and anti-Asian hate crimes reinvigorated our connection to our founding roots,” says Uemura, who has been a member of the ensemble for 25 years. “We were already doing that musically and have produced a number of programs over the last decade that speak to these same issues. We can no longer allow ourselves or our audiences to think of San José Taiko as ‘just’ art, or even cultural art.
“Throughout our 50-year history, we were always doing cultural education and performance. But at this stage in society, we’ve got to move beyond acceptance, tolerance and pluralism. We’re committed to elevating voices of different communities of color, asking ourselves, ‘How can we use our longevity as an organization to help raise up other cultural arts organizations and communities of color?’”
This question still drives the Hirabayashis, who continue to perform, participate and lead educational activities across the world, both individually and as a couple — including at the 50th reunion of the Asian American Studies program at SJSU in April. The couple kicked off the event with a short taiko performance, drumming and chanting in tandem. The energy in the room was palpable, the demonstration an invitation to bring people together.
“Taiko is helping treasure and protect our culture in ways that also expands our expression,” says PJ. “We are no longer the quiet Asians. This flow, this loud art form, is proof that we’re here.”
Authors of their own histories
SJSU's Spartan Daily shared a story about Chaote Lin, then a professor of foreign languages and the oldest member of San José Taiko, in May 1981. Source: Spartan Daily archives, ScholarWorks.
A March 1996 issue of Spartan Daily included pictures from a campus performance. Source: Spartan Daily archives, Scholar Works.
Driven by a desire to better understand their identities as Asian Americans, as well as to educate others on the value of collective action, the Hirabayashis advocated for an Asian American Studies program at San José State. Roy joined the Progressive Asian American Coalition (PAAC), members of Associated Students and key faculty and staff in their petition to establish a degree program. The curriculum was approved as a minor in 1970 and assigned to an army barracks on the lawn where the Olympic Power statue now stands.
Both Roy and PJ played active roles in developing the program. From 1977 to 1979, PJ served as the program’s interim coordinator while juggling her graduate work and performing with San José Taiko.
“Activism taught us to enter this consciousness of community work and Asian American Studies, which at the time was making students learn what it is to be a part of the community,” says PJ. For the Hirabayashis, that meant leading efforts to support Japanese American seniors, as well as anti-war efforts and community organizing across the Bay Area.
“Without the community, there would be no Asian American movement,” says Yvonne Kwan, associate professor of Asian American Studies at SJSU. “Even before PJ and Roy Hirabayashi became the heartbeat of the AAPI community in San José with taiko, they were already exemplars of what young people could do when they had put their mind to being the authors of their own histories.”
Spearheaded by community-based scholars, Asian American Studies emerged as part of a larger ethnic studies movement that addressed long-standing inequities in education and research. The field calls attention to the histories and contributions of Asian and Pacific Islander Americans and the important heterogeneity within these communities. Kwan adds that the mission of SJSU’s program is to empower students to create a more socially-just and equitable society.
“The Hirabayashis never lost sight of the prize: serving the people,” Kwan says. “They did so by helping found and establish Asian American Studies at SJSU and in strengthening our local community. We, the faculty, are grateful to work side-by-side with our elders and co-conspirators. Power to the people.”
Yvonne Kwan
Top video: San José Taiko performs at the 2023 Obon Festival in San José's Japantown. Video: Jim Gensheimer
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