Earlier this month, I had the privilege of talking with NATC and TCA pillars Johnny Mori, Roy Hirabayashi, Alan Okada, and Derek Oye. We shared stories and discussed the rich history of how taiko conferences came into existence in North America. Below are some segments of the interview that I felt compelled to share with my fellow NATC fans:
Kristina
When was the first taiko conference in North America and who ran it?
Johnny
The first one was in 1997 and Kevin Higa ran it.
Alan
The first Intercollegiate Taiko Invitational actually happened before the JACCC conference… In about 1995.
Roy
Yeah that’s right, the first ITI was in 1995 and there were three groups there: Stanford, Irvine, and UCLA.
Johnny
Where was that conference held?
Roy
It was Stanford’s idea and they hosted the first one. I believe Linda (Uyechi), Steve (Sano), and Sue (Yuen) planned it.
Alan
Yes, because Linda was a member of Stanford Taiko at that time.
Roy
Jeanne (Mercer) and Kenny (Endo) were there and a few others. I also have to give credit to Duane Ebata for organizing the first NATC. He organized everyone else to work planning the 1997 conference.
Alan
From a legal and fiscal point of view, JACCC took on the liabilities of running a major event like this and that was largely thanks to Duane. And because they were there, they provided the infrastructure, payroll, admin, etc. in place to help get other local institutions on board to host all over Little Tokyo. They worked deals with local hotels to make the conference possible.
Roy
So because of that, the advisory committee was helping plan the conference. There was always an advisory council to the JACCC in order to run the conference. We (the committee) technically did not have any financial or decision power, because we were there to advise the cultural center – but we basically were a working board.
Alan
Johnny, were you on staff then?
Johnny
I was on staff (with JACCC) in 2000. I was on the Board from 1998. I mean, we all knew each other, and we all knew who wanted to also have conferences at the time. Deeper discussions with folks from Japan (like Ondekoza and Kodo) lead to us being encouraged to do it! We didn’t have a structure similar to Japan in style or student/teacher model.
Alan
In the first conference, Kevin reported to Duane, and in subsequent conferences the conference staff reported to Johnny.
Johnny
At the time, the Executive Director of JACCC was Jerry Yoshitomi, which was interesting because he was heavily involved with many performing arts networks. So his understanding of the performing arts world was vast. His concept of the conference campaign was that he wanted it to be the center of Japanese American culture. He approached the band Hiroshima and wanted to build a partnership with them for mutual promotion. Unfortunately, that relationship didn’t grow much past those initial touch points. Duane became ill around 1999 –
Roy
Yes, in 1999.
Johnny
And that is when Bryan Yamami stepped up.
Alan
Yeah, Kevin Higa only did one, but a lot of structural elements were put together by Kevin. The conference structure itself had similarities to a lot of other types of conferences.
Johnny
Yeah, so Bryan utilized a lot of the JACCC resources to operate the conferences. You know, a side note, I asked Qris Yamashita at Asano’s space last week when she got involved. She said that she was on staff at JACCC, so she has been involved in all the conferences from the beginning, which was good because we didn’t have to line-item for a designer in the early years. Eventually, all of those jobs needed to be part of the paid staff for the conference.
Alan
Right, because with JACCC being a sponsoring entity, they were cutting all the checks, they were taking on all the organizational or administrative baggage for the first conference.
Johnny
It is interesting – I have asked a few times but have never seen the JACCC budget for 1999, so I didn’t know if the conference lost money (which I think it did). But the Taiko Jam concert did make money that year.
Alan
For most of the NATCs, Taiko Jam was separate from the taiko conference. This early on was because the taiko world was not one community – there were political issues that had to be resolved in coming together. One of the questions raised was, “Who are we to represent the whole taiko community?” We were just some random people from across the country. The original idea was that Taiko Jam was going to make the money for JACCC and the conference was going to break even. One of the other reasons we separated Taiko Jam was to prevent our own groups from getting preferential treatment, so Duane curated Taiko Jam, and we managed NATC.
Roy
Yeah, unfortunately we still see some political differences in taiko [laughing from the group], but I think Duane understood that Taiko Jam needed to be the main money maker to support the conference. He thought he could market and sell concert tickets better than selling tickets for the conference. I think we barely broke even for 1999, and 2001 – there were so many hidden costs we didn’t account for because JACCC took on a lot of the back end stuff to run the conference.
Johnny
I know the conference ruined two copy machines… I know we had to bring in extra copy machines. [hahaha]
First conference had about 450-500 come, but for the next couple there were over 600 people. What was interesting is the money [the attendees] spent in Little Tokyo while the conference occurred. The shops there always asked when the taiko people were coming back.
Alan
Duane set a cap of 500 people, and then Kevin let it go past that. He did not turn anyone away. In his opening comments, Jerry Yoshitomi said that this was the largest gathering of Japanese American performing artists ever held. And we were like, “Yeah, it IS!!!”
Johnny
And I think there were so many Asian arts, arts affiliates – so there had never been a gathering like this before.
Kristina
Wow – that is amazing to hear! So, when did TCA host their first NATC? Why did it transition out of JACCC’s hands?
Alan
The main problem was internal transition for JACCC. They lacked the infrastructure to continue running conferences like this. Johnny, were you on the Board then?
Johnny
So, 1999-2011, I was on staff. I was asked to take Duane Ebata’s place, so it kind of started between 2005 and 2007. We started asking ourselves how much money are we bringing in from Taiko Jam or conferences? I think the Center got into a groove and knew how to deal with the conference in terms of how much it could help support or back off of the conference. In 2007, three of us met with Chris Aihara. She attended the 2007 conference. We asked her if we could use the revenue from Taiko Jam and the conference to be used as restricted funds, basically seed money for future conferences. So, Stanford hosting the conference in 2011 took the conference to a different level because there was more of a business-like structure than just a volunteer structure.
But at the same time, JACCC was going through a leadership change. The new leader was someone who did not have the strongest connection to the Japanese community, and they were later found to have a history of embezzling from previous employers. So for a time, there was no leadership there. But, we still had the conference committee. We tried to regroup and see if we could use the restricted funds to start our own organization. Leslie Ito, the new head of JACCC, eventually said ok to release those funds to us; the leadership and resources used were in question. This was all after the 2009 recession after all, and so no one had any money.
Alan
Yeah, it was actually pretty amazing! You have a new Executive Director (Leslie Ito) coming into a financially troubling situation and she still handed off the funds to us to make it happen. We knew then in 2011 that TCA needed to be formed. We knew that something needed to change to keep the conference going.
Roy
But there were a lot of behind-the-scenes talks happening around this time. Probably no one will ever really know the whole true story. To ask JACCC to take money out of their budget was a tough conversation. We explained that this money came from the taiko community and should go back to support the taiko community, which she understood.
I kind of feel that the Sacramento conference was a turning point moment too. While the conference made money, the local group was burnt out and we learned how mismanaging elements of the conference could have long-term effects we didn’t anticipate.
But going into TCA, we wanted to host the gathering of taiko leaders to identify what it would take to be an organization that runs this conference, and because we needed that gathering to help determine this organization, we cancelled the pre-planned 2013 conference.
Alan
Bryan Yamami used the same facilities and similar formatting to NATC to host the World Taiko Gathering instead during that time, so it worked out.
Roy
Yeah, and his audience reach was much wider than our conferences.
Alan
And TCA decided to partner with Bryan for WTG.
Because of JACCC and because it was a part of the community it served, it made the conferences so meaningful to attendees and it was so special to all the attendees of earlier conferences. Obons, businesses, etc. were all part of and benefitted from the conference, so all of this distancing from the community can lose that, I feel.
Roy
The JACCC provided the Japanese American experience to the taiko experience. After we changed that (with TCA), it was a whole different generation of people attending the conference. It is always a new conference with new audiences that we host!
Alan
True. There are some folks who attend every conference, but almost half of attendees each year are new and that surprised us. Plus, a lot of people come to one conference and that’s it – so does THAT matter? Is it a reflection of the value of the conference?
Kristina
Yeah, that is a good point, and it is a nice segue into my next question: What changes have you seen in NATC over the years?
Roy
I think in general, content is philosophically the same – in order to teach taiko fundamentals to a wide array of taiko players. Then there are those specialized classes to highlight certain things each year. We realized we always needed to repeat the taiko history. I have always felt that presenting our history at conference is always important. Within that context, I think what is different now – as compared to when we were an advisory committee… when we were a committee, we had a point person to report to, but now the TCA Board has that fiscal responsibility, so in a sense responsibility has amped up. So for example, how much revenue the conference brings in is much more relevant now then before, when, to be honest, we weren’t even thinking of the money part. We were a lot more naive in that process you could say.
Alan
From Seattle on, we were much more engaged with the liability issues of having a conference. Without Duane there to be our go/no-go voice, we almost couldn’t agree to having a conference. I remember call after call where we just couldn’t reach a yes or a no. So from that conference on, we knew that there needed to be an Executive Committee to make these decisions.
Roy
I agree, and the 2005 conference in LA was financially very tough also. Between that, chairing the advisory committee from 2007 – 2011, and going to the 2013 gathering, I knew I needed to take a break after all of that.
Alan
Yes, but there are a couple of things I need to say about San Jose Taiko (SJT) here. I think that most of the NATCs would have been really hard to do without SJT. A lot of equipment, backstage management, etc. was done by SJT. During the first Taiko Jam, there was a head-to-head decision between SFTD and SJT to be invited to play. SFTD was selected, and I thought, “That’s not right,” because at the time, we didn’t know if there was ever going to be future conferences after the first one. Luckily, there were more NATCs and SJT was able to perform. In my view, before 2011, SJT was helping JACCC with the operational and administrative work because of capacity issues, and since 2011 they have remained heavily involved with NATC.
I also want to recognize that Roy and I have differing views about who should be leading workshops, running the conference events, and performing. I know that this has changed over time also. We added Japanese performers to draw in attendees, but Roy thought there should be primarily North American representation at the conference.
Roy
Wow Alan, you opened up a big door there (hahaha) – it is in the name: North American Taiko Conference. But, Kodo did inspire us to have a conference, and this happened when I worked with Toshio Kawauchi (Hancho) in 1982/83. Initially, Kodo wanted to be the host of that conference in NA, but he died. So Duane picked it up about ten years later. There was a Kodo artists connection for workshops, and then it expanded out afterwards quite a bit.
Alan
And Atsushi Sugano was part of the “committee” early on for a lot of the early conferences. He was on calls and brought folks over to participate in the conference to present a different connection to traditional taiko.
Johnny
At that time, I was looking to put butts in seats, and so then you look at who is the lineup and we added and subtracted accordingly. Maybe we could get somebody to sponsor somebody from Japan. So, there is a fine line in weighing the cost, technical aspects, and how we go about paying the performers. Can we market them? All of these things had to be dealt with in different ways. 95% of this is backstory – it is amazing how certain things got done and when they got done.
Kristina
Yeah, this is all so incredible. I had no idea how much work went on behind the scenes to make these conferences happen! Ok, my final question for you all is if you are going to the next NATC, and what do you hope to see or do there?
Johnny
I expect to attend if it is close enough. I expect to hangout and see friends if I can, and then share some knowledge if I have any and share what it is…
Roy
If it is close by, it would be really hard for me to say I am not going (hahaha). It would be a ruckus if I did that. How would I participate? That is the question… It will depend on how people are being called on to step in and do stuff, so I will have to wait and see…
Alan
I plan to come, but you know, this last conference in Portland felt a little disconnected for me. Probably because I was really busy and there was one day less to do things. The best conferences I have had was when I do all the work beforehand and just sit down, have coffee with people, and catch up. I enjoy reconnecting with people.
Kristina
And to our faithful TCA Chair, Derek Oye, who has been a fly on the wall listening for this discussion. Same question.
Derek
I will definitely go. My Chair duty will be done, but I am definitely going to make an appearance.
I learned so much from this group about the rich history our conference actually has. I hope to incorporate more of the fun facts and hopes of these early thought leaders into NATC 2022 materials. Stay tuned for more monthly updates and as always, I look forward to seeing you all at the next conference!
Take care,
Kristina McGaha