Shunta Yamamoto
Shunta "Peter" Yamamoto grew up in Tokyo in a wealthy, prominent family that would greatly influence his actions later in life. His grandfather (on his father's side) was a highly respected man from Kyushu[1] in the prefecture of Kagoshima. His grandmother on his mother's side was the daughter of the first customs official at the time the Portuguese came there. To this day there is a library in an elementary school in Kyushu dedicated to Shunta's father, and the Yamamoto Family cemetery is on the grounds that still contain the home where Shunta's grandfather was born.
His father Sanehiko Yamamoto was born in Kyushu but grew up in Tokyo, where he became a leading publisher. His company printed most of the Japanese textbooks, and his magazine, Kaizosha Kaizo, had one of the largest circulations in the world (e.g., larger than Time and Life). While he retained prominent national and international authors, he possessed a keen sense to discover and cultivate many gifted young, unknown authors from diverse schools of thoughts. Having been published in Kaizo almost guaranteed successful future for such young authors. As a matter of fact, it is difficult to find Japanese well-known authors at the time who did not have his or her work published in Kaizo.
He was not only an astute businessman, but also a breeder of race horses. He lived half a year in Japan and the other half in China where he developed close personal and professional relationship with Lu Xun. He enjoyed spending time at the race tracks in Shanghai.
Sanehiko Yamamoto was deeply involved in politics, eventually starting his own party—Kokumia Kyodoto (which means Equal Citizens' Party), from which would come a number of Japan's prime ministers. In fact, he was nominated to become the next prime minister of Japan, but complications from a badly-botched operation caused his death not too long afterward in 1952.
What he enjoyed most of all, however, was bringing leading intellectuals from all over the world together in his home to eat and talk. This included Nobel Prize winners and people like George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell, Pearl Buck, Margaret Sanger, and Albert Einstein, as well as Japanese "national treasures"—the leading minds and talents of his country. His intent was to bring the world to Japan for the Japanese to absorb, and if any of those listening to the speeches or conversations were motivated, this was what he wanted. He became quite close to many of these people. (Shunta has stacks and stacks of letters his father received from these individuals.)[2]
An accomplished calligrapher and poet, Sanehiko encouraged the preservation of ideas. He always had on hand large sheets of paper and his calligraphy pens so people could put down their thoughts. It was one of these, written by Einstein ("education is our new religion"), that Shunta brought to the ceremonies when he was made an Honorary Citizen of Davis in 1980.
Sanehiko liked to take home movies and often filmed his guests during parties. Unfortunately, one night someone broke into the house and stole all the films, then cut them up and sold the pieces to journalists. (It was impossible to retrieve the films because they had been cut up.) Many old Japanese documentaries contain these film clips. Eleanor Yamamoto says that whenever you see such films, look for the furniture that used to be in Shunta's home, for the sofas and chairs in which the great figures had sat are the only things Shunta inherited from his father. He wanted these remembrances of the sharing of ideas.
This is the atmosphere in which he raised his first son, Shunta "Peter" Yamamoto, who was born in 1922.[3] It was to this home that Dr. Einstein came to live in the fall of 1922 when he had to flee Germany. Shunta remembers as a child sitting in Einstein's lap while the great man entertained him. He often recalled this period as the beginning of his interest in a place where all nations might meet. (Later, when he would visit Dr. Einstein after World War II, Einstein would tell the man, "I used to bounce you on my knee.")
As Shunta grew older, he was always at his father's side. He attended meetings and assisted as would any dutiful first son. He remembers large dinners at which he would be at his father's right, with everyone else carefully placed down the table in order of rank. He was there when his father would meet with other politicians to determine the fate of other politicians or important issues of the day. And he was there when his father would entertain great figures of the world, ideas and opinions flying freely.
During World War II Shunta went to two universities: Keio (a private school) and Rikkyo. Afterwards he was selected to be in the "infantry," the elite Emperor's guard. The young men in the infantry came from only the best families—to qualify they had to pass close scrutiny of family records. Another requirement was to have a "pleasant face" in case the Emperor should happen to glance his way. Apparently Shunta passed muster! After that he worked in decoding in the Japanese navy. He was never sent to the front lines because of his father's powerful position, though his father would never have asked such a favor. It was simply understood.
Though this was a fortunate result of being the son of Sanehiko Yamamoto, such a position created some interesting problems. For example, after the war, it was clear that several prominent Japanese families were interested in having Shunta for a son-in-law. The problem was that he would offend any family whose daughter he didn't select, and that would reflect badly upon his father as well as himself. Shunta quietly decided he didn't want to marry in Japan but should instead disassociate with ties there so no one could criticize him or his father as a result of any political selection he had made. He would ultimately solve the problem by marrying an American.
After the war, in 1949 Shunta undertook one of his most interesting tasks for his father: to go as emissary to President Truman to find out how much longer General Douglas MacArthur intended to remain in Japan. This came about because Prime Minister Yoshita had only a few years left, and it was not all that easy to work with MacArthur. Yoshita had nominated Sanehiko Yamamoto to be the next prime minister, so he and Sanehiko got together to see what they could do about the problem. Shunta later talked about the heavy political meetings that were taking place at their home during that time.
Sanehiko was having his own problems with MacArthur. Not too long after MacArthur's arrival, the general took offense at the liberal views printed in Kaizosha (Sanehiko's magazine) and wouldn't allow him to continue managing it. A Yamamoto relative then managed it for a while, but MacArthur asked him to step down as well.
Apparently MacArthur was upsetting enough of the Japanese that they decided someone needed to talk to President Truman about it. The prime minister couldn't appear to be involved in such a request, so the leaders quietly decided to send Shunta. At age 28, Shunta Yamamoto went by himself to meet with the American president![4] (An article was written about this trip because Shunta was the first Japanese to get a passport to come to the U.S. The writer referred to the "Jap" who was coming, and Shunta got the newspaper to apologize for referring to him in that manner.)
Incidentally, though Shunta could not speak English well, he could understand it. However, he learned always to have an interpreter, because while the interpreter was translating, he would have an opportunity to form his thoughts before responding. At the I-House he always had his daughter Eleanor or (after Eleanor began working full time) his wife to interpret for him.
Ultimately, he did arrive in Washington and spoke to President Truman. Truman's response to Shunta's query about how long he would keep MacArthur in Japan was, "Be patient—I will call for him soon." Apparently Truman even then was having his problems with the headstrong general, and it was not too long afterwards that he called MacArthur back from Japan and gave him another assignment.
During this trip, Dr. Einstein invited Shunta to visit him at his home in Princeton, New Jersey. When Shunta got off the train, he asked a taxi driver to take him to Dr. Einstein's home. The cabbie laughed and said, "He'll never see you," explaining that people frequently asked to be taken to him but were turned away. But of course he was warmly received. They spent a lovely afternoon drinking tea and conversing. It was perhaps here that Shunta asked if Dr. Einstein could give him any advice. Einstein said he never gave advice, but he asked Shunta whom he most admired. When Shunta replied, "Gandhi," Einstein suggested that he think about what Gandhi would say to that request.
When the children were growing up, they lived in two different buildings that Shunta designed. He worked on these projects with an architect friend who had studied under Frank Lloyd Wright. The first was a four-story building containing six condominiums. His partner lived on the first floor, the Yamamotos lived on the second floor, and the top two floors were divided into two condos each for an additional four families.
This building contained several innovative features. On the top of the building Shunta designed a recreation facility for all six families, and at the front entrance he designed an automatic door, the first such door in Japan. He also designed both homes to diminish the chance of fire or earthquake damage. The ceiling in the parents' bedroom was so strongly built that everyone had orders to run for that bedroom if they felt an earthquake. For the second house, he placed bamboo roots thickly around the foundation to make it more firm.
One of Shunta's favorite pastimes was sitting in a tea house drinking and chatting with friends. One tea house was his favorite, and people all over Tokyo knew him from there.[5] His second home, however, was the Tokyo International House, a magnificent place. It contains all kinds of rooms to accommodate both large and small budgets. The best rooms are on the side where tenants can look out to see the whole Japanese garden. People can also rent a cubical, eat in the dining room, and stroll in the lovely gardens to get their ideas together. Famous people do this all the time—cubicles are tied up for years. The large dining room serves five-course meals at reasonable prices, and people love to take their meals there. Intellectuals can gather in the lobby to smoke and talk freely. It is a heady place to be. This is the kind of place that Shunta had in mind when he decided to start an I-House in the United States.
In 1965, Shunta took his entire family to live in New Jersey. They went for two reasons: 1) the deteriorating health of Chizuko’s father, Manyamon Nakatani, and 2) for the two girls to establish the residency required at that time to qualify for U.S. citizenship. The girls already had dual citizenship because of their mother's being born in the U.S., but they had to live here for at least two consecutive years in order to achieve permanent status. They both returned to graduate from the American School in Tokyo, as their father knew a degree from there would allow them entrance to almost any good university.
From Clay Ballard (written in 2002):
The first memory I have of Peter Yamamoto is the solid clanking of bowling balls in the background of a telephone call I received in my S.I.S.S. office some twenty-three years back. I answered my phone, hearing Buddy Roman (a staff person at UCD’s bowling alley at the M.U.) say: “I have a man here who wants to talk to you about starting an international house.” (Not exactly the typical start to my day at the office!) Buddy brought Peter, Catherine, and Eleanor to my office that day. And, talk about an international house we did! Since I had previously been associate director of the I-House in Chicago, Mr. Yamamoto—through Eleanor’s patient translation—shared his dream of an I-House he wanted to help build somewhere in the U.S., and asked how the model of an I-House in Tokyo or Chicago might work at UCD. At the end of our energetic first talk, we set up a meeting time for the next month when he and Catherine could return to Davis. On that day he called me at home from Motel 6 in Davis—not exactly the typical image of a visiting dignitary to UCD! Beverly and I met him and Catherine at our home that morning, insisting that they stay at our home a few days while they looked over the possibilities for establishing an I-House in Davis. They graced our home for several days while they began to assess the culture of Davis for such an enterprise. During that time, we started the journey of a loving friendship with the Yamamotos.
Memories flood in about that quiet but auspicious beginning of the International House, Davis almost a quarter-century ago, and I can’t begin to relate them to a gathering like this, especially by email. But one thing that I am struck by is his tenacity/stubbornness to make his “dream” a reality. During the first two years before we incorporated, and three years before buying I-House, we must have had at least 500 meetings—each with unique Japanese and American cultural mixes requiring twice as much time and energy for two-way translations!
You may know that I have accompanied Beverly to Bulgaria this year where she is teaching as a Fulbright Scholar. Here the culture and language challenge us at every turn to absorb “foreign” sights, sounds and interactions in this fascinating and often bewildering Eastern European setting. In international educational terms, this setting requires “cultural boundary-crossing,” which engages in the give-and-take of negotiating in another culture. In the painful loss of Mr. Yamamoto, I have found my thoughts drifting toward his stubborn tenacity to take his dream into what must have been his own fascinating and bewildering “foreign” context(Davis, California)—then forge his dream into intercultural reality. What hard, “cultural boundary-crossing” work this must have been for him all these years! What tenacity of this great man imbued with practical idealism!
What an unusual man of unconditional love for the people in this international community that he would keep forging this dream out into reality—negotiating, compromising, and supporting community decisions even, when the collective vision didn’t exactly match his.
What a fun-loving man to enjoy giving out candy canes to kids at I-House holiday parties, as much as he enjoyed giving Francois Mitterrand an honorary I-House, Davis membership.
What a giant of a man in an unassuming package, a man of all seasons and nations.
What a man!
[1] This is the city on which the U.S. military planned to drop a third atomic bomb had not the Japanese surrendered as quickly as they did. That information, declassified in the mid-‘90s, was brought to the public's attention in 1996. Using the third bomb would have required a specific order from President Truman, who was very reluctant to cause any more destruction of non-combatants on such a massive scale. Fortunately, the Japanese surrendered before he had to make this decision.
[2] As Melissa Milich wrote in an October 1983, Sinehiko Yamamoto brought to his home "people who touched the world in some way and who would inevitably come and sit in the great wingback chairs . . . to discuss grave worldly matters and some trivial things, too." She writes that it was in the fall of 1922 when "the German physicist, Dr. Albert Einstein, his recently awarded Nobel Prize not offering him protection enough, took refuge in Japan at the invitation of a friend. Mr. Sanehiko Yamamoto had only one request of his house guest: that he would lecture at the nearby universities to audiences of Japanese students and scholars. . . . The Nobel Prize winner would stay in Japan only two months before he thought it was safe to return home to Germany. Later, right before World War II, he'd be forced to leave again, this time for good. But during this first hiatus in Japan, Einstein would inspire a young physicist Hideki Yukawa, who saw in the audience during one of these lectures, and who would go on to win a Nobel Prize himself several years later."
[3] His passport incorrectly says 1923. His birth certificate was burned in a fire in their house, and when his father ordered someone to make another record, the wrong date was entered.
[4] A rather strange incident took place on the ship en route. Somewhere between Tokyo and the U.S., a stowaway was discovered hiding in a restroom. When asked to identify himself, he claimed to be Shunta Yamamoto. The purser quickly realized that he couldn't be Shunta and reported him to the captain. Upon hearing of the incident, Shunta asked that they be lenient with the stowaway and—since the stowaway was living on peanuts and water—that the man be fed properly.