Sahomi Tachibana—a culture bearer of both traditional Japanese dance, called Nihon-buyō, and regional folk dances of Japan—moved beyond the veil on October 10, 2024 at age 100. 

Tachibana’s artistry left a deep imprint on the ethos of dance in the United States, particularly her capacity to firmly maintain and impart traditional practices while also engaging in artistic exploration. Seminal moments in her life have been chronicled by publications including The Oregonian, OPB, KGW News and Oregon Encyclopedia. These include her childhood performing at amateur kabuki theater in California, her journey to Japan to study at the Tachibana School of Dance, her return to the United States during World War II, where she was promptly sent to an internment camp, her storied career as a dancer in New York City, and her late life as a teacher and performer in Oregon.

In order to elaborate on and celebrate the far reach of Tachibana’s legacy, this memorial story peers into her journey, folding in perspective from archived interviews with her students, insights from ArtsWatch contributor Martha Ullman West, as well as an interview with Tachibana’s daughter, Elaine Werner.

Tachibana’s journey began in the United States, when she was born in 1924 in Mountain View, California, to parents who ran a raspberry farm. Her parents named her Doris Haruno Abe, but, as Chisao Hata notes in the Oregon Encyclopedia, “at the suggestion of a friend in the United States, her father’s branch of the family changed their name to Abey so people wouldn’t mispronounce it.” Her parents’ farm was owned in the name of her father’s cousin, as they had immigrated to the U.S. and were not allowed to own property.

As a young child, she expressed talent for performance at her grandparents’ amateur kabuki theater in California, where she danced during intermissions. To cultivate her skills, she moved to Fukushima, Japan, at age 11, where she lived with her grandparents and trained at the Tachibana School of Dance. As per tradition in this lineage, she was given a new name, Sahomi Tachibana, to reflect the legacy of her rigorous training. This name means “a beautiful bird of paradise,” an expression of the vibrant performance quality she emulated throughout her life.

“Her lion dance was scary. You didn’t want to meet that lion …” said West during a conversation about Tachibana. West did not meet Tachibana until the dancer’s late life, but had witnessed her perform enough times during that period to recognize Tachibana’s versatility—in particular, Tachibana’s special ability to use her face to inhabit a range of characters, even her capacity to be “killingly, side-splittingly funny.” West, with her long career as a dance writer, confidently described Tachibana as “one of the most compelling performers I’ve ever seen.”

The advent of World War II brought about a time of great turmoil and resilience for Tachibana. Upon being admonished by her grandfather to return to the U.S., she caught the final passenger ship to depart from Japan prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor. As stated in the Oregon Encyclopedia, she and her family were incarcerated shortly after her arrival in the U.S. at “the temporary Arboga Assembly Center in California then at Tule Lake, California, and finally to the Central Utah Relocation Center,” also known as the Topaz War Relocation Center. Her family quickly sold their raspberry farm prior to the internment, losing the land they had cared for. 

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Without means for entertainment, Tachibana began facilitating dance within her interned community. In “Sahomi Tachibana American Legacy of a Japanese Dancer,” a virtual event presented by Friends of Topaz Museum & NextGen: Geijutsuka, Tachibana’s daughter, Elaine Werner, displayed some materials from Tachibana’s archive. These objects were designed for Japanese dancing that took place in the internment camps—a bucket made from an ice cream container, a fake sword, a mask—and all were being transferred to collections at the Topaz Museum, a space dedicated to preserving and sharing the history of that fraught time and place. Each object emulates Tachibana’s detailed understanding of the traditions she carried, as well as her ingenuity in imparting these traditions within a hostile western context.

Shortly after her release from the camps corresponding with the end of World War II, Tachibana decided to part ways with her family to pursue her artistic career, eventually residing in New York City. In June of 1948, Tachibana debuted at La Meri’s Ethnological Dance Center in New York, sparking the momentum of her career and popular regard as “a master of classical Japanese dance,” according to Chisao Hata’s essay in the Oregon Encyclopedia. Around this time, she met her husband, Frank Hrubant, in a modern dance class, and they were married in 1949. Hrubant took on all of Tachibana’s bookings and public relations. They had a child together, Elaine, who quickly became another creative partner of Tachibana’s.

While on the East Coast, Tachibana studied ballet and modern dance. But, as she stated in an interview with OPB, “I wasn’t built for ballet or modern dance.” Her comment leaves room for questions about what her experience might have been like in these settings. Tachibana studied at Martha Graham’s school, and Werner confirmed that Graham influenced Tachibana’s artistry, specifically when it came to expressing emotionality in her dancing.

“From what I could tell watching a lot of Japanese dance, it was very prescribed,” said Werner. “You didn’t go outside the boundary.” 

Tachibana, however, brought an uncommon rigor and presence to her dancing. During “Sahomi Tachibana American Legacy Of A Japanese Dancer,” Kabuki performer Bandō Hirohichirō (aka Nakamura Gankyō) observed the way that Tachibana lowered her stance while also managing to explosively channel her energy outward—“a uniqueness of her kind of American-Japanese collaboration,” as he put it. 

Another student of Tachibana’s, Wynn Kiyama, described the power of Tachibana’s gaze as shooting through him: “[E]ven though she’s not that big of a person her presence is gigantic.”

Surely, much of her performance quality also had to do with Tachibana’s intuition to grow her practice in New York City during a heyday of artistic activity. Her daughter described the period of her family life between 1955 and 1967 as an especially exciting time. Together, they saw many shows from the standing-room section of the Metropolitan Opera, and witnessed the likes of Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham perform. “The dance community was just crazy. It was so mixed.” Werner said. “My parents’ friends did dances from India. They did dances from Thailand, Korea, China [. . .] It was stunning.” Werner even mentioned seeing the poet Moondog out on the streets of Greenwich Village around this time—as their family was saturated with art.

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“It gave me such a different perspective. What does it mean to dance and what does it mean to be a person?” said Werner. “It also made me very politically active in later years.” 

Werner began living with her grandparents starting in second grade, staying with her parents only on weekends. However, she continued to train and perform with her mother during her childhood and youth. Ultimately, Werner viewed her Tachibana as an example to look up to as well as a partner, for they worked together quite a lot. 

“She was an amazing artist,” affirmed Werner. “I felt privileged.’

Tachibana entered a vigorous period of her career while in NYC, which is difficult to summarize because her work thrived through so many avenues, such as teaching, performing, and directing. The Oregonian details some specific moments: “She traveled all over the country, performing in 45 states. She danced at Jacob’s Pillow, at Radio City Music Hall, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the 1964 World’s Fair, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Lyric Opera of Chicago.”

What merits closer examination, however, is how all of these public achievements square with Tachibana’s impact as a culture bearer for students. During “Sahomi Tachibana American Legacy of a Japanese Dancer,” artist and scholar Tomie Hahn spoke about Tachibana’s impact as a teacher: 

“I can honestly say that Sahomi Sensei changed my life as early as six years old,” said Hahn, speaking to Tachibana’s impact on her work. “That kind of passion, I had not experienced quite so dramatically and up close.” Hahn’s curiosity about embodied knowledge flourished in later years, and, eventually, Hahn wrote a seminal academic text, Sensational Knowledge: Embodying Culture through Japanese Dance. 

In 1990, Tachibana and her husband left NYC for good. They transitioned to Portland, Oregon, to be closer to Werner, who had already moved out this way. Tachibana created a home-studio for teaching dance to students, both adults and children. Together again in Oregon, Tachibana and Werner also embarked on their newest creative adventure with the Young Audiences of Oregon program (now known as Arts for Learning), for which they toured schools and shared their dancing. Tachibana was good with kids. Werner recalled this time, saying, “what a blast that was.” 

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When it came to Nihon-buyō, “She was very traditional,” noted Werner. “When I go and look at other things from Japan from a while back, it’s exactly the same. She was very precise.” However, when it came to Bon Odori, a style of Japanese folk dance, Tachibana would experiment, even choreographing some of her own routines. According to Werner, Tachibana made sure to translate all the stories behind the dances she taught into English, so that students would understand the meaning and could perform with deep intention.

Tachibana retired at a staggering ninety years old. So much remains of her legacy: her choreographic contributions to the movie Kubo and the Two Strings, her award from the Japanese Government “Order of the Rising Sun–Silver Rays” in 2021, her vast archive stewarded by Werner and others, and more details than could ever be included here. 

West asserted that in researching Tachibana’s life, the best thing to be done for her was to watch videos of her performances, and so this memorial story concludes with encouragement to do the same, starting with this 1953 performance at Jacob’s Pillow. Here Tachibana’s delicacy, power, and unique grasp of tradition remain unmistakable. 

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Citations: This story includes information from The Oregonian, OPB, KGW News, Oregon Encyclopedia, archive.org, as well as interviews with Elaine Werner and Martha Ullman West.