When Grammy Award-winning woodwind artist Ben Kono was given an English translation of his grandfather Juhei Caleb Kono's memoir, he found more than family history. He found music.
"Reading it was like opening a door into a family history I'd never been privy to," said Kono of the memoir, which was translated and circulated amongst the family by his aunt, Seattle artist Midori Kono Thiel.
"I could hear the sounds of music - the temple bells from his childhood near Hiroshima, the rhythms of working in the fields when he first arrived in America."
Those sounds have now become Voyages, an ambitious new album that combines jazz quintet with classical string quartet to tell a uniquely Pacific Northwest story of immigration, art, and identity spanning four generations.
The album's cover features a striking painting by Ben's son Sam Kono. It depicts the Tacoma Maru, the ship that brought Juhei to America, rendered by the great-grandson who is now pursuing his own artistic path.
An artistic legacy
The journey begins in 1911, when 13-year-old Juhei arrived alone in Tacoma, Washington, to join his father on a leased farm in Fife. He was part of a wave of Japanese immigrants who would transform the region's agricultural landscape. By the 1920s, Japanese farmers supplied 75% of Seattle and King County's vegetables through truck farms (small family operations growing produce to sell from trucks at local markets) and operated countless family farms throughout the White River and Puyallup valleys.
"My father always talked about his early life in Japan, and one of his memories was of an artist uncle," said Midori from her Seattle home. That artistic legacy would flow through generations, though in strikingly different forms.
For Midori, art became a way to bridge cultures. After working in and studying abstract expressionism at UC Berkeley in the 1950s, she discovered Japanese calligraphy and traditional arts, eventually becoming a master teacher and artist whose work has been exhibited at the Seattle Art Museum and museums worldwide.
"I got interested in calligraphy probably because of my admiration for Franz Kline," Midori reflected, referring to the Abstract Expressionist painter known for his bold black-and-white compositions. "He wasn't specifically interested in Japanese calligraphy, but because of the black and white abstraction, it also led me into the abstraction of Japanese and Chinese calligraphy."
Her nephew Ben took a different path, becoming a versatile woodwind artist in New York City's jazz scene. But when his aunt shared her translation of Juhei's memoir "Setsuri no Jinsei" (Human Life and Divine Providence), he found himself drawn back to his family's Pacific Northwest roots.
The reality his grandfather faced was stark. Washington state's 1889 constitution banned land sales to "aliens ineligible for citizenship,” a restriction that specifically targeted Asian immigrants, according to HistoryLink.org historian David Takami. The 1921 Alien Land Law further limited Japanese farmers' ability to lease or rent land. Many Issei (first generation) immigrants found creative solutions, making arrangements with white farmers who would technically own the land while employing Japanese farmers as "managers."
"My grandfather worked hard to become an economically independent American citizen," Ben explained. "He lived through the Great Depression, through two great wars, one of which had terrible repercussions for the Japanese American community."
One particularly poignant composition, "Bata Kusai!!" draws directly from Juhei's memoir. Arriving in Tacoma in December 1911, the young immigrant encountered his first American meal. "My father welcomed me with great joy," Juhei wrote, "and quickly introduced me to western food at a restaurant but it was so 'bata kusai', butter-reeking and alien, that I couldn't eat much."
Among Issei and Nisei Japanese Americans, "bata kusai" became a common expression describing not just the unfamiliar smell and taste of Western food, but more broadly the cultural dissonance they experienced, literally "stinking of butter," it captured both the foreignness of American ways and the complex process of adaptation faced by immigrant families.
A musical transformation
The immigrant experience is reflected in both sides of Ben’s family. Ben's mother, an English immigrant, made her own first sighting of America from a ship in the Chesapeake Bay. The experience inspired "Across the Pond," a composition featuring influences from British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, known for incorporating English folk songs into his classical compositions.
The album's ambitious "Generations Suite" traces the evolution of Japanese American identity through four movements: "Issei," "Nisei," "Sansei," and "Yonsei," representing the four generations of the Kono family who have made America their home.
The Suite unfolds with quiet reverence, as strings introduce a haunting melody rooted in traditional Japanese scales. This opening movement, “Issei,” carries the weight of departure and arrival, its sparse arrangement suggesting both solitude and determination. The theme transforms through “Nisei,” where tentative woodwind passages grow increasingly assured, mirroring a generation finding its voice in a new land.
The “Sansei” movement brings striking harmonic tensions, with Kono's reeds darting through complex rhythmic patterns that speak to cultural intersection and creative freedom. By the time “Yonsei” emerges, the original melodic thread has evolved into something entirely new – still recognizable, but thoroughly transformed by jazz harmony and contemporary classical gestures. The musical transformation mirrors that of an immigrant family’s experience across time.
For the recording, Ben assembled a stellar ensemble of musicians who could bridge classical and jazz traditions, including violinists Sara Caswell and Meg Okura, violist Lois Martin, and cellist Jody Redhage Ferber. The combination creates what he calls "a timeless vehicle. It can have that nostalgia element, but it can also be incredibly modern."
The timing of the album's creation added unexpected layers of meaning. As Ben worked on the music during the pandemic, a surge of anti-Asian sentiment emerged across the country, including in Seattle where his aunt Midori has long been a pillar of the Japanese American arts community. These echoes of past prejudices gave new resonance to Juhei's writings about life in America, where Japanese immigrants faced widespread discrimination and were often viewed as permanent outsiders.
"Good food, good clothes, a large home was for white people, not immigrant Japanese," Juhei wrote of those early years. Yet he remained determined to succeed through education.
"When I was in the fields, when I went into town to buy things, I always carried a book and studied," he recounted, eventually completing both elementary and high school while working alongside his father.
The journey continues
Today, the artistic dialogue continues across generations. While Midori creates contemporary works inspired by traditional Japanese arts, her daughter Tamiko Thiel brings the family story into the digital age through augmented reality art installations. They collaborated on the 2015 "Brush the Sky" exhibition at Seattle's Wing Luke Museum, while Ben's son Sam reaches back through time to paint the ship that brought his great-grandfather to America.
This artistic legacy takes on special significance in Seattle, where the Japanese American community's roots run deep. Though the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans decimated local Japanese farming communities, the community's cultural contributions have continued to flourish.
"I wanted this to be a tribute to my grandparents, who provided this platform for our extended family to grow up in the United States, and to my immediate family members, my aunts, who are beyond octogenarians now," Ben explained. The urgency of preserving these stories through art took on new meaning when his aunt Sumi passed away in September 2024, just weeks before the album's completion.
For Midori, who has spent decades teaching Japanese arts in Seattle while developing her own distinctive artistic voice, the album represents another way the family story evolves while staying true to its roots.
As both aunt and nephew demonstrate through their art, the journey that began with a 13-year-old boy's arrival in Tacoma continues to yield new creative harvests. Through their work, the Pacific Northwest's Japanese American story becomes not just one of preservation, but of constant renewal and growth.
