20 June 2025

“The Chevalier was as much affected as Barry at thus finding one of his countrymen. For he too was an exile from home, and a friendly voice, a look, brought the old country back to his memory again.”
-William Makepeace Thackeray, Barry Lyndon

I first met Hisa at the restaurant. He was sitting outside in a straw hat on a hot day. It’s a terrible reflex we have as Japanese to silently profile one another. As he scanned the menu his eyes lit up.

The look on his face when he realized we had the good mentaiko. He laughed and slapped me on the shoulder as if to say, “What the hell are you doing here?” He was one to talk. A Tokyo boy and oldest son of a titan of industry, he bristled at a comfortable life in his hometown. Rather than sit on the throne, he moved to New York and then west.

That glint of recognition from a stranger in a strange land. Moments like these have kept me going. We sat around after work and exchanged lore. He invited me to his gallery opening and we all went after work for the ol’ private tour. Wow. I understood his work instantly. Steel folded like origami, light, shadow, a love of the moon. It was all there.

Since that time he has been very much on the board at Ozu. When he pays us a compliment, it means something. And when he offers a critique, I listen. “The dashi is right, but you should have soaked the oden half a day longer.” He’s never wrong.

Once we expanded into the space next door I called him about getting some of his work in there. Four new walls to fill and I had a feeling my 90s Sapporo bikini poster wasn’t going to cut it. Maybe if I emptied the Ozu vault we could do a deal. I was struggling to figure out a way to ask him when he interrupted: “Look, in the restaurant business. I know. You want to keep your overhead low.” Mochiron mochiron (of course). I was getting the Japanese dad speech I had heard once or twice before. Off to a good start. I poured us a couple glasses of mugi cha. Then he got right to it.

“Listen, I feel like I should, you know, class up the joint a little...”

Zehi. (by all means)

Rather than a single piece, he agreed to the project under the condition he be given free rein on the design of the entire room. Three new works.

A trained architect, he pulled up his plans on the computer in some rendering software. As I have a very limited visual imagination, I sort of spaced out and nodded along. At that point, it was a matter of trust. A few weeks later his old pickup pulled up after service.

His first piece, entitled Night Train, is a twelve-foot-long row of alternating matte and gloss steel panels capturing the blur of an evening train passing by on the horizon. It is a sight that draws you into it. Anyone who has been to Japan knows that feeling. And the sound and the smell. The human silence and mechanical drone of an evening commuter train. Stale bentos in the wastebasket, faint cigarette smoke, and evaporating one cups, beer, and sencha. We had spoken about interiors which create the feeling of travel, not of a destination but simply the act of transportation. Simulating a foreign place is the lowest form of decor. The mind has to wander. And don’t the Japanese out West have their own special touch?

His second piece, Five Directions, hangs on the wall opposite. A circular mirror installed at the same height as Night Train echoes its steel panels. Attached to the mirror are four bars of steel arranged in the four directions, a reference to the sacred sun symbol of the Zia Pueblo. Two ancient sun origins intersect. Hisa is a man with deep esoteric knowledge of Japan’s Shinto traditions and cosmology. Amaterasu, the sun goddess, was pulled into this world having seen her reflection in a mirror. I still think about this when I’m getting ready in the morning.

His third piece, Ancestral, is a towering steel obelisk crowned with a simple lighthouse which calls to mind the portal of a Shinto shrine. A place for incense to be burnt, persimmons to be offered, candles to be lit, but also nothing. A small bulb shines from within, leaving a light on. No matter where we are, we’re on our way home.

I looked at the man, who had left a name and a life in Japan to create his own, and smiled, and wanted to say something but said nothing, in the old Japanese tradition. The bison rancher from Mejiro, the sculptor from Industrial Road, who installed his work at his own expense because he believed in the vision. But then I did say something. After the last sip of mugi cha and a long exhale.

You get it. You understand what I’m trying to do.

“Of course I do. Why do you think I put my work in here?”

A few weeks later I received a phone call. “Hey Jeffrey, I am thinking about a fourth piece for the corner there.”

Equinox is a reference to the harmony of day and night in the solar calendar. Two equal lengths of pine and steel, superimposed. A warm light emerges from the wooden frame. I idiotically misnamed this one in a previous letter, offering him the tip of my pinky to atone. He declined, graciously.

Inarticulately, I’ve tried to convey these feelings of jet lag, nausea, anticipation, and homesickness that have been my constant companions, but words fail me when they really matter. A true work of art never does—maybe because art conveys a meaning we don't understand immediately, in the sacred language of human emotion. But the taste of mugi cha high up in the Rocky Mountains unleashed something in us neither could control.

After dinner service is over and everyone has gone home, I turn off the overhead lights and sit in the dim light of Ancestral and Equinox.

seasonal crudités with sesame miso bagna cauda

temaki
choice of blue crab, hamachi, or ikura

tuna tartare
raw bluefin tuna, sesame, shoyu, garlic, aonori, endive

scallop ceviche
raw sea scallops, sudachi, ikura, aonori

bouillabaisse
rich seafood stew in miso tomato broth with crab rouille toast

seared scallop bento
seared sea scallops over Japanese rice with hiyashi salad, pickles

vegan bento
chickpea and buckwheat patties over Japanese rice with hiyashi salad, pickles

chirashi
raw shima aji, snapper, scallop, bluefin tuna, hamachi, and ikura over sushi rice

kyuri sunomono
vinegared cucumber and seaweed salad

hiyashi salad
local lettuces, radish, cucumber, sesame ginger dressing

basque cheesecake
almond tart with yuzu curd & candied yuzu