Michael Bruce Okagaki's Obituary
Michael Bruce Okagaki died much as he lived: stoic and calm; caring and deeply introspective; wickedly funny yet unfailingly courteous; at peace with himself and his loved ones; and concerned most of all that his family was well cared for, meaning our decades-old cars were running, the heater thermostat was working, and our broken things were mended. He drew his last breath at UCSF Hospital on December 18, 2023 due to complications from prostate cancer. At age 66, his body was the one thing he could not repair.
Michael was born in San Jose, California on May 14,1957 to Thomas and Amy Okagaki. Michael and his sister Karen were often cared for by their unflappable issei grandmother, Okiyo Okagaki, whom they would send sprinting down the street to catchr passing ice cream trucks. In the era of Shirley Temple, Amy enrolled her young children in tap dancing classes, sparking Michael’s first instance of community activism. At age six, he staged a sit-in with Karen, refusing to tap another step, giving him an early inkling that he would never again do something against his inner nature.
Growing up near San Jose’s Japantown, Michael was surrounded by dozens of uncles and aunts, and 34 Okagaki and Saito first cousins. His Auntie Janet taught Michael how to fish; his Uncles Calvin and Warren, who ran a TV and radio repair shop, taught him about tubes and electronics. With his cousins, Gregg Nakanishi and Ron Okagaki, he undertook his earliest chemistry experiments, cooking up gunpowder from potassium nitrate, charcoal, and sulfur, hidden from parental view behind the shed in Ron’s backyard. But in elementary school, Michael fell very ill with nephritis, an infection of the kidneys, that kept him bedridden for a year. To stave off boredom, he read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica, thus explaining his many deep reservoirs of arcane knowledge. In bed, he built a remote control that turned the television on and off by clicking two pennies together.
Graduating in 1974 from Bellarmine College Preparatory, an all-boys Jesuit high school, Michael was one of only a handful of Asian Americans. As a Japanese American at Bellarmine, December 7th (Pearl Harbor Day) was a living nightmare. He’d find himself surrounded, pelted with racial slurs. But Michael found a small group of other misfits to befriend and took refuge in music: the Eagles, Beatles, Neil Young, Cream. In 1971, his father bought him a Martin D-18 guitar, and Michael spent countless hours lying on his bed, teaching himself to fingerpick like James Taylor.
By the early 70s, Michael found his tribe. He blossomed in the Wesley United Methodist Church’s Youth Fellowship program, where they explored their faith and identity as Japanese Americans, whose families were incarcerated by the US government during WWII. At Wesley, he met Peter Horikoshi, Keith Inouye, and Sandra Takimoto, who along with Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo, would form the nucleus of the band Yokohama, California, singing songs of Asian identity and protest. In 1977, a budding impresario, Steve Yamaguma, proposed cutting their first (and only) LP. The night before the album was completed, Michael realized he had something to say, so he dashed off a song on binder paper called Tomorrow. It became the final track on the record.
In 1972, Michael started attending Lake Sequoia Retreat near Fresno, a once venerable Christian camp for Japanese American youth that had become a magnet for long-haired, guitar-strumming 60s flower children. Michael fit right in. Then in 1977, he was randomly assigned to the same work, interest, and discussion groups as a high school junior from Oakland named Wendy Hanamura. He amused her with clever Mad Libs and enchanted her with his sweet folk songs. Soon they were exchanging long letters between San Jose and Oakland.
Michael asked his deepening crush, Wendy, to go to Leopold’s in Berkeley to pick up a rare LP he’d seen there: Sonny Rollins’ Saxophone Colossus. Their first outing was to a Japanese sword store in San Francisco’s J-Town where he plunked down $200 for his first rusty Edo-period blade. Their first “date” was to see Dexter Gordon at the Keystone Korner, where Michael was sorely disappointed when Wendy couldn’t stay for the second set. At 16, she had a strict curfew. Their next date was to see Sonny Rollins play with Donald Byrd at the Great American Music Hall. Vinyl, jazz and Japan would become golden threads woven through Michael’s life.
At Santa Clara University, Michael majored in Fine Art, painting enormous abstract canvases that he stretched himself. However, at his parents’ insistence, he switched majors to Chemistry and would go on to earn a Masters in Chemistry at San Francisco State University, investigating the properties of Laurencia algae. In 1981, in order to be closer to Wendy who was studying at Harvard, Michael drove cross country in the family Buick LeSabre with his patient father to enter a PhD program at Boston University. As a graduate student, Michael was so impoverished, Wendy’s roommates would sneak extra food to him in the dining hall so he could eat for free. Eventually, the cold and cockroaches proved too much for him, and he returned home the next year.
Moving together to Tokyo in 1984, Wendy studied architecture and Michael taught English to businessmen. He lived in company housing, a cinder-block one-room apartment that was so cold in winter that ice formed in the teapot. It was the beginning of Michael and Wendy’s long communion with Japan, a country they explored from the tip of the Noto Peninsula to the remote island of Sado, home to their favorite troupe of taiko drummers.
After dating for a dozen years, in 1989 Michael and Wendy finally tied the knot, bought a house in San Francisco, and promptly packed up and moved back to Japan. While Wendy worked throughout Asia as a television correspondent, Michael studied Japanese, learned to play the shakuhachi, and happily devoted himself to the arduous task of becoming a shakuhachi maker. He led an artist’s life, immersed in classical Japanese music in the school of Yamaguchi Goro, a National Living Treasure, and making instruments by painstakingly applying thin coats of lacquer to the inner bore of bamboo.
By 1992, their first son Jonathan was born and Michael became a stay-at-home dad. In patriarchal Japanese society, people openly stared everytime he got on a Tokyo subway with infant Jonathan on his chest. An avid collector, he never missed the weekly antique flea markets, amassing countless tansu, instruments, and lacquerware. Gomi Days, when people put their large refuse on the curb, were his favorite days of the year. In many ways, these were the healthiest and most carefree days of his life.
Michael, Wendy and the precociously curious Jonathan returned home to San Francisco, and in 1995, they were joined by baby Kenny, a good-natured soul with his dad’s sly sense of humor. After a six-year hiatus, Michael returned to work at DepoMed, a pharmaceutical start-up in Menlo Park. He would go on to work there for 17 years as a research chemist, eventually specializing in running and maintaining the intricate instruments in the lab. Together, the DepoMed team would succeed in developing the first extended-release form of Metformin, the world’s most widely prescribed diabetes medicine.
Michael’s passionate hobbies ran as deep as the sea. He studied watchmaking at San Francisco City College and became the protege of master watchmaker Ken Nihei. His record collection grew to 7,000 discs, mostly jazz but also encompassing the complete recordings of Broadway star Pat Suzuki; he amassed more than 20 guitars, ukuleles, and a mandolin, as well as ten Fender tube amps. Michael took great pride in maintaining his own cars. His first beloved car, a 1974 MGB, broke down so often his frustrated mechanic handed him the manual and said, “Here, learn to fix it yourself.” So he did.
Extending his scientific rigor to the kitchen, Michael approached each dish like a chemist, changing only one variable at a time, until he distilled each recipe to perfection. Thus his family and friends were treated to many iterations of yakitori, tri-tip, leg of lamb, homemade pizza, mabo-dofu, and chicken shawarma. Eating dinner from Michael’s kitchen was always a multi-course adventure. Tasting ojo and cabeza tacos in Santa Barbara once moved him to tears, as did David Kinch’s signature dish at Manresa, Tidal Pool.
As a partner and a parent, Michael was an empathetic listener, who always knew just what to say to make you feel better. Although a total introvert, he maintained long friendships with dozens of former co-workers, watchmakers, and technicians. He knew the life story of every clerk in our local Safeway and always greeted our postman by name. During his final illness, Michael took up the art of kintsugi, repairing broken pottery with glue and gold. But he repaired more than just broken dishes. He was a man who could sense your brokenness, who’d take time to help you heal your wounds.
Throughout his own life, Michael’s body would betray him time and again. He suffered a submacular hemorrhage in his left eye, total heart block, bilateral frozen shoulder syndrome, carpal tunnel, tinnitus, a burst appendix, long Covid, and finally prostate cancer that infiltrated the marrow of his bones. But Michael never let his illnesses define him. He was stoic in the face of great pain; utterly unafraid to die. In the hospital, he sensed his late father, Tom, tapping his foot, and as always, Tom’s presence comforted him.
Michael is survived by his wife, Wendy, his sons Jonathan and Kenny, his mother Amy and sister, Karen, along with numerous cousins, nephews, as well as Jon’s exuberant corgi, Moose. We will celebrate his life at a service on Saturday, February 24, at 2 pm at Buena Vista Methodist Church in Alameda. The service will be followed by a reception featuring Michael’s favorite dishes. Please help the family plan by RSVPing here: https://bit.ly/49hAGNb
In lieu of flowers, charitable donations in his memory can be made to KCSM Jazz 91, the public radio station that gave Michael so many decades of spiritual exploration through music. https://www.kcsm.org/
We hope you will join us either in person or via Zoom to remember this thoroughly good man, husband, father, chemist, musician, mechanic, watchmaker, repairman, and ever-loyal friend.
Know honor,
Yet keep humility.
Be the valley of the universe!
Being the valley of the universe,
Ever true and resourceful,
Return to the state of the uncarved block.
–Lao Tsu, from the Tao Te Ching
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