Co-founder (Roy) and Artistic Director Emeritus (PJ) of San Jose Taiko (SJT) celebrates their 50th anniversary of playing taiko. For their years of community-building and expanding the art form of taiko through SJT, in 2011, the National Endowment of the Arts awarded them the National Heritage Fellowship, the nation’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. Roy & PJ have also received the SV Creates Legacy Laureate and the San Jose Arts Commission Cornerstone of the Arts. In addition, both have been mentors in the Alliance for California Traditional Arts Master Program. In 2017, they performed at the Smithsonian FolkLife Festival in Washington, D.C., and the Library of Congress Noontime Series.

Roy and PJ remain active in performing, composing, and conducting workshops internationally. Creating and recording the music soundtrack for the play “Valley of the Heart” by Luis Valdez, produced by the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles is a career highlight. In 2023, world-renowned Kodo performing arts group from Japan honored them with the Kodo Yuihosho “Kodo Connection Award.”

PJ founded TaikoPeace–Partnerships, Empathy, And Creative Empowerment, a movement to spread the kinetic energy, spiritual vibration, and pure joy of taiko drumming for positive social change and a peaceful world. In addition, she is the President of Kodo Arts Sphere America (KASA) and co-founder of Creatives for Compassionate Communities in Silicon Valley. Other awards include the Arts Council of Silicon Valley Artistic Fellowship for Music Performance and the U.S./Japan Creative Arts Fellowship.

Roy remains active in the national arts community. He has served and chaired the Japantown Community Congress of San Jose and the School of Arts & Culture at Mexican Heritage Plaza boards. Roy is a founding member of 1stACT Silicon Valley and the Multicultural Arts Leadership Institute, a member of the Taiko Community Alliance and a board member for SVCREATES. He is an American Leadership Forum Silicon Valley John W. Gardner Leadership Awardee and a 2017 US-Japan Council Japanese American Leadership Delegation member. In 2023, The Government of Japan honored Roy with The Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Rays and he received the California Arts Council Legacy Individual Artist Fellowship.

Emmy-winning filmmaker Tadashi Nakamura was named one of CNN’s “Young People Who Rock” for being the youngest filmmaker at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and listed as one of the “Top Rising Asian American Directors” on IMDb. The fourth-generation Japanese American recently completed Mele Murals, a documentary on the transformative power of modern graffiti art and ancient Hawaiian culture for a new generation of Native Hawaiians. Mele Murals was broadcasted on PBS and Al Jazeera, and was nominated for an Emmy in 2018. His previous film Jake Shimabukuro: Life on Four Strings was broadcasted nationally on PBS and went on to win the 2013 Gotham Independent Film Audience Award, which was in competition with 12 Years a Slave and Fruitvale Station.

Eryn Kimura (she, they) is a mixed media artist, and cultural organizer and producer based on the unceded territory of the Ramaytush-speaking Ohlone people - San Francisco. Eryn’s visual work recontextualizes the asian american body and experience in popular culture/memory, examining narratives of power and reimagining and archiving ancestral pasts and futures. Eryn Kimura is a fifth generation San Franciscan, and fifth generation Japanese- and Chinese-American and received her B.A. in Asian-American Studies and Psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

In the early 2000's, a kid in rural Alaska first discovered his family's DV camcorder (one of those that beeped like R2D2 when you popped open the back). At the time, creating home movies with his friends felt like a passing interest. Little did he know that two decades later, he will have turned what was considered a fun hobby into a professional career he absolutely loves. Always eager to grow, his experience includes 15+ years of extensive exposure to all aspects of production on a variety of formats, most specifically documentary, commercial work, and short narratives. You can follow his work at www.kshpics.com

Mohammad Sigari has been traveling since 21 and spent 6 intense years building corporate offices all over the world, on every continent, which naturally led into an antique business. M. Sigari is an antique business with a focus on old world pieces in modern interiors. Specializing in unique Asian and African pieces with a strong anchor of design around Samurai Armor.

Andi Wong explores the materials and languages of art - visual art, dance, music, theater, literary arts and new media. Her creative partners include Del Sol String Quartet (Angel Island Project, Jingwei Bird) and The Last Hoisan Poets (Genny Lim, Flo Oy Wong and Nellie Wong); composer/musician Marcus Shelby (Gwah Gai: Crossing the Street, Black Ball: The Negro Leagues and The Blues, Harriet’s Spirit, The Barbary Coast Roots); First Voice, led by artistic directors Brenda Wong Aoki and Mark Izu (Songs for J-Town, Story Circle of the Japanese Diaspora, and the upcoming world premiere of Soul of The City); and the Internet Archive (DJ Spooky’s Quantopia and DWeb Camp).

Flo Oy Wong, co-founder of the San Francisco-based Asian American Women Artists Association (AAWAA), is an artist/poet/educator. A recipient of three National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) awards, she was a visiting artist at various colleges and universities. Articles about her art are published in multiple publications. Growing up in Oakland Chinatown, she spoke her family’s ancestral dialect, Hoisan-wa. In the year 2000, Kearny Street Workshop presented Flo Oy Wong’s “made in usa: Angel Island Shhh” solo exhibit, which explored the identity secrets of Chinese immigrants detained and interrogated in the United States. In 2018, Flo published her art and poetry book, Dreaming of Glistening Pomelos (Amazon), inspired by her childhood. Contemporary Asian Theater Scene (CATS) presented Flo with their 2022 Image Hero Award.

Mike Inouye’s roots are in technology. He first joined NBC Bay Area as an Internet Reporter. He then served as an IT Technician at the station before making the jump from behind the scenes to in front of the camera.