<Begin Segment 11>

DG: Well, tell us a little bit about going to school now, and you took...

MH: You mean USC?

DG: USC.

MH: Oh, first I took a examination. I took piano lesson from now Michiko, Empress Michiko. Her teacher was my teacher, too.

DG: At USC?

MH: No, not the USC, in Japan. When, time is different. My time he just came back from Germany so very strict, short temper, and then my fingers all purple. That's the way he taught me.

BF: From practicing? Oh, so they were bruised. Oh, my goodness.

DG: This was like around 1925, then, that you were doing this? Because was Western music popular then?

MH: No, not the popular, but we had a church so have a piano. So I took a lesson from little tot, and then I took examination at the USC, they said, "We didn't know that Japan had such a good teacher, piano teacher. So we will take you." That's the answer.

BF: As a music major then.

MH: Uh-huh, music major.

DG: Now, back to this Empress Michiko's teacher, was this -- where did you take the lessons? In Tokyo?

MH: Tokyo.

DG: Okay.

MH: After graduate high school.

DG: And had you taken piano before that?

MH: Yes. One graduate from -- he came from Hiroshima and taught us. Of course, he had several top people, navy officers.

DG: Well, not very many people played in those years, then. Your mother was unusual, right?

MH: That's true. Uh-huh. That's true.

DG: I wonder where she had, her parents had the influence to start training her in piano. You said she took lessons when she was little.

MH: I wanted, that's why. I wanted to play the piano, that's why Father send me a teacher.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.