“Death is like a gateway.  Dying doesn’t mean the end.  You go through it and on to the next thing.  It’s a gate”…From the Academy Award winning Japanese movie, DEPARTURES (OKURIBITO).

Shingo Sato was a man who was true to his name.  SHIN = the Truth of the Heart.  Shingo was true to himself.  Honesty was his Way. He could not even fake artifice.  Remarkable!

Listening to his heart, instead of the pressures of his culture to “succeed in business”, he dared dream a dream of a life of little stress, windsurfing in the gorgeous ocean around Maui.  He was handsome and physically strong and very young-looking at age 58 when he died suddenly of a massive brain hemorrhage.

Self-sufficient, creative, he had a unique sense of humor, and was very generous with his attributes, helping cater my daughter and son-in-law’s wedding party, taking care of stray cats and needy birds, and serving the few lucky people he included in his quiet life.

In the last 6 years, Shingo-chan practiced calligraphy, writing the Prajna Paramita Sutra–the Buddha’s Heart Sutra–over and over.  He experimented with an organic honey business (which he named “To My Honey”), mastered the use of the computer, taught himself to play the guitar (quite beautifully), baked special Indian breads and pizza, and produced 12 YouTube videos under the pen name Samurai Date Rokuemon. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhTfYq3gizE&playnext=1&videos=6Z3W1g9SRPs&fe  or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdNdO2OsWBM&playnext=1&videos=m3WsVJ2U5y8&feature=mfu_in_orderature=mfu_in_order.)

Shingo admired Hasekura Rokuemon Tsunenaga, a retainer of Lord Date Masamune  from Sendai who was the first Japanese to act as envoy to the Americas in the 1600’s.

Like Tsunenaga, Shingo was the first in his Sendai clan to travel afar.  He’d visited Tunisia, France, the U.S. and Bali.  He, too, was a pioneer–and gentle man–who shared his beautifully decorated home-baked goods on birthdays, Mother’s Day, and Christmas.  His Yule log cake was a perfect artistic confection.  Before his sudden passing on October 1, 2010, he was investigating the possibility of running a mobile lunch restaurant.  It might have succeeded wildly, even if it sold only his homemade Indian naan and his mouthwatering lamb curry.

I met Shingo in 2002 when he worked as sushi chef at the Diamond Resort.  A friend had invited me to join her there and I soon began to take advantage of the Resort’s kama’aina membership to the ofuro.  I treated myself every week to a long hot soak, Japanese style, and then to sushi afterward.   Although Shingo’s English was difficult to understand back then, we communicated well enough to become friends.  I remember a pivotal conversation in which he told me he loved jazz.  I did too.  It was remarkable to me that with our entirely different backgrounds, we had many quirky similarities in our tastes.

The first time Shingo visited my place in Kula for dinner, he became very animated because he realized we could see the waves coming into one of his favorite windsurfing spots: Kanaha. Later, when he’d taken the courageous step to leave the Diamond Resort and start a new life in Kula, he might call me for an eye-witness wave report before traveling down the mountain to the North shore.

In 2004, I was planning a trip to Japan to gather subject matter for writing stories for Eye Ai Magazine.  I was interested in Sendai tansu.  Shingo was planning on visiting his family at about the same time, and invited me to come to Sendai to meet them.  I was the first American that they had ever had visit their home.  Although they had painful memories from the days of WWII, I was welcomed warmly and generously.  They treated me like family.   Shingo’s mother, Chiyoe san, gifted me with two of her most lovely kimonos, brother and sister-in-law Tatsuo san and Masako san hosted delicious meals with local specialties and brother Shozo san took me to an historic tansu workshop and drove us to Matsushima and places beyond.  It was a memorable journey which included the last of the cherry blossoms and Date Masamune’s castle gate on that visit.

In 2005, Shingo planned out a trip to Japan for the two of us.  It was brilliant, down to the last difficult detail of bus and rail schedules in obscure places on Noto Hanto and Sado Shima.  Our favorite experience turned out to be a meal of fresh sashimi in a small town named Anamizu.  We made a return visit to Sendai, and this time visited the grave of Chiyoe san, who had passed away a few months before.  I promised her I would always remain friends with Shingo.

After Sendai, we went to Kamakura before a stop in Yokohama, where Shingo insisted upon acting as body guard for me in case there were yakuza (Japanese gangsters) about while I interviewed Japanese tattoo master Horiyoshi III.  Until he died, Shingo kept his eye on me.  He passed by my place each night returning from work, and slowed his pickup to make sure all seemed in order on the property.

Samurai Date Rokuemon was one of the most important characters in my life, I am more fully realizing this each day he will not return.  Although simply friends and still fond of each other, we hadn’t made the effort lately to visit to share news and a meal. It was grace that we spoke warmly on the phone the week before he died.  It happened when  I was in California, he in Okinawa.  His sudden death has revealed the immensity of the loss of his beingness and is offering a sharp lesson to look ever more deeply into–or compassionately past–the idiosyncrasies of a loved one.  Memories, now, remind me of how fortunate I have been to know Shingo.

One of Shingo’s favorite jazz tunes was John Coltrane’s  instrumental version of “You Don’t Know What Love Is” .  As our miraculous friendship was deepening, Shingo once wrote me that he was a little sad because he was kind of a wild cat who hadn’t learned how to make a place in the “world of words, like a right way, happiness and love. . .”.  Yet, I am extremely grateful to testify that Shingo’s actions reflected the One Love, and I was on the receiving side of a great deal of love, protection and care from a very dear friend, lover, and true samurai–a man of spirit and honor.

Shingo Sato:  I love you
You live in my heart Itsumademo (forever)

Mata au no. . . (until we meet again)
Your “Crazy Geisha”,  Sherry

PRAJNA PARAMITA SUTRA Great Invocation: Gate gate para gate para sum gate bodhi swaha! Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone utterly beyond, Enlightenment hail!

The lyrics of Shingo’s favorite jazz song, “YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT LOVE IS”:

You don’t know what love is
Til you’ve learned the meaning of the blues
Until you’ve loved a love you’ve had to lose
You don’t know what love is
You don’t know how lips hurt
Until you’ve kissed and had to pay the cost
Until you’ve flipped your heart and you have lost

You don’t know what love is
Do you know how a lost heart fears
The thought of reminiscing
And how lips that taste of tears
Lose their taste for kissing

You don’t know how hearts burn
For love that cannot live yet never dies
Until you’ve faced each dawn with sleepless eyes

You don’t know what love is
You don’t know how hearts burn
For love that cannot live yet never dies
Until you’ve faced each dawn with sleepless eyes

You don’t know what love is