PJ Hirabayashi

Patti Jo "PJ" Hirabayashi is one of the pioneers of the North American Taiko movement. She serves as the Artistic Director and founding member of San Jose Taiko, the third taiko group to form in the United States.

Patti Jo "PJ" Hirabayashi was born on May 18, 1950 in San Rafael, CA. PJ is a third-generation Japanese (Sansei) and was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. As a child, PJ got involved in dance, studying styles such as tap, ballet, and acrobatics. She attended Irvington High School where she would study piano and guitar in addition to dance.

For college, she initially attended California State University, Hayward (CSU Hayward) where she majored in math for two years with the plan to become a computer analyst. PJ's years in college coincided with the Civil Rights Movement, which gained a lot of steam in colleges across the nation in terms of organized protest. While in college PJ began to become aware of the internment experience of WWII and of other injustices to people of color, and because of this she began to get involved in community activism and Asian American studies. She then transferred to University of California, Berkeley with a Social Science major (a combination of ethnic studies, sociology, and psychology) where she focused on Asian-American studies. After obtaining her degree in Social Science from Berkeley, she spent a year in Japan before returning to San Jose to obtain a master's degree in Urban and Regional Planning from San Jose State University in 1977. Her master's thesis is on the preservation of San Jose's Japantown, and has become a widely used reference for research and for community action committees currently discussing the preservation of San Jose Japantown. In 1977-'79, she served as Acting Coordinator for "Asian American Communities" classes and supervisor for students gaining fieldwork experience in Asian American service organizations.

She began to get involved in the early formations of San Jose Taiko in 1973 through Roy Hirabayashi whom she met in 1969 during her years at CSU Hayward. They would eventually get married and become the leaders of San Jose Taiko, Roy as the managing director and PJ as the artistic director.

PJ had some exposure to taiko through Obon festivals growing up. However, she was finally struck by it during a performance done by San Francisco Taiko Dojo through a cultural program featured through the Issei project she was involved with. In this performance she saw two women performing on equal level with the men and, “remembered thinking, that’s fantastic to see women play such a powerful activity, [yet] still be connected to Japanese culture.” After this, PJ had an interest to connect to her Japanese heritage through the art of taiko. When she returned to San Jose State in 1973 she was able to get involved with taiko because Roy Hirabayashi had just started San Jose Taiko. Even though PJ had never had any prior instruction of taiko before, under training from groups such as Ondekoza, Kodo, Warabi-za, and Oedo Sukeroku, PJ went on to become a leading taiko artist and teacher.

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