Sahomi Tachibana was a petite woman. He stood only 4 feet, 9 inches tall. But his small size didn’t matter when he performed. “His presence just fills a scene,” said his daughter Elaine Werner.

When he wasn’t performing, Tachibana was teaching. Throughout her career, she taught the art of traditional Japanese dance to thousands of students and held classes in her living room in Portland until she was 95.

Tachibana passed away on October 10 at the age of 100.

Tachibana was born Doris Abey in Mountain View, California. His parents were Rin and Wakichi Abey and they owned a raspberry farm. He was the eldest of six children.

When the family was not working on the farm, they performed amateur kabuki shows. Tachibana, who started dancing at the age of 7, was also dancing in between these shows.

At the age of 11, Tachibana moved to Fukushima, Japan, to train as a Nihon-buyō dancer at the Tachibana School of Dance. He lived with his grandparents, who raised silkworms. His teacher’s name was Saho Tachibana. Traditionally, a student would take a modified version of his teacher’s name as his own.

“When they decide to give you a name, they take your teacher’s name and add something to it,” Werner said. Thus, Doris Abey became Sahomi Tachibana.

Everything changed in 1941. “His grandfather told him, ‘We’re going to have a war.’ You better go back to the United States,’” Werner said. Tachibana managed to board the last cruise ship to leave Japan before the attack on Pearl Harbor. He returned to California. However, with the beginning of the war, he and his family were sent to live in a prison camp in Tule Lake, California. They remained there until the end of 1942, when they were placed in a camp in Utah.

Tachibana was busy while he was imprisoned. “He was assigned as a guard and was responsible for making sure the mail was delivered, all the notices were on the bulletin boards, that kind of thing,” Werner said.

Tachibana also taught traditional Japanese dances to the girls in the camp. “He was very popular at camp because they didn’t have anything else to do,” he told KGW News in an interview.

When the war ended and he and his family were released, they moved to New Jersey to work in a cannery. They soon found work as gardeners and cooks for a family in Pennsylvania. However, his father hated the cold weather on the East Coast and decided to move the family back to California.

Tachibana refused to participate. Instead, she chose to study ballet in Philadelphia. She eventually decided to pursue a career as a traditional Japanese dancer in New York. “He thought there would be more opportunities there,” Werner said.

He made his first performance at the Le Meri Institute of Ethnology in 1948. That same year, she met her future husband, Frank Hrubant, at a modern dance class. Hrubant managed Tachibana’s career. “He did all the public relations and bookings,” Werner said.

He traveled all over the country, performing in 45 states. She has danced in Jacob’s Pillow, Radio City Music Hall, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the 1964 World’s Fair, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Chicago Lyric Opera. He toured the country as an actor in the musical “A Majority of One” for a year. He performed in the Broadway production of “Rashomon”.

He also tried his hand at directing. He served as assistant director in the Metropolitan Opera production of “Madame Butterfly” starring Leontyne Price. He helped direct the production of Tennessee Williams’ play “The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore.”“ Starring Tallulah Bankhead and Tab Hunter. Tachibana was indifferent to the celebrities his work sometimes brought him into contact with. “He wasn’t affected by fame. He had a job to do and that’s what he did,” Werner said.

He directed a show at a school for the deaf in Connecticut. “He said it was a really interesting experience,” Werner said. “It was difficult to teach deaf people to dance. “They put their hands on the ground to feel the rhythm of the music, and that’s how they learned.”

Despite all his success, Tachibana and his family lived a modest life. “We lived in a cold-water apartment,” Werner recalled. “There was no heat, you had to burn coal in the stove to stay warm. There were rats and fainted people in the corridor. We then got an upgrade. “We went to public housing in the Bronx and that was much better.”

Tachibana opened his own dance company in 1966. Several of his students continued their studies in Japan and took on their own Japanese dance names. In addition to teaching buyō, a traditional Japanese dance, Tachibana also taught Bon Odori, a folk dance.

In 1990, Tachibana and her husband moved to Portland to be near their daughter. Tachibana covered the living room walls with mirrors and transformed the space into a dance studio where she could teach students from all walks of life. “He was extremely good to his students,” Werner said. “So it was open to anyone who wanted to learn to dance. And he didn’t really care if you were okay or not.”

Tachibana continued to perform, taking the stage for the last time at the age of 81. He served as a consultant for the 2016 stop-motion animated film “Kubo and the Two Strings,” choreographing the traditional dance scenes featured in the film.

When she wasn’t dancing or teaching, Tachibana was gardening and practicing ikebana, the art of flower arranging. She baked, sewed, knitted, crocheted and made preserves that she loved to give to people as gifts. “He had a lot of talent, but people always associated him with dance,” Werner said.

Tachibana is survived by his daughter, Elaine Werner, and one grandchild and one great-grandchild.