Edward Iwao Koizumi: A pioneer who spreading tea ceremony

 

Cultural News, September 2007

 

 

Edward Iwao Koizumi, urban development planner in profession and Christian leader in Japanese American community of Orange County, has devoted his efforts to spread Japanese tea ceremony in California. (Cultural News Photo)

 

By Takeshi Nakayama

 

VILLA PARK – A Tokyo-born architectural designer, whose love for his native culture led him to combine work and pleasure in cultivating people’s interest in things Japanese, leads visitors to an authentic teahouse located next to his spacious home that includes a Japanese garden.

 

     Edward Iwao Koizumi, 80, built the 17-tatami (mat) Urasenke-style teahouse in 1983. It has a tea room (chashitsu), a welcoming area and a mizuya (tea preparation room). He and his wife, Yoshiko, proudly show their guests a low entryway through which all guests must enter bowing down to show their humility.

 

   Teahouses are free-standing additions with several rooms, while tea rooms are located within a home or building, he explains. “This teahouse took three years to complete, because I had never done one before.”

 

    Koizumi says he became interested in making teahouses because his wife taught classes in Japanese tea ceremony, the ritualized preparation of powdered green tea in the presence of guests who are led to enjoyment and peace of mind. He and his wife have practiced for several decades and organized the Chado Urasenke Tankokai Orange County Association (tea maters’ association of Urasenke school) in 1988.

 

     “The Grandmaster appointed my husband as president of the California Konnichi Kai (tea practitioners’ association with Urasenke school) in 1982,” Yoshiko Koizumi explains. “Then my husband decided he had to spread the knowledge and interest of tea ceremony. First he set up a temporary tea room in our dining room. Then he decided to build a real teahouse here.”

 

     Koizumi has designed and built 20 teahouses or tea rooms throughout California. The average cost of building a teahouse now is about $150,000, he estimates.

 

     “I enjoy designing teahouses,” he says. “We have to practice the tea ceremony to learn how to design teahouses.”

 

    Born in 1927 to a banker father, Koizumi graduated from Shonan High School in Kanagawa prefecture during World War II and trained to be a Navy officer. After the war in 1945, he studied architecture and theology at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo. In 1951, he received a scholarship to study architecture at the University of Southern California.

 

     When he was a student at USC, a Los Angeles Times editor contacted Koizumi to learn about Japanese architecture because his knowledge of Japanese architects. His contribution resulted in a long article about renowned architect Kenzo Tange in the Los Angeles Times.

 

    After three years in USC, Koizumi joined an Orange County architectural firm and learned urban development. In 1964 he opened an office in Huntington Beach, specializing in urban development. In 1971, he started his present firm in Orange, E.K. International Design & Development Corporation.

 

     His work on designing teahouse is relatively minor portion of his professional works.

His teahouse clients include Japanese who want a place to perform their art such as a tea ceremony, and some non-Japanese clients want a Japanese garden, he says.

 

     Koizumi has been active in many community organizations. In 1976, he organized the Japanese Culture Association of Orange County; in 1977 he helped open Orange Coast Japanese Language School in Costa Mesa; in 1980, he founded Urasenke California Konnichikai; in 1986, he helped organize the Orange County Japanese American Association.

 

   A Christian since postwar days, Koizumi started the Southern California Christian Church Youth Federation in 1961, and helped open Nozomi United Methodist Church of Fountain Valley in 1976.

 

    Koizumi attracted numerous businesses to Orange County through lectures he delivered in Japan and Taiwan. “They learned of Irvine and Mission Viejo companies from my lectures and showed interest in locating here,” he relates.

 

    Honored recently as a Pioneer during the annual Nisei Week celebration of Japanese heritage in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, Koizumi exclaims, “I receive great satisfaction from bringing Japanese culture to the community.”

 

   Takeshi Nakayama is a free-lance journalist who live in Walnut, California.