Falmouth Magazine, May 31, 2018
For Japanese cuisine on the Cape, Inaho has flourished — even at a time when no one had heard of sushi
Cape Cod Magazine, October 2017
At least twice a week, Inaho’s owner/chef Yuji Watanabe makes an early morning trip to Boston’s fish markets—where he shops for the freshest local seafood. He’ll purchase a whole salmon, tuna or whitefish to serve in the restaurant that night. “He’s a fanatic about freshness,” says his wife, Alda Watanabe. “If it’s not in season, it just doesn’t taste right.”
The Watanabes opened Inaho on April 28, 1989, originally on Main Street in Hyannis. Alda says that while sushi was embraced by some, it was a difficult start. “People were like, ‘Raw fish? No thank you,’” laughs Alda. She says that when they moved their restaurant to Yarmouth Port in 1992, people would say, “You’re crazy, opening a Japanese restaurant in little Yarmouth Port!”
The Watanabes met in 1988 in Newport, Rhode Island, where Yuji was a sushi chef. “I’d gone out for sushi and he was the one who made my food,” Alda says fondly. Before then, Yuji had been a sushi chef in New York City for more than 10 years. Originally from Miyagi Prefecture, about 100 miles north of Tokyo, Yuji has done his share of traveling, including, in his 20s, bicycling around Australia for a year. After he and Alda met, they decided to quit their jobs—his as a sushi chef in Newport, hers at a car dealership—move to Cape Cod and open a Japanese restaurant. Alda says it took a couple of years to build a clientele. But little by little, people would try sushi.
Today, Inaho flourishes, with a waiting list for a table nearly every night. It’s been a family affair. The Watanabes have two sons—Hayato, now 26 and studying to be a lawyer at the University of Michigan; and Hiroto, 20, a pre-med student at Tufts University. They grew up with Inaho. “For them, there was school and a lot of Inaho time.” It was tough work, Alda says. “Sometimes we’d work six days a week throughout the year. We’d be lucky to squeeze in the beach for 15 minutes.”
According to Alda, one of the most popular dinner items, is scallops and lemon. A whole lemon or lime is hollowed out and cut in half. Scallops are mixed in spicy mayo sauce with roe and placed inside the hollowed-out lemon cup. For appetizers, customers love the eggplant with sweet, hot miso on top. “It bubbles up and it’s served piping hot,” says Alda, adding that traditionally Japanese cuisine is ordered for the table, like ordering a bunch of appetizers and sharing. “We bring it out as it’s made, so it’s not just sitting around.”
Popular sushi rolls are the dragon rolls—orange, red or double dragon. The Sophia roll has a seafood mix topped with sliced maguro and crispy fried onions with a spicy garlic ponzu sauce. Another customer favorite is shrimp and veggie tempura. The word Inaho means “ear of rice.” Alda explains: “Each kernel, as it bends over, and it’s heavy, means a good harvest, abundance. If there’s no rice in the house, you can’t do anything.”
–Marina Davalos
Cape Cod Life Annual Guide, 2017
What would compel the Emperor of Japan, visiting the United States to shore up post-war relations between the two countries, to include a side trip to Woods Hole? Pretty much the same thing that brings visitors from all over the world to Woods Hole: science.
During a two-week trip to the U.S. in 1975 with his wife, Empress Nagako, Emperor Hirohito of Japan made a short detour to this Falmouth village to visit the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL).
“His being in Woods Hole was a tribute to science,” says M. Patricia Morse, professor emerita of biology at the University of Washington and co-founder of the E.S. Morse Institute at the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Laboratories. A native of Woods Hole, Morse was biology professor at Northeastern University at the time, and was present at MBL when the emperor visited. “It was well known in marine biological communities that the emperor was active in marine biology,” Morse adds. He was an expert on hydroids, small creatures related to jellyfish and corals—a passion that stemmed from time spent during his childhood at his family’s imperial resort in Japan’s Sagami Bay, according to Hirohito’s obituary in The New York Times on January 7, 1989. The emperor wrote several scientific papers, including Some Hydrozoans of the Bonin Islands (1974) and Five Hydroid Species from the Gulf of Aqaba, Red Sea (1977).
In the summer of 2016, the Woods Hole Historical Museum hosted an exhibit celebrating the connections between Woods Hole and Japan. Coordinated by museum director Jennifer Gaines (who has since retired) and museum archivist Susan Witzell, the exhibit featured photos and documents showcasing the careers of Japanese scientists with connections to Woods Hole, and the knowledge of the ocean they shared together during the last 150 years. The exhibit included photos of Hirohito’s October 1975 visit and samples of the types of organisms he viewed while touring Woods Hole’s scientific facilities.
Emperor Hirohito uses a microscope at WHOI’s Redfield laboratory. Photo courtesy of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Hirohito, or Emperor Showa, as he is referred to posthumously, ruled Japan during World War II. During the U.S. occupation of Japan immediately following the war, he was vilified and stripped of his divine status under Japan’s new constitution. When the imperial couple visited Falmouth, Hirohito was 74 years old, the empress, 72.
The groundwork for the 1975 trip was laid the year before when then-President Gerald Ford, who was visiting Japan, invited the emperor and empress to come to the United States. According to documents on the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library website, the Japanese people were slightly nervous about this visit. They knew that an imperial Japanese visit to the U.S. would eventually take place—and they knew it had to go off without a hitch. Relations between the former adversaries had only just reached a high point, since the end of U.S. occupation in 1952. The emperor’s only other visit to the U.S. had occurred in 1971 during a stopover in Anchorage, Alaska, when then-President Richard Nixon had flown out specifically to meet with him. This meeting was seen by the Japanese as political opportunism on Nixon’s part, according to an analysis of the visit published in the March 7, 2013, Japan Times. The 1975 visit would be symbolic of the new U.S.-Japanese relationship, and the Japanese longed to make it a success, with no politics involved, as indicated by documents on the Ford Presidential Library website.
According to news reports at the time, the emperor came to Falmouth not merely to see the world-class facilities at MBL and WHOI, but to partake in science there. As an expert on hydroids, Hirohito was aware that WHOI’s senior scientist, Dr. Howard Sanders, had discovered a new phylum of hydroids while a graduate student at Yale University.
The Japanese spent an entire year in planning the visit. The emperor’s grand chamberlain and vice grand chamberlain, key figures in the agency that oversees the imperial household’s affairs, flew out numerous times during the year, mapping out the territory and deciding what security measures to take.
Dr. Susumu Honjo, WHOI professor emeritus, remembers when he first got word that the emperor wished to visit Woods Hole. “I received a letter from the grand chamberlain!” Honjo recalls. “I showed that letter to [WHOI director] Paul Fye, and he nearly fell off his chair.” Fye asked Honjo to personally arrange the visit. “I was the middle person, between the Japanese and the American diplomats,” Honjo continues. “And I was so young, only an associate scientist at the time.” In 2003 Honjo, who is now 83, was honored by the Japanese government with the Imperial Order of the Rising Sun for his research on the transfer of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to the ocean’s interior and his efforts to strengthen Japan’s role in the international ocean science research community.
Honjo says that the vice grand chamberlain came every couple of months to prepare for the emperor’s visit. A special trip for the empress, who was active in the arts, was also planned: She would visit the Sandwich Glass Museum, the Dan’l Webster Inn, and the Falmouth Artists Guild.
On October 4, 1975, a specially marked Japan Airlines jet, around the size of a DC-10, flew into Otis Air Force base, according to former Bourne selectman and Korean War veteran Jerry Ellis, who is now 82 and lives in Sagamore. During the Korean War, Ellis’s squadron was stationed in Japan, and during a stop at one island, Ellis had the chance to see the emperor and empress, who had come to visit the American troops. “I didn’t get to take a photo though,” Ellis recalls, “because there was suddenly an alert. So when I heard the empress would be in Sandwich, I was determined to get that photo.”
Ellis’s friend, the late Bill Richardson, had property in Sandwich that abutted Otis, and Ellis got to watch the emperor’s airliner touch down while seated on the hood of his pickup truck on Richardson’s property. The white jet had been newly painted and had red markings on it, possibly the emperor’s insignia, Ellis says. “It was a beautiful plane.”
The emperor’s motorcade of eight or nine cars arrived in Woods Hole around 2 p.m., according to Don Rhoads, a Yale geology professor who was on sabbatical and staying at a friend’s house in Woods Hole. Rhoads watched the motorcade as it proceeded up Millfield Street and turned right onto School Street. He remembers it well. “My two boys were very young, and they were all wide-eyed about seeing Hirohito. His motorcade turned the corner right in front of where we were staying, and you could see his head in the car. We waved to him, and he gave us a nice wave back. It was quite a thing to see him in person.” After retiring from Yale in 1986, Rhoads started a seafloor mapping company, Marine Surveys Inc., later known as Science Applications International. He sold the company in 2000 and currently lives in Falmouth.
When the emperor and his motorcade arrived, police and security guards were stationed on the roof of the Lillie Building at MBL, while about a dozen protesters lined the lawn near the sundial across Water Street protesting Japanese whaling. Some 20 to 25 Japanese dignitaries and reporters escorted Hirohito to the welcome ceremony held in the building in his honor. An elaborate tea had been prepared for after the ceremony, but the emperor surprised everyone and said, “Let’s just get to the science,” according to Dr. Shinya Inoue, MBL professor emeritus of biology, who was present for the ceremony. Scientists scurried and quickly rearranged themselves.
“The emperor didn’t come to have tea, he came to have science!” recalls Inoue, who invented the polarized light microscope, and later, the video microscope. Inoue came to the U.S. from Japan in 1948 to attend Princeton University, and later became a U.S. citizen. In 2010, the Japanese government honored him with the Order of the Sacred Treasure, for his scientific contributions and promoting cooperative research between Japan and the United States. In September 2016, he published his autobiography, Pathways of a Cell Biologist. A resident of Falmouth, Inoue will celebrate his 96th birthday in January.
Scientists escorted the emperor to a room they’d prepared for him—a makeshift laboratory in the library catalog room. In fact, numerous concessions were made for the emperor’s visit. “I remember Howard Sanders’s lab,” Rhoads recalls with a laugh. “They were all fishermen, and they always had their poles just lined up against the wall. Well, to clean up for the visit, Sanders got all new fishing racks built for him.”
Inoue recalls that when the emperor looked through his monochromatic polarized light microscope, he asked, “How come one can see so well?” It was the only microscope of its kind at the time, patented by Nikon and American Optical, Inoue says. “I explained to him that the microscope uses a special kind of polarized light, so things show up that you can’t normally see.” Through the lens of Inoue’s microscope, the emperor got to see specimens he was familiar with through an entirely new light, and specimens he’d never even heard of. “It was a special occasion,” says Inoue.
“Dr. Inoue allowed us to see chromosomes, and the emperor was very impressed,” says Morse. Japanese newsmen, who had traveled back and forth in the months before the visit, shot photos of the occasion for publication in Japan. “It was fun to see real genuine Japanese news people in such great numbers,” adds Morse.
Meanwhile, the Sandwich Glass Museum was also teeming with Japanese reporters, as Empress Nagako arrived there in her own motorcade. According to the Sandwich Historical Society’s November 1975 newsletter, The Acorn, the empress was quiet, soft-spoken, and intensely focused on all the pieces she saw. She seemed regretful when the vice grand chamberlain gestured that it was time to go, the newsletter notes.
Ellis, still hopeful about getting a photo, arrived just in time to see the empress coming out of the museum. He watched from the green in front of the Sandwich Town Hall directly across from the museum entrance. “It was thrilling to see an empress here in little Sandwich,” he says. “There was a lot of Secret Service. I happened to have glanced up at the bell tower of the First Church of Christ, and there were two Secret Service guys up there with binoculars. I said to my friend, ‘If those guys are up there, there’s got to be more of them around that we can’t see.’” Even with the security forces, Ellis got his photo that day.
The empress spent about 30 minutes at the museum, according to The Acorn. From there, she was taken via limousine to The Dan’l Webster Inn for a brief rest, reports an article in The Lowell Sun on October 5, 1975. A small Japanese doll encased in glass in the lobby commemorates the visit. The empress then stopped by the Falmouth Artists Guild, and her visit there was highlighted in the art center’s recent 50-year anniversary celebration.
The emperor and empress spent a mere two hours on Cape Cod before being whisked away from Otis Air Force Base to continue on their U.S. tour. But the visit left a lasting impression on those fortunate enough to have witnessed it.
A native Cape Codder, Marina Davalos is a freelance writer who lives in Cotuit.
As an 11-year-old, Colleen Vandeventer often posed as a model for her artist grandmother’s painting class students. “I had the most difficult time trying to sit motionless for 30 minutes!” she recalls. “I’d have to pick a point on the wall and stare at it.”
Her youthful impatience notwithstanding, Vandeventer was invigorated by her grandmother’s art and fascinated to see how she critiqued her students’ work. She loved all the activity in the studio, even the pungent smell of paint.
In her teens, Vandeventer confided her desire to learn to paint to her grandmother, who arranged classes with a teacher, figuring it might be difficult for her to take lessons from a family member. She began with still lifes, and quickly fell in love with oil painting.
Her career as an artist, however, would be put on hold while she joined the work force, first as an executive secretary, then in market research. She enrolled at Stonehill College and earned a bachelor’s degree in business while working full time. When she started a family in the late 1980s and chose to stay at home with her children, she decided to return to art, and enrolled in classes at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
She threw herself into her art studies, participated in workshops and learning from mentors. She told herself if her art career didn’t develop, she could always fall back on marketing. “I gave myself five years,” she says. Then came a turning point: In 1994 a friend asked her to teach an art class a few nights per week. Additional teaching assignments followed, and she also took on framing work for other artists’ creations.
In 2001, Vandeventer opened her own working studio—Studio 5—in an old jewelry factory in North Attleborough. “It was the best thing I ever did for myself,” she says, “being able to do my own thing, and I’ve managed to elevate it into full-time work.” She has since moved her studio to Pawtucket, R.I.
The realistic features of Vandeventer’s landscapes soften as the viewer gets closer to the individual painting, a result of her loose, often feathery, brushstrokes. She gains inspiration, she says, from “the glow of a certain time of day, the mood that the atmosphere creates, or the way the light falls across an object, and the feelings evoked versus the actual subject matter.” She describes her style as “impressionistic realism,” and this also characterizes her still lifes, particularly her richly hued flowers.
Vandeventer enjoys the company of fellow artists. In 2013 she and two other painters, Susan Carey and Kathy Edmonston, opened Gallery Artrio in Hyannis, where they showcase their work as well as that of other artists. She also teaches classes and workshops out of her studio. “We need the constant exposure to others, because that’s how we learn,” Vandeventer says. “The camaraderie, impromptu critiques, and just general art discussions are motivating and a way to keep fresh.” – Marina Davalos
Colleen Vandeventer’s work can be seen at Gallery Artrio, 50 Pearl Street, Hyannis
Scott Terry has always had art in his blood, but it took a quiet revelation on the other side of the world to make him fully realize what his life’s calling would be. “I remember the exact moment I had what you would call an epiphany,” Terry recalls. “I was sitting in my hut in Bali in 1972, painting a sign for these kids who owned the place I was staying at, when suddenly I knew I’d be doing this for the rest of my life.”
As a child growing up in Rhode Island, Terry loved to draw and paint. After taking classes at the Rhode Island School of Design, he enrolled in a medical illustration program at Drew University in New Jersey with the goal of taking his passion for art into the “real world.” But the travel bug bit him, and beginning in 1972 he spent a few years traveling throughout Asia. He stayed for months at a time in Afghanistan, Nepal, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and India. Captivated by the art he encountered, Terry immersed himself in learning such diverse forms as batik design in Yogyakarta on the island of Java and block printing in Nepal.
When he returned to the United States in 1975, Terry studied painting at the Swain School of Design in New Bedford (now part of the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth). Since then he has dedicated his life to painting and commercial fishing. “All I’ve ever done,” he says, “is paint, draw, and fish.”
Terry loves spending time outdoors, both at his summer home on Martha’s Vineyard and at his winter home in Vermont. In summer he fishes the waters of Nantucket Sound, and his brilliant yet subtle land and seascapes in soft purples and pale oranges are inspired by countless sunrises and sunsets witnessed from his boat. His full-moon scenes, on the other hand, are characterized by bold, striking colors. He paints mostly in oils but sometimes works with pastels.
A professional artist for nearly four decades, Terry continues to take on new challenges. His latest endeavor is fossil preparation; he prepares fossils for display in museums and private collections.
And the artist has never lost his love of learning. “When I’m painting, I know I’m learning,” Terry says. “It’s hard to put into words, but I know that I know things I didn’t know before I did the painting.” – Marina Davalos
Scott Terry’s paintings can be seen at two galleries on Martha’s Vineyard: North Water Gallery in Edgartown and the Granary Gallery in West Tisbury.
Growing up in an artistic family, Sarah Holl always intrinsically understood that she would be an artist. “In fact, one of my earliest memories is of throwing myself on the floor in a fit of frustration over a finger painting I was doing—I was 3 or 4!” she says. “I still do that, by the way,” she adds with a laugh.
The daughter of the late Harry Holl, creator of Scargo Pottery, Sarah Holl grew up surrounded by the beauty of Scargo Lake in Dennis. She began selling her own pottery—little ceramic houses—when she was just 5 years old, and she decorated and sold her father’s pottery throughout her teen years.
Holl considers herself lucky to have interned with her father; her sculptor grandfather, Arnold Geissbuhler; artist Cynthia Packard; and artist Sam Feinstein. “This is the reason why I take on so many interns now,” she says. “It feels like I’m giving back.”
For most of her life Holl has been a sculptor, doing some painting on the side. But in the past few years, she has focused on painting and collage, using acrylics and mixed media on wood panels. She creates large-scale, permanent pieces that can be displayed outside and last for generations. “They’re outdoors, and they’ll last forever, long after I’m gone,” she says. “I feel like that gives some purpose to my life.”
Holl uses an unusual combination of materials to create her paintings/collages on panels, which can be as large as 8 feet from top to bottom. She begins by applying acrylic paint to a wood panel, and then adds some reflective foils or cut-up pieces of paper, giving the piece a textured look. She finishes the work with an epoxy resin to seal it and add shine. Some of her large-scale pieces can be seen at Cape Cod Hospital and at The Naked Oyster restaurant, both in Hyannis, as well as Anejo Mexican Bistro in Falmouth.
Her relief sculpture can be described as representational, while her painting tends toward the abstract. She paints loosely representational horses, the female figure, or flowers in a vase, often using bright color for an accent and funky shapes in the background. “My goal is to revert back to the abstract,” she says, “like the kind of stuff you did as a kid.” – Marina Davalos
Sarah Holl’s main studio is at the Cultural Center of Cape Cod in South Yarmouth, located upstairs in the facility’s new wing. When the center is open, viewers are welcome to visit Holl’s studio and see her works in progress as well as finished pieces. She teaches figure drawing classes at the center as well as art at the Sturgis Charter Public School in Hyannis.