In a diminutive wooden house tucked behind the tile-topped white walls surrounding Tenryuji Temple, a World Heritage site in Kyoto's Arashiyama district, lives Henry "Seisen" Mittwer, 91, a Japanese-American Buddhist priest, author, ikebana and ceramic artist.
On a recent midwinter afternoon, as unseen tourists streamed by meters away, Mittwer, with his wife, Sachiko, 89, sat and reflected on a life that, Zelig-like, entangled him in many of the most wrenching events of the 20th century.
Henry Mittwer was born in Yokohama in 1918. His father was an American film distributor who first came to Japan in 1898 as a seaman en route to the Spanish-American War being waged in the Philippines. His mother was a former geisha from the geisha quarters in Tokyo's Shinbashi. He was the youngest of three boys.