Michael Goro Takeuchi
@IrontakMichael Goro Takeuchi is a longtime journalist based in Santa Barbara, California. In addition to features appearing in publications like the Huntington Frontiers Magazine, the Rafu Shimpo, and Nichi Bei Weekly, his proudest journalistic achievement was penning a weekly sports column in the Santa Barbara News-Press for 17 consecutive years without a miss. He is currently in a race with himself to see which of the two novels he is writing finishes first.
Updated April 2022
Stories from This Author
Academy Award Nominated Writer Iris Yamashita Uses Her Lifelong Love of Writing to Forge Her Next Chapter
Jan. 13, 2023 • Michael Goro Takeuchi
Thanks to a lifelong love of the written word, Iris Yamashita continues to carve out a nice literary life for herself. And after reaching the highest echelon of one medium by earning an original screenplay Academy Award nomination, the Nikkei author is traveling a different path on her literary journey via her debut novel City Under One Roof. “I am really excited to see this whole process,” Yamashita said in a video interview with Discover Nikkei. The page-turning thriller releases …
A Later Start Is Proving To Be Fruitful For Award-Winning Nikkei Author Alma Katsu
April 22, 2022 • Michael Goro Takeuchi
Although Nikkei writer Alma Katsu got a relatively late start on her writing career, it doesn’t appear she is going to stop anytime soon. And that’s good news for her readers. In the 12 years since she was first published at the age of 50, Katsu has etched out an award-winning literary career filled with bestsellers, critical acclaim and praise from some legendary peers along the way. With horror legend Stephen King singing Katsu’s praises about her previous novel The …
Dave Roberts, Mr. Santa Barbara Dodger, Tommy Lasorda, and “Fred” Sinatra
Nov. 16, 2020 • Michael Goro Takeuchi
When manager Dave Roberts and the Los Angeles Dodgers clinched a long awaited World Series title, the journalist in me felt pretty happy for one of the truly good guys I wrote about over the years as a player, coach, and skipper. As a fellow Nikkei, watching the Okinawa born Roberts, whose mother is Japanese and late father African American, the same scene elicited more powerful feelings within while triggering childhood memories of watching baseball games with Mr. Santa Barbara …
Walking (and Flying) Thousands of Miles in My Father’s Geta
Dec. 1, 2017 • Michael Goro Takeuchi
If Dad were alive today, I think he would have been simultaneously embarrassed and proud that something of his is currently on display in one of the world’s most prestigious and famous museums. And my late mother, would be standing right beside him smiling with amusement about the improbability of it all. Yet since February, something of Goro Takeuchi’s indeed sits a few dozen steps away from Abraham Lincoln’s iconic top hat inside the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American …
Uncle, The Imperial Dancer: A well-traveled performer of stage and screen is profiled in a forthcoming book by his nephew
Nov. 21, 2014 • Michael Goro Takeuchi
The elderly man leaned on his walker while shuffling across the wood-stained floor, pulling behind him what amounted to his life-support system. The wheels creaked, and were severely in need of a couple of squirts of WD40. The septuagenarian took two steps, then pulled the cylindrical tank closer to him before planting the rubber knobs of the walker onto the floor. Without any other ambient noise, the action seemed to mimic a rhythmic beat that could surely be an opening …
