June Yoshiko Kaililani Ryushin Tanoue

June Yoshiko Kaililani Ryushin Tanoue, MPH is a Kumu Hula (master teacher of the hula) and founder of Halau i Ka Pono - The Hula School of Chicago. She is also an ordained Zen priest and Dharma Holder in the White Plum Lineage. She co-founded the Zen Life & Meditation Center of Chicago with her husband, Robert Joshin Althouse Roshi. She has worked in food banking in Portland, Oregon; Big Island of Hawaii, and Chicago, Illinois for nearly 25 years.

Updated September 2014

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Interview with Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga 

  • Por June Yoshiko Kaililani Ryushin Tanoue
  • 1 Out 2014

Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga is still a ball of fire at 89 years old. She was born in Sacramento, California, a Nisei (second generation Japanese). Her parents, Sanji Yoshinaga (father) and Shigeru, were from Kumamoto Prefecture on the island of Kyushu, Japan.

Her family moved to Los Angeles in 1933 and lived there until the spring of 1942 when they were taken by the U.S. government to concentration and internment camps. Aiko was 18 years old. She remembers her high school principal telling the Nisei in her senior class that they, “don”t deserve to receive our diplomas because YOUR people ...

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Margaret Mitsuko Tahara Tanoue

  • Por June Yoshiko Kaililani Ryushin Tanoue
  • 22 Set 2014

ʻOiai e nana mai ana no na maka. 
While the eyes still look around.
While a person is living, treat him kindly and learn what you can from him.

ʻOlelo Noʻeau—Hawaiian Proverbs & Poetical Sayings, #2381

—Collected, translated, and annotated by Mary Kawena Pukui

This article is dedicated to my mother, Margaret Mitsuko Tahara Tanoue who died on November 22, 2011 in Honokaa, Hawaiʻi. How she lived her life helped me to become who I am today. She was down to earth and a wonderful cook, seamstress, athlete, hula dancer. She didn’t preoccupy herself with pleasing others. She was ...

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Crônicas Nikkeis #3 — Nomes Nikkeis: Taro, John, Juan, João?

My Many Names

  • Por June Yoshiko Kaililani Ryushin Tanoue
  • 2 Set 2014

I never thought much about my name growing up on the northeastern Hamakua Coast of the Big Island of Hawaii. My name is June Yoshiko Tanoue. I am Yonsei on my mother’s side of the family who came from Hiroshima. I am Sansei on my father’s side of the family who originally came from Kumamoto. I’m the oldest of five children.

My father, Robert Naoyuki Tanoue, born in Paauilo, was one of twelve children. His father worked as a laborer on the sugar plantation, and in his younger days bootlegged okolehao (local moonshine). Eventually my grandparents ran ...

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