Ode to a modern samurai who wielded a mighty pen

Sam Goto was a modern day samurai who lived his life in Seattle. However, unlike the samurai of Japan, Goto’s weapon of choice was not the sword, but the pen.

Goto, a second-generation Japanese American, created comics that conveyed the experience of a Japanese American living in Seattle. His daughter, Mercer Island resident Kelly Goto, is honoring his legacy with a book, called “Seattle Samurai: A Cartoonist’s Perspective of the Japanese American Experience,” that showcases his comics along the history of Japanese people in the Pacific Northwest.

Shigeru “Sam” Goto was born in Seattle in 1933. Kelly said Sam started drawing when he was only two or three years old, tracing comics and drawing on the back of napkins.

“He always kind of saw the world in a different way,” Kelly Goto said. “He was mostly just able to translate thoughts and what he remembered into illustrations. So that’s what he’s done all his life.”

Sam worked as a dental technician and created dental bridges and crowns out of gold, porcelain or ceramic. His need to create art blurred into his work with not only the quality of his creations, but the additions of small drawings and cartoons he would hide out of sight on his work.

“He had kind of this weird sense of humor,” Goto said. “My dad said, ‘Well, what do you want me to put on the tooth?’ And [the dentist] said, ‘Well, you can put my name on it.’ And so my dad would put ‘My Name’ and drew that on the back of the tooth.”

Kelly said Sam would also sometimes put little drawings on the dental work as well.

While he was uncomfortable showing his work in public, he shared his artwork with his family making little rings and trinkets for them from leftover dental material.

“He made trinkets, like he made a charm bracelet for my mom and every year she would get a new charm that kind of represented something special that happened that year,” Goto said.

In 1970, Sam’s wife, Dee Goto, was asked by the University of Washington to interview and document all of the first-generation Japanese in the area before they passed.

“She became a collector of oral history,” Goto said. “They realized that there’s this whole thing with oral history and tradition that they don’t want to lose.”

Dee and Sam worked together to write and self-publish several books on their family history. Dee then started a writing group, called Omoide, to record the oral histories of other families. They then made these into books and Sam illustrated them.

Kelly Goto said her father loved comics like the Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes and Li’l Abner. She said her home’s shelves were full of comic books.

“He just loved this storytelling through comics, and he would make us comics growing up, my sister and I. He would make us comic books and draw these funny events that happened,” Goto said. “He just had this way of storytelling through his illustrations with his weird sense of humor.”

When Sam was thinking about retiring, his wife convinced him to begin drawing a weekly comic strip in The North American Post, which is the Japanese American newspaper in Seattle, to help pay for the Japanese Community & Cultural Center of Washington’s ad in the newspaper. He contributed his comics to the newspaper from 2012 until his death in 2018.

“Maybe a week before he passed, he was on a ventilator and he was drawing,” Goto said.

The comics were based on the first Japanese-American born in Seattle, Shigeru Osawa, who was interviewed by Dee in her work for the University of Washington.

“My dad created these characters, Shigeru Tomo, and then Samurai Shigeru, which was like his alter ego. It was sort of the journey of the first Japanese-American born in Seattle, and how they went through life in an everyday way,” Goto said. “So there’s stories of resilience and trying to do the right thing, wanting to be American, trying to get an education and working hard.”

Goto said this fictitious character not only mirrors the first Seattle-born Japanese-American, but her own father’s story and his discovery of what it means to be a second generation Japanese-American. Goto describes a conflict between Japanese values and the wanting to be American that sometimes shows up in Sam’s comics. Goto said Sam wanted to convey a message to the next generation through his comics.

“He was trying to kind of throw in these little ‘isms,’ little bits of wisdom, but really practical practical wisdom along the way,” Goto said. “And then, of course, how does heritage and the Japanese culture affect who we are and how we act and maybe even who we want to become, and how we treat other people.”

When Sam became sick a few weeks before he passed, Kelly came to her family home and found it full of her dad’s collections and sticky notes with his wisdom. These brought back memories for Kelly of her father’s teachings to her and her sister.

“He was really profoundly wise in his own way. He had strong ethics and a strong moral code and I really believe he gets it from a kind of a samurai essence that he had,” Goto said.

Kelly said as a part of her mourning process and to honor her dad’s legacy, she felt the need to share her dad’s comics with the world.

“Maybe it has a broader appeal, because you know, it’s not just about my family, and it’s not just about the Japanese that lived in Seattle, but it’s about any immigrant culture and how they both integrated into American lifestyle and also what they carry through the next generation,” Goto said.” These are stories that any culture can convey and my dad just happened to draw it all out.”

Kelly said she struggled on how to organize everything her father had left.

“It’s like if you had a thousand Lego pieces and you put them on the ground, and you were like, ‘How do I put it together in a way that maybe could make sense?” Goto said. “It was such a long and tedious experience.

Kelly chose to organize the book around eight virtues of the samurai, also known as Bushido, and have her father comics and the story of Japanese-Americans that demonstrate each of the values in individual chapters. The values Kelly includes are courage, mastery, honor, loyalty, integrity, respect, honesty and compassion.

“It’s like Charles Schultz meets Shogun,” Goto said.

Kelly said she hopes readers will see the resiliency, hope and the things that tie us together as a community in her father’s story.

“I just think of the everyday experiences and how we live our lives, each little moment that’s important and trying to stick with your values and take the high road, even if things don’t feel right. I think that’s really what he was trying to convey is, stay true to yourself, stay true to others,” Goto said. “Honor your culture and kind of live your life in a positive way.”

Goto has planned a book release party on Oct. 23 at Island Books on Mercer Island. Goto said she will have a book reading and the book, “Seattle Samurai,” will be available for purchase at the event.

The book is now available for pre-order online through multiple online booksellers.

“All of the proceeds from the book sales go back to the Japanese cultural center,” Goto said. “I’m really encouraging as many people as possible to buy through independent booksellers.”

Links to pre-order the book, as well as a sneak peek of the introduction and first chapter of Seattle Samurai, can be found on the website seattlesamurai.com.