When she speaks, Kazuko Honjo sets off an avalanche of words. She has ideas and energy, inborn talent and developed skills, insights and understanding. Now that she is taking stock and formulating plans, she has reached, she says, her turning point.
Many people remember with fondness her father, Keikoh Honjo, artist and promoter of young artists. He spent much of his youth in Harbin, where he met and married his wife. Kazuko and one sister were born in Harbin. "My parents lived a cosmopolitan life there," Kazuko said. "I was 3 when as refugees we came back to Japan. My father had lost everything, but had very happy memories. He was young and optimistic, willing to do anything, and he began again in Tokyo. My youngest sister was born here."
Kazuko grew up amongst "artists who wore yellow shirts and red shirts. So I went to work in a bank where men wore business suits. After a year I decided that wasn't for me, and I joined my father in his art work." For her own sake she studied English. Language proficiency led her to a performance of the Tokyo Amateur Dramatic Club, now renamed Tokyo International Players. There she met a Canadian diplomat, Gordon Longmuir, whom she later married. She went with him to make her home in Vancouver. Her son was born in Ottawa, and her daughter was born in Korea during the parents' posting there.