# Sad month

- Author: Joichi Ito
- Date: 2004-06-25T13:41:53Z


On the 10th, one of my good friends, Mannojo Nomura of the 300-year old Izumi school of kyogen passed away suddenly. He was 44. His father and grandfather were both Japanese living national treasures and he was scheduled to take his grandfather's Manzo Nomura title in January. Our family house in Iwate used to have a no/kyogen theater and we had hosted his family in the past many years before I was born. A few years ago, Mannojo and I met up through Enjin 01, a cultural non-profit organization that we are both on the board of. He was always very cheerful and thoughtful and we talked a lot about rebuilding our family relationship. We had planned to travel to Iwate together soon. I'm really going to miss him...

Last week the grandmother in the house next door passed away and we had the first funeral in our little village. The village is still mourning the loss. Although I didn't know the woman, I can feel the mourning in the air.

Then, the day before yesterday, Kazuo Sato, the CEO of Net One Systems passed away. I met Mr. Sato through Osamu Sawada who used to be our COO at Neoteny. Mr. Sawada will be taking the CEO role now at Net One Systems. Mr. Sato and I met several times and I remember him being extremely driven and generous. We had agreed to go to dinner sometime and discussed working together more closely, but we had both been busy and hadn't gotten around to it. Net One Systems is one of the largest and fastest growing network solution providers and Mr. Sato is famous for building the extremely successful company with his focus and strength of character.

I'm sorry for clumping three obituaries together in one post, but they're all fresh in my mind right now...





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