Tazuo Basho Yamaguchi is a Japanese-American poet, filmmaker, storyteller, musician, painter/Illustrator, Puppeteer, and both a national and world head-to-head haiku champion. He is also master of the English form of haiku and senryū. He has published four books of poetry, six recorded volumes, and produced the National Poetry Slam, International World Poetry Individual Slam, Women of the World]] DVD from 2002 to 2013. He has made two documentary films - Pass It Around (2000) documenting the first ever Asian Spoken Word Summit that took place in Seattle WA, The Art of The Short Poem (2007) - The first ever English Language Haiku Documentary shot at the annual Haiku of America Conference in Winston Salem featuring Sonia Sanchez, William J. Higginson (Haiku Handbook) and many other contemporary Haiku Poets. He has published 'Symphony' (2019) a collection of his paintings, illustrations, stories and poems from his epic Matsu, He is a partnered streamer on twitch.tv (2018). He has published 4 Picture Books all from his epic Matsu - Where It's At (2019) - Eyes on The Sir-prize (2019) After The Big Race (2020) (a story that tells what happened after the classic Aesop fables tale Tortoise and The Hare) and The first of a series Don't Get Mad At The Monster (2021) He is the founder of IPaintCreatures & The Funkyipuppets (2021) - the first ever audio theater Troupe formed on clubhouse to start to tell his epic story MATSU (a fantasy - sci-fi epic composed in the grand tradition of Tales of the Heiki The Illiad Odyssey. He is the founder of MatsuVerse PBC - a public company formed in February (2023) to support the telling of his epic storyworld experience MATSU. Where he has put together Ipaintcreatures (his artist moniker (2016) and the Funkyipuppets puppet troupe in the grand tradition of Jim Henson's Muppets to tell the story of Matsu. with MatsuVerse PBC Tazuo is carrying on the grand tradition of such creature storytellers as Shigeru Mizuki, Jim Henson, Charles Shultz, Shel Silverstein, George Lucas, Dr. Seuss, and Miyazaki
Biography
Early life
He was born to Edward and Betty Yamaguchi in Tokyo, Japan, into a Japanese American family with direct royal descent to the royal shigin poets and samurai class of ancient Japan. Tazuo was named after his master shigin poet grandmother, Tazue Sakaguchi. He was diagnosed with bone cancer at the age of eleven, and was told his left arm would need to be amputated. It was estimated he had only four more years to live. For treatment, his mother used alternative methods of healing.
Yamaguchi holds three College Degrees from California State University, Chico CSUC - in Learning and Cognition Psychology, Multi=Media Arts and a Masters in Education emphasis of Fine Arts and Technology (Summa cum laude)
Business ventures
In 1991, Yamaguchi was chosen from 8,000 applicants from around the world to work with George Lucas on several educational entertainment-based projects. During this position working directly with George Lucas - he applied his painting/Illustration, poetic storytelling skills, and filmmaking multi-media skills with LucasFilm, he discovered the power of mythic storytelling through digital media and the introduction to Joseph Campbells works. He also helped the formation of GLEF - the George Lucas Educational Foundation.
From 1992 to 2004, Yamaguchi ran a San Francisco-based company called Xstudios specialising in emerging digital technologies such as interactive media and computer-based training, and part of the multimedia revolution in the San Francisco Bay Area, where many companies (Pyramid Technologies, Oracle, Apple Computers, Autodesk, Intel Corporation, Microsoft Corporation were involved in integrating the traditional arts of storytelling, poetry, illustration, and the fine arts with emerging digital technologies.
Poetry career, Arts Educator, Filmmaker, Painter, Storyteller
In 1996, Yamaguchi participated in the 15th annual Taos Poetry Circus in Taos, New Mexico. He met Bob Holman, and was introduced to the 1981 Chicago-invented oral tradition of Al Simmons' Original World Heavyweight Poetry Bouts, which years later morphed into Poetry Slam. He then proceeded to take his film gear to Portland, Oregon to the 1996 National Poetry Slam. He filmed most of the event and participated in a haiku competition, a genre of poetry he had practiced since grade school, and became the "1996 National Head to Head Haiku Champion." He also collaborated with Paul Devlin, a national sport videographer and director of critically acclaimed slam poetry documentary SlamNation. In 2001 he produced his first documentary film, about the Asian American spoken word national movement, called Pass it Around (PIA).