Remembering Ben Makihara ’50 and Yoshi Shimizu ’55, pioneers and lifelong champions of an ongoing exchange

In the summer of 1949, Minoru “Ben” Makihara ’50 boarded a ship near his home in Tokyo, Japan, bound for the United States. After a two-month voyage, he arrived at a port in New Jersey. Representatives of St. Paul’s School were there to pick him up and bring him to Boston. A train eventually transported Makihara to Concord, N.H., his final destination, where he enrolled at the School. It was, by then, September 1949, and Makihara’s arrival at St. Paul’s, just four years after the end of World War II, marked a profile in courage for the young man.

“Relatives of Mr. Viall came to pick me up and brought me to Boston,” he recalled in a 2010 interview with Alumni Horae. “Everyone was kind and welcomed me warmly. I did have some worries about what would happen next, but I was young and more excited about being in the United States.”

Makihara’s pioneering year at St. Paul’s spawned generations of exchanges between students of SPS and Seikei School in Japan, including 58 Japanese students who have spent at least one year in New Hampshire since 1949. St. Paul’s sent its first student to study at Seikei in 1976 – 39 more have followed. Makihara’s arrival at SPS was facilitated in part by Seikei Junior High School Principal Mamoru Shimizu, whose own son, Yoshiaki “Yoshi” Shimizu ’55, would become the program’s third exchange student four years later. Mamoru Shimizu helped shape an early stage of the exchange program on the Seikei side by responding to the original invitation from St. Paul’s School, when Makihara was asked to become the first from Seikei to attend the School. Yoshi Shimizu spent two years at SPS, between 1953 and 1955.

In the decades that followed the SPS experiences of Ben Makihara and Yoshi Shimizu, both men remained committed to the School and the cultural exchange between St. Paul’s and Seikei, as did Tatsuo Arima ’53, the second Seikei Scholar. The cross-cultural interchange between institutions was initially spearheaded by former Rector Henry Kittredge to encourage the development of globally conscious leaders through the understanding of culture, language, and shared scholarship. The School community celebrated the 70-year relationship of goodwill with Seikei in Chapel in October 2019. Over the years, SPS has welcomed not only the Japanese exchange students, but also teachers and administrators from Seikei, both during the academic year and in the summer, when the Advanced Studies Program is hosted on SPS grounds.

The gratitude for two of the first Seikei Scholars has taken on particular sigificance over the last several months with the passing of Ben Makihara on December 13, 2020, and Yoshi Shimizu on January 20, 2021. “My father loved St. Paul’s,” says Makihara’s son, Jun. “The School taught him about the depth of generosity of America, an unshaken belief that guided his life and business career.”

After leaving SPS, Makihara went on to Harvard. He worked his way up through the corporate structure of Mitsubishi to eventually become president and chairman of the Japanese giant. As a leader of Mitsubishi from 1992 until his retirement in 2019, Makihara was widely known as an internationalist and bridge builder – much as his roots suggested when he arrived at SPS in 1949. He took advantage of his fluency in English and global connections to diversify and modernize the traditional Japanese firm.

“I remember Ben climbing the stairs [in Ford House] with the sun behind him,” recalled Makihara’s lifelong friend and formmate Bob Monks ’50 shortly after Makihara’s death. “His mandate was very clear – provide Americans with good reason to believe that Japanese people are not the villains depicted in war propaganda, but highly civilized exemplars of an ancient culture.”

George Packard ’50, who served as president of the United States-Japan Foundation from 1998 to 2019, first met Makihara when he arrived at SPS in the fall of 1949. He tried to put his lifelong friend’s impact into a few words.

“All of us had grown up during World War II, imbued with an image of the Japanese as toothy, ugly warriors,” Packard recalled. “To our amazement, Ben spoke better English than we did, and totally changed our image of the Japanese. I was amazed that he could play football well, he excelled in all his courses, and gained admission to Harvard. I didn’t see him again until 1956, when I was sent to Japan by the Army. He greeted me warmly, took me out for a delicious Japanese meal, and introduced me to Japanese culture in a wonderful way. Since then, we stayed in touch, and I considered him one of my best friends. I believe Ben’s contributions to U.S.-Japan relations are immeasurable.”

Unlike Makihara, who had been educated in England, when Shimizu arrived at St. Paul’s, he did not feel immediately comfortable speaking English. He quickly found a friend and mentor in longtime art teacher Bill Abbé, whom Shimizu described in an interview with SPS decades later as “a wonderful man.” On the weekends, Abbé often took Shimizu and his classmates to the Currier Museum in Manchester, N.H., and to local buildings, farms and bridges to paint and sketch. The excursions helped spark Shimizu’s lifelong passion for art and his future career as a professor and art historian. He graduated from Harvard and eventually became one of the most influential teachers and scholars of Japanese art and art history in the country.

In joining the Princeton University faculty in 1984, Shimizu brought to teaching his method of looking at art through the historian’s eyes. He found he also could effectively reach his students through publications, so he began to write and publish innovative essays on a wide range of topics, including early Japanese seasonal paintings and poetry and Zen art. Decades after his own experience, his daughter, Karen Shimizu ’98, became the first descendant of the SPS/Seikei relationship to attend St. Paul’s. Makihara’s grandson, Takuma Makihara ’15, became the second Seikei successor to join the SPS Alumni Association.

“I know my dad saw St. Paul’s School as a turning point in his life,” says Karen Shimizu. “His admission to the School, via the SPS/Seikei program, provided the impetus for his journey from postwar Japan to America in 1953. During his time at the School, he made some lifelong friendships and found his footing and confidence as an independent thinker and writer.”

Shimizu’s artwork graced the cover of a bilingual booklet produced by Seikei in 2019 to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the relationship between the two schools. Shimizu also was instrumental in making Eighth Rector William Oates one of the recipients of the Japanese Imperial Decorations in 2000 in commemoration of the 50th SPS/Seikei anniversary. 

“I first met Dr. Shimizu some 35 years ago, when he returned to St. Paul’s as a special envoy of the Japanese foreign minister to deliver a letter of appreciation to the Rector,” says Masa Shimano, who taught Japanese at St. Paul’s from 1984 to 2020. “I was immediately intrigued by his down-to-earth personality and boundless energy, as well as his intellect and wealth of knowledge.”

It is impossible to measure the impact Makihara and Shimizu have made on Seikei School, St. Paul’s School, and the many students who have followed their pioneering journeys to post-war America. In the summer of 2004, Makihara returned to St. Paul’s as a featured speaker, when SPS hosted one of the local sessions of the Japan-America Grassroots Summit. In his address, he spoke of the importance of education and emphasized the role of ethical vision in business.

“He said that comes from an education that nurtures the formation of a relationship rooted in trust between individuals who understand each other’s culture, issues, and problems,” recalls Shimano. “He characterized his time at SPS as ‘perhaps the most valuable year’ in his life and said it had formed the basis of his future career.”

Shimano got to know both Makihara and Shimizu through their ambassadorship to the exchange over the years. He calls the men, along with Arima, trailblazers of the program, who “laid the foundation of the prosperous and long-lasting friendship between SPS and Seikei.”

“They maintained their close ties with both schools, helping deepen the relationship along the way,” says Shimano. “They were always ready to help with whatever issues might arise and made sure the students that Seikei sent each year were capable of meeting challenges and upholding the tradition.”