By Will Lerner | Communications Manager, Portland Japanese Garden & Japan Institute
Over the course of its more than 60 years, there are few figures who have made a greater and more lasting impact on Portland Japanese Garden than Stephen D. Bloom. Bloom first joined the organization in 2005 as Executive Director before eventually taking on the mantle of Chief Executive Officer, a title he holds until his retirement in January 2025.
Over an extraordinary two decades, Bloom transformed a humble, local garden that hosted infrequent programming into an internationally renowned garden and preeminent cultural institution. Through his leadership, a global community witnessed how a garden can be fertile soil for the arts, education, dialogue, and peacemaking just as much as flora. Bloom’s departure may be imminent but his legacy, which includes the establishment of the Garden’s sibling organization Japan Institute in 2022, is one that will be lasting. The Garden is proud to present this retrospective on Bloom, whose accomplishments are so prolific that even this article, as long as it is, may fail to do them justice.
Approaching the Cultural Village
Since 2017, millions of people from around the world have entered Portland Japanese Garden through its Entry Garden. After having their ticket scanned at the Calvin and Mayho Tanabe Welcome Center, they weave through switchback trails that are cozied up next to Pacific Northwest vegetation: trillium, huckleberry, salal, and more.
Most visitors cannot help but walk slowly, heads tilted to the sky, only looking down when necessary to mind their footing. Regardless of the gait, regardless of the age, regardless of the intent, all guests inevitably wind up halting at the Sheila Leinhart-Edwards Bridge to take in a view of a built environment that is nothing like they’ve ever seen before: the Cultural Village of Portland Japanese Garden.
As soon as they have finally passed that final step, they enter the nexus of the Village, the Atsuhiko and Ina Goodwin Tateuchi Foundation Courtyard. It’s almost disorienting—they can’t walk in a straight line, instead moving slowly like music box figurines, slowly rotating in place, heads still tilted up. Portland Japanese Garden simply doesn’t have a bad view and to be presented with a visual cacophony of natural beauty is nearly overwhelming.
If you’ve been here and you’ve looked up, chances are you’ve seen a brightly lit office on a second floor with a figure standing at his desk, busy at work.
Sitting Down with Steve
Stephen D. Bloom is warmly known just as “Steve” to colleagues, volunteers, members, Board Trustees, diplomats, leaders of nations, and royalty alike. After speaking with more than a dozen individuals about his time as CEO of Portland Japanese Garden and Japan Institute, I sat down with the man himself to discuss his tenure in his office, a tony space decorated with antique sake cups, ceramics, and glass art. The view from its windows fittingly peers out at the Garden’s Cultural Village, a long-desired addition he finally made happen.
The Cultural Village was the key element of Portland Japanese Garden’s 2017 expansion. Across a courtyard of granite pavers, the site features bonsai terraces, a gift shop, art gallery, café, performance areas, and the campus’s smallest garden space, a tsubo-niwa. With a towering castle wall, and roofs adorned in sedum, moss, and ferns, it is memorable and awe-inspiring. It is a far cry from the weathered, lumpy, and completely unremarkable vehicle turnaround that once claimed this hillside. It’s also a continent’s length away from the humble town Bloom grew up in.
“I was born and raised in a little farming village outside of Buffalo, New York,” Bloom shared. “We spent our summers running around, picking berries in the fields to make extra money sometimes, and playing kick the can. I grew up with three brothers. We’re all two years apart, so we were all close in age and had a real close connection growing up—summers were great fun. And then winters in Buffalo were equally fun, building snow tunnels in the front yard and igloos and spraying the backyard with a hose to create an ice-skating rink.”
Bloom today is known for his ability to command a room with passionate, detailed, and unscripted remarks at gatherings, galas, symposia, conference rooms, hallways, and at least a kitchen or two. His mother Barb notes that he discovered this talent when introducing a very special VIP as a boy. “When he was really young, he was very shy and he didn’t talk to people,” she shared in conversation. “On one Christmas, he dared to get up on the stage all by himself to welcome Santa Claus, and on that day, he changed. It changed everything for him.”
Nothing Bloom has done since has lacked nerve—and whether it was the holiday spirit that compelled him to introduce St. Nick or not, the ability to stand up and meet the moment with eyes watching became a gift he used to transform Portland Japanese Garden.
“You Should See This Place!”
Founded in 1963 by leaders in the Japanese and Japanese American communities, business and industry, philanthropy, and government, Portland Japanese Garden had earned praise from highly esteemed Japanese leaders such as Ambassador Nobuo Matsunaga for being the most beautiful and authentic Japanese garden outside of Japan. The attraction had also made significant progress in improving relations between those of Japanese ancestry and the predominantly white population of the area.
And yet, as the Garden entered the 21st century, its Board of Directors (eventually rebranded as Board of Trustees) sensed the organization was not meeting its full potential. It had no fulltime niwashi (garden expert) leading the maintenance and design of the landscape, relying on consultation from its former Garden Directors. Though it had featured some programming, it did not have a large enough staff to expand it to meet the demand of its community. The historic garden spaces were seeing a burdensome number of deferred repairs pile up. Concerns mounted as the organization risked becoming stagnant.
In 2005, the Board posted a job for an Executive Director. This happened to coincide at the same time Bloom himself was seeking change. After 15 years of working in music, including stints as Executive Director of the Tacoma Symphony in Washington and President of the Honolulu Symphony in Hawai’i, he began to fear that he would be pigeonholed as a music specialist. As he began seeking a new opportunity, he called his eldest brother, Tim, who was living in Portland at the time. Intrigued by the idea of living in the Rose City, he asked if he could send him classified ads from the newspaper.
“One of the listings in the paper was for Executive Director of Portland Japanese Garden,” Bloom recalls. “I had to Google it because even though I’d been to Portland many times, I’d never been to the Garden. I learned how it was already considered to be the most authentic Japanese garden outside of Japan. And as I began to delve a little bit deeper, I saw it was a tourist attraction, but it was a bit under the radar. If I had been to Portland ten times and hadn’t heard of it yet, well, then maybe it needed some promoting.”
Bloom would be among three final applicants considered for the job. From all accounts, he was a standout. Margueritte “Maggie” Drake is one of Portland Japanese Garden’s founding Board Members and is the first woman to serve as Board President (1993-95). “I do remember when we were hiring at that point in time, and we had three candidates, one from Texas, one from here [in Oregon] and then Steve,” Drake remembers. “And it was a very interesting process. We determined that it would be important for our staff, to interview the candidates, which we did. And they all recommended hiring Steve.”
Diane Freeman, Chief Financial Officer of Portland Japanese Garden (2018-2024; with the organization since 1999), is the only staff member still with the organization who has been in its employ longer than Bloom. Freeman, who held the title of “Accountant” at the time shares, “I absolutely thought Steve was the right person—I was very heartened by everything I saw.”
“I remember being very impressed with Steve,” Drake concurs. “He was a very positive person. He presented himself extremely well, and he was very honest. He said, ‘I don’t know anything about gardens and I know nothing about gardening, but I’m a fast learner,’ which he is, and that’s proved to be the case through the years.”
Sadafumi Uchiyama, who retired from his position of Chief Curator at the end of 2023, was Garden Curator from 2008 to 2021, has served as Curator Emeritus since 2024, and has been a crucial figure in his own right for the Garden. Prior to his employment, he served as Vice President of the Garden’s Board and was among the final decisionmakers who approved Bloom’s hiring. “I appreciated his genuine interest in Japanese culture,” Uchiyama shares. “You could see from his background and time in Hawai’i that he had been long engaged with Japanese people and businesses. But at the same time, he had no pretension of knowing everything about Japan—that was very important.”
For Bloom, the hiring process only affirmed his suspicion that Portland Japanese Garden would be the best possible place to lead upon his return to the continent. “I took out my cellphone and I made a call back home in Hawai’i to my partner at the time,” Bloom recalls from his initial visit. “I said, ‘Oh, my God, you should see this place. I could never be so lucky to work at a place like this. I’ve just got to convince these people that I’m the right person for the job.’”
In the October 2005 issue of The Garden Path, Portland Japanese Garden’s member magazine, then Board-President Dee Ross (2005-07) announced the next leader of the organization. “We have a new member at the Garden whom I am honored to welcome and introduce,” Ross wrote. “Executive Director Stephen Bloom joined us on September 12. …He is busy learning everything he can about our Garden, from its development history to the design elements to the koi. When you visit, there is a good chance you may run into him somewhere in the Garden. You will probably recognize him for his obvious enthusiasm! Please join me in welcoming Steve to our Garden and our City.”
Taking on 20 Years of Deferred Maintenance
“[Portland Japanese Garden], arguably, is the greatest Japanese garden outside of Japan,” architecture expert and journalist Randy Gragg offered in an interview on Oregon Public Broadcasting in 2016 ahead of the Cultural Village’s construction. “It’s had a great legacy of top-notch garden designers who have built it over a period of time…but it’s never really had a front door. You park and you kind of walk up and you kind of go through this gateway. And not that it’s ungracious, but it never has really had a sense of presence.”
When Steve Bloom arrives to the Garden on his final day as CEO, he will motor up Hira Lane, a road named in honor of Kinya Hira, the first Garden Director of Portland Japanese Garden from 1964 to 1969. Curving around the bend past a pedestrian entrance that boasts landscape design from Uchiyama and an antique wooden gate from Sapporo, he will see the rooftops of the Cultural Village, beckoning him forward as they do to guests who take the attraction’s shuttle buses up the hill. But long before this kind of presence could be established, Bloom had significant work to do in his first few years at the Garden.
“When I first arrived, it was a much different organization,” Bloom says. “It was a smaller organization, certainly. I felt like it was a bit of a clean slate, most of the Board was open-minded with where we could go, and I think the staff was very open-minded and hungry for the possibilities of a new direction. I was fortunate to walk into that kind of environment. Because of financial restrictions and challenges, the Garden at that time didn’t have any fundraising program at all. I remember prior to my arrival, we had never sent out appeals for funding. As a result of that, the physical upkeep of the Garden just kept getting pushed off because there weren’t enough resources. I knew, coming in, that that was going to have to be a top priority, getting caught up on about 20 years of deferred maintenance.”
“He has been the biggest advocate as far as overdue garden repairs and improvement,” Uchiyama notes. “There was a ton to do when I came on board as Garden Curator in 2008. We didn’t know where to start because they were all big items. Steve really helped make the Board understand and approve the work. It was always a good feeling knowing he was there behind me and supporting me. I’d come to him with a need, and he’d say, ‘Ok, how much?’ And that was pretty much the extent of the meeting. It was great and easygoing, and I knew I could count on him.”
Within Bloom’s first few years, a new drainage system was installed for the Garden’s ponds, the Pavilion had a new deck and railing added, massive improvements were made for the care and safekeeping of the koi, and the Moon Bridge in the Strolling Pond Garden was given a refresh. However, a garden, any garden, is a living and breathing thing and a repair today doesn’t preclude the need for a new one down the road. Plainly: Portland Japanese Garden needed to expand its purse before it could expand its upkeep, let alone its acreage, programming, and staff.
“When we hired Steve, the logistics of the Garden had changed,” Maggie Drake shares. “We needed somebody who could go out into the community and sell the Garden and get money. …We needed a CEO type of person.” Drake’s optimism that Bloom would be able to lessen the strain on the organization’s coffers would be rewarded.
“I was blown away to learn that when Steve came on board, there were $25,000 in unsolicited donations that were made to this organization,” notes Lisa Christy, Executive Director of the Garden since 2024 and Bloom’s colleague of ten years. “Today, our annual fund contributed revenue is somewhere in the ballpark of $2.5 million. That in and of itself, that ability to sustain ourselves through contributed revenue, is really remarkable. That’s a building block.”
“What Do You Think of This Village Thing?”
Perhaps one of the most remarkable qualities of the Cultural Village of Portland Japanese Garden is that it feels as if it sprung up naturally from the soil of Washington Park. This is because it’s a reflection of the philosophy of its designer, world-acclaimed architect Kengo Kuma. Kuma’s artistic mastery is rooted in the concept of “anti-architecture,” where he seeks to strike down the false dichotomy of humans and the natural world. The Ron and Jenny Herman Garden House and Jordan Schnitzer Japanese Arts Learning Center have walls and windows that slide open—a blurring of the line between interior and exterior. They have footprints that resemble geese in flight. Their green living roofs blend seamlessly into the Douglas firs and western cedars behind them. The smaller Umami Café is lofted above a hillside, perching its diners like robins and juncos. “My purpose has always been to give an identity to the building with its surroundings,” Kuma shared in an interview with writer and filmmaker Brian Libby. “Integration of the structure and its environment is what I aim [for] in design, and this design for Portland Japanese Garden is no exception.”
While this integration of structure was seamless, the process to get it was not. Prior to Bloom’s arrival, the Garden’s Board of Directors had been eager to expand and in the years prior to his hiring, had commissioned a proposal for an expansion from a different architecture firm. The vision, less bold than Kuma’s offering, failed to take flight. Meanwhile, the Garden was becoming a victim of its success—increasing visitation led to overcrowding, diminishing the serenity and peace it promised those who strolled its grounds. It was also putting a strain on staff who were stuffed into outdated and ill-equipped facilities. “On my first day, I walked into a shed that was about five-by-ten feet and had no insulation,” laughs Christy. “Flying ants would land on my computer and I eventually wound up sharing the space with two other people. We had a few of these sheds we worked in next to the Nezu Gate [formerly known as the Entrance Gate before the expansion].”
“The Board, for a number of years, had wanted to upgrade the entrance of the Garden,” Drake recalls. “…It was just not adequate. Steve did a fantastic job. I remember going to a meeting with our activities’ council, and one of the ladies asked me, ‘”What do you think about this Village thing?’ I said, ‘To tell you the truth, I’m scared to death. But on the other hand, I have total confidence in Steve, and I know it will work.’”
A Magnificent Fundraiser
Bloom and company made the Cultural Village work and the numbers alone are astonishing—900 truckloads of dirt were removed. 25 geothermal wells bored 300 feet down into the ground. A detention system that could hold 27,000 gallons of water was installed. 440 hours were spent removing invasive plants from the Entry Garden and an additional 233 were spent weaving bamboo waddles that would prevent erosion on the hillside.
“The opening of the Cultural Village was one of the greatest moments of my career, of the Garden’s history, and a great moment for all of our communities that we serve,” Bloom shares. “It was a new start and a moment of people coming from all over the world to celebrate. It was also a moment of drastic change for the organization because we doubled in size—our grounds, our number of staff, our programming, and our attendance. It was a lot to balance, but boy it was exciting.”
When talking about all that was accomplished during his tenure, Bloom’s unapologetic and tireless fundraising prowess was a major key to his success. The Cultural Village was certainly the most notable and immediately recognizable recipient of funding, but there were countless projects that Bloom was tasked with finding money for.
“Simply put, having financial resources is the only way we could achieve anything we did—lovely ideas will only be lovely ideas if you can’t get backing,” Freeman shares. “Steve took us from being a small, somewhat known Japanese garden to a world-class organization and it took his fundraising abilities to do it. He made us a much more dynamic institution, and just made it a lot more fun to work here. I know I wouldn’t have stayed if the Garden had kept to the trajectory it was on before Steve got hired—it wouldn’t have been very interesting. He transformed it from a place where I came aboard mostly because I was a single mom who needed to support her daughter to a place where I could build a career of 25 years.”
“I believe one of the key reasons for anyone’s success in fundraising is a passion for what the cause is,” Bloom notes. “I have no qualms about asking anybody for anything if it’s going to advance this Garden and the work that we’re doing. And if you’re just genuine, people will engage with you in a genuine way. If you’re not genuine, people will see through that very quickly. And so my donors are my friends and my friends are my donors, and I have no hesitation whatsoever enlisting friends, family, or whoever in the work of the organization because I believe in it. It’s magical when you pair a person and a philanthropic cause.”
Bloom hasn’t only helped the Garden, many philanthropists note Bloom helped them discover how much meaning they get from supporting Portland Japanese Garden and other cultural institutions. Dr. Calvin Tanabe, now Trustee Emeritus of the Garden after serving a decade on its Board, has partnered with his wife, Dr. Mayho Tanabe, to make several monumental donations to the Garden and other institutions in his native city of Portland. He credits Bloom. “Becoming a board member of the Portland Japanese Garden or any other organization never entered my mind until I met Steve Bloom about a decade ago,” Tanabe shares. “He is a very persuasive man, and his energy may make you think a perpetual motion machine is a scientific possibility. …He has gained the uncanny ability to probe the nooks and crannies of people’s idiosyncrasies and personalities, and the key to unlocking it almost to the molecular level.”
Other generous spirits have even come to regard Bloom as family. Carolyn A. Berry-Wilson, a longtime supporter of the Garden and Chairperson of its International Advisory Board, first met Bloom in Hawai’i through the Honolulu Symphony. Despite not being based out of Portland, she was inspired by Bloom’s passion and vision for his new organization and has made several generous donations that helped expand the Garden both physically and operationally. “Whenever I get flowers and balloons from Steve, I know he’s going to ask me for something,” Berry-Wilson shared in a 2016 issue of The Garden Path. “But he knows he doesn’t need to do that. I have never turned him down for anything. I love Steve. He’s like one of my kids now.”
Jordan Schnitzer is a former Board President of the Garden (1987-89) and was a member of its Board for 20 years (1977-97). A brief tour of Portland’s community, healthcare, and cultural institutions will prove he was no stranger to philanthropy when he first met Bloom. Yet, despite this rich experience of funding important social causes, he is particularly impressed by the Garden leader. “Not only did [Steve], fortunately for us, know the subject matter, but he always was fiscally very smart, and a truly stupendous, magnificent fundraiser,” Schnitzer shares. “In all the years working with him…he never wore his ego on his sleeve. It was never about, ‘Look at me. Look at what I’m doing.’ It’s, ‘Look at what we’re doing. Look how we’re building this garden into the internationally recognized that it is.’ As someone that has made a lot of contributions, how do you say no to him?”
In total, over the course of his tenure, Bloom raised an astonishing $75 million, all of which was used to support the Garden, strengthen and build upon the U.S.-Japan cultural partnership, and raise peace through cultural diplomacy.
Putting Portland Japanese Garden on the Map
While a complex of stucco buildings with clay roof tiles certainly would have been a pleasant sight, among the most invigorating qualities of the Cultural Village is its hybridization of modern aesthetics and traditional features. It has long, sliding glass windows, but also doors crafted in the naguri method, where chestnut was hand-shaved with a chona blade (flat spade chisel). It has aluminum roofs that have a printed design on them but also an 18.5-foot-tall castle wall of granite installed by a 15th generation Japanese stone mason. The translucent shoji-like roof of the Umami Café is composed of polyethylene fibers known as “Tyvek,” but the Atsuhiko and Ina Goodwin Tateuchi Foundation Courtyard also has a tsubo-niwa (courtyard garden) featuring a Bloodgood maple and moss. In total, the area has the feel of a simultaneously traditional and futuristic monzenmachi, the kind of village that grew outside temples or shrines in Japan.
The Cultural Village is yet more evidence of the more than 60-year-old Portland Japanese Garden’s dedication to the authentic depiction of Japanese aesthetics. The tone was set by its earliest leaders and Bloom and company upheld it. However, Bloom was admittedly not a Japanese cultural expert at the time of his hiring. While he had made some visits, could claim a few connections to people there, and otherwise had a sincere appreciation for Japan, it was an area he sensed he had to improve. He would get a major opportunity to do so in 2008.
“I was actually on vacation in Vietnam when I got a text out of the blue from Mayor Tom Potter [Mayor of Portland from 2005 to 2009],” Bloom shares. “He told me he had the ability to nominate someone for the Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship in Japan. I thought it was amazing that I could go to Japan for six months and really immerse myself in Japanese culture and understanding the field. Mine was the first ever cultural fellowship that they ever awarded in the 40-year history of the program, which I’m very proud of.”
The Board, recognizing the potential benefits of sending Bloom to Japan, approved his sabbatical despite his having been in the role for not even three years. “In hindsight now, the relationships that I began to build and the reverberations of that over the next 17 years have made all the difference in the world,” Bloom says. Among those relationships would be Aki Nakanishi, the Arlene Schnitzer Curator of Culture, Art, and Education of Portland Japanese Garden. While Nakanishi has been working for the Garden since 2018, he met Bloom much earlier.
“I think it was about 15 years ago when I was still working at the United States Embassy in Tokyo as their Cultural Affairs Specialist,” Nakanishi recalls when asked about his first encounter with Bloom. “He was just starting his journey in Japan, getting to know people, cultivating contacts and new ideas. Steve gave us the whole spiel about this innovative and ambitious plan for the Cultural Village. Every time he came to the Embassy afterwards, you’d learn everything was actually happening. Whatever he set out to do, he was making it happen.”
Aside from cultivating future colleagues, Bloom set the stage for one of the most significant accomplishments of his tenure in the form of the Garden’s International Advisory Board, or IAB. Today, the IAB is composed of several highly respected leaders across a variety of fields in Japan and other locations throughout the world. They have helped the organization make demonstrable gains in global awareness of Portland Japanese Garden and have helped establish crucial connections with important figures across Japan.
“The idea of creating an International Advisory Board was that they could bring resources to the organization from the Japan side,” says Bloom. “And that could be human resources, that could be intellectual resources, cultural resources, financial resources, or any number of things. We started recruiting some IAB members one by one, and then leveraged those relationships to bring more people on board. We’re at a point now where the IAB has some of the greatest leaders that Japan has to offer. It would be the envy of any organization to have that board, and we’re fortunate to have them advocating and working and advancing Portland Japanese Garden.”
The impact of the IAB didn’t just bolster the Garden, however, it also strengthened the pipeline of dialogue, culture, and commerce between Japan and Oregon. Jordan Schnitzer affirms this, “All the trips [Steve] made to Japan and the connections he made over there with some of the leading business and cultural leaders in Japan really put Portland and Portland Japanese Garden on the map.”
Among the most important relationships that began in Japan would be with Kengo Kuma. While the Garden was still on the search for the right architect to engage with for its expansion, Uchiyama showed up at his office. “Sada said, ‘Have a look at this,’” Bloom remembers. “And it was a book of works of Kengo Kuma, which were just remarkable. I was just taken with his work.”
“Before my sabbatical, I was trying to find a path to Kuma san,” Bloom continues. “And then I learned that the brother of the Deputy Consul General here in Portland went to school with him and asked for introduction. I knew that not many people in the broader architecture world in Japan had heard of us, so my goal was to go there and introduce Portland Japanese Garden to him. One thing I knew for certain was that if I could get him to Portland, he would see what we have and would get it. Thankfully, he agreed to give a lecture here at the Garden. When he arrived and saw it with his own eyes, he was sold like everyone else who has ever visited—the Garden sells itself. Of course, we had to go through a public process and consider architects across Japan. But in my heart and mind, I always knew it had to be Kengo Kuma.”
Kuma, whose major works include the Japan National Stadium, built for the Summer Olympics in Tokyo, would come aboard for what would be his first public project in North America. “I consider that of all Japanese gardens built outside Japan, Portland’s is number one,” the architect would later tell Libby.
The Art of Curating Leaders
Often out of convenience, we regard achievements as being individual. The truth is that there exists no noteworthy accomplishment that has ever been fulfilled by just one person. After all, what is a leader but someone who can coalesce a group of people toward a mutually desired goal? Portland Japanese Garden exists because of the community of staff, volunteers, and trustees that tend to its care. More than any physical structure, Bloom is clearly prouder of the team he built.
“Part of the job of a CEO is to have vision for all kinds of resources that the organization needs and that includes people,” he shares. “I’ve always viewed part of my role as always keeping an eye out for good people when I’m out there. I’ve always managed with the philosophy that you must always hire people smarter than yourself.”
Bloom was fortunate—two essential leaders during his run were already at the Garden when he joined. Cheryl Ching, who retired as Chief Operations Officer in 2022, was a mainstay at the Garden for an astonishing 40 years. The aforementioned Diane Freeman is another, ascending from the title of “Accountant” to Chief Financial Officer, a role she will hold until her own retirement at the end of 2024. Freeman has been an unsung hero, forever swatting away the limelight. And yet, she was the hand at the till of an organization that went from 17 employees to nearly 150 and an operating budget of a few million to nearly 13. Because of her work, Portland Japanese Garden managed to avoid catastrophe that might have happened from recessions and the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Cheryl and I were two of the staff that he really encouraged to move up and take on more,” Freeman shares. “I think one of the gifts that Steve had was that he was able to look at who he had to work with and identify abilities they didn’t even know they had. He could see potential that, for whatever reason, you weren’t reaching and would push you a little further. I wasn’t sure what to make of it at first, but I came to trust him, appreciate his confidence in me, and deeply respect his vision. The key was that Steve truly cares about the human being in the role more than the role itself.”
In Ching, Freeman, and several others, Bloom had standout colleagues. More were needed. By 2008 he had hired two significant figures that would accelerate the organization’s ascendancy as a preeminent cultural institution: Diane Durston and Sadafumi Uchiyama.
Durston’s hiring would be a coup for the organization. A recognized expert on Japanese culture and an acclaimed author on books that explore Kyoto in fascinating detail, Durston had been Curator of Education at Portland Art Museum. Through her oversight, the Garden became a respected and recognized venue for worldclass art exhibitions—in her decade of leadership, she introduced the work of more than 75 artists representing Japan and its unique artistic traditions, including some of whom have been recognized as Living National Treasures in Japan.
Durston, who continues to serve the Garden as Curator Emerita (2018-present), shares, “Steve encouraged us to explore new directions in the Garden’s programming. In doing that, to seek out the full potential of the Garden itself as a vehicle for better understanding Japan.”
Joining Durston as a monumental figure in the Garden’s recent history would be Uchiyama. Uchiyama, as we know, had been on the Garden’s Board and was among those who approved Bloom’s hiring. He also happened to be a highly-regarded and fourth-generation Japanese-born gardener and registered landscape architect. After his resignation from the Board (a needed formality), Uchiyama was hired as the organization’s first Garden Curator in 2008. Importantly, it also marked the return of a Japanese-born gardening expert to lead the maintenance and design of the grounds after nearly 20 years without someone fulltime on staff in the position. Bloom also supported one of Uchiyama’s dreams and helped it become a reality: the International Japanese Garden Training Center. At the Training Center, traditional methods and techniques are combined with modern and Western teaching methods like classroom lectures and homework assignments—a wholly unique experience borne in Portland.
“In his second year we were planning a futuristic sort of vision for the Garden,” Uchiyama remembers. “We started talking about the Training Center—I had had the idea for a long time and was pleased that he was totally on board from the get-go. I remember thinking, ‘Ok, this guy will do it.’ And he did, he actually made it happen, along with the expansion, and getting approval for major repairs to the historic gardens. It’s remarkable that he did all of that in such a short period stretch. 20 years is not a lot of time to bring the Garden this far.”
While Durston taking the title of Curator made sense given her role and experience, “Garden Curator” was something novel at the time of Uchiyama’s hiring. His predecessors had been referred to as “Garden Director.” With the title, Bloom was making a point.
“I come from a performing arts background,” he notes. “As I gained perspective on the field, I began to realize that gardens were landscapes and living and evolving works of art. In order to steer this work of landscape art, you need someone who’s going to curate that, in terms of what it looks like and then how we enlist it.”
While Bloom was working to enhance the Garden’s programming and physical grounds, he also needed more help to professionalize the operation and spare him time to build and strengthen the organization’s networks and relationships. Fortunately, much like Durston and Uchiyama, there was a person in Portland who was more than up to the challenge in Cynthia Johnson Haruyama. Haruyama was hired as Deputy Director in 2012 and held the position through her 2023 retirement. Her many impressive achievements include the administration of the $37.5 million capital campaign to build the Cultural Village, managing the day-to-day construction in its final few months, and maintaining operational stability through bleak economic times including the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Cynthia, in terms of setting up the organization for the success was so critical in all of the operational functions that we see today,” Bloom notes. “We doubled the size of our organization and the size of our staff and it all went off without a hitch because of her. Her community engagement was also remarkable. She was the leader of Hoyt Arboretum and Lan Su Chinese Garden, sat on numerous boards for local organizations—Cynthia has lived a full life of giving back to her neighbors.”
Setting an Ambitious Vision for the Garden
The Cultural Village is more than passage into the historic garden spaces—it is also the site for much of the programming at the Garden. Thousands of guests sit every year in the Jan Miller Living Room to watch performances and demonstrations of koto (Japanese zither), tea ceremony, ikebana, bonsai upkeep, and other Japanese arts in the Cathy Rudd Cultural Corner. The Garden also uses the space to host its celebrations of traditional Japanese festivals like O-Shogatsu (Japanese New Year) and Kodomo no Hi (Children’s Day). In the Calvin and Mayho Tanabe Gallery, exhibitions of traditional and modern Japanese art are shown. The wide variety of cultural programming, which manifests into more than 150 different offerings annually, speaks to how Portland Japanese Garden is more than “just” a garden.
Portland Japanese Garden is more than “just” a garden in other ways. For more than 60 years, it has provided insight into and built appreciation for Japan and its people. In partnership with the local Japanese and Japanese American communities, it has helped transform perceptions of a nation once considered the enemy. While people of Japanese ancestry were wrongly incarcerated and abused during the World War II era, the truth is they had been routinely targeted, harassed, and harmed ever since they first began to immigrate to Oregon in the 19th century and past the end of the war. Garden Director Kinya Hira (1964-69) and the original designer of the Garden, Professor Takuma Tono, were attacked by racists on the grounds of an attraction that now welcomes hundreds of thousands of people every year.
While much more work is to be done on this front, for the Garden to help mitigate more than 150 years of racist hostility within one generation is proof that the kindness of a community can weaken and even obliterate hatred. It also is proof that gardens are more than the sum of their plants, stones, and water. Steve Bloom recognized the paradigm-shifting history Portland Japanese Garden had accrued before his arrival and sought to share its message. First, it took setting an ambitious tone.
“I saw that there was no vision statement for the organization,” Bloom says when looking back at the beginning of his tenure. “Without vision, how do we know where we’re going? Taking all the information that I had garnered from my first year on the job, I created a vision statement: ‘We want to be the leading Japanese garden organization in the world.’ And that wasn’t to say that we wanted to be the best or the biggest, but we wanted to be a leading organization in our field. There were a few Board Members who were still very conservative, and were concerned that it might be presumptuous. But we also had a lot of Board Members who were supportive and were excited by that new vision. We held a Board retreat and the debate over this new vision statement went on for about two hours, back and forth. You could feel the frustration in the room. Finally, there was a Board Member who just couldn’t take it anymore, and I remember him literally pounding his fist on the table, saying, ‘Fine! Our vision should be we want to be mediocre!’ And it was this moment of crystallization because, of course, no one wants to be mediocre. The vote was taken and we adopted the new vision to be the leading Japanese garden organization in the world.”
A significant way Portland Japanese Garden is now leading throughout the world is its advocacy for nature based cultural diplomacy. Cultural diplomacy, not having one universally accepted definition, can generally be taken to mean advancing friendship and partnership between cultures through their arts, cuisine, and other forms of nonaggressive “soft” power. Bloom helped focus it through nature—something that is appreciated, utilized, and vital to all peoples in all places. Japanese gardens are particularly suited to be a vehicle for social change because they are built intentionally to reduce the distance between humanity and the rest of the natural world. That a garden could help establish peace was something that even leaders of other great gardens had not yet considered.
“I confess, when this notion was first raised, I hadn’t really thought at all about the links between gardens and horticulture and peace,” shared Richard Deverell, Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, at Japan Institute’s 2022 International Peace Symposium in London. “But, my conversation with Steve seeded that thought and I started to reflect upon these themes. …Gardens are very safe and tranquil places. They encourage you to be convivial, to be honest, to perhaps drop some barriers to engage with your fellow humans. And I think even if you were angry or distressed, going into a garden would diminish your anger and distress. They are common, safe places in the broader sense of the word. Gardens are also universal. There is no country, no region, no tribe, no culture anywhere in the world that doesn’t have some tradition of gardening, that magical conversion of seeds into food or flowers. They are truly universal.”
Having the audacity to lead helped Portland Japanese Garden set out on several ambitious initiatives such as the North American Japanese Garden Association, or NAJGA. “Coming out of my sabbatical in Japan, it was clear that Japanese gardens were not connected between Japan and the U.S,” Bloom recalls. “And what that created was a vacuum of knowledge and expertise on the North American side. There are hundreds of public Japanese gardens in North America, but with the exception of a few, most of them were dilapidated and falling in disrepair because gardeners didn’t know how to maintain them. Additionally, many of them were part of park systems or city programs, so they didn’t know the specialized techniques and maintenance knowledge that was required to maintain them.”
“We had dreamed of [the International Japanese Garden Training Center] down the road, and that was something that we later created. But what I first understood was that in order to have a Training Center, we needed a system that would feed gardeners into it. There was no network of Japanese gardens and Japanese gardeners in North America to steer learners to us. Around the same time, I spoke at a small Japanese garden conference in Long Beach [in California]. We realized many of us had the same dream of building a network, and out of that conversation we were able to create a North America Japanese Garden Association.”
Portland Japanese Garden now is demonstrating that gardens can be hubs for the exchange of information, wisdom, dialogue, and camaraderie. In 2022, the organization would set out on an ambitious plan to take this existing approach to cultural diplomacy to a new level.
Japan Institute, the Programmatic Arm of Portland Japanese Garden
Clearly the Cultural Village is the most obvious sign of growth of Portland Japanese Garden relative to where it started under Bloom’s tenure, and the sheen hasn’t worn off. There is one specific reason why it remains special and imbued with purpose: people. A garden is incomplete without its guest; a complex of Kengo Kuma-designed buildings is no different. Portland, Oregon is disproportionately white, the unfortunate legacy of a state that has still not recovered from its white supremacist origins. And yet, within the Cultural Village, a melody emerges from the different languages one might hear: Japanese, English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Russian, and more. The Garden welcomes people from all 50 states and more than 90 nations around the world annually. It is one of the few areas in this region that truly feels cosmopolitan. The beauty of the physical Garden is, of course, a draw. But it is also because of the spirited programming that the Garden’s attendance reached new and impressive heights during Bloom’s tenure.
“Steve has demonstrated that a Japanese garden is not just for horticulturalists, landscape architects, or Japanologists, for that matter,” shares Aki Nakanishi, a cultural expert who has overseen programming at the Garden since joining it in 2018. “We now have over 150 events annually—that was unthinkable prior to his time here. By expanding our programmatic horizon, we have seen more people come and those who are returning now have an enhanced experience. He has, time over time, proven that Japanese gardens can be community centers that welcome everyone, not just people with niche interests.”
Well aware of the increasing popularity and inability for the Garden to meet demand, Bloom started ideating on the next phase for the organization before it even broke ground for its expansion.
“Early on, Sada Uchiyama, Diane Durston, and I were trying to see how we could really expand on what a Japanese garden and cultural organization could do, for the benefit of our field and for communities here at home and around the world. We wouldn’t talk about what was happening today, we’d look ahead two, five, even ten years into the future. We had come up with something called the International Institute for Japanese Garden Arts and Culture, a very long-winded name. We realized it was a mouthful and so it was actually Diane who said, ‘We need to simplify it—let’s call it the Japan Institute.’ The idea was that it’s a big enough umbrella that would cover all the many different things we wanted to do.”
In 2022, Portland Japanese Garden formally launched a global cultural initiative and sibling organization and named it Japan Institute. Because of the resounding success of its programming, an established history of successful cultural diplomacy and its aspiration of being the leading Japanese garden organization in the world, the Garden finally decided it was time to share and expand its programs more broadly in Portland and around the world, pursue international partnerships, and continue to engage diverse people in shared experiences and conversations about peace, beauty, and nature. In just two years, it has organized programming in its home of Portland as well as Japan, the United Kingdom, and South Africa. It has engaged with august institutions such as the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Nobel Peace Center, Nelson Mandela Foundation, and the Government of Japan. It is possible because Bloom understood the importance of the Garden’s history.
“Portland Japanese Garden is a very successful case study,” notes Nakanishi. “Over more than 60 years, its history has proven to a global community that a garden can bring people together from all walks of life for better cultural understanding. Japan Institute will be a place, but it is also an idea spreading mechanism, using the universal language of nature and culture.”
“Japanese culture wasn’t born out of void,” Nakanishi, a native of Japan, continues. “Everything was based on symbiotic relationship with other cultures and civilizations to build an edifice of humanity. A Japanese garden and its culture belong to the world in that sense. We hope to showcase cultural programming that honors and symbolizes those relationships with other beliefs, cultures, and customs, and in doing so add to the creative vibrancy of Portland. It also feels reassuring for people that come from Japan to find such an authentic place of cultural affirmation; being supported and loved by local people. That speaks volumes.”
“Creating Japan Institute is a big project,” adds Lisa Christy, who has been instrumental in shaping the burgeoning organization’s identity, messaging, and philosophical approach. “Some have called it audacious for Portland, Oregon, but that’s what’s really exciting about it. It has already begun to create a place of cultural connection and creative inspiration, which will only further our ability to explore the potential of cultural diplomacy. We’re really excited about it.”
A Legacy That Will Last
When Steve Bloom returned to his office in 2024 after a month-long vacation across Europe with his mother, a trip that for her was her first return to the continent in 60 years, he knew something had changed. It was time to move on.
“On May 6th, as I gave my report on the state of our organization at the Annual Meeting of the Membership, I announced that in January of 2025, I will be retiring,” he wrote in a letter to the community. “I believe in the philosophy that life is short, and I want to exact from my brief existence on this planet, as much as I possibly can while I am able… My passion lies in traveling and making meaningful connections around the world. Since I was a boy growing up in Buffalo, I always dreamed of living in a foreign country and of traveling the world to meet people and explore cultures different from my own. How fortunate that I was able to achieve this in many ways through my career and with the support of those around me – and I plan to continue to pursue this in my next chapter of life!”
While Bloom plans to continue to advocate for Portland Japanese Garden and Japan Institute in retirement from his anticipated new home in Japan, he will not do it tirelessly—instead finally making time for pleasure and relaxation with the scores of friends he has made on every continent. Or nearly every continent, at least at the moment. One assumes he will somehow find a way to befriend some folks in Antarctica. However, he will be leaving the Garden better than he found it and a large part is because of the staff he hired that will carry on the organization’s stewardship: Executive Director Lisa Christy, the Arlene Schnitzer Curator of Culture, Art, and Education Aki Nakanishi, Garden Curator Hugo Torii, and the Executive Director of the Japan Office, Misako Ito, and the many staff members they oversee, all in partnership with the organization’s volunteers and Board Members.
“What I hope for the future of Portland Japanese Garden and Japan Institute is that they thrive,” Bloom shares. Japan Institute was designed in such a way that people outside of Portland can understand what the Garden is, that beyond its landscape, we are doing incredible work in so many different areas; culture, art, performing arts, and peacemaking to name a few. And the name Portland Japanese Garden didn’t fully represent what that meant in terms of the work we were doing. And I know with Lisa, Aki, Hugo, Misako, we have the right people to lead our organization to the next level. That’s always been the case.”
“I have known Steve Bloom for nearly 19 years,” shares Misako Ito, the inaugural Executive Director of Portland Japanese Garden and Japan Institute’s Japan Office, responsible for establishing a networking framework that will maintain, strengthen, and add connections to individuals in Japan. “He has brought our Garden to the global level with nearly half a million visitors annually. I was sad to hear his decision to leave, initially. However, his dream for his own post-retirement life aspirations is also global and so meaningful, I support his future path with whole my heart.”
“I first met Steve several years before I joined the Garden, after a presentation I gave in Chicago while working for [the Kyoto-based organization] Ueyakato Landscape,” shares Hugo Torii, the Garden Curator responsible for the maintenance and design of the landscape and Bloom’s colleague of six years. “We kept in touch for several years before I accepted a position with the organization. He made an immediate impression that he was deeply passionate about not just Portland Japanese Garden, but the field of Japanese gardening itself. Quickly after I moved to Portland with my family, I was happy to find that this impression was revealed to be true—I could always rely on Steve to support updates to our grounds that help maintain our beauty and authenticity. But beyond the short-term needs, I admire his long-term mindset and am very proud to have had him as my leader. As we know, gardens are intended to last over the course of centuries, with the idea that their fostering will be cared for by successive generations. Through his leadership and the example he set, the Garden will continue being an important community resource and a leader in the field of Japanese gardens. I will miss seeing him every day and I’m very grateful that he was able to bring me to the U.S.”
“Personally speaking, my family and I would not be here without Steve’s encouragement and support,” Nakanishi adds. “He pushed me to set goals for my own career to higher places than I had them. Beyond our friendship, Steve has proven we can be much more than a garden. We can be a place and resource that allows people to let their guard down, engage in conversation, and discover their true selves. We have an amazing foundation now to build from and an exciting new chapter ahead with Japan Institute. What he’s done over the past 20 years of his leadership is amazing. It has been a tour de force of cultural diplomacy that rivals the greatest ambassadors. Few come close to the magnitude of success he has achieved in career as CEO.”
“I’m grateful to Steve for his mentorship,” concludes Christy, who as Executive Director is guiding the organization during this transitionary period. “He cares about people and prioritizes the human approach always—he’s incredibly compassionate and that’s proven by his legacy. Steve has been so committed to the idea that the power of culture, art, and nature can transform hearts and minds of an entire community. He has brought people together who don’t typically interact, unlocking new and creative ideas that can only happen through collaboration, partnership, and dialogue. For us, he has instilled this belief and path forward where we acknowledge our responsibility to give back to our community, our field, and the world. I’m just so grateful for everything he’s done for the organization and excited for what’s ahead.”
Bloom too is excited for what’s ahead. He’s still got much more to do, small things like read all the books he put off while working endlessly around the clock and more ambitious ventures like fulfilling his dream of visiting 100 nations (23 more to go). At the end of our chat, he turned to a quote from the legendary Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, a turn of language that he feels illuminated his path throughout his career and one that he hopes will continue to light the way:
“This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.” – George Bernard Shaw