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Published in The Seattle Times online on Jan. 30, 2025
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Feb. 2, 2025

Compassion bolsters winter fishing for 90-year-old Tengu Club

By Clay Eals

Up, down, up, down.

Over and over.

Perseverance, patience, peace.

This approach has buoyed a little-known organization that has plied the waters of Elliott Bay off West Seattle most every winter for nine decades.

The all-volunteer Tengu Club, an aggregation of Seattle-area Japanese Americans and others, has forged a hearty culture and tradition of yearly fishing derbies.

Early on, Tengu became the club’s name based on reddish-faced supernatural beings in Japanese folklore with long noses that grow as they tell lie after lie — much as those who fish are prone to do.

Tengu Club’s durability, however, is no exaggeration. It stems partly from a fishing method members developed long ago called “mooching” — constantly moving a herring-baited line up and down, imitating the flutter of a wounded fish to entice bigger ones to bite.

The club’s venerated historian, Mas Tahara, 89, of northeast Seattle, also sees significance beyond its fishing. The underlying point, he says, is kizuna, a Japanese word that means enduring bonds.

“Tengu is people,” he says. “”It’s very, very important for anyone. It makes people alive.”

Summoning that spirit was a challenge when the club began in the mid-1930s. Though well-publicized spring and summer fishing derbies proliferated throughout Puget Sound, Japanese people weren’t invited to participate.

Ostensibly this was due to the success of mooching, as noted in the Sept. 16, 1940, edition of Time magazine. Describing the Sound’s 25 established salmon derbies, the article stated, “Japanese are barred (because they are too skillful).” But Tahara and other Tengu Club members assert that discrimination also was a factor.

To provide an alternative, Tahara says, Tengu Club set its derbies in the winter, a relatively unpalatable time for local fishing. The weather is bracing, and the fish typically available then are juvenile blackmouth salmon, smaller than their fair-weather adult counterparts.

Tengu Club’s contests ceased after Japan’s Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor and the U.S. relocation and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Post-war, in December 1946, Tengu derbies resumed, lasting days and even weeks, and continue today.

Derby data starting in 1946, kept by Doug Hanada, longtime president, show 100-190 annual members through the mid-1990s, dropping to 20-35 in more recent years. Still, they’re a hardy crew.

Tahara emphasizes a pair of longtime Tengu Club philosophies: maintaining dignity and momentum in the face of unavoidable hardships, and extending goodwill by opening derbies to non-Japanese.

“We always try to see things with compassion,” Tahara says, “and we are always interdependent.”

The resulting camaraderie in the cold and wet, he says, is precious.

WEB EXTRAS

Big thanks to Mas Tahara, Doug Tanada, Nancy Ishii and Linda Ishii for their invaluable help with this installment!

To see Clay Eals‘ 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photos, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column.

Below, you also will find a video interview of Mas Tahara and Doug Hanada, a dissertation (at the end), 85 additional photos and 18 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

 

Following are 40 historical thumbnail photos, courtesy Doug Hanada, of Tengu Club events (click once or twice to enlarge):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Following are 17 thumbnail photos, courtesy Doug Hanada, of the Jan. 8-9, 2022, Tengu Club Cracker Derby (click once or twice to enlarge):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Following are 20 thumbnail photos, courtesy Doug Hanada, of the March 25, 2022, Tengu Club Banquet (click once or twice to enlarge):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Following are 3 thumbnail photos, courtesy Doug Hanada, of the April 29, 2022, Tengu Club Fish Fry at the home of member Dan Hicks (click once or twice to enlarge):