Harry Seisho Nakasone, Utu-Sanshin Musical (Sanshin) Director Harry Seisho Nakasone is a recognized master artist of the Okinawan uta-sanshin music tradition who learned to play by ear as a child in Okinawa. In 1925, Nakasone returned to Hawaii (where he was born) and studied with several masters for many years before becoming the first non-Japanese citizen to receive a teaching certificate for sanshin from the Nomura Music Academy in Okinawa, which has more than 5000 worldwide members and is recognized by the Japanese government. Nakasone has been an ethnomusicologist on the faculty of the University of Hawaii-Manoa since l966. He released a four-record set of traditional Okinawan music in 1985. Nakasone became Kariyushi-Kai's Music Director through a National Endowment Folk Arts grant in l990. In 1991, he received an NEA National Heritage Fellowship. He has performed throughout Japan and Hawaii as well as in Brazil, Los Angeles, the Pacific Northwest and the San Francisco Bay Area.