Museum - Kenji's Room

Come to the Museum at Kenji's House and discover the intriguing world of the homestead's lifelong resident Kenji Yokoyama. Along the way you'll understand a little more about Kapa'au and the once bustling plantation district that was North Kohala.

What you'll first notice upon entering Kenji's Room is the thousands of rocks and shells, many assembled into a myriad of sculptures and plaques. Kenji collected and faithfully documented where he found them as well as what role they played in the ocean's environment. Reading his copious notes, one sees that he was a bit of a historian and philosopher.

His workroom has been recreated as Kenji's Room: A Personal Museum, designed to reflect Kenji's simple yet rich life and dedicated to educating visitors about the hidden treasures of Kohala.

Kenji's Room is an interactive museum, the small space filled with the articles of Kenji's daily life, including his personal artifacts, shell sculptures, tables, chairs, and well-preserved hand tools. Even his patched and mended clothes hang on a door from the original house. Visitors are encouraged to touch and witness what it meant to reuse, recycle and fix everything, again and again- Kenji-style.

Kenji Yokohama lived all his life on his family homestead in Kapa'au, Hawaii in North Kohala. He was a quiet man, a loner, a self-taught scientist and free diver, an avid collector and researcher of shells, rocks, and driftwood. He researched and chronicled the ocean's resources that beached themselves in Kohala. He left volumes of detailed, handwritten notes on his treasures from the sea. In addition to belonging to the Matalogical Society of Honolulu, for the study of mollusks, he was also an avid gardener, and frequently shared his plants and artistic creations with his neighbors and friends.

(Adapted from an article by Cynthia Sweeney, published in the North Hawaii News, Sept. 6, 2007)