Hirai, a native of Japan who teaches courses on “Japan Since 1945 through Film and Literature” and “Japan: Myths, Stereotypes and Realities,” among others, says that the Tohoku region is historically among the country’s poorest.

“Patience, hard work and perseverance.”

Yet because of what the Tohoku region has endured, its people may have the stoicism to face what comes ahead, says Hirai. “Despite their poverty, or because of it, the Tohoku people have internalized the values of patience, hard work and perseverance,” she writes in an e-mail exchange with Klonoski. “These qualities will help them again.”

Despite its harsh climate, the Tohoku region, which now faces widespread nuclear contamination, depends upon agriculture.

“I feel inconsolably sad.”

“You can tell how outstanding is the quality of work of these people just by looking at the lovingly tended vegetable fields that the chocolate-colored tidal waves devoured mercilessly,” Hirai said.

“In an instant, these people lost everything that they have built and the loved ones with whom and for whom they have built all I feel inconsolably sad to think about their losses.”

Hirai’s family lives in and around Tokyo, and all are physically safe. “My sister, who is a pillar of strength, was audibly shaken on the phone,” Hirai tells Klonoski. “That spoke (to) the state of her psyche more eloquently than any words she uttered.”

Hirai holds an endowed professorship that honors the late 1936 Bates alumnus who was a noted journalist in Japan as editor of The Japan Times and news broadcaster.

Hirai too has been jarred by the quake. “On Monday…as I glanced at the heavy doors inside Pettengill Hall and thought that they were moving up and down, I realized I was affected by the TV footage until my mind could make a fool of me.”

View story in the Lewiston Sun Journal, March 18, 2011.

Musicians performing at Bates College in September include Frank Glazer, a prominent Maine pianist and Bates artist in residence; Atsuko Hirai, a soprano and member of the Bates faculty; and the Verdehr Trio, internationally acclaimed for its development of the violin-clarinet-piano trio repertoire.

Glazer opens the college’s 2004-05 Noonday Concert Series at 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 14, with music by Bach, Busoni, Haydn and Mendelssohn. Bates Noonday Concerts typically last around 30 minutes.

The Verdehr Trio, which has commissioned some 170 pieces of music during a career of more than 30 years, performs at 3 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 19. The trio’s pianist, Yuri Funahashi, lives in Maine, and the program includes a piece by Bates faculty member Philip Carlsen. Also on the program is the world premiere of “Playground,” a composition by Barry Conyngham, chair of Australian studies at Harvard University.

Hirai, the Kazushige Hirasawa Professor of History at Bates, is accompanied by Glazer in a program of 10 songs by Johannes Brahms. This Noonday Concert takes place at 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 21.

Finally, Glazer offers music by Mozart, Schubert and Schumann in a recital at 8 p.m. Friday, Sept. 24.

The Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St., is the site of all four concerts, which are open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-6135.

Through commissioning new works and transcribing or rediscovering music from centuries past, the Verdehr Trio has molded and defined the personality of the violin-clarinet-piano trio. The ensemble has performed worldwide in chamber concerts and in trio-concerto repertoire for orchestra. Its catalog of recordings includes the 17-volume series “The Making of a Medium,” documenting the trio’s contributions to the repertoire (Crystal Records). An article about the trio appears in the new Groves Dictionary of Music.

Though in residence at Michigan State University in East Lansing, where violinist Walter Verdehr and clarinetist Elsa Ludewig-Verdehr teach, pianist Yuri Funahashi lives in Wilton and teaches at the University of Maine in Farmington. She is known statewide for her performances with such chamber ensembles as the Nordica Trio and the Funahashi-Pane Duo.

A highlight of the trio’s Bates program is the world premiere of Conyngham’s “Playground.” In addition, the trio performs its own arrangement of the Andante-Allegretto (Op. 43, No. 13) from Beethoven’s music for the ballet “The Creatures of Prometheus”; Carlsen’s 1987 “Penumbra”; Peter Sculthorpe’s 1992 “Dreamtracks,” inspired by the Australian landscape; William Brohn’s adaptation of music by songs by George and Ira Gershwin; and “Tibetan Dance,” composed and dedicated to the Verdehr Trio by Bright Sheng.

One of Maine’s best-known pianists, Bates College artist-in-residence Frank Glazer is a musician of international stature. His long career includes numerous recordings, and countless solo recitals and performances with orchestras and chamber ensembles, including the New England Piano Quartette, of which he was a founder.

Glazer, 89, taught at the Eastman School of Music for 15 years before retiring to Maine with his wife, Ruth, in 1980. The couple founded the Saco River Festival, held in Cornish every summer. A student of pianist Artur Schnabel in the 1930s and ’40s, Glazer is one of the few remaining proteges of that great musician.

The first Kazushige Hirasawa Professor of History at Bates and a specialist in Japanese history, Atsuko Hirai is a graduate of Tokyo University and earned her Ph.D. in government at Harvard. She and Glazer perform together occasionally at Bates.

Philip Carlsen has degrees from the University of Washington, Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. His many compositions include works for such Maine ensembles as the Portland Symphony Orchestra and Bates’ gamelan orchestra, and a commission from the National Symphony Orchestra and the Kennedy Center in connection with the orchestra’s residency in Maine. Carlsen teaches half-time at UMF and half-time at Bates, where he conducts the college orchestra.

Matthew Côté, associate professor of chemistry; Atsuko Hirai, Kazushige Hirasawa Professor of History; and John Rhodes, associate professor of mathematics, have been awarded Phillips Faculty Fellowships for the 2002-03 academic year, announced Donald W. Harward, president of Bates College.

Phillips Faculty Fellowships at Bates provide a full-year’s paid leave, with additional funding for scholarly research, enabling fellows to travel, pursue scholarship and interact with other leading scholars in their field.

Côté will spend one year fabricating and studying arrays of metal oxide nanostructures at the Laboratory for Surface Science and Technology at the University of Maine at Orono. Access to the laboratory and to its staff expertise will expand the range of research possibilities for Côté and his students, and will produce continuing collaborations after Côté’s return to Bates.

Hirai plans to complete her manuscript, Government by Mourning: Death and Political Integration in Japan, 1612-1912 and secure its acceptance for publication. Her research is a study of governmental edicts on mourning and related rites in Japan. The grant enables her to complete extensive archival work in Tokyo as well as in provinces of Japan, and to meet with scholars in Japan and the United States who are working on related topics.

Rhodes will focus in two areas: number theory and mathematical biology. His plans include investigating the number theory of modular forms for complex quadratic number fields. The grant also will enable Rhodes to develop a new research direction in phylogenetic invariants, studying algebraic methods of inferring relationships among species from DNA sequence data.

The Phillips Faculty Fellowships are part of an ambitious initiative of awards, honors and opportunities for faculty and students funded by a $9-million endowment bequest from former Bates President Charles F. Phillips and his wife, Evelyn Minard Phillips, in 1999. President and Mrs. Phillips, longtime Auburn residents, served Bates from 1944 through 1966. Charles died in March 1999, just months after the death of Evelyn, his wife of 65 years. In addition to the faculty fellowships, the Phillips Endowment Program supports student fellowships, two endowed faculty professorships and academic programs recommended by the dean of the faculty.