The Pascal Project was originally conceived in 1993 and completed in the summer of 1994 with the assistance of a grant from the Foundation of California State University, Sacramento. It was designed to be an exhibition in three modules, each representing a "room," which tells the story in photographs and poems of two New York businesswomen in their mid-thirties, Pascal McLaren and Naomi Fujiwara. Pascal is Irish-American and Naomi was born in Japan but raised in California. The two met in elementary school and have been best friends ever since.

    The three different rooms of this photo-drama focus on Pascal, who is dying of a terminal illness. The first is the room in a hospice in Sacramento where Pascal has gone to die. The second "room" is the one which Pascal used when she stayed with Naomi in New York. And the third room is in a hospice design proposal created for Pascal by an architect friend of Naomi, Robby Gordon, who is German-African-American. The Pascal Project is an extension of the Pacific Rim themes first introduced in the first four exhibitions of The Bizen Sonata. Its basic assumption is that as the new Pacific Rim community emerges, we need to take serious look at one-on-one personal relationships that are not primarily concerned with trade or politics. The characters and the cultures presented here have been designed to further explore the complexities of the synthetic spiritual landscape now taking shape in the United States.

    Because the photodrama format is inherently limited in what it can effectively present, the ultimate objective of The Pascal Project is to develop a multimedia installation featuring interactive CD-ROM terminals and other electronic components which would allow each viewer to explore each character's life in detail. This would be Phase 3 of the proposal. However, due to funding constraints, the exhibition never took place. Hence, we have decided to offer the photographs and poems on this web site in the hopes that the efforts of the many contributors might still prove to be of benefit to the general public.

    The format of Phase 1 will be three installation modules. Each module will consist of a series of 8 5'x18" mesh panels painted in black. They will be arranged so that there will be only one entrance. Each of the primary panels will have a photograph accompanied by a poem mounted in a 12x42x2" frame. The viewer will be able to read additional documentation along with the poems in each module to enable him or her to piece the "story" together.

    These installations will feature different levels of digitization of the text and graphics allowing for increased interactivity utilizing computers, CD-ROM players and other equipment. Phase 3 was also supposed to include an actual architectural design created for this project by San Francisco architect, George Despues. Unfortunately, Mr. Despues was not able to compete his proposal.

    It would be impossible to fill in all the gaps in this complex story in a few brief notes. However, these comments will hopefully assist the viewer making sense of the narrative.******Naomi Fujiwara first met Pascal McLaren when Naomi came from her home in Kamakura, Japan to attend the old Anna Head School in Berkeley. She stayed with her uncle, the architect, Sen Motoyoshi, who was also a professor in architecture at the University of California, Berkeley. (His firm is called Moto-D with offices in San Anselmo in Marin County.) At that time, Pascal was living in Berkeley with her aunt, Mary Elizabeth McLaren, an ex-Navy nurse who had served in Viet Nam.

    After Naomi graduated from Mills College, Oakland and Pascal graduated from California, Naomi was appointed a vice-president in her father's American subsidiary, Nara New York (NNY), which was headed by her cousin, Yoshimasa Fujiwara. Yoshi, who was himself a graduate of Columbia but spent much of his time at Nara's international headquarters in Osaka, let her have complete control of operations and planning. So Naomi reorganized the company, using Pascal and a special group of telecommunications and design specialists named the Night Posse (which included Ramon "Rom" Molina, Dr. Arnold Geller and Daniella Caste–ada) as her brain trust. Always working in the background and using young, low-profile but elite talent, Naomi and Pascal were able to breathe a new life and energy into NNY. The trade-off was that others would always be given the credit as well as the material rewards for their efforts.

    One subject Pascal talks about often is her father, a photographer who often worked for the United Nations and was killed with her mother in a terrorist attack in London while he was seeking ways to bring about peace in Northern Ireland. It was he who got her started in softball when she was very young.On the other hand, Pascal has problems thinking about her mother, Emily McLaren, who suffered from a series of neurological problems which kept her in various hospitals and clinics for most of her adult life.

    Some of the poems Naomi writes to Pascal not only refer to their own emotional bond but Naomi's curious relationship to Robby Gordon, the chief architectural designer for her uncle's firm, Moto-D. Robby has had to wait years for Naomi to become emotionally free from her obligations to others -- first to her dying mother and then to Pascal herself. But during this time, he has remained patient. However, his patience did not come easy, and he has had to work through layers upon layers of frustration and confusion.

    Moto-D has always worked with NNY to do a number of projects, and Rom Molina, Pascal's telecommunications specialist, has served as liaison between the two firms. Rom, who graduated from Pomona College and the California Institute of Technology, is close friends with Robby, since Motoyoshi had Robby train with him when they were both taking graduate courses at Cal Tech. Robby also has a third-degree black belt in judo, and Motoyoshi was his first teacher, which is the reason Robby still calls him "Sensei," which means "teacher" or "master."