Utae Suzuki once made the Dalai Lama's bed-literally. The year was 1994, and His Holiness was visiting the Wood Valley Temple on Hawaii Island. As chairman of the Buddhist board, sultan of sitting, the Dalai Lama, it was decided, needed a set of cushions-for meditating, sleeping, the works. Suzuki, then 44, got the call in Hilo and stitched up a Japanese futon, maroon on one side and scarlet-floral on the other, with pillow and cushion to boot. "I tried to pay attention to the color," she says. Then she got to meet him. "Oh, he was much younger. And very intellectual."
Suzuki recently celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of her shop in downtown Hilo. A sign hangs over the sidewalk touting Dragon Mama's "Natural Fiber Futons and Fine Bedding." The store is cozy, lined with rolls of patterned fabric and cushions, accented with Japanese tchotchkes. She fills her zafu (meditation cushions) with buckwheat hulls she prepares herself and stuffs her sleeping futons with wool from New Zealand. "The wool does not hold moisture, so it's perfect for this kind of weather," she says of rainy Hilo.
Born in Tokyo in 1950, Suzuki grew up watching her mother and grandmother make futons for her family. They rolled out those futons and slept on tatami mats. When she left Japan for Berkeley, California, she was a single mother in her thirties with three small children and cleaned houses to get by. Eventually she opted to pursue what she most enjoyed: sewing. "It was never a pain," she says. She opened her first Dragon Mama in Oakland, making Japanese futons. Still, she always wanted to end up in Hawaii-even though she knew next to nothing about it. "I was very ignorant," she says. "I thought Hawaii was only one island." After eight years in the East Bay, she packed two shipping containers and sent them to the island named Hawaii, the big one.
Now 72, Suzuki worries that younger generations are growing less interested in her wares. "The wabi-sabi traditional designs are more for obachan, grandma," she says. "It's a little outdated." And yet she stays busy, sometimes making three futons in one day with the help of her 27-year-old grandson. The same salespeople she's known for years come by selling fabric-Japanese, often very expensive. "Especially the ones that I really like," Suzuki says. "And so I cannot have everything."
