Doreen Ihara was born in 1944 and grew up in Woodridge NY.
She was the second daughter of Alfred and Bessie Kaplan and is survived by her older sister, Jewell Kirwin. Doreen and Jewell and their two younger brothers, David and Paul (both deceased) lived in a two bedroom 2nd floor apartment in a house built by Doreen’s grandfather. The neighborhood had lots of kids (mostly boys) so Doreen played baseball in the summers and, in the winters, sledded down the street usually stacked 2-3 kids high. Sometimes Al would pull all the sleds up behind his jeep. Eventually Al built a house across the street, next to his garage and car dealership and the family of six moved in. The kids all took turns pumping gas for customers when Al came into the house. Doreen attended Fallsburg High. She was an excellent student but found lifelong loves in literature and art.
In 1961 she moved to Boston to attend BU, studying art and English. She worked hard, painting every day and, in the evenings, going out to coffee houses to hear folk music and gallery openings to see art. She met her future husband, Michio Ihara, a Fulbright scholar from Japan and a sculptor who was studying architecture at MIT. Their romance in the US was relatively short as Michio had to return to Japan. They wrote to each other frequently and soon he asked her to join him in Tokyo. Doreen, barely in her twenties, rushed to finish her degree and save money to begin this new adventure so far away from the small Catskills hamlet where she’d spent most of her life to that point.
In Tokyo, she studied Japanese and worked at Kodansha, a bilingual publishing house. Michio’s career as an architectural sculptor was taking off with multiple commissions for high profile new buildings in Tokyo. Doreen and Michio married in the summer of 1966. They lived in a small two room concrete building attached to Michio’s studio. It was part of a compound centered on the “European” style home of Michio’s father, a well know painter and professor. In 1968, Doreen gave birth to Akeo, their only child. In the winter of 1970, the young family moved temporarily to Kyoto while Michio participated in the EXPO 70 world’s fair in Osaka. Later that year, along with a nanny, they traveled through Europe, on the way back to Massachusetts and Michio’s new fellowship at MIT.
They settled into life in the Boston area, eventually buying their first house in Cambridge in 1975. By then, Michio had left MIT to focus on sculptural commissions and Doreen had started teaching elementary school art in Wayland. She loved working with kids; inspiring their creativity. During these years, Doreen also attended Leslie College earning her masters degree in education.
In 1981, they purchased a house and studio in Concord MA. Doreen, in between teaching jobs at the time, dove into fixing up this beautiful but well worn Victorian. She worked closely with the contractor and did most of the interior painting herself. Over the years, she and Michio hosted many dinners and parties in that house including an annual New Years Day event for which she cooked and prepared for days ahead. As many in the Japanese community around Boston can attest, she was an excellent cook of shogatsu ryori (traditional Japanese New Years cuisine).
After Akeo went off to college, Doreen began teaching at the Thoreau School in Concord; first art and then 4th grade. She taught there until her retirement in the early 2000’s.
Doreen also managed much of the financial and contractual aspects of Michio’s career as a sculptor. He highly respected her aesthetic opinion and often looked to her as a second set of eyes on his work.
Doreen loved to work in the garden. She had extensive plantings all around the house in Concord. When she and Michio moved to Canton in 2018, she designed the garden there to work in harmony with the sculptures Michio and his assistant carefully placed in their new environs.
Doreen was an avid reader; often choosing novels by foreign authors and relishing that window into another culture. She also returned time and again to “Pride and Prejudice”. Doreen and Michio made travel a big part of their life; over the years visiting Australia, New Zealand,
China, Egypt, the Netherlands, Russia and Spain to name a few.
In retirement, Doreen joined a writing class which became a small but devoted writing group. Although the group eventually stopped meeting, the women remained lasting friends.
Michio’s final years were challenged by dementia. Doreen was committed to keeping him at home and caring for him herself. She did this with the same love and devotion that characterized their 60+ year marriage.
Michio passed away in 2025.
A year later, Doreen was diagnosed with a rare sarcoma, likely the result of radiation treatment she had received 30 years earlier for a previous cancer. She did not linger long on this cruel irony. Rather, she reflected on those 30 years as a beautiful and fulfilling gift of a life. She faced her final months with dignity and grace and love.
In lieu of flowers, please consider donating to Good Shepherd Hospice in Doreen’s memory. Without the compassionate care and commitment of their nurses, aides and social workers, Akeo would not have been able to keep Doreen at home which was her wish.
https://gscommunitycare.org/Donate