ORCHID NEWS #47

AOSP - SÃO PAULO ORCHIDOPHILE ASSOCIATION
A little of history

By Lucia Midori Morimoto

This February, AOSP completed 56 years since its foundation. It is a relatively new entity compared to others such as CPO – Círculo Paulista de Orquidófilos, SBO – Sociedade Bandeirante de Orquídeas, but it has a lot of history. It is an entity with only 5 presidents in all these years.


Futao Inoue -first presidente	Ienori Nakao -second presidente	Jorge Kawasaki - presidente from 1977 to 2002	Lucia Morimoto - president from 2002 to 2008 and from 2011	Elza Kawagoe -president for the 2009-2010 biennium

Published 4 books, 18 bulletins, 38 magazines, cultivation booklets at each exhibition.
It is a very active entity and has a valuable membership, not in number, but in dedication and volunteer spirit that is passed on to each new member that arrives.

Well, let's get to some history.

Back in the 1950s and 60s, some Japanese attended meetings of the CPO and SOB, associations whose members were mostly influential businessmen at the time.
Since most of the Japanese are immigrants and come from humble origins, they encountered some problems such as language barriers and discrimination. Even so, they attended the meetings hoping to expand their knowledge with orchids. Until at a certain point they decided to leave and began to meet at the home of one of the members, in this case Mr. Futao Inoue, who would later become the first president.
Around 40 orchidophiles eager to know and study orchids gathered in his residence and the language practiced was Japanese.

In 1967, Associação Orquidófilos São Paulo was founded and years later it was renamed Associação Orquidófila de São Paulo.
Already in the year of its foundation, the first newsletters began to be published with handwritten texts in Japanese and with black and white photos.
This publication was being perfected, becoming colored and with the typography of a journalistic company partner of AOSP. This publication had a total of 18 editions and ended in 1980.

In the 1970s, AOSP had its second president, Mr. Ienori Nakao, who took over when the former had to return to Japan. But in 1977, due to health problems, he passed the presidency to Jorge Kawasaki, who only left the position in 2002. It was a long term management where he idealized and accomplished many achievements!

In 1977, to celebrate 10 years of existence, it published the memorable book “Native Orchids of Brasil”, a luxury edition that was edited and printed in Japan. It was a bilingual publication, quite daring for the time.
Kawasaki made many friends throughout Brazil. Most orchidophile associations in Brazil invited AOSP to participate as an exhibitor and there was Jorge with a car full of plants! He made a point of visiting most of the exhibitions and that was passed on to us. His teaching was how important it is to make friends through orchids and that AOSP should participate, within its possibilities, in most exhibitions and, most importantly, not worry about the scores. After all, the intention is to help the host entity and not pick a fight because someone scored more points than you! And so it is to this day. He never allowed vanity to speak louder.

He also made our exhibitions look refined, organizing the sales space well and distributing the booklet “Basic Notions of Orchid Cultivation” free of charge, which was published at each exhibition, always with an unpublished theme.
In 1997 I joined AOSP at the invitation of Sumio Nakashima who was vice-president. In the first meeting I attended, I found something different, not to mention strange... The meeting was entirely in Japanese! I left the meeting thinking that for some reason that day it was in Japanese. At the next meeting again! I decided to ask because it wasn't in Portuguese. The response was that it was out of respect for the founders and history of AOSP. I thought it was strange but I understood.
In the election that year I was given the job of public relations. I had no idea what my role was, but little by little I learned to give radio interviews and even go on TV to talk about orchids and publicize the exhibitions. It was not easy.
In 2002, after some threats from Kawasaki to leave office, I was elected to his place. I relucted, I denied it, but there was no way! I ended up accepting on one condition! That he would not conduct the meetings in Japanese but in Portuguese! They ended up accepting and so it is to this day.
Since then, many associates have come. Most are not of Japanese origin, including many veterans who participated in other associations began to attend our meetings. The language barrier was gone.

In the year I took office, in celebration of AOSP's 35th anniversary, the book “Manual de Cultivo – Vol.1” was launched, conceived by Kawasaki, executed by Denitiro Watanabe, Márcia S, Morimoto, Gilson Kihara and I Lúcia M. Morimoto . This book was a huge success!
And following such success, to mark the 40th anniversary of AOSP, the “Cultivation Manual – Vol 2” was launched.
There was also a lot of demand!
These publications were very successful because at the time the use of the internet was not as widespread as it is today, unfortunately...
Between 2009 and 2010, Elza Kawagoe took over the presidency, as I had to leave for reasons of family health.

In 2011 it was back and we realized another one of Kawasaki's dreams, which was the publication of a quarterly AOSP magazine.
It took several meetings to arrive at the format of the publication.
The “Revista da AOSP” had great repercussion in the orchidophile environment and we managed to keep publishing it for 10 years. From issue number zero to number 37.
In 2017 AOSP completed 50 years and we would release a commemorative book, but unfortunately Kawasaki ended up passing away and we changed the focus of the book.
We call it “Memoirs, dreams and reflections of an idealist” – it was a tribute book to our great president.

After all these years, many things have changed.
The Pandemic came, paralyzing activities such as meetings, exhibitions.
Anyway, no activities, no revenues.
We decided to return the room we rented for meetings with the intention of reducing fixed costs. We cleaned up our accounts well and remained firm and strong, meeting monthly in open spaces such as orchid gardens and partners, adding knowledge through lectures, in addition to enjoying the full-time chat instead of a few hours as it was in the previous format.We are all having fun, spending less and with invigorated energy to continue holding the exhibitions.