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Japanese crew to film documentary on Rota coffee
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Posted on Dec 01 2022
From left, David M. Sablan, Shigeo Nakaya, Hiroko Stewart, CNMI Associate Justice Perry Inos Sr., and Hiroshi Masuda pose for a photo after the Rotary Club of Saipan meeting on Tuesday. Nakaya and Masuda, from Temjin TV in Japan, will film a documentary on coffee grown in the CNMI. (LEIGH GASES)
A Japanese television crew from Temjin TV in Japan are on Rota to put together a documentary program on the history of Rota’s wild coffee trees.
Television director Hiroshi Masuda and his cameraman, Shigeo Nakaya, arrived on Saipan last Sunday to meet with David M. Sablan or “Uncle Dave” and were his guests at the Rotary Club of Saipan meeting last Tuesday.
Sablan said the pair will fly to Rota and stay there for two weeks to gather information on the island’s coffee. They will then create a documentary to be shown in the CNMI’s channel 4, or NHK Japanese, around February next year.
After the Rotary meeting, Masuda elaborated on their plans: “I’m making a documentary program focused on coffee growing [on] Rota, which has just started. The thing is, they found wild coffee trees among the forest [on] Rota and it’s so obvious that it’s not natural—it was most likely left over from Japanese time.”
Masuda said his other purpose is to investigate the history of coffee growing in the CNMI, and he intends to collaborate with Sablan on this subject, as Sablan may remember the Japanese occupation of Saipan and holds a wealth of information on its history.
Masuda and Nakaya will create the documentary, but there are six others on the team that will help them out on Rota.
Masuda is a director for Temjin TV, which is a production company that develops stories, primarily focused on documentary-style programs.
Previously, in 2018, The Ueshima Coffee Co., or UCC in Japan, along with KFC Triathlon Club, gathered Rota coffee beans for UCC’s investigatory and testing work to determine Rota’s coffee bean quality. No updated plans have been disclosed since then.
To read more of KFC Triathlon Club’s story on Rota coffee, visit their website at kfctriathlon.com.
