A Blessed Life: My Father, the Preacher, the Santa Barbara Legend

In 1997, I took my inaugural trip on the Amtrak Surfliner from LAX up to Santa Barbara on a mission to find Blessed, my biological father. He didn’t raise me, and I had only met him a handful of times, but I knew he was a Japanese man who wore a white robe, preached the Bible, and walked barefoot. After a few days traversing the sidewalks, I became infatuated with this town, and soon I found Blessed, and became smitten with him also.

Blessed and I related to each other those first days with an awkward curiosity about who the other was. I was his daughter, but I would never be his little girl. He was my dad, but I’d never actually called him Dad. We settled on being friends. I called him “Bles-sed,” like everyone else. He preached the Bible to me every chance he got while I inquired about his past and, specifically, his childhood. Perhaps if I could envision him as a little boy, his absence when I was a little girl wouldn’t feel so crushing.

His past had two categories. When he was “of the flesh,” he was a boy in Tokyo, a student at The Studio School in Manhattan, and became roommates with my mom, Sandy Harrington. Shortly after I was born, he decided he was “of the spirit,” gave away his possessions, and committed to living on the streets alongside the forgotten ones — his sheep and his church — for whom his sermons were created.

He had found his calling. How and why he engaged in such an unconventional calling are questions that linger heavy in my heart: Was Blessed mentally ill or just eccentric? Why did he choose a life on the street rather than grow into becoming my father?

Blessed’s first congregation was the homeless population of Venice Beach. But over time, he spread the gospel in Hawai‘i, Alaska for a cold snap, inside a high-security prison in Texas, and in South Beach, Miami, for a hot minute before he realized the sidewalks might burn his bare feet. Sometime during the mid ’90s, he settled around Montecito Street in Santa Barbara. By that time, his student visa had long run out and he was an illegal citizen. Given the right situation, he would have been deported back to Japan, where I don’t think he would have been met with as much grace and acceptance as what was shown by the people of Santa Barbara for more than 30 years. I will always cherish the generosity and love offered him by this town.

Finding him was a slippery operation. During my twenties, I eked by with manual labor jobs when I didn’t have a theater gig; hence, my funds sorely dwarfed my time. I was rich in hope and ambition, but little else. When I could cobble together airfare from where my mom and I lived in Hawai‘i, I’d crisscross State Street trying to run into Blessed on the sidewalk. I never patronized a shop, museum, or restaurant unless I had to; being indoors seemed selfish and inefficient to my mission.

I’d ask the woman panhandling in front of the Art Museum if she had seen Blessed, but I never saw an exhibition. I’d ask the baristas, but never hang out. I’d ask the man with the double shopping carts slung together with bungee cords at Chase Palm Park. All of the strawberry farmers on Tuesdays and Saturdays.

After three days or so, word would get around, and he’d show up.

My goals with him proved fluid. At first, I wanted to write a screenplay of his life, but when he didn’t want Johnny Depp to play him, my project turned into a documentary. Fast-forward a decade, when I began creating a family of my own, and a book became a more attainable endeavor. Over the countless interviews, I learned that he fell from his beloved peach tree once and had to go to the hospital. I learned that he loved skipping school, going to the shore, and eating fresh oysters found on the sand. I learned that among the sculptors at his college, dentists were regarded as “frustrated sculptors.” I learned that he resolved that being my father was secondary to his calling as a preacher, because, as he put it, “Sandy could handle it.” (He meant me.)

At the lowest point in our relationship, he called me a trespasser. At a high point, he took me shopping for a dress, as if I were 8 years old, though by then, I was already 38. Time changed us like waves shift a shoreline; our boundaries dissolved. Eventually, I left my video camera at home. In 2022, when I last shared space with him, he tried to persuade me to order a salad at dinner instead of the meat appetizer I craved. The next night, he quibbled with me saying I drove too slow on the Mesa. It finally felt like we were some version of a family … and it felt really good.

Blessed joined the spirit world sometime in May. According to the coroner, he experienced cardiac arrest, but died pain-free. A part of me will always want more time with him, but I also know that his entire mission in life was to be of the spirit, and now he has, without a shadow of a doubt, attained that status. His high-pitched train crash of a laugh will always be missed, but surprisingly, I feel more settled now that he really is “of the spirit.”

I got to know my dad over the seven trips I made to find him as an adult. What he gave me was the gift of exemplifying an impassioned life, to live a singular truth to the point that everything else falls away. And in a time when distractions bombard our every second of existence, I honor him and his ability to never stray from the beat of his own drum. Unless, of course, the distraction is your only little girl.

Watsuki Harrington is a retired aerialist who lives in Pennsylvania and teaches hand balancing. She continues to revise her memoir about finding Blessed and hopes to publish it someday. You can find her on Instagram (@watts_suki_watsuki), where she posts a handstand daily. 

The public is invited to a Tree Dedication on Saturday, October 12, at 3 p.m. in front of the former Fiesta 5 Theater at State Street and Canon Perdido Street. This location is where Blessed was made famous in the viral video (see youtu.be/t8nz3knvhts?feature=shared) that, to this day, circulates the globe by the magic of the internet and continues to inspire people across nations. “#asianjesus #japanesejesus #weedjesus”