Kaji Aso, at 69; artist, poet was a Renaissance man

In a world where the description Renaissance man often is overdone, all those who speak of Japanese-born artist Kaji Aso use those words to capture his many accomplishments and his boundless spirit.

Artist, professor, opera singer, Haiku poet, marathon runner, roller-blader, ice skater, and a man whose work is among the permanent collections of museums around the world, Mr. Aso was a presence in his Fenway neighborhood for more than three decades, presiding in kimono at his Japanese tea house, strolling along in his elegant attire and fedora hats, or taking a midnight spin on his roller blades.

Mr. Aso, who had planned to run his 37th consecutive Boston Marathon next month before becoming ill, died March 11 at his Boston home of esophageal cancer. He was 69.

He said in a 2002 interview with Boston magazine, which chose him as one of its ''40 Bostonians We Love," that he always told people he was 86 ''because if he told them his real age, they'd never believe he'd had the time to accomplish so much."

A dapper, handsome man, who enjoyed an occasional cigar and the finer things in life, friends said, Mr. Aso always wore well-tailored suits and ties in the classroom during the more than 30 years he taught at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and at his Kaji Aso Studio Institute for the Arts on St. Stephen Street. His students said he taught them as much about life as about art.

''It's OK to mess up," he would say, said Polly Broman Wright of Natick, who teaches calligraphy at Tufts University. ''He would tell us that 'without failure, you don't know success. No matter how much you fail, you can always come back.' " The most important thing he told his students, she said, ''was to be one with the work. To me that meant, 'Go ahead and do it.' "

''He was an extraordinary teacher," said former student Rosemarie Sansone of Lexington. ''He gave you so much of himself. It was obvious he loved his profession." She said Mr. Aso challenged his students to use their imagination in their art work with stories from his childhood and by getting them to imagine things taken for granted, like the moon, from a different point of view. ''His own paintings were all about light and bringing light to the subject matter," she said. ''He was a Japanese man with an Italian flair for clothes. There was something very Italian about him."

Mr. Aso's art was all-encompassing and included acrylic painting, Japanese calligraphy, Sumi painting -- an ink painting Oriental in style -- watercolors, etchings, and, in later years, sculpting. ''His work was very beautiful, very peaceful and inspiring," said Kate Finnegan, administrator of the Kaji Aso Studio.

''Kaji was a very optimistic person and anything that stood in his way he saw as a creative challenge," Finnegan said. ''He never saw things negatively."

Mr. Aso always ''wanted to see things through," she said. For instance, no matter how difficult it was, he always finished the Boston Marathon.

His philosophy was that ''art does not come from art. Art comes from life," and he encouraged his students to go out and experience things, she said.

One way he helped open their eyes and feelings to the world around them was on river trips he started in the 1980s, where groups of students paddled, kayaked, or rowed on rivers such as the Volga, the Mississippi, the Nile, the Hudson, the Swanee, the Connecticut, the Seine, and the Tagus.

When the students weren't paddling to the cadence of Mr. Aso's ''keep paddling" in Japanese, they were sketching nature and people they met along the route. Back in class, they would paint from their sketches, which often were exhibited around Boston.

Mr. Aso often expressed the wisdom of his beliefs in his Haiku poems, many published. One reads:

''Old dog

''Chasing firefly

''Never catch it"

Mr. Aso was born in Tokyo to Minoru and Kisa Aso. He started painting as a child and earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from the Tokyo University of Art in 1963. For a time, he taught in Japan and traveled extensively through Asia, Finnegan said. He had been invited to teach in San Francisco and Chicago, but met some people from Boston and was attracted here ''because of the ocean," Finnegan said.

He arrived in 1967 and did not have a job lined up, recalled Peter Thomson of Boston, whose family befriended him. ''He arrived with his art under his arm," Thomson said. ''He was a wonderful etcher and had a whimsical sense of humor. He always loved brimmed hats and owned 15 of them. He was a good swimmer and would dive for sea urchins. He was a master at creative sushi. He was a great friend."

Among the museums that hold Mr. Aso's work are the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Padua Museum of Art in Italy, the State Pushkin Art Museum in Moscow, and the National Museum of Art in Tokyo. He has been honored by a number of foreign governments and recently was recognized as one of the 2,000 Outstanding People of the 20th Century by the International Biographical Centre of Cambridge, England.

Mr. Aso never married. He told Boston magazine he had ''never thought" about marrying -- although he had thought ''a lot about not marrying."

Mr. Aso leaves a sister, Kazu Toyama of Yamato, Japan, and a brother, Eiji Aso of Toride, Japan.

A memorial service will be held at 7 p.m. tomorrow in the Great Hall of the State House.