Farewell to Baiyu, Who Knew All the Numbers, and So Much More

by Beverly Faxon

In “Uscita in Firenze,” written for The Natural Enquirer in 2016, longtime Co-op cashier Baiyu Mukai speaks of the decision by Israeli essayist Amos Elon to live out the rest of his life in the Tuscan landscape, of which Elon wrote, “It’s so beautiful, it melts your heart away. So in the few years I have left, I want to look at this view most of the days of the year.”

Baiyu, inspired by such a description of Tuscany, travelled there with his wife. His essay, in true Baiyu style, wove and braided threads of fact, musing, humor, and philosophy. He described his captivation with Michelangelo’s Florence Pieta, a work Michelangelo began in his 70’s to set upon his own tomb and was then said to have abandoned a decade later because of faults in the marble.

But Baiyu was uncertain—was it unfinished? Or was it how Michelangelo intended? He writes, “Either way, it simply embodies both physical and spiritual beauty.”

Baiyu—philosopher, humorist, essayist, cashier, numbers-man-extraordinaire, appreciator of all beauty, and good friend to many—died of cancer in April 2025, after having moved back to his native Japan the previous spring. His death saddens us all.

Catherine, Baiyu’s daughter, tells us that he originally moved from Japan to get his MBA in Illinois in the 1970s, where he met his first wife. He moved back to Japan for a while, then came to L.A. with his family, which included his two toddler daughters, and worked as an accountant.

After a divorce, he realized he didn’t want to work in the corporate world anymore. A move to Washington eventually brought him to the Co-op, where he interviewed for a cashier position. I recall that interview, 20 years ago. I was a bit buffaloed, trying to figure out why this slight, soft-spoken man, with a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth, who had an MBA and a background as a CPA, wanted to take on the hectic, customerintensive, and just above minimum-wage job at a not-for-profit Co-op.

But clearly, Baiyu knew from the get-go what he was choosing. He quickly demonstrated both the basics of cashiering, and the secrets of customer service, which in Baiyu’s hands, was never formulaic “customer service,” but an almost formally polite and engaged way of being himself that charmed customers and had them queuing up to go through his line.

Like hundreds of other Co-op members, I was both surprised and deeply pleased the first time I gave Baiyu my member number and he said with a nod, “I have it.” Aside from respecting his recall skills, I recognized a generous acknowledgement in his having memorized my numerical connection to the Co-op.

Remembers Patricia, who worked with him as a cashier, “Customers would wait for Baiyu. There would be no one in the next line, but if we tried to wave someone over, they’d just say ‘Waiting for Baiyu.’ He literally brought people into the store just to talk to him.”

Baiyu and his cowboy hat in Florence, 2016.

Wendy, a Co-op customer, tells us she often checked out at Baiyu’s register, enjoying a “good chat” while he rang up her groceries, “He had a picture of his cat on his shirt one day and I asked him about it. I found out the cat had passed away.”

A cat lover herself, Wendy understood the sorrow Baiyu and his wife were feeling, so a couple of days later, she handed him a pet sympathy card.

Those acts of kindness and connection led to friendship when Baiyu’s wife invited Wendy for tea, “We shared our cat stories and became friends. They would often invite me over to eat a wonderful dinner with them.”

And of course, Wendy tells us there was, as was so often true of Baiyu’s stories, an uplifting final word, “Some months later a wild mama cat deposited four little babies on their deck and soon took off and never returned.” He and his wife “rescued the kittens and they became part of their family.”

Baiyu had the gift of being both “dignified and goofy,” says Amber, who worked with him for many years. She adds, “He had a fun, dry sense of humor. We liked to goof around, but he would also share little bits of wisdom, which he would write down on tiny pieces of paper.”

If you only noticed Baiyu’s departure days or weeks after he was gone, you are not alone. Baiyu’s leaving from the Co-op was quiet, without fanfare or a goodbye party. Said Amber, “He never tried to make a big deal of anything. On the day he left, he came up to my register and said goodbye. I thought he meant for the day. He held my hand for a bit. Only later, I realized he was trying to say goodbye without telling me he was leaving.”

Baiyu and his wife

As much as he seemed to enjoy cashiering, Baiyu loved writing. In his many articles, spanning 11 years in The Natural Enquirer, his subject matter was far ranging: oysters and burdock root, Agatha Christie and Abraham Lincoln, cowboys and samurais, Mother Flight Farm and Mark Twain, anthills and pottery sheds. His writings reflected his innate curiosity and his life as a prodigious observer and reader.

His January 2013 essay Den of Writers: Co-op/ Cowboy Perspective, begins with Baiyu’s trademark sly—often self-deprecating—wit, when he writes of his “brown hat, my favorite”: “My wife says it is too big for my head, maybe my head is shrinking, or I am losing my hair. Either way, I wear it when I am not with my wife.”

He is “tickled” when a small girl in his cashier line spots his hat and proclaims, “Cowboy.”

By the essay’s end, Baiyu explores why writers write, “By writing we can sublimate our own inadequacy, weaknesses or anxiety. By writing we can touch others with the roadmap of our own travels, no matter how rocky the road has been.”

He ends by quoting Ralph Keyes, that writing is an act of courage, and adds, “I must put on my cowboy hat to round up all my courage.”

Baiyu—the numbers man—wrote in his Natural Enquirer staff profile that he had reached his 1395th day of Co-op employment on May 2, 2023. He’d printed 47 articles in The Natural Enquirer. That is a solid legacy to leave for us all.

Thank you, Baiyu, for all the beautiful words, and all the rich, full days. Thank you for putting on your cowboy hat for us.

Thank you to Baiyu’s daughter, Catherine, for her contributions to this story.

If you would like to read Baiyu’s essays, they can be found online at plumpickings.wordpress.com