Ohno Kazuo was born October 27, 1906, in Hakodate, a seaport at the southern point of Hokkaido as the oldest son of the family. Hakodate was considered a very modern town in Northern Japan that is strongly influenced by the West. Ohno's parents were from relatively well to-do families; his father's family worked in the fishing industry of the Northern Ocean. In Hakodate, Ohno had never seen a western-style dance or theatre performance. At the gymnastics school he got to know neuer Tanz. It was not this first encounter with western dance that was to become the guiding light for his future career, however, but rather an experience from shortly before graduation. Ohno's class was more like a meditation session where music and spoken words were supposed to help [participants] abandon reason and thoughts about the appearance of one's own body in favor of emotional experiences out of which movement could emerge.