In 1966, Henry Miller was calling The Pacific Palisades home. On Wednesday nights, he’d go into Beverly Hills to visit his doctor and friend, Lee Siegel. He never brought along any “intellectuals,” as he was “sick of hearing people discuss art and literature in [his] home;” it was a chance for him to have some fun.

On one of these nights, in Beverly Hills, Miller met a new love. Her name was Hoki Tokuda, and she was in the United States working at the—now extinct–Imperial Gardens. She was, by all accounts, an accomplished jazz singer and pianist. She was on a work visa.

She’d also been in two films, by then. Japanese films, they were titled Nippon Paradise(1964) and Chinkoro Amakko (1965).

She was twenty-seven years old.

Click here to read some of Henry’s letters to Hoki!