In Tanabe, a fishing port on the south end of Japan, a long line of people waited on the narrow street outside Misai Itani's row house for a chance to meet with the nearly blind 78-year-old Buddhist.

Anguished neighbors had come from far and near to seek the wisdom of Itani-san, who, with her expressive hands and melodic voice, was renowned as a healer.

Orphaned in her youth, losing her first child and husband by age 28, then unable to have children with her second husband, Itani-san still had the calm demeanor of a person at peace. She neither complained about her hardships nor bragged about her abilities. She just humbly offered massage and herbal medicine with dollops of gentle advice.

When asked about her gifts, Itani-san said, simply, "You can't help people without love."

The Japanese healer was among 19 "wise ones" interviewed by Merriam Fields Bleyl for a doctoral dissertation on wisdom, a topic that her University of New Mexico adviser initially rejected as too broad.

After all, the adviser warned, philosophers and psychologists have been studying it for thousands of years, yet have arrived at no universal definitions or assumptions. It could take her years just to plow through the volumes devoted to the topic, and she would not likely discover anything new.

But Bleyl had a different idea.

Instead of focusing on what scholars believe wisdom to be, she believed the best way to study it was to interview wise people to see what they have in common.

Thus was born Bleyl's 10-year effort to find and analyze figures in five cultures -- Japanese, Kenyan, Navajo, Saami/Norwegian and Western European -- now published as Finding Wisdom: Learning From Those Who Are Wise.

And, yes, her subjects did share many characteristics, some obvious, others less predictable.

Whether formally educated or self-taught, for example, they all had practical skills like Itani-san's massage. Some worked the land, others built houses or organized produce co-ops. They all had a thirst for continued learning, Bleyl discovered, but none lived primarily in their minds.

They were modest and self-effacing, expressing surprise at being considered wise. Many were naturally generous, giving of their time and goods without a second thought, and grateful to a fault. Her interviewees observed more and talked less, offering their perspectives only when asked.

Many learned wisdom from stories of ancestors passed down through the generations and, like Ibrahim Muthoka Kang'eri, a Kenyan medicine man, accepted a semi-public role as "truth teller."

And, possibly most astonishing to Bleyl, she felt immediately at ease in the presence of these wise people, no matter how vaunted their positions.

Finding subjects » Scholars in developed countries have talked a lot in recent years about wisdom. The University of Chicago launched a $2 million research program on the nature and benefits of wisdom, and veteran writer Stephen S. Hall just released a tome called Wisdom: From Philosophy to Neuroscience .

Yet people in Western societies have a harder time identifying genuine sages.

That's because European and American cultures have been dominated since the Enlightenment by scientific thinking, democratization of knowledge, a general skepticism about -- and a loss of respect for -- those who have the gift of knowing, says Bleyl, a Mormon grandmother who now lives in Star Valley, Ariz. The past is devalued; the elderly no longer are revered; individual achievement is heralded; and science, aided by technology, is seen as the way to truth.

"In our world, if you are feeling sad, you go to a psychologist," she says. "If you are a Navajo, you go to a hand trembler."

So Bleyl sought savants in indigenous cultures where sagacity is more readily recognized and appreciated. She asked well-placed members of each culture to propose at least three people who were widely believed to be wise. After assembling the names, she interviewed 19 individuals, combing their life stories for hints of what made them wise.

With scarcely any effort, she immediately saw similarities. All of them had suffered harsh circumstances, if not outright tragedies, yet they all believed their problems were part of life to be borne with dignity.

A Navajo wise woman, whom Bleyl called "Shandiin" to protect her identity, spent years trying to fit into American culture, living in a boarding school and eventually converting to Pentecostalism with her husband. After the death of her father, however, Shandiin became anemic, thin and depressed. Later, her husband died and one of her children perished in an accident.

Finally, her cousin suggested she go to a Navajo crystal gazer, who diagnosed her problem and prescribed a five-day Evil Way ceremony, Bleyl writes. "With time, Shandiin, relying on her traditional Navajo beliefs and ceremonies, began to come to terms with the events of her life, including all her disappointments and losses."

Drawing on that experience, she became a mentor to young Navajos, teaching them beliefs and traditions that would steady them in today's conflict-tossed society.

Another Navajo leader, whom Bleyl called White Elk, told her wisdom is possible only when the mind and feelings come together.

"To be wise means that one must plan ahead -- think of possibilities and plan for them," he told her. "It is knowing what to do and what not to do. It involves choices."

Family ties » Many people look no further for wisdom than their own parents or grandparents.

Salt Lake Tribune reader, Kevin K. Rex, called his mother, Esther K. Rex, "the wisest person I know."

Esther reared seven children but "wasn't subservient to anyone and she wasn't a pushover," Rex writes in an e-mail. "There wasn't 'man's work' or 'woman's work' in our home, even if Mom was considered a stay-at-home mom and cooked and cleaned and sewed a lot."

One spring Esther decided she wanted to do something more than housework so joined a community softball league for women. She relished the game, even though her son "detested" playing Little League baseball.

"I loved hearing her opinions, her editorializing and her indignation over injustices wherever they occurred, whether at church when some hypocrite was preaching from the pulpit, or the fairgrounds when someone was blowing cigarette smoke our way, or at the movie theater line where people were cutting in front of us," the son recalls. "She was our own private form of justice by standing up for us and for what she felt was right."

Laurence Clifford Hovseth's was a man of unyielding disposition who never let himself get down or waste time with self-pity, says his son, Robert Hoff.

Larry worked two jobs all his adult life so that his large family -- eight children, 19 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren -- could benefit from his labors. He enjoyed cooking Sunday breakfast for family and friends or driving one of his boys around the neighborhood delivering papers and even learning to cut hair while practicing on his boys. Larry had a gift for seeing the good in people, his son says, and treated everyone with respect.

But it was his father's sage statements at a traumatic moment in his young life that Hoff will carry forever.

Hoff, who was 7 and his sister, Dolly, 10, were waiting for a school bus, when a young man, only 15 himself, plowed his car into them. Dolly was killed and Hoff injured.

"After bringing me home from the hospital, my father carrying me the whole way, the one thing I remember most was that everyone was crying. Everyone except my father, who probably wanted to cry the most," Hoff writes in an e-mail. "I know the only reason he didn't cry was because he knew it would frighten me."

Hoff was happy to be alive but distraught that his sister wasn't. The gentle father said God took Dolly because she was hurt badly and, if she had lived, would have been in a lot of pain.

"Then he said that we were very thankful to God for saving Doll from all that pain," Hoff says, "but that we were most thankful to God for letting me stay."

The stories never stop » Death never was far from another one Bleyl's wise ones, Kristian Kristensen, of Norway's Saami tribe -- known as the reindeer people. Yet Kristensen used his wits and grit to survive and protect others in his clan during the German occupation of World War II.

He started a mink farm after the war, and, when that failed, became a modestly successful farmer. He also built his own Saami sleds, sewed his own Saami-style clothing from reindeer hides and painted scenes from the arctic regions based on his vast knowledge of the people, plants and animals.

"He humbly balanced the values of honesty, hard work, truth, moral sensitivity, gratitude, compassion for people and creatures, and ethical behavior in his life," Bleyl writes.

In all, her subjects revealed a depth and breadth of wisdom still in evidence today, though more obvious in some societies than others.

"To my knowledge, no one keeps statistics on how many wise men and women are living in the world at present," Bleyl writes. "There is no 'society of wise people.' "

That's a shame, she concludes, because each "great soul" she interviewed helped her better appreciate the intrinsic value of wisdom. It's an understanding that would provide, she says, "a vital role in guiding humanity mindfully and sanely into the future."

pstack@sltrib.com