It’s something incredible, humbling and inspiring. You’re inside the Wing Luke Museum, a place where the ground and structure itself are loaded with our history, and you’re looking for an exhibition of three artists from the same history. , from the same position. Then, you’ll most likely be guided through the exhibit by a staff member who lives in the neighborhood.
“Side to Side: Nihonmachi Scenes from Tokita, Nomura and Fujii” is so. . . intimate, in the most productive way imaginable. These three artists, all men, all connected to Seattle’s Japantown in the early 20th century, all imprisoned during the World War. War II, are cosmopolitan and talented. His art, composed basically, but not exclusively, of urban scenes, is regionalism par excellence. The difference is that, like other American artists of the realist movement of the time, they focused on urban and rural settings ( (the regionalist movement began in small towns in the 1930s).
The global was becoming very fast. Advertising posters, well documented in particular by Kamekichi Tokita (1897-1948), appeared almost everywhere. Power lines too. At the same time, the citizens of the International District and Nihonmachi in the 1930s were surrounded by the unique atmosphere of downtown Seattle, that aggregate of sea and salt, with the exteriors of buildings already blackened and worn, in the midst of a thriving culture of immigration that provided goods. It combines food, art, camaraderie.
“I see the sky,” said curator Barbara Johns, who has written books about all three. “The kind of filtered light that we get so often, even when the sun is out. ”
When you look at the most common external scenes of the streets of Nihonmachi as experienced by those men, you feel as if you are there. Are you there. Some things have not changed. And it’s time for paintings by notable local Asian artists like these to come back into the spotlight.
Tokita, born in Japan, arrived in Seattle in 1919. He already had some skills in painting Chinese landscapes. He and Kenjiro Nomura (1896-1956) started out together as sign painters. Takuichi Fujii (1891-1964) came to Seattle at the age of 15 and eventually opened his own retail fish business. He also had experience in the arts, specifically watercolor. In Seattle, the three artists learned to paint in the Western style. Nomura notably joined a painting school run by a Dutchman, Fokko Tadama, aimed at Japanese students. Whatever his influence, the depictions of Tokita, Nomura and Fujii can be said to be Japanese because they were Japanese.
The three knew each other, supported each other with their friendship and the community supported them. Blake Nakatsu, an exhibition developer at Wing Luke, whose own family circle has had ties to the Nihonmachi for generations, recalls that his relatives once bought a painting through some other artist in the community.
“These connections just happened. It is a component of the community,” she noted. Before World War II, Tokita, Nomura and Fujii were doing well. They were known not only in the CID but also in the greater Seattle area and, in some cases, their paintings had even been exhibited outdoors in Washington. Then came the fields. The three men and their families were arrested at the Puyallup Fairgrounds and then sent to Minidoka.
And they have been somewhat forgotten. Not through his own family, of course. Not through those involved in the renovation of Seattle’s Japantown, which is undergoing a renaissance. Not through Wing Luke. Now, in “Side Through Side”, the works of those 3 talented artists are presented in the largest collection on display simultaneously. The works were brought from all over, from other collections and from personal and public owners, to complete the exhibition. Nakatsu specifically remembers going to Central Washington University to retrieve Nomura’s “Yesler Path. “
“The intensity of the color is great. Every art painting is not just an art painting, but my relationship with it. . . Going to get it was clever reminiscence, and I attach clever memories to clever art paintings. Johns is also a fan of this painting, one of the largest in the exhibition. He likes that we can see familiar buildings in this painting, and in the others, but that they are noticeable from the street. Sometimes the peaks are jagged or there are angles, as well as alleys and pedestrian paths that only the locals would have known or noticed.
“I love that privacy,” Johns said. And even we can miss some details. ” The site-specific tribute to me is indeed special,” Nakatsu said.
The paintings included memorabilia from the time, such as gifts from dime retail stores (sandals, sewing thread, fans) and diaries written by Tokita and Fujii about their time in Minidoka. You can’t read everything, they are in a glass case. However, with the options on offer, written in Japanese and accompanied by sketches by the artists, you get a quick idea of what life was like before and their imprisonment.
I found Tokita’s first article moving, which he wrote on the day Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941: “I will continue writing until the day Japan and the United States meet. They will shake hands again. ” or already experiencing, some of the anti-Japanese difficulties that lie ahead, Tokita continued: “My center is about to burst. In an instant, we have lost all the price of our lifestyles in this society. Fujii also wrote about the grim first Days after Pearl Harbor and the time before the move to Puyallup: “We will finally have to say goodbye to this space to which we are so accustomed. ”
Today, thanks to the Wing Luke exhibit and the many other efforts of Seattle residents, we can bring our own sons and daughters home, even if their lives have passed away. Their legacy, in those works of art, in the ties they still weave. through those who still live here, he lives on.
“Side via Side: Nihonmachi Scenes from Tokita, Nomura, and Fujii” runs through May 11, 2025, at the Wing Luke Museum. For tickets, visit www. wingluke. org/sideviaside or prevent in person.
Kai can be reached at info@nwasianweekly. com.