By Kai Curry
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
It’s an incredible thing, both humbling and inspiring. You are standing inside the Wing Luke Museum, a place where the ground and the building itself are full of our history, and you are viewing an exhibition of three artists from the same history, the same place. Then, you will probably be guided through the exhibition by a staff member who lives in the neighborhood.
“Side by Side: Nihonmachi Scenes by Tokita, Nomura, and Fujii” is just so….homey, in the best way possible. These three artists, all male, all with ties to Seattle’s Japantown in the early 1900s, all incarcerated during WWII, are cosmopolitan and talented. Their art, which primarily but not exclusively consists of city scenes, is regionalism par excellence. The difference being that, like other American artists in the Realism movement of the times, they focused on urban versus rural environments (the Regionalist movement started in small towns in the 1930s).
Takuichi Fujii
Title unknown (alley buildings), 1930s
Oil on canvas
Private collection
The world was changing so fast. Billboards, well documented especially by Kamekichi Tokita (1897-1948), were cropping up all over the place. So were the power lines. At the same time, residents of the International District and the Nihonmachi in the 1930s were surrounded by the special ambience of downtown Seattle, that mix of sea and salt, building exteriors somewhat blackened and worn down already, amidst a thriving immigrant culture that provided goods, food, art, companionship.
“I see the sky,” said curator Dr. Barbara Johns, who has written books about the three. “The kind of filtered light that we have so often, even when the sun’s out.”
When you view the mostly outside scenes of Nihonmachi’s streets as these men lived them, you feel like you are there. You are there. Some things haven’t changed. And it’s about time that the work of stellar local Asian artists like these return to the spotlight.
Tokita, born in Japan, came to Seattle in 1919. He had some skill already in Chinese landscape painting. He and Kenjiro Nomura (1896-1956) went into business together as sign painters. Takuichi Fujii (1891-1964) came to Seattle when he was 15 and eventually opened his own retail fish business. He also had a background in the arts, specifically watercolor. In Seattle, the three artists learned Western-style painting. Nomura in particular joined a painting school run by a Dutch man, Fokko Tadama, who catered to Japanese students. Regardless of influence, it’s safe to say that the work of Tokita, Nomura, and Fujii is Japanese by the fact that they were Japanese.
Kenjiro Nomura
Bridge, ca. 1932
Oil on canvas
Wing Luke Museum, gift of Sean Callahan
The three knew each other, they supported each other with their friendship, and the neighborhood supported them. Blake Nakatsu, exhibit developer at Wing Luke, whose own family has generations of connection to the Nihonmachi, remembers that his relatives once bought a painting by a fellow artist in the neighborhood.
“These connections just happened. It was part of the community,” he remarked. Prior to WWII, Tokita, Nomura, and Fujii were doing well. They were known, not just in the CID but in greater Seattle, and in some cases, had even had their work exhibited outside of Washington. Then came the camps. All three men and their families were detained at the Puyallup fairgrounds and then sent to Minidoka.
And they were in some ways forgotten. Not by their own families, of course. Not by those involved in the renewal of Seattle’s Japantown, which is seeing a rebirth. Not by those at Wing Luke. Now, in “Side by Side,” the works of these three talented artists are being shown in the largest collection on display at once. Works of each were brought from far and wide, from different collections and owners private and public, to fill out the exhibition. Nakatsu especially remembers going to Central Washington University to pick up Nomura’s “Yesler Way.”
“The depth of the color is great. Each piece of art is not just the work of art, but my relationship to it…going and picking it up was a good memory and I attach good memories to good art works.” Johns, too, is a fan of this piece, one of the largest at the exhibition. She enjoys that you can see familiar buildings in this work, and the others, but that they are from a street view. Sometimes the tops are cut off or there are unusual angles, as well as alleyways and pedestrian pathways that only locals would have known or noticed.
“I like that intimacy so much,” said Johns. This view of our city. A city only known this closely by those that live here. And even we may miss some of the details. “The site specificity homage to me is really special,” said Nakatsu.
Along with the paintings included memorabilia from the era, such as dime store offerings (sandals, sewing thread, fans), and written journals made by Tokita and Fujii during the time they spent at Minidoka. You can’t read all of it, they are under glass cases. However, with the selections given, which are written in Japanese and accompanied by sketches by the artists, you get a quick sense of what life was like leading up to and during their incarceration.
Kamekichi Tokita
Title unknown (Prefontaine Street), 1930
Oil on canvas
Collection of Yoshiko Tokita-Schroder and Jerry Schroder
I found particularly moving Tokita’s first entry, which he wrote on the day Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941: “I will keep writing until the day when Japan and the United States shake hands again.” No doubt envisioning, or already experiencing, some of the anti-Japanese-based hardships to come, Tokita continued, “My heart is full to bursting. In a moment, we have lost all the value of our existence in this society.” Fujii, too, wrote of those first ominous days after Pearl Harbor and the lead up to relocation to Puyallup: “Finally, tomorrow, we must say farewell to this house to which we have become so accustomed.”
Now, with Wing Luke’s exhibition, and through the many other efforts of local Seattleites, we can bring our own sons and daughters home, even if after their lives have extinguished. Their legacies, in these works of art, in the connections still formed by those that still live here, go on.
“Side by Side: Nihonmachi Scenes by Tokita, Nomura, and Fujii” runs through May 11, 2025, at Wing Luke Museum. For tickets, visit www.wingluke.org/sidebyside or go by in person.
Kai can be reached at info@nwasianweekly.com.