Stories of Pacific Northwest Issei Artists Who Achieved Recognition in the Years Before World War II—PART THREE: Kenjiro Nomura
Stories of Pacific Northwest Issei Artists Who Achieved Recognition in the Years Before World War II—PART THREE: Kenjiro Nomura
This is the final article in a series featuring three remarkable Issei artists—first generation Japanese who immigrated to Seattle in the early 20th century. By the 1930s, their paintings had brought them widespread recognition and awards, but their lives and careers were upended—and largely erased from historical memory—by the wartime incarceration of about 120,000 people of Japanese descent living on the West Coast.
These three artists, all born in Japan in the 1890s, were Kamekichi Tokita, Takuichi Fujii, and Kenjiro Nomura. We’re fortunate that relatively recently their paintings, sketches, and diaries have been rediscovered and publicized—primarily through three books (published beginning in 2011) by art historian and curator Barbara Johns, with major assistance from translators and the artists’ descendants. These books, and their related museum exhibits, have been my primary resources for this blog series. My subject here is Kenjiro Nomura.
PART THREE: Kenjiro Nomura (1896-1956)
Cover of Barbara John’s book, Kenjiro Nomura, American Modernist: An Issei Artist’s Journey, 2021. Detail of Nomura’s oil on canvas painting, Puget Sound, ca. 1933 (Tacoma Art Museum, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Cyril A. Spinola.)
Barbara Johns first became acquainted with Kenjiro Nomura’s paintings in the early 1980s, when she worked as a curatorial assistant at the Seattle Art Museum. In the racks of museum storage, she found “strongly composed and beautifully crafted paintings in a 1930s American realist style… seldom… exhibited in recent years” by Issei artists Kenjiro Nomura and Kamekichi Tokita. In the decade that followed, she found opportunities to recommend the artists and exhibit some of their paintings.
Also in the 1980s, David F. Martin worked restoring paintings in a small shop in Kent, Washington. One day Nomura’s son, George Nomura, brought in a severely damaged painting for restoration, commenting that it had been painted by his father. Martin, now curator of Cascadia Art Museum (since 2015), recognized its quality and asked if he was a famous artist. “Well back in the day, he was, but he’s forgotten now,” his son replied. (Jade Yamazaki Stewart, Dec. 16, 2020, in The Seattle Times)
Ultimately, Johns’s extensive research resulted in works of biography and art history (published in 2011, 2017 and 2021) about the three Issei artists covered in this blog series. Kenjiro Nomura, American Modernist: An Issei Artist’s Journey, published in 2021, is also the catalog for Cascadia Art Museum’s Kenjiro Nomura exhibition (2021-22)—and includes an extensive chapter written by Martin, its curator.
Early Life, Immigration to Seattle, and Early Employment (1896-1922):
Little is known about Kenjiro Nomura’s early childhood. Born in 1896 in central Japan’s Gifu Prefecture, he was the only one of Harukichi and Shiu Komura’s four children to be born in Japan. Harukichi broke with the family’s farming tradition, became a tailor, and worked for a time in the Alaska Gold Rush. When Kenjiro was ten, the family immigrated from Japan to Tacoma, where his father opened a tailoring business in the city’s Nihonmachi (Japantown). Three much younger brothers, all American citizens, were born in the next few years.
For about six years, Kenjiro attended a public elementary school, in a special class for immigrant children. He was one of the oldest Japanese children in the district, bullied by other students for his broken English. He also attended the Tacoma Japanese language school, where he received excellent calligraphy instruction that would serve him well as an adult. But when he was sixteen, his parents and three younger brothers returned to Japan. Too old to re-enter school there, Kenjiro stayed behind in Tacoma. He left school after the eighth grade and worked in several laboring jobs.
Sometime before his 19th birthday, Nomura moved to Seattle and found work selling and delivering a shopkeeper’s merchandise and at a Friday Harbor salmon cannery. Fortunately, his prospects improved when he apprenticed to a sign painter, making use of his calligraphy training. By 1922 he had opened his own sign painting business, Noto Sign Company, in partnership with another Issei, Show Toda.
Artistic Training, Marriage, and Prewar Art and Businesses (1915-1942)
Unlike many other immigrant artists of the period, Nomura received formal instruction in Western-style oil painting, studying for several years with Fokko Tadama, a Dutch immigrant artist whose teaching studio included three more experienced Issei painters. In October 2016, his paintings were exhibited alongside theirs, winning critical acclaim.
In 1928, Kamekichi Tokita replaced Show Toda as Nomura’s sign company partner. Tokita had learned Western-style oil painting from Nomura and was also a member of Shunjukai, a group of young artists who exhibited together. The sign shop also served as their studio and became a place for Japanese American artists to meet and critique one another’s work. On Sundays, they took sketching trips in the city and nearby rural areas. Also in 1928, Nomura married Fumiko Mukai (1908-1946), who had been born in Washington State and educated in Japan, returning here when she was fourteen. Their only child, George, was born in 1930.
Nomura’s artistic reputation was established in the 1930s, when he exhibited regularly in Seattle and the San Francisco Bay Area. After winning the 1932 Northwest Annual’s first prize in oil painting, he was given a solo exhibition in 1933 at the Seattle Art Museum’s formal opening. Noted artist and art critic Kenneth Callahan praised him as “one of the leading progressive painters in Seattle.”
Throughout the 1930s, Nomura represented Washington State and the West Coast in several regional and national exhibitions. These included Painting and Sculpture from 16 American Cities (at The Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1933); Oil Paintings by Four Japanese Artists of the West Coast (organized by the Seattle Art Museum and the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in 1934); the First National Exhibition of American Art (in New York in 1936); and the Golden Gate International Exposition of 1939.
Here is Barbara Johns’s description of Nomura’s prewar paintings:
“He was a careful observer who represented the places he knew. He depicted the intimate character of an urban neighborhood: the relationship of its walkways and buildings, its particular vistas, and the atmospheric qualities that lit them. Nature was in the sky overhead and the vegetation sprouting alongside concrete, at the waterfront where nature and industry meet, the bridges that span the city’s waterways, and the valley farms he occasionally visited.” (p. 114)
Her description of his award-winning 1932 oil painting, Street, clarifies Nomura’s “individual style” and “American modernist” identity:
“Nomura’s paintings of the 1930s are characterized by clearly constructed perspectival space and a rhythmic sequence of geometric shapes. In Street, buildings march up Yester Way in alternating curves and planes. Their solidly modeled forms are outlined to define and simplify shape; the foliage is reduced to pattern and mirrored by the billowing clouds. The palette is rose-gray and green, a muted version of the red and green complements he favored in paintings of these years. Here and in other paintings, a clear light illuminates all pictorial elements and accentuates geometry and color.” (p. 30)
Nomura, Tokita and Takuichi Fujii were invited in 1935 to join the Group of Twelve, a collective of Seattle-area modernist artists who exhibited together. Here is Nomura’s artistic statement, published in their catalog:
"My desire in painting is to avoid the conventional art rules, so that I can be free to paint and approach Nature creatively. I have gradually and almost unconsciously been influenced by the work of early Japanese painters. Now realizing this influence, I am consciously trying to utilize those qualities that I want, such as color, line, and simplicity of conception, in my own style of painting. Due to the great difference between the Western style of painting and the Japanese, the problem is a very difficult one, but I am devoting every effort to achieve this." (Kenjiro Nomura, 1937, in Some Work of the Group of Twelve)
Despite Nomura’s artistic success, the Depression years brought hardship and business failure. He found four weeks’ employment in the 1934 Public Works Art Project, creating six paintings for public institutions. But both the Noto Sign Company and the grocery store that he and Fumiko managed were forced to close. Eventually, the dry-cleaning business that they opened in Seattle’s University District was successful; by 1941 they hoped to buy a house.
Wartime Incarceration (1942-1945):
Main Gate, 1942. Watercolor on paper painting of the Puyallup camp’s main gate. (image: published online in Densho Encyclopedia; Creative Commons 3.0 License. Courtesy of the Tacoma Art Museum, The George and Betty Nomura Collection, 2013.)
On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought irrevocable change. Anti-Japanese racism and wartime propaganda were rampant, and on February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which targeted everyone of Japanese descent living on the West Coast for forced removal to WRA (War Relocation Authority) Camps.
When orders were posted for his family’s removal, bringing with them only what they could carry, Nomura began burning his paintings. Fortunately, his landlord agreed to store their belongings and the paintings that remained; he also sold their dry-cleaning equipment and personally delivered the money to Nomura. In May 1942 the family was forcibly “relocated” to a temporary detention camp at the Washington State Fairgrounds in Puyallup. And in September of that year, they were incarcerated at the Minidoka WRA Camp in the Idaho desert.
Beginning in Puyallup, Nomura made notebook sketches of the camp’s inhabitants and its poorly constructed, unsanitary and crowded conditions. He also created a series of watercolor paintings of camp life. At Minidoka, he was assigned to the cabinetmakers crew, responsible for sign-making and for building and maintaining camp furnishings. He also continued painting—works of various sizes, most focused on the landscape rather than camp residents. Some displayed the beauty of the desert environment as well as its starkness and isolation. A few were produced for art exhibitions held in camp and at the Twin Falls Library, where Nomura, Tokita and Fujii were featured artists.
Here is Barbara Johns’s description of Nomura’s wartime art:
“Nomura’s total extant wartime work comprises oil and watercolor paintings, pencil and ink drawings, and two small sketchbooks, altogether nearly one hundred discrete images. The paintings vary in formality, from some that are signed and dated to others that are loosely sketched. The more finished ones are characterized by their well-balanced construction and precise perspective that recall Nomura’s formal training.” (p. 56)
Guard Tower, 1943. Oil on paper painting of the Minidoka camp. (image: published online in Densho Encyclopedia; Creative Commons 3.0 License. Courtesy of the Tacoma Art Museum, The George and Betty Nomura Collection, 2013.)
Postwar Life (1945-1956):
In early 1945, the WRA began planning to close the camps, but with rumors of West Coast anti-Japanese violence, many residents were fearful of leaving. By late summer, those who remained were evicted, with little notice. In September, the Nomuras returned to Seattle, where they had lost everything. Even after finding work in a garment factory, they continued to struggle. Nomura had stopped painting, and Fumiko was ill and depressed. She died by suicide in 1946.
Over time, Nomura’s personal life improved. He married Chiyo (Alice) Fukasaki in 1949 and together they bought a hotel management business in Seattle’s Belltown. But the hotel failed six months later. Nomura found work as a garment factory pressor, but it was too physically demanding. Eventually he found work as a frame maker that supported them.
After the laws prohibiting naturalization of Asian immigrants were ended, first Chiyo (in 1953) and then Kenjiro (in 1954) became naturalized citizens. They were finally able to buy a house of their own. Tragically, Chiyo died of an illness in early 1956; that June Kenjiro died of complications following surgery.
Postwar Art (1947-1956):
After two years of postwar hardship, Nomura resumed sketching and painting, encouraged by Paul Horiuchi, a younger Issei artist. Ironically, Nomura’s work was exhibited at the 1947 Western Washington State Fair in Puyallup, where the Nomuras had been incarcerated just five years earlier.
From 1947 until his death, Nomura left behind the realism of his prewar and wartime art, at first.creating semi abstract paintings in oil or gouache. Soon, however, his work had become fully abstract:
“His painting style quickly evolved from realist landscape to a gestural abstraction that is characterized by a dynamic combination of bold and delicate calligraphic marks, together with the luminosity and color sensibility that imbue his paintings of the 1930s.” (Barbara Johns, in an online article in Densho Encyclopedia)
Johns also points out that, unlike Tokita and Fujii, Nomura was the “only one to have returned home, survived and reestablish[ed] recognition.” His paintings were exhibited and received awards, with reviewers noting his artistic and stylistic growth. Unfortunately, he never regained his prewar fame.
Prominent Seattle gallery owner Zoe Dusanne promoted Nomura’s paintings and the work of other Japanese American artists. In 1954 her gallery held a solo Nomura exhibition, and with her help a Nomura painting was included in the 1955 São Paulo International Biennial. That year, his work was also included in a Portland Art Museum exhibition titled Eight Washington Painters.
Kenjiro Nomura with his painting International Carnival at the Zoe Dusanne Gallery, 1952. (photo by Elmer Ogawa, published online in Densho Encyclopedia; Creative Commons 3.0 License. Courtesy of Betty Nomura.)
Posthumous Exhibitions:
Four years after Nomura’s death, an exhibition of his prewar and postwar work was held at the Seattle Art Museum. Unfortunately, this 1960 exhibition did not restore Nomura’s prewar fame. It was held too early, more than a decade before young activists began working to promote and redefine Asian American art.
Nomura’s wartime art remained in storage, with family members unaware of its existence, until it was rediscovered in the late 1980s by his son George. In 1991, it was shown at the Wing Luke Museum in an exhibition titled Kenjiro Nomura: An Artist’s View of Japanese American Internment before traveling throughout the country. A review published at that time provides much-needed context:
According to June Mukai McKivor, the artist's niece and organizer of the exhibit, the paintings weren't talked about because talking about internment was too painful for the family. “The subject of internment was never really discussed,” McKivor said. “It's similar to victims of the Holocaust not talking about that experience. When I started to do research on internment camps, I asked people from the camps what they remembered and if they could recall or describe certain things. They almost always categorically said, ‘I don't remember.’ “ (“Internment Paintings Speak the Unspoken,” by Phil West, June 26, 1992, in The Seattle Times)
For the next two decades, Nomura’s wartime paintings and sketchbooks were exhibited widely, and in 2013 they were donated by George and Betty Nomura to the Tacoma Art Museum.
More recently, Nomura’s art has been included in several exhibitions,* notably the 2021-22 exhibition at Cascadia Art Museum—and Barbara John’s 2021 book, its catalog. Even so, Curator David F. Martin, who has advocated for Nomura’s art since the 1980s, reveals the art establishment’s ongoing resistance to recognizing Nomura’s place in American art history. Martin reports that major art museums have been reluctant to accept Nomura’s work, always responding that it would be more appropriate to exhibit it in a Japanese historical museum.
In Conclusion:
Like Kamekichi Tokita and Takuichi Fujii, Kenjiro Nomura left almost no personal papers, other than his artwork, and it’s unknown how many of his works of art have been lost. But the paintings and sketches that were preserved are of great artistic and historical significance.
Here is Barbara John’s description of his legacy:
“Nomura’s legacy is that of an immigrant who made his home in the United States and contributed substantially to its cultural life. It is an immigrant experience enriched by his Japanese American understanding and yet constricted by laws, language, and custom. It is an ethnic minority experience, constrained by mainstream assumptions, biases, and social norms… His paintings add meaningfully to an expanded, inclusive view of American art and experience. They are eloquent, present objects through which we interpret and reflect upon not only his time but also our own.” (p. 114)
I feel strongly that now, in 2025, Nomura’s life and art are even more relevant to our own time than when Johns’s book was published. And when I walk through the Seattle Japanese Garden, I feel the presence of those who came before us, immigrants and indigenous peoples alike, and am grateful for their lives and labors.
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*As I was beginning to research and develop this blog series, I was excited to learn of a new exhibit at Seattle’s Wing Luke Museum that features the three Issei artists in this series. I was fortunate to view this wonderful exhibit on August 16th, its opening day! Side by Side: Nihonmachi Scenes by Tokita, Nomura, and Fujii features paintings from the 1930s by these three remarkable artists. It runs through May 11, 2025, and brings to life their extraordinary artistry and the prewar Nihonmachi where they lived and painted. Although it’s a relatively small exhibit in a single gallery, I encourage art-lovers and readers of this blog not to miss it!
Corinne Kennedy is a Garden Guide, frequent contributor to the Seattle Japanese Garden blog, and retired garden designer.