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Becoming American? : the art and identity crisis of Yasuo Kuniyoshi / ShiPu Wang.
LIBRA ND237.K83 W36 2011
Available from offsite location
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Wang, ShiPu.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Kuniyoshi, Yasuo, 1889-1953--Criticism and interpretation.
- Kuniyoshi, Yasuo.
- Kuniyoshi, Yasuo, 1889-1953--Political and social views.
- Kuniyoshi, Yasuo, 1889-1953.
- Japanese American artists--Race identity.
- Japanese American artists.
- World War, 1939-1945--Art and the war.
- World War, 1939-1945.
- Political and social views.
- Criticism and interpretation.
- World War, 1939-1945--Japanese Americans.
- Japanese Americans.
- Genre:
- Art and the war.
- Art.
- Physical Description:
- xii, 191 pages : illustrations ; 27 cm
- Place of Publication:
- Honolulu : University of Hawaiʻi Press, [2011]
- Summary:
- In 1939 the painter Iwamatsu Jun (1908-1994) and his artist wife, Tomoe, arrived in the U.S. as political refugees. During World War II, Iwamatsu used his artistic talents for the U.S. war effort, and he adopted a pseudonym, Taro Yashima, to protect his young son, whom he left behind in Japan. The New Sun, which was published in the U.S. in 1943, is an account of his life in prewar Japan.
- In its depiction of ordinary Japanese, The New Sun is both an indictment of Japanese militarism and a plea for American understanding of "the enemy." Told mainly through Yashima's powerful artwork, it is a personal and political text of a rural doctor's s son who becomes an anti-imperialist artist-activist. Yashima recounts how his wife and their peers were imprisoned and brutalized by the tokkoka, Japan's secret police, often for months without being formally charged or knowing when they would be released. Despite the arbitrary deprivations and cruelties of life in prison and in Imperial Japan, Yashima retains faith in the regenerative possibilities of art and in a future without tyranny.
- This work of quiet conscience and protest is now as relevant as when it first appeared more than sixty years ago. Book jacket.
- Contents:
- Prelude : surviving Pearl Harbor
- Painting American
- Negotiating "Japaneseness"
- Picturing an identity crisis
- Fighting the battles within
- Wearing the masks
- Epilogue : becoming American?
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- ISBN:
- 9780824834180
- 0824834186
- OCLC:
- 668986145
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