How Taisho-era Japanese Artist Yumeji Takehisa Helped Me Find My Place in L.A.
Sometimes a special significance can be buried in the unlikeliest of things. There is a large tree that towers over the corner of Folsom and Indiana Streets, where Boyle Heights meets East Los Angeles. Known as El Pino, it's an Australian bunya pine that has become an East L.A. icon largely in part due to its appearance in the cult movie "Blood In, Blood Out." In it, the tree serves as a meeting spot for the protagonists, providing a sense of stability in a community deep-rooted with uncertainty. When rumor spread that it was going to get knocked down by the property owner, people flocked to the site to pay their respects to "The Pine," presumably for one last time.
It turned out to be a false alarm. Or maybe it was a cruel prank. Either way, the tree was still standing. As an Angeleno interested in community history, I paid a visit, too. When I got there I couldn't help but notice the stately house that shares the property with the tree. It looked like it could be an early Frank Lloyd Wright building, its design inspired by one of his multiple visits to Japan in the early 1900s. Curiously, some of the early residents of the house were a Japanese couple by the name of Hideo and Kiku Okada, according to census data. From Folsom Street, there's a sweeping view of the eastside basin. Evergreen Cemetery, the oldest cemetery in Los Angeles, spreads out below.
On this day I also made it a point to visit a particular grave at Evergreen, one that holds a certain personal significance to me. The Japanese woman buried there wasn't a family member, nor was she someone any of my relatives or I ever knew. She wasn't anyone famous, either. The headstone reads:
武藤鈴乃の墓
[Mutō Suzuno's Grave]
Suzuno died on Feb. 26, 1932 of tuberculosis. She was the wife of Shōgo Mutō, an issei writer for the long-running Japanese American news daily, Rafu Shimpo. He would later be assigned to the paper's Tokyo bureau, relaying news from the homeland to the Japanese diaspora. Of particular interest to me is the engraving itself, which is known to be done by a man by the name of Yumeji Takehisa.
Yumeji was a Tokyo-based artist and poet who gained prominence in the Taisho-era (1910s-20s), primarily for his fresh depictions of modern Japanese women. He was a savvy marketer of his own works, selling art prints and stationery emblazoned with his graphic design work at his Minato-ya shop in Tokyo. His untrained style and socialist views made him an outcast in artist circles at the time. If you've seen Wong Kar Wai's "In The Mood For Love", you've heard "Yumeji's Theme," composed by Shigeru Umebayashi originally for the film "Yumeji," a surreal retelling of his life story directed by the madcap auteur Seijun Suzuki.
Yumeji is a distant relative of mine. I don't even know if there's a term that would describe my relationship to him. He was a complicated man with complicated relationships with the women in his life and his three children. Yumeji's youngest child, Soichi, was born in 1916, and was put up for adoption 10 months later. He was taken in and formally adopted by a friend of Yumeji's, the stage actor Takeo Kawai, who specialized in playing women characters, and his wife Eiko. Soichi, under the name Eijiro, trained to be an actor like his father. He later fought for his country in WWII, and died during combat in Papua New Guinea.
Technically speaking, Soichi was my first cousin, twice removed. Eiko, or Meguro no obaachan (Grandma from Meguro) as she was affectionately called in my family, was my great-grand aunt, which is to say that she was the sister of my grandma Mieko's father. Soichi was my grandma's first cousin. Practically speaking, they all lived under the same roof as one large extended family in an old sprawling house in Nagatacho, in the heart of pre-war Tokyo. The Prime Minister's official residence was nearby and next door was the family home of a baron, whose son's dashing looks was known to attract a number of young women to the front gates, hoping to steal a look. Soichi would often take my grandma, a young girl at the time, on shopping trips to Asakusa to buy pieces of fabric to be sewn into a costume. In Nagatacho, living mere steps from the center of an increasingly unstable Imperial government meant that political turmoil was always within earshot. My grandmother remembers vividly about the time she and Soichi heard gunshots during what turned out to be a political assassination by ultra-nationalist militants of then-Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi, during a coup d'état attempt which came to be known as the 1932 May 15 Incident.
While his biological son was living in the midst of political upheaval that would eventually lead to a world war, Yumeji was in Los Angeles. He had traveled to America, at the height of the Depression, to try his luck at finding success as an artist overseas. He was 48 years old, and his popularity in his home country had waned considerably since his days as the master of Taisho-era art. First in San Francisco, then through Carmel and the central coast, and eventually in Los Angeles, Yumeji spent a total of 16 months wandering around California. He wasn't very productive during this period. He drew simple sketches as part of his diary, and wrote a column for Rafu Shimpo, but he produced very little of the kind of work he'd been known for. What work he did create in Kashu, as California was known at the time amongst Japanese Americans, very little of it remains today. Much of it was lost during WWII when the owners of his works, many of whom were of Japanese ancestry, were sent to the concentration camps, only being allowed to take two pieces of luggage with them.
Little evidence remains of Yumeji's time in Los Angeles. He had a studio in Boyle Heights, one-half of a Spanish-style duplex at 112 ½ North Mott Street. It is now the parking lot of Rissho Kosei-Kai Buddhist Center. He lived for a time at the Green Hotel on Sawtelle and Elko Hotel on Main Street, and had an exhibition at the Olympic Hotel in Little Tokyo. None of those buildings exist now. There are bits and pieces of history, however, that serve as small reminders that a person with familial ties had been on this land long before my family and I ever stepped foot in this country.
In November 1931, Yumeji arrived in Los Angeles after a day-long car ride from Monterey. He found himself in Sawtelle, which by this time was already home to a fairly large Japanese American community. Issei-owned nurseries and boarding houses abounded, and Japanese language schools and arts centers provided education for their nisei children. Yumeji was strapped for cash. His solo exhibition at the Seven Arts Gallery in Carmel had been a total failure, despite the endorsement of celebrated California artist Mary DeNeale Morgan. The Hashimoto family, proprietors of O.K. Nursery (still operating today as Hashimoto Nursery, where I've bought many of my houseplants), soon took Yumeji under their wing, feeding him and supporting him financially as needed.
In February 1932, presumably with help from UCLA alum Michiko Hashimoto, Yumeji mounted a two-week exhibition at the university's Department of Fine Arts. Before the end of its run, the restless Yumeji decided he had enough of trying to sell himself to American high society. He left Sawtelle for the more comfortable digs of Little Tokyo, where he could indulge in familiar culinary delights and a little taste of home. Unexpectedly, he was starting to get homesick after half a year in America.
By the early 1930s, Los Angeles was home to more than 35,000 Japanese Americans, the majority of whom lived in and around Little Tokyo. The neighborhood was thriving. There Yumeji fell in with a group of artists and intellectuals, many of whom associated with the modernist art association Shaku-Do-Sha. They included dancer and choreographer Michio Ito, Rafu Shimpo journalist Yoneo Sakai, poet Hojin Miyoshi, illustrator Gyo Fujikawa and photographer Toyo Miyatake.
Toyo's photos were my gateway to exploring the history of Little Tokyo. As the chronicler of Japanese American life in Los Angeles and beyond, he captured moments and memories that show the vibrancy, heartbreak and resiliency of the community in the years before, during and after the war. His early experimental work opened my eyes to the immense creativity of the pre-war Japanese American art community. His photos of Nisei Week festivities and the reality of life at Manzanar showed me what life could've been for me if I had grown up here during that time. I spoke recently with Alan Miyatake, Toyo's grandson, about keeping alive the legacy left behind by his grandfather. "It's important to help Little Tokyo and Japanese Americans record their histories," he told me.
In 2015, two representatives from Yumeji Art Museum in Okayama (his birth place) paid Alan a visit in Los Angeles. Alan had reached out to them about a rare Yumeji oil painting in his family's possession. Toyo had taken a portrait of Yumeji in 1932. In appreciation for all the help he received from Toyo during his time in L.A., Yumeji gifted him this painting, titled『西海岸の裸婦』("West Coast Nude"), right before he left L.A. for Europe. Toyo, in anticipation of his incarceration at Manzanar, had handed the painting to a friend for safekeeping, thus ensuring that it would stay in their family. In 2016, almost 75 years later, Alan traveled to Okayama to attend the opening of the exhibit that showcased the "homecoming" of "West Coast Nude."
Yumeji held his second L.A. exhibition at the Olympic Hotel, located on a block on East First Street that was later demolished to make way for the LAPD Parker Center. This time, the exhibition was catered primarily to Japanese Americans rather than the largely caucasian patrons at his previous shows. Yumeji had begrudgingly admitted that the Japanese were better able to appreciate his art, though he felt like a fraud for doing so. One particularly excited visitor to the exhibition was Shige Takahashi, owner of the Elko Hotel on Main. Brassy and insistent, she made herself known that she was a Yumeji fan from her days growing up in Osaka before she came to Los Angeles as the wife of a migrant worker. A successful businesswoman, Shige became Yumeji's de facto patron, supporting him financially whenever she could. The truth is that she wanted to marry him, however unrealistic she knew that was. Yumeji didn't mind the attention though, and started calling her his Main Mama.
Main Mama put Yumeji up in a room at the Elko Hotel. But the rough and tumble elements of Main Street were a bit too much even for Yumeji, who had supported socialist causes back home and greatly sympathized with the hard working blue collar laborers in the city. During this time Yumeji would visit Olvera Street, drawn to the Mexican crafts and dancers on display. He came away impressed by the works he saw at the nearby Plaza Art Center. It's compelling to note that precisely during this time, the famed Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros was in the middle of his six month stay in L.A., working on the revolutionary "America Tropical" mural on the exterior wall of the Plaza Art Center. If Yumeji had seen the master at work on his controversial depiction of the struggles of a marginalized people against the powers of imperialism, it would have piqued his curiosity for certain, and in all likelihood would have understood and approved of its message.
Yumeji soon moved in with poet Moriji Matsumoto and his wife Suki, owner of Angel Salon in Little Tokyo. Their home was located at 3342 Folsom St. in Boyle Heights. Around that time the area was known by some as the "Japanese Beverly Hills." The existing house at the address seems to be the original structure, hiding beneath a heavily stuccoed exterior. It's just a few doors down from El Pino. It's remarkable to think that Yumeji, whenever he stepped out of the Matsumoto house for some fresh air, may have looked up and seen the same iconic pine tree. Just how long it has stood there remains a mystery. But it's entirely possible that each morning he would have greeted Mr. and Mrs. Okada - おはようございます - underneath the canopy of what would be known as El Pino more than half a century later.
Yumeji left L.A. for Europe on Sept. 10, boarding the Tacoma passenger ship from San Pedro. The lack of success and general unproductivity in this city had left him defeated and eager to leave. In Berlin he witnessed firsthand the rise of Nazism and the dangers of fascism. He wandered around Europe for a year, still unable to find the overseas success that he had longed for. He died of tuberculosis shortly after his return to Japan, aged 49.
This brief period of Yumeji's life as a sojourner doesn't hold much significance in scholarship surrounding his life and work, especially in comparison to his early career when he produced his most popular work. But to me it's the source of endless fascination, a piece of personal history that improbably connects me to where I am now. Yumeji's presence looms over my family lore like a stubborn ghost, appearing every so often to remind us of the lasting power of kinships, no matter how opaque they may be.
The true meaning of home can be a complex thing, especially for me as a first generation Japanese who has spent almost all my life in America. The connection I have to my homeland didn't come naturally; it's something I had to learn and earn. I consider California to be my home, yet I still question whether I'm allowed to say that. The shared history and resilience that help keep the Japanese American community united aren't something my family and I can lay claim to. When I learned of Ms. Muto's headstone and its provenance, thanks to scholar Rinjirō Sodei's meticulously researched writings on Yumeji's time in the Golden State, it proved to be the key to grounding the rootlessness I've sometimes felt as a so-called 1.5 generation. It meant that Yumeji, a distant relative of mine, had left behind a tangible trace of my family history in Los Angeles, more than five decades before my family would cross the sea to move to this city. Yumeji may have led a vagabond life in California, but he ultimately gave us something with permanence, something that provides for me a sense of direct connection to the place I call home. How appropriate that my place in this city of Angels seems to have been validated by acknowledging a death.
This essay is dedicated to my grandmother Mieko "Mamamee" Takamatsu, who passed away on New Years Day, 2022 at the age of 97.
