Roger Shimomura: A Voice for Asian Americans

Growing up Asian American, I never felt inordinately out of place, until I grew up to see the world from another perspective and understood how to world saw me. I was born in Hong Kong which means my ethnic makeup is Chinese-American. My adoptive mother is also Chinese. In many Chinese adoption cases, both the adoptive parents are Caucasian and of older age; but, my story is exceptionally different, from how I got to America and how I experienced this comparatively new culture. By virtue of my mom having the same ethinic background as me, I was too naive to realize my difference in appearance to my family, as well as other people did not have strong inclination to point out it out either. Since my mother has family back in Hong Kong, throughout my childhood I had amazing opportunities to visit my hometown, allowing me to create nostalgic memories and learn about who I could have been. However, as I matured, so did my knowledgeability, and I began to recognize that I do not fit into the mold of a pure Chinese or a pure American. Feeling more insecure and being more conscious of discrimination, I started to seach for outlets of acception. For me, these outlets came in the form of various fine arts - music, film, and visual arts. Visual art in particular, has been proven to be a powerful resource for mental and physical well-being.

While taking art appreciation in college, I was lucky enough to come across a remarkable Asian-American artist named Roger Shimomura. Shimomura’s art style ranges from ukiyo-e woodblock prints, a popular media art that developed during the Edo period, to the flat colors of American pop art. Roger Shimomura is a third generation (sansei) Japanese-American, who was born in Seattle, Washington. Although having a Japanese background, Shimomura does not describe his culture as Japanese culture due to the lack of experience living in Japan and him living in Kansas, where Asian Americans are scarce. That being said, Roger did travel to Japan in 1986, but quickly realized, without really knowing the language, his experience of his ‘hometown’ was limited. He did not feel at home in Asia, describing the difference of being in America versus Japan as, “I could stand on a street corner in Japan and be anonymous, which I couldn’t do here, but the lack of language was crucial”.

Roger did not have the brightest early childhood, as he, along with 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent in Washington, Oregon, and California, were sent to internment camps. The Shimomura family, under President Roosevelt’s 1942 Executive Order 9066, that stated people who posed a “potential threat to national security”, was relocated to Camp Minidoka in Hunt, Idaho. To put into context, this executive order was put in place after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, therefore the tensions between the Japanese and Americans was high; consequently, many Americans grew accustomed to fearing and discriminating anyone who depicted of Asian physiognomy. Of the 120,000 Japanese incarcerated, about two-thirds were native-born citizens. Living through Minidoka at such a young age, the internalizing effects of everyday life heavily seeps into Shimomura’s work. For example, some of his most well known artwork series and exhibitions rooted from the painful repercussions of the Japansese internment - Minidoka a canvas painting series (1978-79), and the Diary series (1980-83), the Minidoka on My Mind exhibition at the Flomenhaft Gallery (2007-2008), and the Yellow Terror exhibition at the Monroe Brown Gallery (2010) and the The Wing Luke Asian Museum (2009). From the Diary series, his grandmother wrote many Haiku poems that celebrated artful protests, ultimately motivating Roger by leaving him with unforgettable advice: 'When you have information like that, you’ve got to find a way of sharing it'.

Before diving deeper into his artwork, I would like to establish a quick biography of Roger Shimomura, more specifically his credentials. Shimomura earned his bachelors of art in Commercial Design at the University of Washington in 1961; and after serving two years of U.S. military service in Korea, returned to obtain his masters of fine arts in Painting at Syracuse University in 1969. With his MFA, Shimomura taught at the School of Fine Arts at the University of Kansas, being the first fine arts faculty member of KU to be honored as a ‘University Distinguished Professor’. On top of his academic degrees, he has proven himself to be a well-rounded artist, having had over 125 solo exhibitions of paintings and prints, presented his experimental theater pieces at venues such as the Walker Art Center and the Smithsonian Institution as well as has several of his work in permanent collections in over 90 museums nationwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Mr. Shimomura has been highly recognised by many and has been rewarded more than 30 grants and in 2002, the ‘Artist Award for Most Distinguished Body of Work’ from the College Art Association. Despite retiring in 2004, Roger continues to create artwork, splitting between his studios in Lawrence (Kansas), Seattle, and New York City.

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Extracting from the Yellow Terror exhibition, is my chosen artwork of Mr. Shimomura’s, a 60” by 72” acrylic on canvas, finished in 2008, titled Yellow Terror. On that premise, my first encounter with Roger Shimomura’s work is an untitled acrylic on a 60” by 72” canvas that depicts a mix of Western and traditional Japanese superheroes. Both paintings represent Shimomura’s bright, jocose blend of pop art from the West and cartoon imagery from the East that address the sociopolitical issues of Asian American stereotyping. I think that is the primary reason why Shimomura’s artwork resonates with me, because at the heart of his work, is a voice that relates with many Asian Americans and represents our perception of asiatic stigmatizing. Many of his other works include icons I grew up with, like Hello Kitty, Pikachu, Astroboy, Mickey Mouse, Superman, Marilyn Monroe, etc. or at least associate to their respective cultures. Roger Shimomura has even borrowed images from well-known pop artist Andy Warhol, whom was one of his biggest influences, both visually, historically, and stylistically, and Roy Lichtenstein. Shimomura uses nostalgia to capture the audience's attention for more or less positive purposes; he exploits familiarity to compel viewers to confront their reaction to the underlying visual language of racism. The more I was drawn into researching his illustrations, the further I became enamoured of the stories behind the canvases, hence my decision on Yellow Terror over the untitled artwork.

Given that Roger Shimomura appointed ‘Yellow Terror’ to be the title of his painting but also his exhibition, really shows the significance of the concept behind the two words. Just as the title says, this piece of work emcompasses a large collage of yellow characters meant to represent foreigner notion that Asians have ‘yellow’ skin. Like the game of ‘Where’s Waldo’, Shimomura will place himself in his own art work, giving the spectators more opportunity to see art. In Yellow Terror, Mr. Shimomura is placed in the center of the chaos, seen to be slanting his eyes upwards to impersonate the stereotype of small Asian eyes. In other paintings, like ‘American Mouse’, Shimomura clearly interchanged Mickey Mouse’s cartoon-like features with his own caricature peculiarities. What strikes me more from this painting is not the obvious satire, but the vivid yellow background, a color that seems to be a recurring theme to represent the ‘yellow peril’ conception. The term ‘yellow peril’ is used to “describe the perceived menace and threat of the hordes from the East to the Christian morals, values, way of life, and the social order in the West”. The yellow peril especially emerged when Asian countries posed a political threat to the West from World War II, the Russo-Japanese War, and the Korean and Vietnam War.

Yellow Terror also an exhibition, encompasses what Shimomura could not fit on a 60” x 72” canvas. Before dedicating his life to art, Roger Shimomura was a prolific collector of tchotchkes and memorabilia, the majority of them dealing with Asian and Asian American stereotypes. Alongside the artwork in the exhibition, Shimomura also has displays for his more profound collector’s items, such as salt and pepper shakers, masks, song sheets, movie posters, buttons, magazines, and comics. Shimomura enjoys the hobby of collecting as he says, “My life can practically be measured by what I was collecting at the time”. Collecting started in the 1990’s when he discovered eBay and began to earnestly muster anything related to the internment of Japanese during World War II. It was this particular collection of World War II mementos that lead him to launch the Yellow Terror exhibition. Shimomura includes physical, three-dimensional items to create a unique framework through which the public can view his paintings and prints.

Comics in particular play a role in several of his works, as a child he adored characters like Dick Tracy and Captain Marvel, however many thought he used them as painting the enemy. One returning character in Shimomura’s work is Dick Tracy’s sidekick Joe Jitsu, who was stereotyped with yellow skin tone, slanted eyes, and was a martial arts master who spoke in pigeon English. Many of the characters in the painting Yellow Terror can be interpreted as Shimomura’s take on the character Joe Jitsu, as they share similar features, namely the slanted eyes and black, round eyewear. If you look close enough, you can find the real Joe Jitsu left of the worn Japanese flag in the fourth quadrant. Objects or characters that come from specific social and cultural milieu are often recontextualized in Roger Shimomura’s art, yielding stimulating dialogue between art and subject, in hopes to further engage the viewer. This way, as Shimomura said, “the line between life and art becomes blurred”.

In conclusion, Shimomura’s life experiences and dedication to his works suggest that adherence to racial categories is not necessarily a true reflection of a person’s identity and social relationships. By incorporating tough topics, Shimomura urges onlookers to consider questions that can be difficult to address; and, sometimes people are still uncomfortable with additions like the barbed wire detailing on several works in the Minidoka series, showing that humans are not ready to accept the work based on its real intention. The multicolored and even cheery veneer of Shimomura’s paintings of stereotyping is not a form of acceptance to these atrocities, but response and reshaping. Proof through his World War II trinkets and others, demonstrate the notable role that American popular culture has in evolving and circulating stereotypes as they give a palpable form to racists views. Above all, physical appearance is one of the primary themes of Shimomura’s art and how other individuals perceive Asians, rightly or wrongly. For instance, the pressing color yellow that is our Asian skin that overwhelms Yellow Terror. On behalf of Shimomura, his art and what they hold “serve as a constant reminder of who I once was and from where I have escaped”. To Roger, the importance of remembering the past, specifically towards the younger generation, is that they are lessons of history and American culture. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.