Licensing

Eugenia Sumiye Okoshi

(b. 4/26/1921, Seattle, WA; d. 7/16/2008, New York, NY) Eugenia Sumiye Okoshi was born in Seattle, WA, in 1921, the daughter of an adventurous Japanese man who had toured with the Barnum & Bailey circus doing judo demonstrations, and bought the first patent rights to neon lights in Japan, lighting up the Ginza. At age seven, the family returned to Japan, and she was educated outside of Tokyo, where she attended the prestigious Rikkyo Jogakuin, Futaba-kojo-Futaba-kai school. As a young woman Okoshi lived through the bombings and destruction of her home and way of life during WWII. She recalls, “Everything was destroyed, destroyed everywhere, people with nothing, nothing to eat, nowhere to live.”

On a train from Tokyo to Nagasaki, Okoshi passed through Hiroshima after the bombing. The military police ordered her to shut the blinds but she peeked through. She saw that there was nothing. Faced with nothing herself, Okoshi decided to leave Japan. She fought authorities to recognize her as an American citizen by birth and returned to Seattle, WA, where she began working, and eventually studying art with Fay Chang and Nicholas Damascus at Seattle University and Henry Frye at the Modern Art Museum of Seattle. Okoshi also found inspiration in the work of Mark Toby, another popular Seattle-based artist who incorporated Japanese sumi painting, brush gesture and calligraphy into his Abstract Expressionist paintings.

Okoshi made her way to New York in 1956 where she worked as a beautician by day and spent her nights in her studio in the West Village. She studied with Jacob Lawrence at the New School Painting Workshop and sang in the choir at the Japanese American United Church on 143rd Street, where she met George Mukai. In 1976 Okoshi married Mukai who was also an artist. By then she was exhibiting in shows internationally and was a member of the Westbeth Artists Community in the West Village. Sadly, Okoshi passed away in July 2008 before we could launch her Nikkei Album. She leaves behind her husband, George Mukai, but her art lives on.

For more information about the artist or the work, please contact Margret Mukai at mkmukai@gmail.com.