Material contribuído por Greg
Toge Fujihira: Master Photographer and World Traveler - Part 1
Greg Robinson, Jonathan van Harmelen
Toge Fujihira (whose family name was sometimes reported as Fujihara) left the West Coast in the years before World War II and settled in New York, where he distinguished himself as a photographer and documentary filmmaker. During the postwar era, he established himself as a professional cameraman and photographer, capturing …
The N-Word and the Japanese American Press
Jonathan van Harmelen, Greg Robinson
In the wide world of American racial epithets, one word seems to stand apart as uniquely hateful and wounding: the term euphemized as the “N-word.” Applied to African Americans, it is a corruption of the term Negro—a term that has gone through its own complex history. Like the Nazi swastika, …
Kenji Toda: Groundbreaking Artist and Scholar
Greg Robinson
Not long ago I did a Discover Nikkei piece on the artist Bunji Tagawa, who made a career of scientific drawing for Scientific American, and who was lauded for the artistry of his technical work. I later discovered that Tagawa was preceded in the field by another prodigious Japanese artist-turned-scientific …
A Family of Artists - Part 2: The Goodenow Brothers Make Their Own Marks
Greg Robinson
Read Part 1 >>
A Family of Artists - Part 1: Kyohei Inukai, Society Portraitist
Greg Robinson
One remarkable clan of artists is that of the Inukai-Goodenow family. It was formed by Kyōhei Inukai, a Japanese immigrant who became a popular society portrait painter (and fencing enthusiast) in 1920s New York, and his first wife Lucene Goodenow, a writer, painter and sculptor. Their three sons, who were …
Kinjiro Matsudaira: Mayor of Edmonston, Maryland
Greg Robinson, Jonathan van Harmelen
In the pre-World War II years, mainland Japanese Americans were all but absent from electoral office. Whereas in Hawaii there were Nisei representatives in the Territorial Assembly and even a Senator, Sanji Abe, those living elsewhere found endemic anti-Japanese prejudice an effective barrier to even running for elected office, though …
‘One mistaken and semi-Fascist regulation’ : The Debate over McGill University’s Wartime Exclusion of Japanese Canadians
Greg Robinson
One remarkable story that comes out of the wartime removal and dispossession of Japanese Canadians is that of their exclusion at McGill University. In fall 1944, McGill, the historic university in Montreal, became the first Canadian institution of higher education officially to close its doors to Japanese Canadian students. Its …
Laying Down the Law of Love: The 1936 American Tour of Toyohiko Kagawa
Greg Robinson, Bo Tao
It was the middle of December 1935. The Nippon Yusen liner Asama Maru had just concluded a fourteen-day voyage. After leaving Yokohama and stopping at a port of call in Honolulu, it arrived in San Francisco. As Asama Maru sailed into San Francisco Bay, its 800 passengers looked on, no …