Shinkichi Tajiri

Born Shinkichi George Tajiri in Los Angeles, he was one of six children of Ryukichi Tajiri, a descendant of a samurai family who worked variously as a field hand, fertilizer worker and newspaper clerk, and his wife Fuyo Kikuta, a Japanese university graduate. His siblings included the journalist Larry Tajiri and the photographer/writer Vince Tajiri. The young Tajiri spent his early years in South Central Los Angeles, in a largely African American neighborhood. When he was 13, the family moved to San Diego. There he was taken on as a student by the sculptor Donal Hord, who taught him sculptural technique. In his memoir Oh! Poston, why don't you cry for me? Paul Okimoto recalled watching Shinkichi build a kit of Michelangelo's "David" in his garage, ignoring the taunts of classmates over his nude statue.

In 1942, the young Tajiri, his mother, and three siblings were rounded up under Executive Order 9066 , and confined at Santa Anita and Poston . Because of its proximity to a US Naval base, their house was condemned and moved off its original location. It ultimately vanished, and the Tajiris were never compensated for the seizure of their house or its belongings. While at Poston, the young Tajiri worked under the celebrated sculptor Isamu Noguchi in the camp art department. He also concentrated on making drawings, using paper and charcoal donated by Donal Hord. His first surviving artwork was a portrait drawing of his younger brother Jim, done in Poston. In May 1943, a show of his paintings and drawings was mounted at Poston High School.

In 1943, Tajiri volunteered for the newly-formed 442nd Regimental Combat Team . As he later stated, he "wasn't a gung-ho patriot but wanted to get out of the damn camp." ^[1] He may also have thought that he would likely be rejected for service on health grounds, as he was underweight, had poor eyesight, and had a history of pneumonia. In the event, however, he was enlisted. In 1944, he shipped out with his unit to Italy, where he took part in the battle of Anzio. There he was assigned the role of a messenger, running between the front lines and the command post. On July 9, 1944, his sergeant sent him on a hazardous mission to instruct a group of soldiers to retreat from a vulnerable position near the German lines. As they were all retreating, they came under fire from the enemy. Shinkichi was wounded in his leg. He later recalled that the enemy fire was so intense that he had to lie there for hours until the cover of darkness allowed four of his buddies to creep up and carry him away. After spending six months recovering in an army hospital, he was transferred to noncombatant duty as a postal worker and hotel concierge. Along with his friend Milton Hartfield, he was ultimately assigned to Special Services, where he did drawings of Displaced Persons, a task he later described as harrowing.

In 1946, Tajiri was discharged, and went to join his family in Chicago . With help from the GI Bill , he enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago. He helped form the Gaka Art Guild, a cooperative of Nisei and white artists and organized exhibits. His work was featured in the photo magazine Nisei Vue . He presented his work in 1948 at an outdoor art fair at the Du Sable Community Center. Outraged by wartime confinement and distressed by the anti-Japanese prejudice in postwar Chicago, Tajiri decided to leave the United States for Europe, where he could perfect his art. He remained in "self-imposed exile," as he later termed it, for the rest of his life. As part of his feeling of alienation he dropped the name George and took the name Shinkichi. He nevertheless accepted that he remained American in his identity.

In Fall 1948 Shinkichi Tajiri sailed to France in order to study with the noted sculptor Ossip Zadkine. He also took painting classes from Ferdinand Leger and studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. After meeting artist Karel Appel in Paris, Tajiri grew close to the members of COBRA, an avant-garde art and social protest group, and participated in several of their shows. He likewise joined the group of 18 young American artists who opened Galerie 8 in Paris, and he showed in their opening exhibition in June 1950. One critic remarked, "Perhaps the most inspired exhibitors are the sculptors. Shinkichi Tajiri creates an excellent relatedness between two spikey, ritualistic gladiators." ^[2]

During these years, he abandoned the stone sculpture which had been his earlier focus. He later stated, "Stone didn't suit me. I like to do more fragile thangs in space." ^[3] After 1950, his work centered on abstract forms constructed of iron and plaster, using found materials he picked up in the street. He pioneered the use of welded sculpture. After a time, he turned to sculpture in bronze, which could best stand up to the elements when exhibited outside.

After his GI Bill stipend ran out in 1951, Tajiri supported himself for a time by teaching art and by designing patterns for a wallpaper factory in Wuppertal, Germany. As late as 1957, he was designing wallpapers for F. Taylor and Sons in the Netherlands. While in Paris, he met Ferdina "Ferdi" Jensen, a young Dutch sculptor and jewelry designer who would become his wife and chief muse. He also discovered filmmaking. In 1955, together with filmmaker Baird Bryant, he made a short film, "The Vipers." Set to a soundtrack by jazz performer Stan Kenton, it explored through surreal imagery the "high" experienced by marijuana smokers. It won a Golden Lion award at the Cannes Film Festival.

Even as he produced more films, his artistic career picked up. In 1959 he won the William and Norma Copley prize for achievement in sculpture, and the following year a John Hay Whitney Fellowship. In the following years he exhibited at one-man shows in Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and The Hague, as well as group shows in Europe and the United States. He exhibited a 12-foot "sentinel" sculpture at the Seattle World's Fair Exhibition in 1962. He also displayed it at the 1963 Biennale of San Marino, where it won the Gold Medal for sculpture. He exhibited at three of the famous Documenta shows in Kassel, notably in 1964. The Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired one of his pieces for its collection. A large sculpture of his won the Mainichi Shimbun prize at a Tokyo Bienniale, and was installed in the garden of the city's Meiji Insurance company. Another piece of his was placed in the garden of the Stedelijk Museum. The city of Arnhem (Ferdi's birthplace) commissioned him to create a giant sculpture for its town square.

Beginning in the 1960s, Tajiri's sculpture concentrated on two themes. One was the warrior. In part due to his own wartime experience, Tajiri held strong antiwar sentiments, and deplored the waste and danger of the arms race. At the same time, he was drawn to Japanese folklore and to the figure of the samurai. In later years he would begin work on a monumental series based on the 47 Ronin , the wandering samurai of Japanese legend. Meanwhile, in 1967 he started work on his Knots series, a set of twisted sculptures, which he considered had a universal significance as promoting mutual understanding. In 1981, his sculpture "Friendship Knot," representing the "unity between two cultures," was installed in the Weller Court in Los Angeles's Little Tokyo.

In addition to sculpture, Tajiri pursued many other arts. He illustrated books and in the 1950s provided the cover drawing for an issue of the magazine Paris Review . He also produced volumes of his photography, including a volume of stereoscopic images of the entire Berlin Wall, as well as experimenting with the long-defunct photographic process of the daguerreotype. He published several art books, and ultimately his memoirs.

In 1956, Shinkichi and Ferdi moved to Amsterdam, where their two children, Giotta Fuyo and Ryu Vinci, were born. However, in 1962, they moved to Kasteel Scheres, a castle near Baarlo, and set up their studios there. Tajiri was proud of his acceptance by the Dutch, who commissioned several works and asked him to represent the Netherlands at the 1962 Venice Bienniale. In the next years, he had numerous exhibitions of his work in Amsterdam, Arnhem and other cities. In 1964, he visited the United States as visiting professor at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, housed in the Art Institute of Minneapolis. Using the Art Institute's foundry, he created 25 bronze sculptures, which served as the centerpiece of a New York show at the André Emmerich Gallery. Perhaps ironically, he received his heaviest dose of publicity in his native land at this time, when he agreed to design the statuette for the Larry Tajiri Award, a Denver theater award created in honor of his late brother.

In February 1969, Ferdi died in an accident, leaving the family devastated. Shinkichi began work as a teacher at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste at Berlin. He remained as a professor there until 1989. He married his third wife, Suzanne van der Capellen, in 1976. They would remain together until Tajiri's death.

Tajiri remained most celebrated in Holland. In 1992, Tajiri was named an officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau, akin to knighthood for the British. A highlight of his career came in 2007, when De Wachters (the Sentinels) a set of four of his sculptures, was installed on a bridge near his home, in a ceremony featuring an unveiling by the Queen of the Netherlands. He applied for and was granted Dutch citizenship. Shinkichi Tajiri died in Baarlo on March 15, 2009.

Okimoto, Paul. Oh! Poston, Why Don't You Cry for Me? and Other Stops Along the Way . Xlibris, 2011.

Randall, Margaret. Artists in My Life . New York: New Village Press, 2022.

Roberts, A.T. "Shinkichi Tajiri: A Friendship Knot for Bruyeres," film, 1995. 22 minutes.

Westgeest, Helen, ed. Shinkichi Tajiri's Universal Paradoxes . Leiden, Netherlands: Leiden University Press, 2015.