Chiura Obata: Art of a Peaceful Man

Regrettably during World War II, Obata and his wife and two of his children were sent to the Topaz Relocation Center - a Japanese concentration camp in Utah. But Obata’s spirit was irrepressible and even there he organized art classes for the internees and maintained his sense of humor. Wherever he was he was able to look and find the beauty in nature, whether in dwarfed trees, the colors of the desert, or a scorpion. Even interned, Obata chose to sign the oath swearing allegiance to the United States. This allowed him and his family to be freed and move to the Midwest where his son was in school in St. Louis, Missouri.

Finally in 1945, Chiura Obata and his family were able to return to their lives in California, and he retired Professor Emeritus from UC Berkeley in 1954. Obata continued to work to bring understanding between the disparate cultures of the United States and Japan. He even led tours of Japan for travelers and in 1965 was awarded the Order of the Sacred Treasure by the Japanese Emperor for his efforts of furthering peace between the two nations.

Chiura Obata died in 1975 – at the age of 89, but the beauty of his art and his success in promoting peace between the people of the United States and the people of Japan lives on. A one-hour documentary about this remarkable man was shown in Japan in September of 1995.

Copyright 2000 Patricia Dake

To learn more about Chiura Obata, I highly recommend the following sources:

Nature Art with Chiura Obata by Michael Elsohn Ross, illustrated by Wendy Smith, Carolrhoda Books, Inc, Minneapolis, copyright 2000. ISBN #: 1-57505-378-0
This is a children’s book which I found to be absolutely wonderful. I was so taken with it myself that I still have yet to read it to my children!

Obata’s Yosemite published by the Yosemite Association in 1993. ISBN #: 0-939666-67-7
This book contains many exceptional prints of the artist’s work.

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