“Defiant Vision: Prints & Poetry” by Munio Makuuchi will be exhibited until December 8 at the Smith College Museum of Art. As a Japanese-American artist and poet, Makuuchi’s work represents an important perspective on a moment in American history that was ignored during his lifetime.
Munio Makuuchi was born Howard Munio Takahashi to two working class Japanese parents who owned grocery stores in Seattle, Washington.
At the age of seven, Makuuchi was relocated from his home alongside all other persons of Japanese heritage despite their American citizenry. His family was moved to Camp Harmony in Puyallup, Washington where they were given tags and forced to live in crowded, temporary shacks. Before his eighth birthday, the Takahashi family were moved to the Minidoka Relocation Camp in south central Idaho where they remained for the rest of the war.
Makuuchi would aim to become a Lutheran minister before joining the United States Army and later studying printmaking at the University of Iowa. Makucchi also taught at the University of Ife in Nigeria in the 1970s prior to returning to America.
As suggested in the title “Defiant Vision,” Makuuchi was known for his rebellious nature, for refusing to make art that pleased the masses and for refusing to remain only a visual artist, striving to create poetry as well. His strong personality reflects greatly in his artwork, “an unusual response for his generation,” notes Aprile Gallant, curator of the exhibit.
While most Japanese-Americans were ashamed of their experiences during the war, ashamed that their own country would reject them, Makuuchi rejected those notions.
Throughout the exhibit, visitors will discover a history that the United States has not tried to remember and a brilliant artist who defied the artistic trends of his time. While artists and public interest in the ’60s and ’70s focused on colorful Pop Art and popular culture, Makuuchi focused on the autobiographical and individual experience.
Gallant organizes the exhibit based on the themes Makuuchi used in his artwork: family, internment camps, and the atomic bombs.Through his work, Makuuchi demonstrates his anger and frustration, telling his audience that he lived his youth as a “child POW,” penning “Dear Anne Frank, my age mate.” He refused to allow the United States passively forget its crimes during the Second World War.
Visitors can listen to Makuuchi narrate his poetry while viewing his artwork. Makuuchi began writing poetry during his time in Nigeria where many artists dealt in multimedia artworks. At the time of his death, Makuuchi had finished a 258-page manuscript of his work.
A displayed print, “Listening for Pillow Talk of Escape,” illustrates a small rabbit inside a building resembling the barracks of the camp in Minidoka under a full moon. “Listening for Pillow Talk of Escape” deals with a child’s fear, hostility and confusion. Makuuchi often used rabbits as a symbol of himself with farmers in Idaho often hunting jackrabbits, parallel to the United States and “japrabbits.” (Makuuchi’s term.) The print was exhibited with a related poem “J. Rabbit Run.”
Makuuchi is not only an important creator in the history of minority representation, but also a technically innovative print-maker. Makuuchi created many complex pieces that are on display such as “H-Maidens,” named after the female victims of Hiroshima who were brought to the United States for plastic surgery in the 1950s, “On Boys days, I ‘I.D.’ with Rocky Mountain Salmon… /… So where’s the Salmon?”, the first piece that began the project dealing with masculinity and Japanese tradition and many of his “flip flop” creations.
Mukuuchi’s flip flops are complex prints that appear to be two distinct works when they are placed in different orientations. On display are a pair of flip flops, entitled “Solomon Sealing Under Golden Eagle Wings” and “Night Flight.”
In addition, exhibit attendees can view the artist’s interaction with ‘energy points’ and geometric shapes, tools he uses to ground his compositions, transforming them into distinct images such as a squid eye or a wire fence.
One of his few colored prints, also on exhibit, is “Landlocked Midwesterners or Dad sez a fish always rots from the head first.” It was created after his return to the Pacific Northwest to care for his Aunt Dorthea, a victim of shock treatment during the war. Makuuchi created the print using two salmon that he caught himself, allowing the fishes and their oils to rot on the print-plate for a period before scratching patterns of its form into the plate. Visitors will be able to see an example of his plates as well as the materials used by printmakers like Makuuchi.
Visitors are encouraged to write down questions about the exhibit in a notebook provided by the museum which Gallant answers. She hopes this exhibit will generate a greater interest for Munio Makuuchi. This exhibit is just the “top layer, just the beginning of more research.”
“History depends on who is telling,” Gallant says, and Makuuchi is a voice that deserves to be heard.
