The Symposium
MOONSCAPE OF THE MIND
Japanese American Design after Internment
APRIL 14-15, 2023
Hosts: The “Moonscape” Symposium will be hosted by the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts and the College of Architecture, with support from the Department of Special Collections at Olin Library at Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL)
Sponsors: This symposium is being supported by the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts and the American Culture Studies program WUSTL, as well as The Divided City: An Urban Humanities Initiative (The Mellon Foundation & the WUSTL Center for Humanities).
Campus Locations: Most of the Symposium sessions will take place in Weil Hall (the Sam Fox School), and in Olin Library. Participants will stay at the Moonrise Hotel in University City, which is walking distance to the campus.
Description: The “Moonscape of the Mind” project, which began with the launch of Beauty in Enormous Bleakness (BIEB), is a multifaceted research initiative that explores the legacies of the Japanese Incarceration of WWII by closely considering a specific work by a Japanese American designer, architect, or artist. Coinciding with the 80th anniversary of the arrival of the first interned Japanese American students to WUSTL, the symposium will unite scholars from across the humanities, art, and design disciplines.
Goals: The symposium will advance the goal of the “Moonscape” project, which is to create a compilation of object-focused essays for an edited volume. Contributors will also have the opportunity to give and receive feedback on their draft essays, and to visit sites associated with the work of Gyo Obata (HOK), Richard Henmi (Henmi & Associates)—Japanese American architects who trained at WUSTL—and other buildings designed by Incarceration survivors (such as a ceiling designed by Isamu Noguchi).
Symposium Schedule
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KUEHNER COURT | WEIL HALL | SAM FOX
4:00 - Welcome
4:10 - Opening Remarks
Heather Woofter, Director of the College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design, and the Sam and Marilyn Fox Professor, Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis.
4:20 - Keynote Address
“Moonscapes of the Mind: In-Between Space”: Ken Tadashi Oshima, Professor of Architecture, University of Washington-Seattle .
THOMAS GALLERY | OLIN LIBRARY
5:45 - 8:00 - Beauty in Enormous Bleakness Exhibition Opening + Reception
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KUEHNER COURT | WEIL HALL | SAM FOX
8:30 - 9:00 - Light breakfast outside of Kuehner
9:00 - Opening Remarks
Carmon Colangelo, Ralph J. Nagel Dean, Sam Fox School; E. Desmond Lee Professor for Collaboration in the Arts.
9:15 - Introduction to Session I
Lynnette Widder (Columbia University)
Session I: The Architectural Scale
9:20 - Michael Allen (Washington University in St. Louis): ‘Confinement, Agency and Design: Minoru Yamasaki and Pruitt-Igoe’
9:40 - Eric Mumford (Washington University in St. Louis): ‘Isamu Noguchi and the Heart of the City’
10:00 - Justin Beal (independent scholar / artist): ‘Minoru Yamasaki & the legacy of the World Trade Center’
10:20 - Dale Gyure (Lawrence Technical University): ‘Between Two Worlds: Minoru Yamasaki’s Japanese Cultural and Trade Center’
10:40 - Comments | Q+A
11:00 - Break
11:15 - Introduction to Session II
Heidi Aronson Kolk (Washington University in St. Louis)
Session II: The Object Scale
11:20 - Christina Hiromi Hobbs (Stanford University): ‘Kay Sekimachi’s Ogawa II’
11:40 - Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt (Covenant College): ‘A Cross for Wakasa-San: Funerary Paper Flowers and Grief as Resistance’
12:00 - Sanae Nakatani (Tokyo Metropolitan University): ‘Learning Is Empowering: A Story Behind George Nakashima’s Odakyu Cabinet’
12:20 - Mari Yamashita de Moya (independent artist): ‘Keeping the Calendar: Essential Elements of Tets Yamashita's Photography’
12:40 - Comments | Q+A
1:00 - 1:45 - Lunch
1:45 - Introduction to Session III
Kelley Van Dyck Murphy (Washington University in St. Louis)
Session III: The Scale of Civic Action
1:50 - Lisa Beyeler-Yvarra (Yale University): ‘Yuri Kochiyama’s Kitchen Table’
2:10 - Andrew Wasserman (American University): ‘Glass, Paper, Ground: Paul Horiuchi’s Seattle Mural’
2:30 - Aki Ishida (Virginia Tech): ‘Citizen 13600: Decolonizing Architectural Ethnography’
2:50 - Marin Sullivan (independent scholar), ‘Shinkichi Tajiri: Made in America’
3:20 - Comments | Q+A
3:45 - Break
Site Visits Around St. Louis
4:15 - Shuttle departs from Weil Hall
6: 15 - Dinner + discussion at Sen Thai (downtown)
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1:00PM - Group follow-up discussion on Zoom
Cover page for the Call For Proposals (2022).
‘Moonscape of the Mind’ contributors and attendees alongside BIEB project leads in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’s Kuehner Court. Photograph by Abraham Diaz.
Ken Tadashi Oshima presenting the keynote lecture at the ‘Moonscape of the Mind’ symposium. Photograph by Abraham Diaz.
Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt answering questions during the Q&A portion of Session II. Photograph by Abraham Diaz.
Micheal Allen presenting their research on architect Minoru Yamasaki, ‘Yamasaki’s Interiors at Pruitt-Igoe: Representations and Misrepresentations,’ during Session I. Photograph by Abraham Diaz.
BIEB project lead Lynnette Widder introducing the theme of and contributors for Session I. Photograph by Abraham Diaz.
Justin Beal discussing architectural models of the World Trade Center within ‘Yamasaki’s Model & the Idea of the World Trade Center’ during Session I. Photograph by Abraham Diaz.
Mari Yamashita de Moya answering questions during the Q&A portion of Session III. Photograph by Abraham Diaz.
Aki Ishida presenting on artist Miné Okubo within the presentation ‘Citizen 13660: Decolonized Architectural Ethnography’ as a part of Session III. Photograph by Abraham Diaz.
Mari Matsumoto, daughter of architect George Matsumoto, contributing to discussions during a Q&A session. Photograph by Abraham Diaz.
Marin Sullivan presenting on the complex and dynamic legacy of sculptor Shinkichi Tajiri within the presentation ‘A Displacement of Forms: Shinkichi Tajiris Made in USA’ during Session III. Photograph by Abraham Diaz.
Rod Henmi, son of architect Richard Henmi, contributing to discussions during a Q&A session. Photograph by Abraham Diaz.
BIEB project lead Kelley Murphy positing questions to panelists and attendees during a Q&A session. Photograph by Abraham Diaz.
Ken Tadashi Oshima presenting the keynote lecture to a captive audience of participants and attendees at the ‘Moonscape of the Mind’ symposium. Photograph by Abraham Diaz.
Aki Ishida and Ted Tadashi Oshima in conversation at the BIEB exhibition inside WUSTL's Olin Library. Photograph by Abraham Diaz.
Lynnette Widder, Sanae Nakatani, and Christina Hiromi Hobbs in conversation at the BIEB exhibition inside WUSTL's Olin Library. Photograph by Abraham Diaz.
Student drawings from the Fall 2022 course ‘Matsumoto Modern’ displayed within the BIEB exhibition inside the Thomas Gallery. Photograph by Abraham Diaz.
Blueprints of the Mansion House Apartments in St. Louis within the BIEB exhibition inside the Thomas Gallery. Materials provided by Rod Henmi, Richard Henmi’s son. Photograph by Abraham Diaz.
A section of the BIEB exhibition related to the St. Louis Science Center, the Flying Saucer building, and the Japanese Garden in St. Louis. Materials provided by the St. Louis Science Center, the Missouri Historical Society, and the Missouri Botanical Gardens. Photograph by Abraham Diaz.
Student models from the Fall 2022 course ‘Matsumoto Modern’ displayed within the BIEB exhibition inside the Thomas Gallery. Photograph by Abraham Diaz.
Student models from the Fall 2022 course ‘Matsumoto Modern’ displayed within the BIEB exhibition inside the Thomas Gallery. Photograph by Abraham Diaz.
Keynote Lecture
Ken Tadashi Oshima
Keynote Lecture
Ken Tadashi Oshima is a Professor at the University of Washington, Seattle, where he teaches trans-national architectural history, theory and design. He has also been a visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the University of California, Los Angeles. He is a Fellow of the Society of Architectural Historians for lifetime achievement and served as President of the Society of Architectural Historians from 2016-18.
Dr. Oshima’s publications include Kiyonori Kikutake: Between Land and Sea (Lars Müller/Harvard GSD, 2015), Architecturalized Asia (U. Hawai’i Press/Hong Kong U. Press, 2013), GLOBAL ENDS: towards the beginning (Toto, 2012), International Architecture in Interwar Japan: Constructing Kokusai Kenchiku (U. Washington Press, 2009) and Arata Isozaki (Phaidon, 2009). He curated “GLOBAL ENDS: towards the beginning” (Gallery MA, 2011), “Tectonic Visions Between Land and Sea: Works of Kiyonori Kikutake” (Harvard GSD, 2012), “SANAA: Beyond Borders” (Henry Art Gallery 2007-8) and was a co-curator of “Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive” (Museum of Modern Art, NY, 2017) and “Crafting a Modern World: The Architecture and Design of Antonin and Noemi Raymond” (UPenn, UCSB, Kamakura Museum of Modern Art, 2006-7). He was an editor and contributor to Architecture + Urbanism for more than ten years, co-authoring the two-volume special issue, Visions of the Real: Modern Houses in the 20th Century (2000). His articles on the international context of architecture and urbanism in Japan have been published in journals including Architectural Review, Architectural Theory Review, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Kenchiku Bunka, Japan Architect, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, and the AA Files.
Session Descriptions
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Although architecture may be constrained by parameters far more powerful than those of personal expression, the work of the most well-known Japanese American architect of the post-war period, Minoru Yamasaki, made much of its expressive capacity. Papers in this session will raise questions about potential correlations between Yamasaki’s architectural decisions and questions of Japanese identity, whether through his clientele, his own encounters with his parents’ country of origin or his response to mass housing. For Isamu Noguchi, on the other hand, as this session’s fourth paper describes, the experience of voluntary incarceration in the Poston camp prompted work at territorial scales, expanding upon the more personally expressive scale of sculpture in which he had dealt until then.
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There is much documentation of how vernacular traditions were shared during incarceration. Papers in this session consider how such practices, and camp life, impacted artists who emerged from the experience of incarceration, and might have translated into the work of personal or community memory. At stake is the work of four artists working in textile, paper, wood and photography. Whether destined for the gallery, the world of commercial art, or the lifeworld of one of the camps, these works not only testify to the complexities of incarceration and postwar life, but give voice to such things as hope, faith, longing, grief, identity and community.
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Art making in the framework of activism, whether through publishing, public art or participatory engagement, was a vital part of post-incarceration production. This session describes how both better-established media – mural painting and sculpture – as well as more novel artistic practices – critical ethnography and the kitchen table as archive – operated as a site of civic action or resistance in the hands of four Japanese American artists in the era following incarceration.
Symposium Contributors
Christina Hiromi Hobbs is a PhD candidate in Art History at Stanford University focusing on art of the Asian diaspora and the history of photography. She recently co-curated the exhibition No Monument: In the Wake of the Japanese American Incarceration at the Noguchi Museum.
Kay Sekimachi's Memory Work: Inheritance, Transparency, and Touch in Ogawa II
Aki Ishida, a Japanese born architect, is an Associate Professor and the Interim Associate Director at Virginia Tech School of Architecture. Her work centers around aspects of architecture that are temporal, impermanent, and ever-changing, including the aging of buildings over the course of time, and mutable readings of architecture.
Citizen 13660: Decolonized Architectural Ethnography
Andrew Wasserman is a Professorial Lecturer in the Department of Art at American University. He is co-chair of Public Art Dialogue and the author of the forthcoming World Atlas of Public Art (Yale University Press).
Glass, Paper, Ground: Paul Horiuchi's Seattle Mural
Dale Allen Gyure is a Professor of Architecture and Chair of the Architecture Department at Lawrence Technological University. His recent publications include Minoru Yamasaki: Humanist Architecture for a Modernist World (Yale University Press, 2017), and The Schoolroom: A Social History of Teaching and Learning (ABC-CLIO, 2018).
Between Two Worlds: Minoru Yamasaki’s Japanese Cultural and Trade Center
Marin R. Sullivan is a Chicago-based art historian, curator, consultant, and educator. She specializes in the histories of modern and contemporary sculpture, especially its interdisciplinary, intermedial dialogues with photography, design, and the built environment.
A Displacement of Forms: Shinkichi Tajiri’s Made in USA
Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt is Associate Professor of Art and Art History at Covenant College. Her work explores race and gender in 19th and 20th century art and visual culture and includes the 2009 exhibition A Challenge to Democracy: Ethnic Profiling of Japanese Americans During World War II at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum and Redeeming Vision: A Christian Guide to Looking at and Learning from Art (Baker Academic).
A Cross for Wakasa-San: Funerary Paper Flowers and Grief as Resistance
Mari Yamashita de Moya has been retired for over a decade, but recently resumed presenting art-related talks to community groups in North Carolina. This fall, she will present "Ruth Asawa at Black Mountain College." Throughout her career, de Moya worked at the Palmer Museum of Art, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and the Madison Children’s Museum.
Keeping the Calendar
Justin Beal is an artist and writer based in New York. He currently teaches at Hunter College. His first book, Sandfuture, was published by the MIT Press in September 2021.
Yamasaki’s Model & the Idea of the World Trade Center
Lisa Beyeler-Yvarra is a landscape designer and PhD student in the Department of Religious Studies and the School of Architecture at Yale University. Her work interrogates the religious and racial imaginaries that co-construct supposedly secular spaces, and has been supported by Yale's Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration.
Activism at the Table: Yuri Kochiyama, William Lescaze, and the Manhattanville Houses
Sanae Nakatani is an Associate Professor at the University Education Center at Tokyo Metropolitan University. Her research focuses on the lives and works of Japanese American designers, especially George Nakashima, Minoru Yamasaki, and Isamu Noguchi.
Learning as Resistance and Empowerment: A Story behind George Nakashima’s Odakyu Cabinet
Kay Sekimachi, Ogawa II, 1969, nylon monofilament. Collection of Forrest L. Merrill, Photography by M. Lee Fatherree.
Drawing by Mine Okubo of herself sketching the former horse stalls that were converted to barracks for Japanese Americans incarcerated at Tanforan Assembly Center (CA) in 1942.
Paul Horiuchi's Seattle Mural (1962) at the Century 21 Exposition. Courtesy of the Seattle Municipal Archives, Jim Skinner Photograph Collection, 77813.
A view of the Japanese Cultural and Trade Center in 2012. The tall building at the far right was the Miyako Hotel; the Peace Pagoda next to it was not designed by Minoru Yamasaki & Associates. Wally Gobetz, Flickr, 2012.
Shinkichi Tajiri, Made in USA, 1965. Bronze, 100 x 39 x 30 cm. New Carlsberg Foundation, Copenhagen.
Russell Bankson, "James Wakasa Funeral Scene," April 19, 1943. Courtesy National Archives at College Park, Still Picture Records Section, Special Media Archives Services Division.
“A Romantic Journey” measures 17 x 24 inches wide. It is a collage of color photographs superimposed on a black and white photograph of the German countryside. The background is in soft focus, placing emphasis on romance. Credit line: Studio Giclee, Wilmington, NC; Design and Photographs Tets Yamashita; Harte Yamashita & Harte Inc; Printed by the Short Run Press.
Minoru Yamasaki & Associates, Model of the World Trade Center c. 1969 Balthazar Korab, photographer (courtesy of the Library of Congress).
The kitchen table at the Kochiyama family apartment in the Manhattanville Houses in Harlem, New York, 1996. Courtesy of the Yuri Kochiyama Archives Project.
George Nakashima’s Odakyu Cabinet features the asa-no-ha (hemp leaf) pattern grillework on the doors. At its most complicated point, twelve small members made of Japanese cypress interlock and form perfect symmetry without glue or nails. Nakashima’s interest in wood joinery grew as he worked alongside an Issei carpenter building model rooms for the detainees in the Minidoka camp.