Japanese
women thrive in Bay Area arts scene
Anastasia Ustinova, Chronicle Staff
Writer
Monday, June 9, 2008
On a recent Friday night,
fashionably dressed young Japanese men and women
jostled in a downtown gallery, sipping wine and
celebrating their own - six artists based in the
Bay Area who were showcasing their paintings and
photos.
"My photography is simply a
challenge to try my creativity as an artist and a
designer," said Akko Terasawa, 24, a photographer
and graphic design student at the Academy of Art
University who moved to San Francisco in 2004. "I
really don't know many women photographers in
Japan. Most famous photographers there are
male."
Young, creative and ambitious,
Terasawa exemplifies the typical modern Japanese
emigres who are flocking to the United States in
search of artistic and personal freedom. More
likely to be female than male, many are inspired by
cultural icons such as musician Yoko Ono and
conceptual artist Yayoi Kusama, both of whom became
famous after coming to the United States.
More than 60 percent of the 39,400
foreign-born Japanese living in the Bay Area are
women, according to the Census Bureau's 2006
American Community Survey. Some come to study
English and art and move back upon graduation.
Others stick around to test the waters of the local
art scene, find a job or get married.
"There is a strong ambition to go
abroad," said Karen Kelsky, head of the department
of East Asian languages and cultures at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "They
simply don't believe they can accomplish their
goals in Japan."
Female artists, especially, face
obstacles in the elitist conservative Japanese art
world, said Midori Yoshimoto, author of "Into
Performance: Japanese Women Artists in New York,"
which profiles Japanese artists living in the
United States in the 1960s.
"The situation has changed over the
course of 40 years. It is somewhat better now,"
Yoshimoto said. But many female artists "still
cannot stay in Japan because the art world is very
conservative there, self-confined in a traditional
mold."
Home to the world's second-largest
economy, Japan nonetheless lags behind other
countries in addressing the gender gap, with women
largely absent from top-level executive and
political positions, according to the 2007 Global
Gender Gap report by the World Economic Forum, a
Swiss-based think tank. Japanese women hold 10
percent of senior corporate positions, compared
with 42 percent in the United States, the report
said.
Last year, Hakuo Yanagisawa, the
health minister of Japan, described women as
"baby-making devices" in his speech on population
decline, encouraging couples to have more
children.
"Right now, Japan is ruled by my
father's generation - typical Japanese politicians
are 60 or older," said San Francisco artist Ayu
Tomikawa, 36. "I think truly modern Japan might
appear when my generation" reaches that age.
Growing up in a remote village in
the south of Japan, Tomikawa wasn't expected to do
well in school, but to get married and have
children. Instead, she moved to San Francisco, dyed
her hair pink, sang in a female punk band, and
became famous in the local art scene for her
woodcut prints featuring fantastic adventures of
Hato the alien.
"There was another reason why I
came to U.S. other than getting into an adventure -
I wanted to be (away) from my authentic
samurai-type father," Tomikawa said in an e-mail.
"He probably does not approve what I am
doing."
While more women have entered the
workforce in Japan since the 1980s economic boom,
they often earn a fraction of what their male
colleagues make, have fewer prospects for
promotion, and are looked down on if they stay
single and keep working past their mid-30s.
"I felt like I was born in the
wrong country," said Aya Kinoshita, 38, a
photographer and writer who came to study art at
Holy Names University in Oakland when she was 22.
"In Japan, you have standards about everything, and
neighbors are watching you - you have to marry, you
have to have a baby."
Kinoshita got a job at a Japanese
cosmetic company in Silicon Valley, where she was
expected to work long hours with little
compensation, serve tea during business meetings,
and walk two steps behind her male
co-workers.
"I didn't want to accept that
because I was in United States," Kinoshita said. "I
feel more freedom here. I don't have to meet
anybody's expectations."
But the quest for a new lifestyle
sometimes comes with a price. Many Japanese women
say they have had to learn new rules for
relationships, friendships and love.
"When I came to America, I was kind
of surprised at how direct Americans (are)," said
Hiroko Sakai, 43, who quit her job as a commercial
artist in Tokyo to move to San Francisco to be with
her husband 10 years ago. "Japanese talk rather
vaguely: Small 'no' expresses big 'yes,' and direct
talk is sometimes regarded as rude and
unsophisticated."
When her marriage failed, Sakai,
who hardly spoke English, was surviving alone in a
foreign city. During those dark times, she said,
she rediscovered art. Today, her paintings are
featured in several galleries in San
Francisco.
Japanese women are like willow
trees, she said.
"They can be bent easily, but it is
very hard once you try to break them."
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