76 Artists Magazine May 2020
During his first years in California,
Obata held several jobs outside his
artistic wheelhouse, including work
as a house servant and as a field
hand picking hops in the Sacramento
Valley. He was also a founding mem-
ber of the first Japanese-American
baseball team in mainland America.
But his art was ever-present, and
he painted and drew every day. He
got his first chance as an illustrator
by documenting one of the most
momentous natural calamities
in the history of the U.S: the San
Francisco earthquake of 1906. Obata
was granted permission to tour the
disaster sites and create sketches
of wreckage and destruction that
crippled the city. This paved the way
for Obata’s stint as an illustrator for
several of San Francisco’s leading
Japanese-speaking newspapers. In
subsequent years, he would also land
commissions as a muralist and holdOPPOSITE
Life and Death,
Porcupine Flat
1930; color woodcut
on paper, 15½x10⅞
SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN
ART MUSEUM, GIFT OF THE
OBATA FAMILY, 2000.76.3;
©1989, LILLIAN YURI
KODANIBELOW
Mono Crater
1930; color woodcut
on paper, 11x15⅝
SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN
ART MUSEUM, GIFT OF THE
OBATA FAMILY, 2000.76.9;
©1989, LILLIAN YURI
KODANIpositions as a magazine cover designer, art director and
interior designer. The irony underpinning Obata’s status as
an artist and decorative arts designer is that while the elite
of San Francisco embraced Japanism and the Japanese
decorative arts that Obata and others provided, these same
enthusiasts were often openly hostile to the actual people
of Japan who lived alongside them.“Great Nature” Takes Hold
It was the summer of 1927. Obata had struck up a friend-
ship with University of Califonia, Berkeley art professor
Worth Ryder, who invited him on a sketching tour of the
nearby countryside. For years, Obata had been working in a
professional capacity as an illustrator and designer—at one
point he’d been in the employ of a Japanese steamship com-
pany for which he’d created 3,000 images over the course
of two years. He’d also become something of a plein air
wanderer. He would visit a wide circle of acquaintances and
friends within the Japanese-American community, ranging
from farmers in the Santa Cruz Mountains to families in
Pescadero and Monterey—and Obata had created studies
of the landscape of California wherever he went. The trip
Ryder proposed suited Obata’s artistic passions perfectly,