Japanese-American Artists in Greenwich Village and the East Village: A Walking Tour

As you read through the exhibit, follow along on the map!  

On June 16, 1860, a parade of Samurai took place on Broadway, starting downtown and ending at Union Square. Approximately 500,000 people attended the parade, about two-thirds of the NYC population at the time.^¹ Walt Whitman wrote a poem about the event, titled "A Broadway Pageant." Published in his seminal work Leaves of Grass, he described the "swart-cheek’d two-sworded envoys" moving through the city. It was followed by an evening reception at the Metropolitan Hotel on Broadway and Prince Street (demolished 1895), where the group stayed for about two weeks.^¹

Following the Meiji Restoration, the political event that restored imperial rule to Japan in 1868, the Japanese community in NYC started to grow.^¹ In 1876, six Japanese businessmen arrived on a ship called the Oceanic to establish trade companies and represent Japanese commercial interests. By 1900, the Japanese population in NYC had grown to about 1,000 people.^¹

While the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 restricted Japanese immigration to the United States, it was not officially prohibited.^¹ But due to a gentlemen's agreement between the  U.S. and Japanese governments, Japanese immigration remained low until it was officially prohibited by the National Origins Act of 1924.^¹ Following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Japanese consulate and several Japanese businesses in New York City closed. While the full Japanese population was not mass-interned as on the West Coast, many community leaders were interned at Ellis Island.^¹ The internment of Japanese Americans formally ended in 1946, but it wasn’t until 1988 that President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, officially apologizing for the “racial prejudice, war hysteria, and failure of political leadership” and offering reparations to those who had been incarcerated.

Many of the artists and writers included on this tour were incarcerated during the wartime years, either in the Ellis Island site or in detention camps in California or Arizona. These experiences shaped their artistic output and political perspectives in critical ways, as did their specifically place-based experiences of living and working in Lower Manhattan after World War II. 

LaGuardia Place and West 3rd

Hideo Sasaki (November 25, 1919 - August 30, 2000) was an internationally respected Japanese American landscape architect.^¹ Among many significant projects, he was responsible for the design of Washington Square Village in 1958, including its beloved 1.5-acre Sasaki Garden, located within the superblock of LaGuardia Place and West 3rd, Bleecker, and Mercer Streets in Greenwich Village. 

Sasaki was born in Reedley, California and grew up working on his family's California truck farm. He started college at University of California, Berkeley during WWII but was displaced to the Poston War Relocation Center in Arizona after the signing of Executive Order 9066. He was able to leave the camp upon volunteering to work as a farm hand in the beet fields in Sterling, Colorado.^¹

In 1948 he graduated from Harvard with a Master of Landscape Architecture degree. From 1953 to 1970 he was a professor and chairman of the department of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. In 1953, Sasaki founded Sasaki Associates in Watertown, Massachusetts, where he was the president and chairman until 1980. The interdisciplinary design firm developed many noted commercial areas and corporate parks. The firm expanded significantly after Peter Walker joined Sasaki Associates in 1957.^¹ 

The Sasaki Garden is located at the heart of the modernist apartment complex known as Washington Square Village. It was one of the first rooftop gardens covering a parking garage in the country. In 2009, the Sasaki Garden at Washington Square Village was listed on the Cultural Landscape Foundation’s Landslide compendium of at-risk landscapes, when it was proposed for demolition due to New York University’s plans to erect two new buildings on the superblock between the two existing residential buildings.^¹ Thankfully, following community engagement, NYU figured out how to not demolish this unique space.

In addition to Washington Square Village, Sasaki’s firm was responsible for a number of notable projects, including John Deere World Headquarters in Illinois, the master plan for UMASS Amherst, One Maritime Plaza in San Francisco, One Shell Plaza in Houston, Euro Disney, and Bell Labs Holmdel Complex (later known as Bell Works) in New Jersey, where Bell moved after leaving its large complex in the West Village that was later redeveloped as the artists housing enclave Westbeth.

33 MacDougal Alley and 52 West 10th Street

Isamu Noguchi (November 17, 1904 - December 30, 1980), the son of an Irish-American mother and Japanese father, was one of the 20th century’s most important and critically acclaimed artists with works spanning sculpture, dance, lighting, furniture, and landscapes. He was an outspoken advocate against the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, and though he could have avoided internment himself, was voluntarily interned in a camp for seven months. 

From 1942 until the late 1940s, Noguchi lived and worked at 33 MacDougal Alley, which was later demolished to make way for the high-rise apartment building at 2 Fifth Avenue. Many of the residences on MacDougal Alley were former stables, built beginning in 1833 and converted to artist studios in the early 20th century.

By the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Noguchi was already a well-known and accomplished sculptor. When anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States escalated following the attack, Noguchi formed “Nisei Writers and Artists Mobilization for Democracy” to speak out against the internment of Japanese-Americans, testifying at congressional hearings and lobbying government officials.^¹ Despite his and others’ efforts, over 100,000 Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast were sent to internment camps. 

Noguchi reached out to John Collier, head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, who persuaded him to travel to the Poston Internment Camp located on an Indian Reservation in Arizona to promote art in the community.^¹ He arrived in May 1942, becoming its only voluntary internee. He found the conditions unbearable, including the extreme desert heat. Although Noguchi worked on many projects to increase the quality of life for internees at Poston, he found the authorities had no intention of implementing them.^¹ He was viewed with suspicion by both internees, who thought him a spy and an outsider, and the authorities, to whom he was a troublesome interloper. Intelligence officers labeled him as a “suspicious person” due to his involvement in activism against internment. After he left the camp, Noguchi received a deportation order. The FBI accused him of espionage and launched a full investigation, which ended only through the intervention of the ACLU. Noguchi would later retell his experience in the documentary series, The World at War.    

On April 16, 2026, Village Preservation installed a historic plaque honoring Noguchi at his former home and studio at 52 West 10th Street. Watch the video of the plaque unveiling ceremony here, featuring speakers from the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum.

Click here to see photos of Isamu Noguchi in his 33 MacDougal Alley studio.

17 East 9th Street

Miné Okubo (June 27, 1912 - February 10, 2001) was a Japanese-American artist born in Riverside, California. She is best known for her 1946 book Citizen 13660, in which she recounts her experience in a Japanese-American internment camp. It was one of the first widely-circulated personal accounts of the repression and indignities faced by over 100,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II, and is considered to this day to be one of the most affecting pieces about that chapter in American history.^¹

Okubo received her Master’s of Fine Arts from UC Berkeley in 1938 and spent two years traveling in France and Italy developing her skills as an artist. The outbreak of war in Europe forced her to return to the United States, at which point she began working for the Works Progress Administration’s art programs in San Francisco. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 called for the imprisonment of thousands of Japanese immigrants and Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast.^¹ Okubo and her brother, Toku, were sent to the internment camp Tanforan, which had been created as a “temporary assembly center” on a horse racing track in San Bruno, California.^¹ They were later relocated to the Topaz Camp in Utah, where they lived in harsh conditions with about nine thousand other Japanese-Americans. Okubo documented her experience at the camp in her sketchbook, recording images of the humiliation and everyday struggle of internment.

In time, Fortune magazine learned of her talent and offered her assignments. When the War Relocation Authority began allowing people to leave the camps and relocate to areas away from the Pacific Coast, Miné took the opportunity to move to New York City, where Fortune was located.^¹ Upon her arrival, she moved to 17 East 9th Street. It was here that she completed her work on Citizen 13660, named for the number assigned to her family unit, which contains more than two hundred pen and ink sketches. Though she eventually moved into another apartment, she lived in New York for the rest of her life. Citizen 13660 is considered a classic of American literature and a forerunner of the graphic novel and memoir.^¹

30 East 14th Street

Yasuo Kuniyoshi (September 1, 1889 – May 14, 1953) was an influential Japanese-American painter, photographer, and printmaker. He made his mark working out of an artists’ collective in a studio at 30 East 14th Street. 

Throughout the 20th century, the area south of Union Square attracted painters, writers, publishers, and radical social organizations, many of whom were challenging accepted American social and cultural ideals. This neighborhood was a crossroads where art, politics, industry, commerce, the New York elite, and the working class collided to create an eclectic culture and built environment emblematic of New York City’s status as America’s “melting pot.” From the late 19th to the mid-20th century a series of artist enclaves and galleries developed in the area.

One particularly notable collection of artist studios was located at 30 East 14th Street, a five-story structure built in 1880 as a retail store and lofts for developer, businessman, and politician W. Jennings Demorest, who was largely responsible for the late-19th century transformation of 14th Street from a high-end residential corridor to a center of commerce. The lofts at 30 East 14th Street have been home to numerous artist studios since the late 19th century.

After immigrating to the United States alone in 1906 at age 16, Kuniyoshi first lived in Seattle where he worked as an office porter. After studying art in Los Angeles, he made his way to New York City. In 1916, he studied at the Art Students League under Kenneth Hayes Miller alongside Stuart Davis, Edward Hopper, and Alexander Calder. 

Kuniyoshi’s first solo exhibition was in 1922 at the Daniel Gallery in Manhattan. His work from the 1920s is considered by many critics to be his most original and inventive. He drew on American folk art, Japanese design and iconography, and European modernism to create a distinctive visual style. He exhibited with the Daniel Gallery until its closure in 1931.

Despite his early critical and commercial success, Kuniyoshi still experienced a great deal of discrimination as a Japanese American. In 1929, when Kuniyoshi was selected as one of “19 Living Artists” exhibited at MoMA, his inclusion in this group exhibit brought controversy surrounding whether or not he was “American” enough to be included, as the Immigration Act of 1924 barred Japanese immigrants from seeking American citizenship. During World War II, Kuniyoshi faced discrimination from the United States government. Kuniyoshi’s camera was taken from him (Kuniyoshi’s photography was his primary source of income at the time), his bank accounts were frozen, and he was prohibited from traveling outside of the New York area.

Kuniyoshi took great pains to indicate his allegiance to America. He promptly volunteered to aid propaganda efforts against Japan through radio programming (one of which was titled “Japan against Japan”), and poster projects of the Office of War Information. Kuniyoshi insisted: “In appearance, I am Oriental but my beliefs, my ideals, and my sentiments have been shaped by living in the free American atmosphere most of my life. At heart, I am an American and I see and feel everything that way.” Tragically and despite multiple applications, the United States never granted Kuniyoshi citizenship.

Kuniyoshi’s influence on American art cannot be overstated; the first elected President of the American Artist’s Group, he was also on the executive committee of the American Artists’ Congress, was a Guggenheim Fellowship recipient, and was awarded first prize at the Carnegie Institute in 1944. In 1948, Yasuo Kuniyoshi was the first living artist to receive a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art. While Kuniyoshi did not create work in the Realist style of the neighborhood’s namesake Fourteenth Street School, his figural modern paintings and prints are indicative of the thriving art scene in the area south of Union Square.

70 East 12th Street

Kusama grew up on her family’s plant nursery and seed farm in Matsumoto City, Nagano Prefecture. She began experiencing hallucinations when she was ten years old — flashes of light, auras, or dense fields of dots. She began drawing around the same time, including sketches of pumpkins, which would later become a signature of her work. Kusama’s mother forbade the young artist from painting or creating artwork of any kind, insisting that her daughter was destined to marry a rich man and become a housewife. Nevertheless, Kusama went on to study the traditional Japanese Nihonga painting style at Kyoto Municipal School of Arts and Crafts after graduating high school in 1948. She soon grew frustrated with the style, however, and began creating work in the style of the European and American avant-garde. After success in Matsumoto and Tokyo galleries, she moved to the United States in 1957.

After a year in Seattle, Kusama moved to 70 East 12th Street in 1958 following encouraging correspondence from fellow artist Georgia O’Keeffe. She found life in New York to be artistically enriching, but much more trying than her time in Seattle. As a Japanese woman living in a major city after World War II, Kusama faced more hardship than many of her white, male peers. She often painted at night without heat and resorted to eating from restaurant dumpsters. Despite these trials, Kusama soon found acclaim. In 1959, she debuted at Brata, a gallery at 89 East 10th Street run by and for artists. It was there she debuted her Infinity Nets which were lauded for their hypnotic allure by critics, artists, and collectors.

Kusama soon became a central figure in the downtown New York avant-garde arts scene. She frequently staged exhibitions, including at the 1961 Whitney Annual at the Whitney Museum of American Art. However, Kusama was regularly hospitalized due to overwork, spurring a concerned Georgia O’Keeffe to convince her own dealer to purchase works to help Kusama stave off financial hardship.

Her immersive work exploded in 1965 when she opened her first Infinity Mirror Room, Phalli’s Field. Kusama affixed thousands of fabric spotted tubers to the floor and furniture, echoing her previous Accumulations sculptures. She then covered the room’s four walls in mirrors, creating an infinite reflection so that one felt they were standing in an endless field of spotted tubers. This whimsical, surreal, and immersive installation became a signature style for Kusama, whose own visions seemed to be brought to life to be shared by her audiences.

Kusama also made headlines for her public nudist gatherings in the late 1960s, reveling in the counterculture and anti-war sentiment that was sweeping the nation. In 1967 she invited New Yorkers to her “Body Festival” in Washington Square Park where participants would strip, be covered by Kusama in her signature painted polka dots, and “play” in the sun. The “High Priestess of Polka Dots” also presided over a 1968 gay wedding at the Church of Self-obliteration at 33 Walker Street. That same year, she performed alongside Fleetwood Mac at the Fillmore East.

Despite these successes, Kusama continued to be plagued by ill health and increasing paranoia. She believed her male peers, including Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenberg, and Lucas Samara were stealing her work while receiving far greater attention for it. She took to covering the windows of her gallery to prevent outsiders from looking in. This deterioration, combined with the rejection of her work by her family and Japanese community, led Kusama to attempt suicide.

Kusama returned to Japan in 1973 following her recovery. The country received her with little sympathy, however, viewing her bold work as distasteful and shameful. She became so depressed she was unable to work and made another suicide attempt. Thankfully, in 1977 Kusama encountered a doctor who used art therapy to treat mental illness in a hospital setting. She checked herself in and eventually took up permanent residence in the hospital by choice. Her studio, where she has continued to produce work since the mid-1970s, is a short distance from the hospital in Tokyo.

These tumultuous developments forced Kusama to build her career back from the ground up. After a quiet period of recovery and reflection from the late 1970s, Kusama once again rose to stardom with her work at the Japanese pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1993. She crafted a dazzling mirrored room filled with small pumpkin sculptures in which she resided in color-coordinated magician’s attire, leading viewers through a shocking fantasy of color and brightness.

Since then, Kusama’s career has exploded. Her stylized pumpkins have become a Kusama signature, sprouting up to decorate landscapes around the world. Her works are instantly recognizable, cementing her as one of the most successful and iconic artists of her time.

150 First Avenue

Jerry Fujikawa was a Japanese-American actor who had a 30-year career spanning film, television, and theater. He debuted on Broadway in the five-time Tony Award winning play The Teahouse of the August Moon. His career included a wide variety of movies, plays, and television shows; Mr. T and Tina, M*A*S*H, and Chinatown were some of his most recognizable roles. 

Jerry was also one of over 110,000 Japanese-Americans that the U.S. government interned in camps during World War II. Jerry and his young family, along with his parents, his siblings, and their neighbors, lost their constitutional rights and were forced to relocate to the Manzanar Camp in California in 1943. Most remained there until 1945.

Cynthia (Cyndy) Gates Fujikawa, Jerry’s daughter, followed in her father’s footsteps by becoming an actress herself. Cyndy’s pursuit of a career in the theater led her from California to New York in the 1990s. Shortly after her arrival, Cyndy began developing a one-woman play based upon her father’s life, his incarceration at Manzanar, and her quest to uncover the story of his mysterious first family and the search for a long-lost sister she never knew she had. Her submissions process brought her to Mabou Mines, an artist-driven, experimental East Village theater collective generating original works and re-imagined adaptations of classics.

Work at Mabou Mines is created through multi-disciplinary, technologically innovative collaborations among its members and a wide world of contemporary filmmakers, composers, writers, musicians, choreographers, puppeteers, and visual artists. Mabou Mines fosters the next generation of artists through mentorship and residencies, and remains a leading light in nurturing a variety of artistic voices at its artistic home at PS122, at 150 First Avenue. Cyndy found herself embraced by the company and was given the space and mentorship to create her work through an extended development process with the Mabou Mines Resident Artists Program. The result of Cyndy’s quest is a beautiful and searing autobiographical account, called Old Man River, which uncovers a father very different from the one she thought she knew: a man whose life was destroyed by his internment.