Kadowaki, Motoichi (“Roy”) (1885-1981)

Born Totori Prefecture, Japan, Kadowaki immigrated to Seattle, WA in 1909, giving as his profession a tailor for the famous Mitsukoshi department store in Tokyo. He appears to have lived in California shortly after arrival. As of 1917, he was a waiter at an Oyster Bay, NY restaurant; in 1920 he was butler to the son of a US Vice President in Wayne, NJ; in 1930 he was servant to a Murray Hill attorney; in 1940 he was a cook. These occupations all were considered appropriate for Japanese immigrants, and yet Kadowaki persevered in his art. While in California he took classes at the Los Angeles School of Art and Design, exhibiting there in 1910; while in New York, he took classes at the Art Students League and exhibited at the ACA Gallery and Salons of America. In 1926 he designed a whimsical cockatoo light made of celluloid. After the Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor, he was one of seven (along with NDG artist Thomas Nagai) to sign and publish a “Declaration of Japanese-American Artists”: “Let us express here and now our tremendous anxiety for national defense of America; our determination to support it to our utmost as artists and men, and further, to bear arms if necessary to ensure the final victory for the Democratic forces of the world. Whether a Fascist calls himself German, Italian, or Japanese, he is part and parcel of the same plot against all mankind.” Kadowaki became a US citizen in 1953.

Sources consulted: Ruth L. Benjamin, “Japanese Painters in America” Parnassus 7.5 (October 1935): 13–15.

Works in the New Deal Collection at GVCA by Roy Kadowaki:

Featured
Country Construction
Country Construction

An apparently straightforward scene of home construction reveals a more complex, interconnected relationship between humans and the rest of nature. In the left foreground we see the stump of a tree, either downed by windfall or more likely cut down. A remaining tree at right includes another inhabitant of the area, a squirrel, now perhaps displaced; beneath that tree bloom a profusion of shade-loving flowers. What will become of them? At bottom center is a young sapling which, if allowed to flourish will maintain balance. The human and human habitation being built will be a determining factor in the forest’s health.

Flower Arrangement
Flower Arrangement

This enigmatic watercolor is organized around the small figurine at left, probably a mythical Japanese fox-spirit called kitsune. Their intelligence and shape-shifting ability renders them an ambiguous omen: perhaps as shapeshifting tricksters, perhaps as spirit messengers. They could have as many as nine tails—suggested here by an additional eight curling cacti—at which time their fur turned white. This would be a very old, wise, and powerful kitsune. Two lotus blossoms in the dish, symbols of purity, render this compact still life to be of profound spiritual importance, and we see waves of fabric rippling around the moment.

Japanese Garden
Japanese Garden

A beautifully balanced composition depicts, on either side of its central planter, a knobbly gourd and ringed vase of similar shape. Our conception of what constitutes a garden blurs distinctions between human-cultivated plants and human-created objects, like the polished table, pleasing containers and lacework. As with his NDG still lifes “Japanese Plant” and “Still Life,” a sort of flaming life-force surrounds the objects in gently burning colors—although most pronounced in this painting.

Japanese Plant
Japanese Plant

The plant depicted here probably is a Japanese arrowhead (Saggitaria japonica), which is native to marshes and due to its edible tuber occasionally called a “duck potato.” Kadowaki’s interest certainly is aesthetic—due to its distinctive leaves and graceful stems—and possibly symbolic, given the arrowhead’s remarkable adaptability. Far from wetlands and indoors, this one still is growing vigorously despite a couple of yellow leaves.

Still Life
Still Life

We approach this still life obliquely, as a momentary and almost casual glimpse of domestic space: a covered table is pushed against the wall, next to a door frame, holding a few everyday objects set down in passing. Yet each of them points beyond the frame with unanswered questions. What is the apple doing here? What book is being read? And most urgently, what is inside the envelope addressed to “Mr. R. Kadowaki” at his Hell’s Kitchen apartment? Does the conspicuous dead leaf nearby signal some great disappointment? Regardless of what we don’t know, the plant at center has mass and its shadow is rendered in a distinctive tone—less a shadow than that of a spirit.

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