Existing comment:
Immigrant:
"Being a stranger in a strange country is very difficult and hard to get along…I never thought anything could be had easily and therefore my attitude has always been to fight to get it."
-– Kuniyoshi, notes for his autobiography
When Kuniyoshi left Okayama, Japan, in 1906, he planned to learn English and return home as a translator. He worked in rail yards, hotels, and fruit orchards along the West Coast, before enrolling in high school, where a teacher encouraged his creative talents. In 1910 he moved to New York to study art and by the 1920s, critics began to appreciate his paintings. Even as Kuniyoshi made a name for himself as a leading American artist, he regarded his status as a "resident alien" with apparent anxiety. |