Since 1981, NJAHS has produced groundbreaking exhibitions both in its own Gallery as well as in numerous larger venues such as the Oakland Museum of California, the Smithsonian Institution and the Bishop Museum, among others.

Several of NJAHS’ exhibitions toured the country. NJAHS’ art exhibits and programs have explored topics such as the history of Japanese American women over the last century; photography and artwork from the World War II American concentration camps, Japanese Americans in popular music and the art work of Japanese and Korean women.

Past exhibitions include Transforming Kami: The Art of Origami; Chimu ni Sumiri: The Heart to Heart Journey of Okinawan Culture and Nikkei Reflections: Continuing the Connections with Cuban Nikkei.

NEW EXHIBITIONS

TOPAZ COLLAGES: The Art of Jeanie Kashima

@ NJAHS Peace Gallery, SF Japantown

February 1 to July 31, 2025

Meet the Artist Jeanie Kashima – March 15, 2PM

Eugenia “Jeanie” Kashima was the first baby born in Topaz (Central Utah) Concentration Camp, on September 22, 1942. Seventy-eight years later during the initial stages of the COVID epidemic Jeanie would revisit her birth via art. This journey would produce the collages here.

Her family lived in Berkeley before the war where her grandfather Seizo Oishi owned a wholesale carnation nursery in Richmond, CA, and her father was a landscape architect. Persuant to E.O. 9066 her mother, father, and older brother were forced from their home and sent to Tanforan “Assembly Center” before being transfered to “Central Utah War Relocation Center,” later known as Topaz.

The idea of these collages began with the discovery of family photographs, during the COVID quarantine. Each photo by Edna Horiuchi/Discover Nikkei photo was only about two by three inches.

The family was photographed by her uncles, both of whom had volunteered to serve in the US Army 442nd Regimential Combat Team. Cameras were not normally allowed in camp but her uncles snapped pictures of the family while on leave.

In 2020, Jeanie enlarged these photo images and added them to her mixed media to create the collages. Her mix of the historic images blended with her artistic interpretation add to the richness and depth of life in Topaz, and her return to Topaz in 2022.

These collages have been shown at at the Visions Museum of Textile Art in San Diego.

Kashima’s art is currently on display at the NJAHS Peace gallery in Japantown, 12 Noon- 5PM & first Sats of each month

PAST EXHIBITIONS

NOW & THEN: Life in Community Art with Richard Tokeshi, Leon Sun & Leland Wong

@ NJAHS Peace Gallery, SF Japantown

October 15 – December 31, 2024

An exhibition, which explores new works and old favorites of San Francisco Nihonmachi’s Community Artists.

Come explore!  Our time-honored artists of J-Town Richard Tokeshi, Leon Sun and Leland Yee herald their diverse cultural heritage, share their personal and spiritual journeys through life and celebrate a deep sense of community of now and then. Their works of art reflect on what’s happening in the streets and in the world.

American Bon Odori: Dancing in Joy and Remembrance

@ NJAHS Peace Gallery, SF Japantown

July 1 – September 30, 2024

This summer and early fall, come visit this new exhibit commemorating the 125th anniversary of the Buddhist Churches of America.

Curated by Dr. Wynn Kiyama and Jane Suiei Naito,  and hosted by the National Japanese American Historical Society (NJAHS)

Vibrant, colorful, and joyous—Obon dancing (Bon odori) is a kaleidoscope of movement and rhythm, deeply rooted in Japanese Buddhist traditions. In the 1930s, Reverend Yoshio Iwanaga first introduced Bon odori to Buddhist communities up and down the American West Coast. Since that time, Bon odori has remained an important Japanese American tradition, persisting through the difficult wartime “camp” years and the postwar years, and evolving into the 21st century. “American Bon Odori: Dancing in Joy and Remembrance,” celebrates the legacy of Rev. Yoshio Iwanaga, Obon dance teachers past and present, and all who have entered the dance circle.

Incorporating archival photos, rare pre-war and wartime film clips, and artifacts, a soundtrack of  familiar Japanese folk dance tunes “American Bon Odori” chronicles the history and significance of Obon dancing (“Bon odori”) in the continental United States, from the 1930s and the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, through the postwar era and into the 21st century. Principal curator, Dr. Wynn Kiyama, has written extensively on Bon odori for Discover Nikkei, Wheel of Dharma, and Portland State University’s Digital Archive. Assistant curator, Jane Suiei Naito, is a member of the BCA Archive Committee and a Sogetsu Ikebana instructor.

For Programs:https://www.njahs.org/events/american-bon-odori-dancing-in-joy-remembrance/

Register for workshops here: https://forms.gle/tQBuM2QS2bp1wJxq7 and Group tours Click here .

Mark Shigenaga photo                                                                                      Isao Isago Tanaka photo, featuring Reiko Iwanaga, BCA 75th Commemorative Committee

November 2023. Ending June 30, 2024

The Go For Broke Spirit,  Photography Exhibit by Shane Sato
– 10th Year Anniversary of MIS Historic Learning Center

NJAHS is excited to announce the newest exhibit at the Military Intelligence Service Historic Learning Center: The Go For Broke Spirit – Presidio, by photographer Shane Sato. It explores the “untold” histories of the Nisei and Japanese American veterans of World War II and beyond.

The series of portraits features Nisei and Japanese American veterans, dressed in military uniforms similar to the ones they once donned during the war. The juxtaposition between their age and their vintage dress offers viewers a chance to “see into the past” and “equate these men, in the twilight of their lives, to the vets who fought in WWII” (Sato, The Go For Broke Spirit). Each portrait captures the feelings of these men, and what it might have been like fighting for a country that imprisoned their family and friends, the racism they endured for looking like the enemy, and their ultimate triumph.

Sato aims to inspire the audience through the triumphs of the Nisei, and also show the complex range of emotions these men must have felt fighting for this country . . . a country that did not fight for them.

The Go For Broke Spirit now also includes Japanese Americans who fought after WWII, in the Korean, Vietnam, and Gulf Wars. Simultaneously, it provides awareness to the Japanese American War Memorial Court in Little Tokyo, CA., and the MIS Historic Learning Center in the Presidio of San Francisco. Through his portrait series and gallery exhibitions, Sato hopes that everyone will remember the diversity of the American soldiers who served this country, as well as those Japanese Americans who gave their lives for this country’s freedom.

Sato’s accompanying photo book, which has two versions, are on sale in store and online, with a special discount when you purchase both. To order online, click the link below:

The Go For Broke Spirit: Portraits of Courage by Shane Sato

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2023 PAST EXHIBITIONS

Nihonmachi Street Fair T-Shirts, Designs by Leland Wong

@ NJAHS’ Post Street Peace Gallery, August 2023 to December 2023

Founded in 1973, the Nihonmachi Street Fair was hatched as an idea to provide leadership and mentorship opportunities for the youth of J-Town and to honor the cultural heritage that was, at the time, at risk of being displaced. Since then, the annual event has grown from a small four-booth affair to a two-day event that drew over 30,000 attendees in 2023.

What makes this street fair a uniquely San Francisco event is the broader cultural context participants can experience in addition to traditional Asian-Pacific influences. The Fair continues evolve to reflect the city it celebrates while staying true to its original mission: Engage and develop young Asian American leaders through the development of building community that celebrates our culture and diversity.

The Nihonmahi Street Fair is produced, staffed, and organized by volunteers. Each year we encourage the next generation to take part, providing an opportunity to not only give back but also take what they’ve learned working next to their mentor and applying it to their community.

The look of the Nihonmachi Street Fair from 1974 – 1998 was created by local community artist, Leland Wong. His concepts and vision for each poster design captured what was happening in our community and sometimes in the world. These beautifully silk-screened posters were also a community effort where many Street Fair volunteers assembled in Leland’s garage to help screen his work of art. The poster images were applied to the coveted Nihonmachi Street Fair T-shirts. For those of us who were lucky to receive one meant a badge of honor to be part of an important community celebration that continues today.

Open until the end of 2023, swing by and experience almost five decades of street fair history and memories.

Enemy Alien Files: Hidden Stories of WWII

ON TOUR

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Queer Reflections

Queer Reflections

June 2023 to August 5, 2023

NJAHS invites visitors to examine how we see and remember this Summer in the Peace Gallery, on Now until August 5, Queer Reflections asks about or memories, perceptions and what we see in ourselves an others.

Featuring Midori (美登里) and Tina Kashiwagi the exhibit examines perception and memory.

Two scrolls from Midori’s Evoco Project are artifacts of memory created in originally with an incident, the creation sometimes public often private where guests are asked to enjoy the moment and creation as live performance is transformed into scrolls that represent both the moment, and the memories of that moment.

Tina Kashiwagi’s search for mt. fuji renders abstract what is normally a cliched image of Japanese tourism culture, Mt. Fuji at once iconic of Japan, symbol of the culture of Japanese tourism and its shifting of the rest of Japanese culture.  In this video piece Kashiwagi uses the technology through which we now consume culture to render distorted one of the most recognizable landscapes on the planet, and asks us what are we actually looking at?

Threads of Remembrance

January 2023 to June 15, 2023

Threads of Remembrance: Asian American Quilts of Memory at Peace Gallery

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New Interactive Installation @ MIS Historic Learning Center -Feb 2023

REDRESS, RECKONING & RECOVERY

On the 35th anniversary of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, a digital exhibit and interactive reflection booth at the MIS Historic Learning Center, Presidio of San Francisco

presented by the National Japanese American Historical Society funded by a grant from the National Writing Project- National Endowment for the Humanities -A More Perfect Union

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Back to the Culture: A Silkscreen Print Exhibit by Artist Leon Sun

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The Enemy Alien Files: Hidden Stories of WWII

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We are LGBT Nikkei!

May 14, 2022  extended to September 15, 2022

Julia LaChica

(she/they) https://jlachica.art/
Instagram: jlachica.art
Email: julia@jlachica.art

Image is “A Glimmer” (2020)

Julia LaChica is a queer Japanese-Filipino American Visual Artist. Born in San Francisco and raised at North Ping Yuen Public Housing. She attended public school during “Operation Integrate”—-desegregation busing— taking her from Chinatown to Potrero Hill where she would spend time with classmates at the Sunnydale Public Housing Project.

For lack of a better word, Julia was a latchkey kid, deeply immersed in street culture and free to play without supervision.  Her work is deeply informed by her upbringing as a Nisei daughter and her life within BIPOC and LGBTQI communities of San Francisco and Oakland.

After several years as a working artist, Julia returned to school and received her BFA in Industrial Design from CCA, worked as a Product Designer for 20 years and is now dedicating all her time to Visual Arts. Julia works in Acrylic, Mixed Media Collage, Assemblage Art Printmaking and Digital Art.

Midori

(she/her) www.PlanetMidori.com

Image is “Kimono 2 What We Wear”

Bio: “ I am a multidisciplinary, social practice artist. Using material and techniques of manual labor and survival, I invite people who don’t think of themselves as artistic into the creative process as together we build environments in which viewers can process their own narratives. My work often explores the ephemeral nature of memory and place.”

Tina Kashiwagi

http://kashiwagitina.xyz/
Instagram: @ti_michiko
Email: tinamk73@gmail.com

Image is ‘myspaceisnotyourspace’

Tina Kashiwagi is an Asian American interdisciplinary artist and educator from San Jose, CA. Tina received their BFA in Art Education from SFState University in 2016. They have exhibited locally around the Bay Area and are a member of Oakland based art collective MACRO WAVES. Using experimental media, installation and performance, they are interested in reconnecting with their cultural roots as a way to decolonize and reclaim their queer identity. Tina is currently pursuing their MFA in Studio Art at Stanford University.

Mia Nakano

https://www.mianakano.com
www.visibilityproject.org
tintype photo lab
resilience archives
Instagram: @mia_nakano_oakland

Image is “Visibility Project”

Mia Nakano is a freelance media artist rooted in Oakland, CA. Her focus is on visual and multimedia artistic practices, archives, digitizing, front and backend design, and making tintypes.

Her work has been published in Colorlines, the Kathmandu Post, and Democracy Now!. Nakano has contributed to numerous organizations including the Smithsonian, Salon.com, and the de Young. She is the founding photo editor of Hyphen magazine and the LGBTQ section creator.

Nakano is a board member of Banteay Srei, whose work is dedicated to ending sexual exploitation of young Southeast Asian women in Oakland.

She is the IT Director of Asian Americans for Civil Rights and Equality (AACRE) network. Her work is shaped through her experiences as a proud 4th generation japanese american, queer woman of color, daughter of a single mother, and sister of a deaf adult. She is a self-taught artist, who advocates strategic and ethical use of media arts to make social change.

She believes in doing what you love as much as possible and that no meal is complete without cheese.

Tomo Hirai

Freelance Reporter for Asian American community, popculture commentator, and writer. Once wrote an undergraduate thesis on Japanese culture. Has traveled to Japan for reporting but mostly based in SF’s Japantown and surrounding areas.

We Are LGBTQ Nikkei Exhibition Interview with Tomo Hirai and Lilith Benjamin:

Curatorial Statement:

Exhibition dates: May 14 – July 15, 2022

There have always been queer Japanese Americans. Since the earliest days of Japanese migration to the United States, there have been Japanese Americans who defy traditional gender and sexualtiy. Whether it be the poet Yone Noguchi or 1960s activist Kiyoshi Kuromiya, queer Japanese Americans have been among us. The Japanese American Citizens League famously became the first non-LGBT oriented civil rights organization to endorse gay marriage in 1994.

Yet, there seems to be an invisible wall between the two identities.

When operating within the Japanese American community, the support for LGBTQ people seems to be an outward show of support rather than an embracement. Thus, the identities almost seem mutually exclusive. As American queer scholar Eve Sedgwick described an “epistemology of the closet”, Nikkei scholar Andrew Leong describes an “epistemology of the pocket.” As LGBTQ people in America have “a closet” to be themselves, being a minority within a minority affords queer Nikkei even less space.

This exhibition aims to bring that issue to light and radically give Nikkei space to queer Nikkei. By doing so, the exhibition intends to not only send a message that LGBTQ Nikkei they are welcome and embraced within San Francisco’s Japantown community, but to show the greater Japanese American community that LGBTQ people are amongst them.

Location: NJAHS Peace Gallery 1684 Post St San Francisco CA 94115

Email: njahs@njahs.org

Phone # 415-921-5007

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NJAHS presents Oshogatsu Festival Posters exhibit – Curated by Rich Tokeshi

January 2022 to February 2022

THE SUITCASE PROJECT travelling exhibit
@ NJAHS Peace Gallery 2019 – 2020

What would you pack if forcibly removed from your home today?

The Suitcase Project is a multimedia exhibition asking yonsei and gosei (fourth and fifth generation) Japanese Canadians and Americans what they would pack if uprooted from their homes in a moment’s notice.
While these descendants of the internment and incarceration may never have to endure the same forced uprooting as their ancestors, Kayla Isomura’s work examines how they, and those descended from families who experienced other forms of discrimination, remain affected by this history today. More than 80 subjects ranging in age and background share their stories from cities in British Columbia, Canada and Washington, US through a series of photographs, short films and interviews.
Post Street Peace Gallery, 1684 Post Street, San Francisco Japantown. FREE

DISLOCATION & DIVERGENCE: The Causes & Consequences of E.O 9066 

Explores and illuminates the buildup, implementation and effect of the Executive Order 9066 on the Japanese American community.

3-walled installation capturing five episodes of WWII Incarceration:

War Clouds Brewing, America Enters the War, Exclusion & Removal, Hidden Truths, Hidden Treasures

Using Interactive IPADPro technology, dive deeper into the analysis of what happened and why.

Mock-up horse-stall barrack, camp map & interactive kiosk for records search.

more, click here

At MIS Historic Learning Center, Building 640, 640 Mason Street, (Crissy Field) Presidio of San Francisco, CA 94129
Funded in part by the Japanese American Confinement Sites (JACS), administered by the National Park Service,  California Civil Liberties Public Education Program (CCLPEP) and the JA Community Foundation with matching contributions from our donors.

Open Weekends, 12- 5.

Group tours by appt. W-F 

Click here to register

415-921-5007

PREJUDICE & PATRIOTISM: Japanese Americans in the Military Intelligence Service

November 1, 2016 marked  the 75th anniversary of the first US Army Language School at the Presidio of San Francisco. Against the spectacular backdrop of the Golden Gate Bridge, is the Military Intelligence Service Historic Learning Center at Crissy Field in the Presidio of SF. Within these walls, is a permanent exhibit Prejudice & Patriotism: Japanese Americans in the Military Intelligence Service. Supplementing this exhibition is a framed photographic exhibit on the Nisei Soldier in the MIS. Come inside and discover.

Latent August: Legacy Of Hiroshima And Nagasaki

Produced by the National Japanese American Historical Society, Inc., this exhibition combines history, memory, and art to present a 50 year retrospective on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Its purpose is to engage the American public in an examination of the converging historical forces that led to the use of the bomb and its aftermath.

A special feature of the exhibit is the wartime experiences of Japanese Americans from California. As Americans of Japanese ancestry, they offer insight into the complex nature of how Americans view the legacy of the atomic bomb 50 years later.

Photo Credits:
Little Boy with Rice Ball. Nagasaki, August 10, 1945. Photo by Yosuke Yamahata, Shogo Yamahata.