SFGate: Japanese women thrive in Bay Area arts scene
On a recent Friday night, fashionably dressed young Japanese men and women jostled in a downtown gallery, sipping wine and celebrating their own - six artists based in the Bay Area who were showcasing their paintings and photos. "My photography is simply a challenge to try my creativity as an artist and a designer," said Akko Terasawa, 24, a photographer and graphic design student at the Academy of Art University who moved to San Francisco in 2004...Young, creative and ambitious, Terasawa exemplifies the typical modern Japanese emigres who are flocking to the United States in search of artistic and personal freedom. More likely to be female than male, many are inspired by cultural icons such as musician Yoko Ono and conceptual artist Yayoi Kusama, both of whom became famous after coming to the United States. More than 60 percent of the 39,400 foreign-born Japanese living in the Bay Area are women, according to the Census Bureau's 2006 American Community Survey...Female artists, especially, face obstacles in the elitist conservative Japanese art world, said Midori Yoshimoto..."The situation has changed over the course of 40 years. It is somewhat better now," Yoshimoto said. But many female artists "still cannot stay in Japan because the art world is very conservative there, self-confined in a traditional mold"..."Right now, Japan is ruled by my father's generation - typical Japanese politicians are 60 or older," said San Francisco artist Ayu Tomikawa, 36. "I think truly modern Japan might appear when my generation" reaches that age. Growing up in a remote village in the south of Japan, Tomikawa wasn't expected to do well in school, but to get married and have children. Instead, she moved to San Francisco, dyed her hair pink, sang in a female punk band, and became famous in the local art scene for her woodcut prints featuring fantastic adventures of Hato the alien...more...
