Chiura Obata was born in 1885 in Okayama prefecture, Japan. At the age of fourteen he traveled to Tokyo where he studied with the noted artists Tanryo Murata, Kogyo Terasaki and Goho Hasimoto. In 1903 he moved to San Francisco. While working as an illustrator for the city's Japanese newspapers The New World and the Japanese American, Obata made on-site sketches of the San Francisco earthquake.

Obata married Haruki Kohashi in 1912, and from 1915 to 1927 worked as an illustrator for Japan Magazine. He spent much of the 1920s painting landscapes throughout California and helped establish the East West Art Society in San Francisco in 1921.

In the summer of 1927 Obata went on a sketching tour of Yosemite and the Sierra high country.  He produced over 100 new paintings. In 1928, Obata returned to Japan, following his father's death. While there, he supervised the production of 35 colored woodblock prints of California landscapes for his “World Landscape” Series. They were exhibited at the "Eighty-Seventh Annual Exhibition" at Ueno Park, Tokyo. His Lake Basin in the High Sierra won first prize.

Returning to the United States, Obata was appointed as an instructor in the Art Department at the University of California, Berkeley in 1932.  Between 1930 and 1941, one-man exhibitions were held in numerous locations.

The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, disrupted his life as well as the lives of all Japanese-Americans along the Pacific Coast.  In April 1942, Obata was interned at the Tanforan Detention Center where, during his stay, he organized an art school with over 650 camp residents as students. In September 1942, he was moved to the Topaz Relocation Center in Topaz, Utah.  Obata’s artwork of the internment experience is one of the most profound chronicles of this historic event.

Released from Topaz in 1943, he moved with his family to St. Louis, finding employment with a commercial art company. In 1945, when the war ended, Obata was reinstated as an instructor at U.C. Berkeley. He was promoted to Associate Professor of Art in 1948.

Obata exhibitions continued, as did his sketching and painting trips in the Sierra Nevada, often with the Sierra Club. In 1954, Obata became a naturalized American citizen and retired as Professor Emeritus from U.C. Berkeley. From 1955 to 1970, he traveled throughout California offering lectures and demonstrations on Japanese brush painting. In 1965 he received the Japanese Order of the Sacred Treasure, 5th Class, Emperor's Award, for promoting good will and cultural understanding between the United States and Japan. He died in 1975, aged 90.

Posthumously, exhibitions of Chiura Obata works have been organized at the Oakland Museum, The Smithsonian Institution and, most recently, at the M.H. de Young Museum in San Francisco, in 2000.  Recent books about Obata include:  Topaz Moon: Obata’s Art of the Internment (2000); Obata’s Yosemite (1993); and Nature Art with Chiura Obata (2000)

Chiura Obata paintings

Passing Rain, 1930

Color woodblock print, 11 x 15 ¾ in.

A Storm Nearing Yosemite Government Center, 1939

Sumi on silk, 20 7/8 x 32 5/8 in.

Death’s Grave Pass, 1930

Color woodblock print, 11 x 15 ¾ in.

Untitled (Granite Rocks), 1927

Sumi and watercolor on paper, 15 ¾ x 11 in.

Color Composition, Top of Johnson Peak, 1927

Sumi and watercolor on paper, 15 ¾ x 11 in.

Silence, Last Twilight on an Unknown Lake, Johnson Peak, 1930

Color woodblock print, 11 x 15 ¾ in.

Before Thunderstorm, Tuolumne Meadows, 1930

Color woodblock print, 11 x 15 ¾ in.

Morning at Mono Lake, 1930

Color woodblock print, 11 x 15 ¾ in.

Mono Crater, 1930

Color woodblock print, 11 x 15 ¾ in.

Evening Glow at Yosemite Falls, 1930

Color woodblock print, 15 ¾ x 11 in.

Sundown at Tioga, Tioga Peak, 1930

Color woodblock print, 11 x 15 ¾ in.

Chiura Obata paintings

Passing Rain, 1930

Color woodblock print, 11 x 15 ¾ in.

A Storm Nearing Yosemite Government Center, 1939

Sumi on silk, 20 7/8 x 32 5/8 in.

Death’s Grave Pass, 1930

Color woodblock print, 11 x 15 ¾ in.

Untitled (Granite Rocks), 1927

Sumi and watercolor on paper, 15 ¾ x 11 in.

Color Composition, Top of Johnson Peak, 1927

Sumi and watercolor on paper, 15 ¾ x 11 in.

Silence, Last Twilight on an Unknown Lake, Johnson Peak, 1930

Color woodblock print, 11 x 15 ¾ in.

Before Thunderstorm, Tuolumne Meadows, 1930

Color woodblock print, 11 x 15 ¾ in.

Morning at Mono Lake, 1930

Color woodblock print, 11 x 15 ¾ in.

Mono Crater, 1930

Color woodblock print, 11 x 15 ¾ in.

Evening Glow at Yosemite Falls, 1930

Color woodblock print, 15 ¾ x 11 in.

Sundown at Tioga, Tioga Peak, 1930

Color woodblock print, 11 x 15 ¾ in.

Additional images for Arts Portal

Untitled (artist Sketching), 1927

Photo of Obata painting Evening Glow, 1948 (p. 147 of Obata’s Yosemite)

Taken August 1948 by Cedric Wright, from Collections of Susan Herzig and Paul Hertzmann, San Francisco

In 1927, Chiura Obata undertook an artist pilgrimage to Yosemite.  While there he produced hundreds of works.  He also kept his family informed through a series of notes and letters to his wife, Haruko.  The letters were written in Japanese, but translated for the book Obata’s Yosemite, published by the Yosemite Association in 2000.  The following is the letter from July 21, 1927, written in Tuolumne Meadows.

“Hundreds of vivid-colored frogs were jumping”

I lost the Elizabeth Lake trail three times as I made the climb to Johnson Peak. Pieces of the glacier hammered down loudly, right and left, from the top of 10,000-foot Johnson Peak, as if the ice were cracking. The white rocks, both large and small, have sharp edges and look just like lumps of cracked ice.

Of the trees there are only juniper and five-needle pine growing low, one to two feet at the most. On the ground are a few flowers crawling in between the cracked white rocks: red-colored, white-lined wild chrysanthemum-like blooms, and white and yellow grassy flowers scattered here and there.

After following several creeks, I reached 9,000 feet. Here lies a flat area about five blocks wide where the soil had crashed and flowed down. Sierra gentian and other plants spread their roots, blooming yellow and red flowers through the remaining snow. A creek twists and bends; here and there it flows five to six feet deep underneath the snow in the small meadows. This is the kind of scene I would like to show to Korin [Korin was an eighteenth-century Edo period painter].

I crossed many of these streams. Then I climbed about 500 feet, stepping on the snow between the steep, white rocks, until I reached a basin of one or two miles across. There were two small lakes and one lake of about a mile-and-a-half circumference on the western edge looking as if ultramarine had been put into a white vessel. The towering rocks in the east, south, and west were like screens. There was not even a ripple in the lakes. I heard only the sound of melting snow flowing quietly somewhere. As I stood on the shore gazing into the beautiful water, hundreds of vivid-colored frogs were jumping in. I caught a few as souvenirs for Nonaka-kun, but I let them go in case they might die.

I climbed another 600 or 700 feet up to the top of the peak. In the east was Mount Dana at 13,000 feet, Mount Gibbs, and the Kuna Crest at 12,500. The glacier on Mount Lyell was the farthest and the largest, and the ridges of McClure were heavy with snow. In the northwest behind Unicorn Peak was Cathedral Peak.

I took out a brush, rinsed out the inkstone, and sketched for an hour or so. As I was looking at the white snow on Mount Dana, the gathering clouds darkened the snow and before I knew it, the sky above Mount Lyell in the south was covered. When I turned around to look behind me, the rain had already broken through the clouds from the direction of Tuolumne Meadows. Then, right away, a crash of thunder roared, and there was an incredible echo throughout the ridges and valleys.

It was raining too hard for me to apply the colors without the shelter of trees or rocks. I put them away in my knapsack and instead listened to the thunder of the mountain storm. Although I knew I was in danger of being struck by lightning, it would have been easy to break a bone if I hurried and slipped on the bladelike rocks. Many people lose their lives in the mountains when they step through the melting snow or fall in between the rocks, perhaps breaking a leg. They call for help but no one comes until at last they die. Since I heard these stories I take my time in going down, being careful not to slip.

In 1928, Chiura Obata published a series of five articles in an unidentified Japanese newspaper.  The newspaper may have been in Southern California, 1928. The first article in the series is lost.  The following is the second of the articles.

“Untold lessons and valuable experiences”

When you climb the mountains you can find bracken and coltsfoot. In spring and autumn, after the rains, shoots of young grass and a variety of flowers grow out of the dark soil.

To catch trout, one needs only a hook and a few tools. Using pine grubs or, if you can catch them, angleworms, which live among the pebbles near the stream bank, let down your line and you will have a delicious meal for campers. {Donkeys are very fond of fried trout, so, campers, give them a treat sometimes.)

Camp life is to be found everywhere. You gather firewood with your right hand and cup clear stream water with your left. You are awakened by the chorus of chirping birds and nod off into dreamland listening to frogs and insects while gazing at the starlight through the tree branches. This is an easy, comfortable life. Moreover, in this state of California there are large plains, deserts, a mountain chain along miles of coastline, thousands of rivers and rapids, numerous hills of different shapes, cold streams, and high, famous, snowcapped mountains.

I recommend the route in the Sierra from Oakdale via Knights Ferry to see the scenery at Yosemite Junction. Visit Jacksonville where Bret Harte and Mark Twain lived. Then go over the steep incline of Priest Hill and climb Tioga Road from Big Oak Flat. Depending on the elevation, the trees, plants, flowers, birds, animals, the shape of the mountains, the condition and color of the rocks will differ even though they are the same type.

Wind, rain, thunder, snow, morning and evening views, sun rays that burn the hot sand, tranquil moonlight-all at over 10,000 feet above sea level.

Adorning the heights of the Sierra range are the wildflowers. Every three to seven days they bloom in white, red, yellow, and purple, bursting out in a kaleidoscope of beauty and giving us untold lessons and valuable experiences.

The seeds and roots of the wildflowers find a bed of ground in between the rocks. For eight or nine months of the year they patiently lie buried under several feet of snow. In the warm light of July and August they burst out toward

the wide sky.

In 1928, Chiura Obata published a series of five articles in an unidentified Japanese newspaper.  The newspaper may have been in Southern California, 1928. The first article in the series is lost.  The following is the fifth of the articles.

“There is unlimited soaring on the wings of creation.”

There is an old saying, "Writing is a person." Art is also a personality. If you were able to face all different phenomena with the clear, bright eyes of the mind, you are automatically nurtured in the bosom of nature's spirit. Even if a man stands only five feet tall and cannot leave the ground, there is unlimited soaring on the wings of creation.

I was filled with youthful dreams and spirit when I left Yokohama Port. I faced my father, whose face had an indescribable expression, which I had never seen before. "Father, now I am going. I will return when I am able to create, without fail, masterpieces that will be known to the world as those of Chiura Obata." My father, to whom I had thus bid farewell, died this March, the day after my exhibition was closed, following a successful showing at the San Francisco East West Art Association.

Snowy mountain road,

Pine needles scattered by the storm.

California to the west, Nevada to the east.

Even the wind freezes on Tioga Pass.

To the right of the 10,000-foot summit of Tioga Pass stands Mount Dana at 12,500 feet. On the left towers Tioga Peak like a gigantic screen. The old pine on the Tioga plain has borne avalanches, fought wind, rain, ice, and snow, and has suffered bitter times for several hundred years. Like a warrior at the end of his life, he embraces with his rough roots the young trees growing up and surrounding the fallen parent. When I see this I feel that man should be devoted and struggle hard to follow his own ambition without willful, selfish reasons.

I feel that to weep and to be caught in trivial emotions is impure, and I would be ashamed before nature. Now, I have come to Southern California to exhibit my work of the past twenty years to brothers and sisters and young people who are also working hard with similar thoughts in spite of different vocations.

I dedicate my paintings, first, to the grand nature of California, which, over the long years, in sad as well as in delightful times, has always given me great lessons, comfort, and nourishment. Second, to the people who share the same thoughts, as though drawing water from one river under one tree.

My paintings, created by the humble brush of a mediocre man, are nothing but expressions of my wholehearted praise and gratitude.