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TSURUOKA Kakunen(1892 - 1977)Biography TSURUOKA KAKUNEN in his 40ies, detail from a oil painting by Abel WARSHAVSKY |
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Artist – TSURUOKA
Tokutaro (鶴岡 徳太郎) was born on November 14th in 1892 in the
Ueno section of Tokiyo to a tobacconist merchant. In 1896 he
was orphaned during a typhoid epidemic, afterwards living with
the Shiota family, supposed to be cousins of his mother. In
1905 his foster family sent him to San Francisko, where he had
been living with another cousin's family of the Shiota branch.
His uncle was the owner of 'T.Z. Shiota' antiques shop. In
1918 Tokutaro TSURUOKA
started his own business in selling Asan pieces of art. He
regularly travelled to China, Japan, and Mongolia, for
appropriating local pieces of art and antiquities. In the
early nineteen-twenties he started making classical
watercolour paintings in the Chinese tradition. He usually
signed his works with his 'ga'
“Kakunen" and often parallell with his birth name Tokutaro TSURUOKA, both in Kanji
and in Latin script. In the 1930ies he produced several
Japanese woodblock prints, nearly all in collaboration with
publisher Watanabe Shozaburo of Tokiyo.
Like most US citizen of Japanese ancestry, he and his family suffered systematic and forced expulsions into incarceration in the early course of Worldwar II. He had been illegally expropriated and interned in the "Colorado River Relocation Center" in Poston, Arizona, located on the Colorado River Indian Reservation. Even in this remote Arizona desert camp, he use to paint water colours and gave painting lessons to his fellow inmates. After liberation, his family settled in New York, where he resumed businesses as antiques and art dealer.
Personal
life - During his time at 'T.Z.
Shiota' he married his supposed cousin Dai. They had three
issues, a boy and two girls. TSURUOKA Tokutaro died on
November 14th in 1977. His ashes had been transferred to the
Shiota family compound in Japan.
Aliases - TSURUOKA Tokutaro (birth name), SHIOTA Takezo, Tsuruoka Kakunen
Disciples - no known disciples
Copyright 2008 ff: Hans P. Boehme