b'artists are from the same generational cohort as Makuuchi, born in the UnitedIn 2006 Shimomura curated a traveling one-person exhibition dedicated to the States between 1920 and 1941, and either were themselves imprisoned or hadlife and work of Mirikitani, an unheralded outsider artist and gritty individualist family members in the internment camps. In tandem with Gallant and Cheungswho, like Makuuchi, pursued a steadfastly idiosyncratic path. 7Born in Sacramen-cross-disciplinary mobilization of insights derived from Makuuchis writingsto, California, but raised in Hiroshima, he was the subject of Linda Hattendorfs and recorded interviews, this appraisal points to how important broader contex- 2006 film, The Cats of Mirikitani. 8The documentary raised Mirikitani to national tualization and attention to authorial meaning can be in deciphering work thatvisibility, tracing the filmmakers evolving relationship with the artist, whom she is often elusive, cryptic, and densely allegorical, yet intimately entwined withmet living rough on a New York City street in 2001. Then homeless and subsisting the volatile reverberations of the world-shaking events that shaped this artistson the meager sales of his art to passersby, Mirikitani was eventually invited to turbulent, peripatetic life.stay at Hattendorfs apartment, where he was filmed drawing incessantly. During this period, Mirikitani produced numerous works on paper that included depic-Clearly, artistic responses to such acutely troubling events are far from monolithic,tions of Tule Lake, the camp in northern California in which he was imprisoned, as demonstrated by the range of art featured in a concurrent pair of landmarkand the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. 9historical shows on the internment of American citizens of Japanese heritage mounted by Los Angeles museums in 1992: The View from Within: Japanese Amer- Since Makuuchi and Shimomura were interned as young children, their ican Art from the Internment Camps, 19421945 and Relocations and Revisions: Thememories of camp life are closely tied to relationships with incarcerated family Japanese-American Internment Reconsidered. 2One exhibition presented landscape,members, especially their grandmothers, who emerge as predominant figures. genre scenes, and portraiture done in the camps by adults, whereas the other dis- Thus Makuuchis paternal grandmother appears in the camp as a stalwart played paintings, installation art, and experimental film by younger artistssomeand self-sufficient presence in a 1960s portrait entitled Grandma T (fig. 50). interned, and some born after the warproduced since the late 1970s.By Makuuchis account, the ordeal of internment exerted a palpable, disquieting hold on his artistic imagination throughout his adult life. 3Incarcerated at Puyallup Assembly Center (Camp Harmony) in Washington State, and then in the Minidoka War Relocation Center in Idaho, the artist experienced an early childhood that was continually shadowed by fear, following the emotional rupture caused by his familys forced removal from Seattle and subsequent confinement in a distant rural landscape. Although the internment never was Makuuchis sole artistic focus, the artist was repeatedly drawn to the psychic undertow of this destabilizing, traumatic period in visual and written work that he collectively characterized as psycho-docutrauma drama. 4His writings, in particular, mount a full-throated, voluble denunciation of the systemic discrimination and prejudice then being encoun-tered by Japanese Americans. A shared carceral history likewise provides a platform for affinities between Makuuchi, Jimmy Mirikitani (19202012), and Roger Shimomura (born 1939). Indeed, Shimomurawhose bold graphic imagery has long centered on the ongoing impact of the Second World War on Japanese Americanshad personal contact with each of these artists. 5He appreciatively relates how the art of Makuuchi and Mirikitani fed directly from their political beliefs and life experiences . . . [and] both . . . were active before the art world began to accommodate those beliefs with organized support systems. 6 FIGURE \x04 Grandma T CHECKLIST #10130 131'