Online - Persimmon and Frog: The Story of Sumi Artist Fumiko Kimura

Written intimately and in the first person, Persimmon and Frog, My Life and Art, a Kibei-Nisei’s Story of Self-Discovery reveals a less familiar story from World War II. Born in America to immigrant farmers, Fumiko Kimura was visiting Japan as a 10-year-old when the US entered the war. She was stranded in Japan and spent her preteen and adolescent years in that foreign country, an American who looked completely Japanese. She went to school, absorbing Japanese aesthetics and the solace of art making. After the war, Kimura returned to the US. Relearning English, she graduated college and became a research chemist. In her forties, married with a family, she left that career and pursued her passion for painting with watercolor, sumi ink, and acrylics. She studied Western art at university, but later focused on the Japanese brush and ink on paper. She would eventually help found Puget Sound Sumi Artists.…