Roger Shimomura
Kansas Samurai2004

Not on view

Vertical screenprint combining a close-up kabuki-style male figure with black topknot, red-rimmed eyes, and blue collar against a pale blue background filled with black-and-white comic-style characters, with a diagonal blue sword blade crossing the composition

Artist or Maker: Roger Shimomura
United States, born 1939, active Lawrence, Kansas
Publisher: Lawrence Lithography Workshop
Kansas City, Missouri
Title: Kansas Samurai
Date Made: 2004
Medium: Lithograph
Dimensions: Sheet: 44 3/4 × 31 in. (113.67 × 78.74 cm) Image: 38 3/4 × 25 7/8 in. (98.43 × 65.72 cm) Frame: 48 3/4 × 35 in. (123.83 × 88.9 cm)
Credit Line: Gift of artist
Accession Number: M.2017.252.2
Classification: Prints
Collecting Area: Prints and Drawings
Curatorial Notes: Roger Shimomura’s family was forced to relocate to a Japanese American incarceration camp during World War II. He was two years old at the time. His grandmother kept diaries while in the camp, which Shimomura has translated to learn about his family history. The artist has also avidly collected American comic books since childhood, and began envisioning himself as a superhero at a young age. In works like this lithograph, Shimomura fuses these disparate literary references with his firsthand experience of facing racial prejudice and cultural stereotyping, representing himself as a caricature to upend the viewer’s preconceived ideas about American identity.

In 1970, Shimomura moved from the Pacific Northwest to the Midwest to accept a teaching position at the University of Kansas, an environment that was much less culturally and ethnically diverse than where he had lived before. Kansas Samurai mimics the attributes of a Japanese woodblock print, showing the artist in the costume and hairstyle of a traditional Japanese samurai warrior—albeit with modern wire-rimmed eyeglasses. Shimomura places himself against a backdrop of characters from American comic strips but represents the figures with their backs turned on his self-portrait. The artist has said these cartoons “are meant to metaphorically represent that sense of rejection that can be experienced by those who are not members of the majority culture.”

Claudine Dixon

2023
Selected Bibliography: Schillo, Eve, and Claudine Dixon. Before You Now: Capturing the Self in Portraiture; Ante Usted: La Captura del Ser en el Retrato. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2024.
Copyright: © Roger Shimomura

Roger Shimomura
Kansas Samurai2004

Not on view

Artist or Maker: Roger Shimomura
United States, born 1939, active Lawrence, Kansas
Publisher: Lawrence Lithography Workshop
Kansas City, Missouri
Title: Kansas Samurai
Date Made: 2004
Medium: Lithograph
Dimensions: Sheet: 44 3/4 × 31 in. (113.67 × 78.74 cm) Image: 38 3/4 × 25 7/8 in. (98.43 × 65.72 cm) Frame: 48 3/4 × 35 in. (123.83 × 88.9 cm)
Credit Line: Gift of artist
Accession Number: M.2017.252.2
Classification: Prints
Collecting Area: Prints and Drawings
Curatorial Notes: Roger Shimomura’s family was forced to relocate to a Japanese American incarceration camp during World War II. He was two years old at the time. His grandmother kept diaries while in the camp, which Shimomura has translated to learn about his family history. The artist has also avidly collected American comic books since childhood, and began envisioning himself as a superhero at a young age. In works like this lithograph, Shimomura fuses these disparate literary references with his firsthand experience of facing racial prejudice and cultural stereotyping, representing himself as a caricature to upend the viewer’s preconceived ideas about American identity.

In 1970, Shimomura moved from the Pacific Northwest to the Midwest to accept a teaching position at the University of Kansas, an environment that was much less culturally and ethnically diverse than where he had lived before. Kansas Samurai mimics the attributes of a Japanese woodblock print, showing the artist in the costume and hairstyle of a traditional Japanese samurai warrior—albeit with modern wire-rimmed eyeglasses. Shimomura places himself against a backdrop of characters from American comic strips but represents the figures with their backs turned on his self-portrait. The artist has said these cartoons “are meant to metaphorically represent that sense of rejection that can be experienced by those who are not members of the majority culture.”

Claudine Dixon

2023
Selected Bibliography: Schillo, Eve, and Claudine Dixon. Before You Now: Capturing the Self in Portraiture; Ante Usted: La Captura del Ser en el Retrato. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2024.