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Oral History Interview with Isamu Noguchi, 1973 Nov. 7-Dec. 26

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Oral history interview with Isamu Noguchi, 1973 Nov. 7-Dec. 26 Funding for the digital preservation of this interview was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service. Contact Information Reference Department Archives of American Art Smithsonian Institution Washington. D.C. 20560 www.aaa.si.edu/askus Transcript Preface The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Isamu Noguchi on November 7, December 10, 18 and 26, 1973. The interview was conducted at Isamu Noguchi's studio in Long Island City, New York by Paul Cummings for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Interview [SIDE 1] PAUL CUMMINGS: November 7, 1973- Paul Cummings talking to Isamu Noguchi in his studio in Long Island City, New York. To kind of start at the beginning, you were born in Los Angeles but really grew up in Japan and started your traveling very young and kept at it. I’m curious about what that was like on a kind of day-to-day basis, what you did as a child in Japan. You lived in two kinds of worlds. At least that’s the observation from reading your autobiography and the catalogues and things. You grew up with – what? Japanese or English? ISAMU NOGUCHI: First of all, my mother was American. And going to Japan with an American mother and being half-Japanese puts on in a very anomalous position. On the one hand, she is of Japan, she wanted to be in Japan. But the fact of the matter is that the Japanese do not accept foreigners as another person equal to themselves because Japanese are Japanese and everybody else is foreign, you understand. It’s a very traditional country in that sense; and very unusually so, perhaps. I mean very exclusive in a sense. And, on top of that, my mother was separated from my father when I was very, very young so that I didn’t have that contact that I might have had to one-half parent anyway. So I was an appendage on a stranger; that is to say….And yet, as I say, she loved Japan, let’s say, had friends and pupils there. She taught English. But I was more or less a kind of waif because she was always working a great deal of the time and I was sort of thrown onto the neighboring children and so forth who, of course, were Japanese. So my playmates and so forth were Japanese but I was not Japanese, you see. And, you know, people talk about the discrimination that exists against half-breeds. And, it is probably so. Although I mean, personally, I can’t say that I experienced discrimination as such, a third person looking at it more objectively would probably say that it’s a classical case. I, for instance, have never felt discriminated against in this country either, for that matter, but somebody else looking at it might say: “Well, but you don’t realize that this is evidence of discrimination.” And my own attitude, of course, is another question. Am I really free? Or am I really inherently self-protective against incipient discrimination. Do you understand? PAUL CUMMINGS: Right ISAMU NOGUCHI: It works both ways. I mean, both the people who may be – my whole attitude and, let’s say, being in a sense a misfit in any situation both in Japan and here, in a sense, might be a part of what makes me the way I am, you know – a misfit. PAUL CUMMINGS: But growing up as a child, because you lived in Japan until you were – what? ISAMU NOGUCHI: Until I was thirteen. PAUL CUMMINGS: So you had a chance to have kind of teen-age friends and school? ISAMU NOGUCHI: That’s right. Therefore I had a double background there, especially during the time that we were living in the country at Chigasaki from the time I was six years old or earlier – I’m not too sure – but maybe five or six years old, until I was ten certainly, we lived in this country place. There were no foreign children there at all so all my friends were Japanese children. PAUL CUMMINGS: so you were really quite different from…? ISAMU NOGUCHI: Yes. And, as to whether or not they accepted me, who knows. When I was about eight, I started to commute to a school in Yokohama which was a Jesuit school – St. Joseph’s College. PAUL CUMMINGS: Do you know why your mother sent you to that school? ISAMU NOGUCHI: Prior to that, I was going to a Japanese school and she probably worried about my being a country boy in a Japanese school and thought I should have more European-type education, I suppose. PAUL CUMMINGS: Did you speak English at home, or Japanese? ISAMU NOGUCHI: I spoke English at home and Japanese outside. Well. When I started to commute to this school, which was frequented by foreigners, you know, the pupils were the children of the residents of Japan and also of other parts of the Orient came to the school. So, for a while I commuted, maybe for a year or so. And for one year my mother took me out of school and tutored me because she didn’t particularly like that school and she thought maybe she could do better tutoring me herself. But that was only for a while. Then I boarded at that school for a while. Finally, she moved to Yokohama and then I went to that school from where we were in Yokohama. But that wasn’t for very long, I don’t think it could have lasted for more that a year. In any case, she was living in Yokohama then. You see. The reason was she was teaching in Yokohama then. You see, therefore, I was kind of real waif, I would say. PAUL CUMMINGS: You had no contact with your father at all during that time? ISAMU NOGUCHI: None at all. None at all. So that you might say I’m a classical case of conditioning as a child in a not too fortunate way. PAUL CUMMINGS: You know, it’s curious form reading and everything how choppy it was and how broken up but, but it seems even more so. Was you mother’s idea in sending you back to the United States again to get an education? ISAMU NOGUCHI: Yes. Probably for the same reason that she sent me to St. Joseph’s. Probably she wanted to protect me from the kind of half, you know… PAUL CUMMINGS: Half in and half out. ISAMU NOGUCHI: …business of not belonging anywhere. She probably thought that I would have a better chance of belonging in society here that in Japan. But as to whether or not that was really so, other people are in a better position than I to know. She didn’t know where to send me. She happened to read in a magazine about a school in Indiana – the Interlaken School – which was devoted to teaching children to learn by doing; that it, it had a kind of manual training approach. She sent me there in June 1971. As you can see from reading my book, I didn’t stay there very long; in fact I never went to school there. PAUL CUMMINGS: Right. But, before you came to this country, did you have a lot of friends as a student and as a young man in schools in Japan? ISAMU NOGUCHI: No. I never had. I never had many friends; I don’t have any recollection of them, or not much. Nor after coming here either, for that matter did I develop great friendships with people. I’m a loner. PAUL CUMMINGS: Your mother being an English teacher, did you have books around? Did you read? Did you read? ISAMU NOGUCHI: Yes, there were plenty of books around. PAUL CUMMINGS: Did you remember any of them? ISAMU NOGUCHI: Well, you know, she was a rather literate person so we had books. I mention in my book William Blake, for instance. And there were books of poetry. She was fond of poetry. And my father was a poet. And my mother herself was a loner; I mean it was not just me. PAUL CUMMINGS: In what way? ISAMU NOGUCHI: She was a very quiet person, a very retiring sort of person. She was not pushy at all. Therefore, I mean, her life was very lonely. She didn’t have very many friends. So that also reflected on me, you see. PAUL CUMMINGS: Did you every talk to her about why she was so interested in Japan, what it was that – why she wanted to live there? ISAMU NOGUCHI: Well, for one thing, she had fallen in love with my father and I was born and she took me over there, I think, somewhat to his surprise and maybe to his annoyance. And, having gotten over there and finding that by then he had gotten another family, there was nothing for her to so. For that matter, probably she couldn’t afford to come back here either. PAUL CUMMINGS: So she started teaching? ISAMU NOGUCHI: Yes, she started teaching there. It was a very mixed up and unfortunate situation. PAUL CUMMINGS: Did you start drawing as a child the way so many children do? ISAMU NOGUCHI: Well, after all, all children do draw. Yes, I drew. And I looked at pictures and magazines and so on. But I was not, you know – I would say that my mother wanted me to be something like an artist.
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