Most historians of Japanese art are likely familiar with the generous exhibition and publication grants given by the Blakemore Foundation. Older print scholars and collectors may have shopped in the 1960s and 1970s at the Franell Gallery in Tokyo, or used the book Who’s Who in Modern Japanese Prints, published by Weatherhill in 1975. Some may have heard that the person behind these diverse enterprises was a woman named Frances Blakemore. Before the publication of Michiyo Morioka’s biography, however, it is unlikely that anyone knew much about the fascinating life and artistic career of Frances Wismer Baker Blakemore (1906–1997).

Blakemore is the kind of figure rarely written about. An American living and working in Japan for most of her life, she fits into neither Japanese nor American standard art histories. Deceased only a little over a decade ago, Blakemore also seems too recent to be a proper historical subject. Moreover, and more damning, she never achieved acclaim as an artist, gallery owner, or collector. By conventional standards, she might well be considered a failure, or more generously as the kind of minor figure appropriately studied in an MA thesis. Not only was Blakemore an artist on the far margins of the mainstream (working primarily in the area of illustration), the diversity of her endeavors suggests a diffusion of energy that tends to make most historians uncomfortable. After all, it is hard to make a reputation as a progressive, mainstream scholar without a progressive, mainstream subject. Yet, Blakemore is an intriguing and important figure whose life connects with many central issues in the history of Japan and the United States during the mid-twentieth century, and whose work points up many of the lacunae in the study of modern art. Moreover, her diverse experiences show how one individual can connect with art as a creative endeavor, as propaganda tool, as business commodity, as collectible object, and as academic field—topics that scholars tend to treat in isolation.

Morioka’s biography follows Blakemore’s career chronologically, tracing lightly her education in art at the University of Washington, early experience as an English teacher and struggling artist in Tokyo in the late 1930s, work in Honolulu from 1944–45 designing war propaganda leaflets for the Office of War Information, return to Tokyo as an artist and exhibition designer in the Occupation Civil Information and Education Section of the General Headquarters, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, and later years as farmer, gallery owner, and painter while married to prominent corporate lawyer Thomas Blakemore (1915–1994). Morioka’s study reproduces numerous works by Blakemore, paying particular attention to her book illustrations and propaganda work, and includes a number of her early woodblock prints and late oil paintings.

Blakemore’s artistic creations are as appealing as they are diverse. Her “primitivist” woodblock prints in the 1930s, murals from the 1930s through the 1950s, illustrated book on life in Hawai’i during the war, pictorial leaflets dropped on Japanese civilians, and illustrated pamphlets made for U.S. military personnel in Occupied Japan are each topics worthy of extended investigation. Blakemore’s styles—ranging from WPA regionalism to Thurber-esque caricature—are well outside canonical modernism. How Blakemore synthesized these styles in her deadly serious war pamphlet drawings points to the need for the serious study of vernacular art.

Morioka deserves high praise for taking on Blakemore as a topic, and for uncovering the production of an artist who frequently worked on anonymous and often collaborative projects. Despite its many accomplishments, An American Artist in Tokyo leaves us wanting to discover much more about its compelling subject. Although the author knew Blakemore in her later years, by then Blakemore’s memory was already fading, and Morikoka’s idea for the biography materialized well after Blakemore’s death. It is also worth mentioning that the book is published by the Blakemore Foundation, and there may have been a desire to treat its subject gingerly, either from a fear of probing too deeply into the darker corners of her life or, conversely, out of a modesty based on the perception that the foundation’s founder did not warrant excessive attention. Thus, there are substantial shadows in the biography presented here. For instance, Blakemore’s motivations—for going to Japan initially, for returning there in 1946, for divorcing her first husband, Glenn Baker—remain opaque. While Blakemore’s vitality and curiosity come through to a degree in the two-dozen letters included in the appendix, her personality is largely absent in the discussion of her life. Blakemore’s life and work could use more depth and more context.

Among the various aspects of Blakemore’s creative production, the war propaganda leaflets that she helped design for the Honolulu branch of the Office of War Information in 1945 are arguably the most compelling. After introducing the genre, Morioka translates the text for twenty-three of the roughly fifty leaflets that Blakemore likely worked on, and then briefly describes the designs. This tempting introduction to the topic whets our appetite for a more detailed discussion of propaganda leaflets within the larger topic of propaganda-art strategies. Such an in-depth analysis could range from an investigation of the other artists who worked with Blakemore, to Blakemore’s own suitability for this kind of art based on training in woodblock prints and in book illustration. A contrast with Japanese propaganda leaflets, as studied in Suzuki Akira and Yamamoto Akira’s Propaganda Leaflets of the Pacific War (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1977), might be instructive.

Blakemore’s social contributions to cultural relations between Japan and the United States were as important as her creative ones. These activities include helping teach the silkscreen process to Japanese artists during the early Occupation era, supporting Japanese print artists by assisting Oliver Statler in organizing an exhibition of their work in the United States in 1952, and, most dramatically, by selling the work of younger artists at the Franell Gallery in the 1960s and 1970s. Although art historians have begun to examine seriously the activities of collectors, the impact of art dealers is still little studied. As such, it would be useful to know more about the business model for the Franell Gallery, its client base, Blakemore’s scope of relations with the artists she represented, and the social ramifications of a gallery owned by an American woman but largely run by Japanese women. The impact of Blakemore’s Who’s Who in Modern Japanese Prints similarly deserves further study in light of her gallery business.

An American Artist in Tokyo is an important addition to the growing literature on artistic relations between Japan and the United States in the dramatic years between 1935 and 1975. Handsomely designed, lavishly illustrated, and clearly written, this biography presents an individual whose complex relations with Japan give an individual face to a number of critical issues in American political and cultural policies. Blakemore’s simultaneous creation of propaganda leaflets aimed at Japanese civilians and an unpublished manuscript titled “Gold Star,” about the prejudice suffered by Japanese American mothers who lost sons in the war, points at both the paradox of American cultural attitudes and Blakemore’s own remarkable diversity. It thus comes as no surprise that a few years later Blakemore was back in Japan, seeking to Americanize Japanese society and satirizing American colonial attitudes. If this book refuses to place Blakemore within the usual academic formula of cultural analysis, it may well be because Blakemore not only resists easy classification but actively threatens many cherished assumptions.