By KEVIN CHARLES KEIZUCHI, Rafu Contributor
It’s Saturday, Nov. 5, 1949, the opening night for the second annual L.A. Palette Club exhibition at the Daishi Mission in Little Tokyo. Tokio Ueyama is chatting with Toyo Miyatake about the concept and techniques Toyo used in his oil painting “Autumn,” which hangs on the same wall as Ueyama’s “Self-Portrait.”
Other artists in this exhibition included Estelle Ishigo, a painter of European ancestry who voluntarily went to the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in solidarity with her Nisei husband, Arthur, where she charcoaled sketches of the cruel Wyoming weather.
Sueo Serisawa, the director of “Nisei Parade,” a silent film that is considered by some to be the most complete cinematic portrait of prewar Nisei life in California, and an accomplished art teacher at Claremont and Scripps College, has his oil painting “Portrait of Mary” on the wall as well, courtesy of the Hatfield Gallery, Ambassador Hotel.
At this moment, you may be wondering why I’m describing this scene of gathering creatives from years past, and it all has to do with one word: Bunkado.
Bunkado is Japanese for the “House of Culture” and is also a gift shop that was founded in 1947 by Tokio and Suye Ueyama after they returned from being imprisoned for 40 months, first held in a California race track then sent to the sandy prairie lands of Grenada, Colo. Before his incarceration, Tokio was an accomplished painter who worked with the likes of Edward Weston and Diego Rivera after he graduated from USC and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Upon establishing Bunkado, they lined the shelves with Japanese records, books, stationeries, and magazines while often filling many of the drawers with various art supplies.
Fast-forward 77 years to the present. Bunkado’s owner, Irene Tsukada Simonian, is proud to be a popular destination for Japanese gifts, housewares, and materials for traditional crafts while also adapting to the artisanal market demand by working with local artists and independent businesses in collaborative products.
Bunkado’s manager, Dane Ishibashi, is the visionary responsible for the second floor’s metamorphosis into the L.A. Palette Club. His mission to seek out products that felt organic for Bunkado is what led him to form a relationship with Shoshi Watanabe and bring Zakka Bakka into this space.
“The reintroduction of the L.A. Palette Club is meant to celebrate and showcase these artists,” says Ishibashi. “When Mr. Ueyama did art exhibitions with his friends, he would call them the L.A. Palette Club, so it’s kind of an insider appreciation of his spirit.”
As a legacy business, Ishibashi knows that Bunkado has to evolve with the times, but it can also stay true to its roots. This is why the revival of a program like the L.A. Palette Club is so uniquely Bunkado that I imagine Mr. Ueyama would be so proud to see this moment happen.
As I walk up the wooden steps to the second floor of Bunkado, I can’t help but ponder the idea of what “legacy” means as I’m greeted by the oil-painted eyes of Tokio Ueyama’s “Self-Portrait,” positioned perfectly between two antique speakers on a library shelf of CDs. There’s a man in a haori measuring water with a bamboo ladle and pouring it into an iron cauldron as he waves me over for “a free education” in Yusando, a naturally farmed tea from Nara, and offering cubes of colored wagashi from Fugetsudo.
His name is Shingo, and he’s not normally up here whisking Angelenos off the street to try their ceremonial matcha. Tonight marks a special occasion where a trifecta of ideas, past, present, and future, has formed. On tonight’s menu, we have the ingredients as follows: one part Zakka Bakka, one part Bunkado, and one part L.A. Palette Club.
The term “Zakka Bakka” in Japanese means “items everywhere,” which is clearly what has happened to the second-floor space of Bunkado. An array of fantastic ceramic objects adorns the display tops in clusters of uniqueness and whimsy, each item fascinatingly crafted with a human touch and intention, from Shoshi Watanabe’s multi-glazed ramen bowls to Alyson Brandes’ ceramic “Thank You” bag to the warped chalices of Quinn Daly. There were so many items everywhere all at once but only so much time to take them all in.
A series of freeform clocks with arms in all time zones hangs next to an illustration of a whirlwind of cups in a circular frame. This was the doing of Michael Dopp, the painter, illustrator, and one-third of the Zakka Bakka team.
When asked about why he made it a circular frame, Michael replied, “I found all of these frames in the basement of Bunkado and decided to use those dimensions for the custom illustrations in them now. It’s a fun element of layering that just happened organically when we started the concept.”
He even points out how the concept of layering is applied to the Bunkado exclusive candles and how all three artists came together to form one object like a “Power Ranger’s Megazord.” Shoshi Watanabe threw the ceramic cups, Michael Dopp painted the graphics with glaze, and Yosei Shibata filled the vessels with a wick and wax that’s reminiscent of an “old bookstore” smell.
It’s the small details like these that make the layering of art, culture, and nostalgia like that of the pigmented oil in a Ueyama painting so effortlessly complex with the softness of a human spirit, and the canvas this time being that of Bunkado’s second floor.
Out of the corner of my eye, I can’t help but notice a crowd of creatives rifling through a pile of vintage T-shirts. It was like they were vinyl hunters digging through crates. Each garment is meticulously inspected before being either tossed aside or put neatly into a figurative “shopping cart” stack.
Yosei Shibata, the apparel designer of Zakka Bakka, informs me that each upcycled shirt is unique and has had a story of its own before the collective’s logos are screen-printed over the heart. On the back of each shirt is also a stunning reprint of Tokio Ueyama’s woodblock Xmas card of the “Virgin Mary, Child & Tiger,” another layer of homage to the founding father of Bunkado.
I asked Shibata why they printed them on old shirts and not just run a fresh batch of Kirkland white tees. “There’s already so much apparel out there in the world. Why not repurpose it by adding another layer? It makes it more interesting that way,” said Shibata as he showed me the nuances of a problematic 1960s yacht club shirt that was in the batch.
I ended up buying that shirt, by the way. It was really interesting. He sold me on problematic.
The last of the trio that I get to chat with is a guy sporting a Victory Lakes P.E. shirt with the handwritten name “Martin” across the tummy. His name isn’t Martin. This is, clearly, the ceramicist Shoshi Watanabe of the Zakka Bakka squad.
As I talk to Watanabe about what this exhibition means to him, he educates me on how this is a full-circle moment for him and his team. It all started as a month-long artist residency that was suggested to him by Mariko Lochridge of Little Tokyo Service Center, which took place just across the street in the current location of CRFT by Maki. It was there on Jan. 8, 2019, they started this idea of Zakka Bakka and its approach to gallery spaces and the collection of artists’ experimental objects.
“We were excited to do Zakka Bakka in Bunkado,” says Watanabe, “We love the history of this space, and having a show here really brings back the culture [of L.A. Palette Club].”
As 2024 settles in and certain legacies come to an end, it gives me hope to see new legacies being formed out of the ideas and philosophies of our ancestors through cultural commerce and communal events. It’s exactly why Hollywood is rebooting all our favorite movies and why Zakka Bakka can upcycle old treasures into modern art and one day those pieces might be reimagined as well.
This is the circle of life and the ouroboros of creativity that lives within the “house of culture,” as each year gently paints a new layer upon the dreams imagined by the Ueyamas, once upon a time in Little Tokyo.
For more information on Bunkado, Tokio Ueyama, and Zakka Bakka, please visit their websites and IGs.
https://www.bunkadoonline.com/
@bunkado_ltla
@tokioueyama.archives
@zakkabakka.shop
@mdopp @yoseishibata_design @shoshiwatanabe