Emily Anderson

Emily Anderson is Project Curator at the Japanese American National Museum and a specialist on modern Japan. Having received her PhD in modern Japanese history from UCLA in 2010, she was assistant professor of Japanese history at Washington State University (Pullman, Washington) from 2010-2014, and postdoctoral fellow at University of Auckland in 2014. She is the author of Christianity in Modern Japan: Empire for God (Bloomsbury, 2014) and the editor of Belief and Practice in Imperial Japan and Colonial Korea (Palgrave MacMillan, 2017) as well as a number of articles and book chapters on religion and imperialism in Japan and the Pacific. She also has extensive experience developing museum exhibits, including co-curating Boyle Heights: Power of Place (JANM, 2002-2003) and Cannibals: Myth and Reality (San Diego Museum of Man, 2015-ongoing). With Duncan Williams (USC), she is currently working on Sutra and Bible: Faith and Japanese American World War II Incarceration (Japanese American National Museum, opening Spring 2022).

Updated June 2021

 

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The World of Kenzi Shiokava

  • By Emily Anderson
  • 30 Jun 2021
I was deeply saddened to learn of the recent passing of the sculptor Kenzi Shiokava on June 18, 2021. I had the pleasure of interviewing him in his remarkable studio in 2017 for the catalog that accompanied the Japanese American National Museum’s exhibition, Transpacific Borderlands: The Art of Japanese Diaspora in Lima, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and São Paulo. Amidst the comfortable chaos of lumber, hand tools, collectables, and books, Kenzi beamed with joy at the sudden attention he had started to receive in recent years after nearly a lifetime of toiling away in anonymity. I…

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