Chiura Obata

In the San Francisco Bay Area, Chiura Obata was the most prominent practitioner of the modern nihonga (Japanese painting) movement, which sought to reconcile the practices of traditional Japanese and contemporary European schools of art. Accompanied by his wife, Haruko Kohashi, who helped introduce ikebana (the art of flower arrangement) to the Bay Area, Obata gave hundreds of public lectures and demonstrations that introduced audiences to Japanese art and aesthetics.