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Blueprints for New Designs: Japanese American Cultural Ambassadorship during the Cold War
- Journal of Asian American Studies
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 19, Number 3, October 2016
- pp. 351-374
- 10.1353/jaas.2016.0031
- Article
- Additional Information
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In the 1950s, Nisei architect Minoru Yamasaki designed a new U.S. consulate building in Kobe, and Isamu Noguchi created the Japanese garden for the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. The Nisei cultural producers combined Japanese visual elements with modernist aesthetics in their works to signal their capability as a translator between the East and the West. Through their overseas projects, they not only expanded their horizons but also acquired unique standpoints from which they occasionally challenged the assumptions of the white-dominated professional fields in which they worked.