Shogo Myaida papers, 1922-1989

Summary

Creators:

Myaida, Shogo, 1897-1989

Abstract:

Spanning the years 1920 to 1989, the collection consists of approximately six linear feet of archival material. The bulk of the collection contains materials dating from 1920 until Myaida's retirement in 1972. The collection chiefly consists of documents, such as letters, immigration papers, and class notes, ephemeral items, news clippings, and printed material about gardens, flower arrangements, and landscapes. Moreover, there are hundreds of photographs related to Myaida's studies, social activities, and garden projects. Significant documents include the family registry, licenses, naturalization papers, and patents. While a majority of the manuscripts are written in English, a number of items such as his class notes, immigration and travel documents, and various printed materials are in Japanese.

Extent:

6 linear feet

Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Shogo Myaida Papers. 97.77, Japanese American National Museum. Los Angeles, CA.

Background

Scope and content:

This collection provides an insight into the personal and professional life of Shogo Myaida as a "First Wave" Japanese immigrant. Given the contemporary dominant ethos toward Japanese and ethnic groups, Myaida's experiences in the United States as a result of his family's priviledged status in Japan provide some contrast to the life experiences of many Japanese immigrants who suffered harsh social and economic conditions in the United States. However, despite his elevated social and economic background, Myaida still suffered from discriminatory United States policies, as evident in his confinement to Albertson, New York during World War II. The Shogo Myaida Collection provides a valuable insight into a segment of Japanese immigrant history in the United States.

Biographical / historical:

Between 1885 and 1924, approximately 200,000 Japanese traveled to Hawaii and 180,000 to the United States mainland. They were predominantly young men, were well educated (with an average of eight years of schooling), and had a high literacy rate. Mostly coming from the farming class, many of this generation of Japanese immigrants, known as the "First Wave" came to the United States with more financial resources than European immigrants.(Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore (New York: Penguin, 1989), pp.45-46.) It is in this first group of Japanese immigrants that Shogo Joseph Myaida belongs. However, while many of the first Japanese immigrants came from the agricultural fields of Japan, Myaida's background differs from many of the Japanese of the "First Wave".

Born on June 25, 1897 in Takamatsu, Japan, Shogo Joseph Myaida (originally spelled Maeda; he adopted a spelling change to accommodate the pronunciation difficulties of many Americans) and his family belonged to the Japanese aristocracy. Myaida's father, who died early in his life, was a member of the Japanese parliament. His mother was a poet and a writer who also wrote speeches for her husband. At the age of fifteen, Myaida was the only one among his brothers and sisters to be baptized in the Christian tradition. Hence, he received the Christian name Joseph. In 1922, after taking part in a class tour of Europe, Myaida immigrated to the United States where he pursued a career in landscape design and architecture.

Because of his family's aristocratic background, Myaida met numerous affluent and influential individuals who provided him with employment and opportunities to work on major projects and estates. In 1941, Myaida married his personal secretary, Grace. During World War II instead of being forcibly removed to Ellis Island, Myaida was forced to remain in Albertson, New York. In Albertson, Myaida worked in many places, including a nursery called The Garden Clinic where he gave lectures on flower arranging. In March 1954, Myaida received United States citizenship. Shogo Myaida retired in 1972 and lived with his wife in Hendersonville, North Carolina. Grace died on March 26, 1989 and two months later Shogo Myaida passed away.

Chronology of Education and Professional Experience:

Date	Event
1914-1918	Attended Horticulture College at Imperial University in Tokyo, Japan
1918	Graduated from Horticulture College
1916-1920	Attended Tokyo College of Fine Arts, Department of Agriculture
1920	Graduated from Tokyo College of Fine Arts
1918-1920	Appointed Assistant Instructor and Librarian at Tokyo College of Fine Arts, Department of Education
1922	Joined a summer study group organized by Professor Philip H. Elwood of Ohio State College. The group visited historic gardens located in England, France, and Italy.
1923	Brooklyn Botanical Garden, Brooklyn, New York -- Designed and supervised the improvement of the Japanese garden
1923-1924	Brenau College, Gainesville, Georgia -- Designed and supervised the improvement of the campus and developed a Japanese-style summer camp, Camp Takeda
1925-1928	Addison Meisner, Architect, Palm Beach, Florida -- Architectural designing and drafting for the Everglades Country Club, Singer Building, and the Boca Raton Country Club
1925-1928	Marion Wyeth, Architect, Palm Beach, Florida -- Architectural designing and drafting for the J.P. Donahue residence
1925-1928	Oliver J. Vinour and William Gonjost, Architects, Palm Beach, Florida -- Architectural drawing and drafting for the Palm Beach Hotel and municipal buildings
1925-1928	Sheffield Arnold, Landscape Architect, Palm Beach, Florida and New York, New York -- Landscape design for the National Hotel, Cuba and the Edward Stotesbury Estate, Palm Beach, Florida
1929-1930	Lewis and Valentine Landscape Construction Company, Palm Beach, Florida; Long Island, New York; Connecticut; Pennsylvania; and New Jersey -- Landscape designing and supervision of Palm Beach, New Jersey, and Long Island estates
1931-1958	Private professional practice of landscape architecture
1938-1939	Commissioned by the Japanese government to supervise construction of the Japanese garden for the New York World's Fair
1949-1950	Andrew Fritz, Architect, Rockville Center, New York -- Architectural designing, drafting and landscape designing for apartment buildings, residences, schools
1951-1953	Levitt and Sons, Architects, Long Island, New York and Pennsylvania -- Planning Department for new Levittown, Pennslyvania
1954-1958	Julius Fishkind, Architect, Benjamin Levinson, Architect, Samuel Paul, Architect, Jamaica, New York -- Architectural designing, drafting and landscape designing for apartment buildings, residences, schools and shopping centers
1956-1958	Mary Briggs Burke, Centre Island, Long Island, New York -- Designed bog-land Japanese garden
1957	Hillwood Gardens, Washington, D.C. Estate of Marjorie Merriweather Post -- Designed a traditional Japanese garden with waterfalls, pools, bridges and garden gates
1972	Retired

Processing information:

This finding aid was created as part of a project funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. The project started in 2007 and finished in 2010. Marlon Romero processed the collection and wrote the finding aid as Project Archivist; the Project Director, Yoko Shimojo, encoded the finding aid. Jamie Henricks edited the EAD encoding in 2017.

Arrangement:

The collection has been organized into nine series: Immigration and Travel, Correspondence, Projects and Garden Materials, Publications, Education, Professional Development, Ephemera, Photographic Materials, Three-Dimensional Objects. The series are arranged chronologically (when dates can be determined, undated items may be listed as n.d.). The projects and garden materials are arranged by project with a chronological subarrangement. Photographic prints and negatives, ephemera, and three-dimensional objects have been grouped with related series whenever possible. In some cases Myaida numbered his prints and negatives. These have been arranged in numerical order.

Series 1: Immigration and Travel
This series contains immigration documents and includes family and medical records from Japan. Correspondence, travel documents, and head tax receipts are included in this series which is suggestive of contemporary United States immigration policy. The records also indicate the influence of Myaida's family on his passage to Europe and eventually the United States. A few photographs are also associated with this series.

Series 2: Correspondence
This series consists of letters to and from family members, friends, and professional acquaintances. The family letters provide glimpses of Myaida's relationship with his family, especially his mother, and his attitude towards the political climate between Japan and other nations. Included with these family letters is a document from the Federal Bureau of Investigation returning some letters belonging to Myaida as part of their investigation into his activities during World War II. Some of the correspondence is in Japanese. Photographs of correspondence are included in this series.

Series 3: Projects and Garden Materials
This series contains printed and photographic materials from Myaida's major projects from the 1920s until his retirement in 1972. Items are grouped together by project as this is the original order. Folders contain the following projects: Brenau College, New York World's Fair, and Hillwood Gardens. This series also contains materials pertaining to Myaida's residential projects. Lastly, a number of sketches of flower arrangements, architecture, and gardens give insight into Myaida's creative and aesthetic vision.

Series 4: Publications
In addition to landscaping and garden projects, Myaida also wrote articles and a book expressing his philosophical and aesthetic ideas on gardening, particularly on the art of Japanese gardens and Japanese flower arrangement. In this series are a number of published and unpublished works, some of which Myaida had presented as a guest speaker at various associations. Accompanying these works is correspondence that indicate Myaida's intention to publish some of his writings. This series also contains newspaper clippings, articles, and publications pertaining to Japanese gardens, flower shows, and related topics. Many of the materials were written by other individuals and collected by Myaida. Some of the items are in Japanese.

Series 5: Education
This series contains Myaida's class notes from Japan, including garden and architectural sketches and other printed materials. Mostly in Japanese, the items document Myaida's intellectual and artistic development in garden and landscape design. This series also includes approximately photographs taken during his school tour when he visited England, France, and Italy prior to coming to the United States in 1922. Postcards collected during the class tour are also included. Documents related to Myaida's travel for the summer school of architecture are located in the Immigration and Travel series.

Negatives from the Eastman Negative Album are b/w (3x5) negatives. The album is dated 7 June 1922. The album contained a total of 45 negatives and the images are indexed in English and Japanese on the inside flap of the album. The images are of buildings and gardens in Europe visited during the summer travel school.

Series 6: Professional Development
Arranged according to topic and activity, this series consists of curriculum vitae, correspondence, letters of recommendation and introduction, items pertaining to membership in the American Association of Landscape Architects (ASLA), Myaida's application for a landscape architecture license, and other materials related to Myaida's professional development. These documents provide insight into Myaida's professional career and technical training in Japan and the United States. In particular, the letters of recommendation and introduction reveal Myaida's numerous personal and business relationships. These letters also show the unique social network the Myaida developed in the United States as a result of his background. Also included are two United States patents for birdhouses.

Series 7: Ephemera
This series contains postcards from Myaida's travels, envelopes, and a map of the Royal Botanic Gardens. Business cards are grouped with the Professional Development series.

Series 8: Photographic Materials
More than two thousand images document Myaida's projects and social activities. The collection also contains some family photographs from Japan. The images provide a pictorial record of the places where Myaida worked and visited. Black and white prints, black and white negatives, color prints, color slides, and color negatives are included in this series. Many of the images have identification numbers that Myaida developed. In these cases prints and negatives have been arranged in numerical order within sleeves. Images related to other series such as Projects and Garden Materials have been grouped with those series and arranged chronologically.

Series 9: Three-Dimensional Objects
A few three dimensional objects are contained in the collection. Myaida's steamer trunk is grouped with the Immigration and Travel Series and his stamp is grouped with the Professional Development series.

Physical location:

Japanese American National Museum 100 North Central Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90012

Rules or conventions:

Finding aid prepared using Describing Archives: a Content Standard

Indexed terms

Subjects:

Landscape architecture
Gardens

Names:

Myaida, Shogo

Restrictions:

By appointment only. Please contact the Collections Management and Access Unit (collections@janm.org). Advanced notice is required.

Terms of access:

All requests for permission to publish, reproduce, or quote from materials in this collection must be submitted to the Collections Management and Access Unit at the Japanese American National Museum (collections@janm.org).

Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Shogo Myaida Papers. 97.77, Japanese American National Museum. Los Angeles, CA.

Location of this collection:

Japanese American National Museum

Collections Management & Access Unit

100 North Central Avenue

Los Angeles, CA 90012, US

Contact:

213-625-0414

collections@janm.org

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