Bio

Kimihiko Nakamura is a doctoral candidate in Art History, The University of Osaka, Japan. He researches modern and contemporary Japanese art,  particularly in relation to imperialism/colonialism, war, gender, and migration. Kimihiko's doctoral dissertation explores the transwar art and careers of four Japanese painters who produced war propaganda paintings in wartime Japan and then established themselves as abstract painters in postwar New York: Inokuma Gen’ichirō (1902–1993), Kawabata Minoru (1911–2001), Okada Kenzō (1902–1982), and Takai Teiji (1911–1986). His recent publications include: 'Shinoda Tōkō: Ink, Abstraction, and Radical Individualism', in Woman’s Art Journal, vol. 43, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2022); ‘Norakuro: Imperial Japan’s Unofficial Mascot for Children’, in Aziatische Kunst, vol. 54, no. 2 (June 2024); ‘Painting World Powers across the Transwar Period: Okada Kenzō and Kawabata Minoru under the Japanese Empire and Pax Americana’, in Review of Japanese Culture and Society, vol. 36 (forthcoming). Prior to coming to Heidelberg, Kimihiko completed his Bachelor’s in Philosophy (Aesthetics) at the Keio University in 2019 and Master’s in Art History (with Distinction) at the University of St Andrews in 2020. From 2022 to 2023, he worked as a research assistant at the Collaborative Research Centre 933 ‘Material Text Cultures’, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg.