By Anne Papantonio
(Nishimachi Report/The Internationalist Fall 2006 Vol. 38)
Meet "Major Flerton"
We have stumbled on a bit of a mystery and hope perhaps that someone out there can shed some light on it. We've done a little detective work on our own, and this is what we know thus far.
It all started when the Development Office received an intriguing call not long ago from a writer by the name of Hayasaka, who wanted to know whether a certain "Dorothy Risser Flerton" had ever taught at Nishimachi. He said he was doing research for a biography he was preparing of the twentieth-century Japanese sculptor and painter Takashi Shimizu (1897–1981).
To mark the twenty-fifth anniversary, this year, of Shimizu's death, the Yatsugatake Museum of Art, located in Shimizu's home town of Hara (Nagano-ken), is trying to track down and document his total oeuvre.1 The museum has 107 sculptures and twenty paintings by the artist in its permanent collection and has been successful in locating more than thirty of his "missing" works in different parts of the country. According to the museum website, Shimizu's work can be found not only in the Outdoor Art Park in Sapporo and in the Keidanren Guesthouse, Ueno Park, but also in the collections of major corporations, such as Fuji Bank and Nihon Sekiyu, in the hands of private collectors, and in various other public spaces.
Enter Nishimachi and "Dorothy Risser Flerton." It turns out that one of the Shimizu sculptures on display in the Yatsugatake museum is the head of a Western woman, dating from around 1951. The title of the work is Major Flerton.
Based on information culled from family and museum records, Mr. Hayasaka was able to determine that "Major Flerton's" full name was Dorothy Risser Flerton (or Fullerton)2—a name he subsequently found, in part, on the Nishimachi website.
Dorothy Risser was—according to the 1964 Ayumi yearbook—
Our Seventh Grade teacher, Eighth Grade English teacher, and Junior High and upper elementary music teacher. [She] is from Seattle, Washington. She attended University of Washington (B.S.) and majored in Public School Music. Miss Risser has traveled in other countries and used to be a communication officer in the U.S. Army. Her hobbies are writing, shell collecting, music, and flower gardening.
Indeed, Dorothy Risser taught at Nishimachi from 1963 until her death in 1976. Nishimachi thought so highly of her they created an endowment fund in her name (see page 13).
Could they be one and the same person? We agreed with Mr. Hayasaka that it was too much of a coincidence to think otherwise, although the connection to the name "Flerton/Fullerton" remained a puzzle.
The obvious course was to locate photographs of Dorothy Risser—in old Ayumis and in the Nishimachi photographic archive (see photographs, pages 27, 29)—in order to compare the two women side by side: Nishimachi's Dorothy and Shimizu's major (the frontal view of which is reproduced here on page 27).
Our results were ambiguous. Maybe they were the same person, and, then again, maybe they were not. We couldn't be sure. At least fifteen years had elapsed between the two Dorothys. And wasn't it a bit like trying to compare apples and oranges? The head is an artist's creation and represents the subjective modeling of what he saw with his eyes and felt in his heart, with all the freedom and license that that implies. Unlike the objective lens of the school camera, whose role is documentation.
Of course, the exercise was academic. Knowing the identity of the woman is not essential to appreciating the work and reacting to it as art. Just as the artist chose to confront his subject head-on in a frank and honest rendering, the woman in bronze returns the favor and confronts the viewer unflinchingly. The hair undulates back and down over her neck in strong but tightly controlled waves, revealing a broad, high forehead and well-spaced eyes. Her expression is candid overall, but one senses reticence behind the mask. From the left side, the artist strategically directs the light in such a way that it strikes the temple first and then bounces down a level to illuminate the most prominent feature of the face, the elongated nose. There is a trace of a smile, barely visible, at the corners of the mouth.
Mr. Hayasaka referred us to the February 1952 issue of Musashino Bijyutsu,3 in which Shimizu describes his current project in general terms: "I am working on an American woman's face. She is a military officer, and looks very severe but her personality is crisp and nice. I like a face with a distinguished nose. I often use this type of face in my art."
We do not know when and where the artist met the "soldier," but Mr. Hayasaka believes church to have been the most likely place. Toshiko Morikawa, a close friend both to the Matsukatas and to Dorothy, tells us that Dorothy was an enthusiastic member of the First Church of Christ, Scientist, Tokyo, in Nagatacho. Takashi Shimizu's sister-in-law by marriage, Nobuko Imai,4 was a member of that same congregation. She may have made the introduction. Of equal importance to our story is the eventual Dorothy Risser–Nishimachi connection. It is likely, too, that Dorothy met fellow churchgoers Tané Matsukata and her family there about the same time.
Fusion: The Woman and the Work
The accuracy of the artist's aim is uncanny. The qualities he recognized in his subject, over the course of their sittings, correspond closely to what people who knew Dorothy Risser well from her years at Nishimachi remember about her to this day.
Morikawa-san describes Dorothy as "straightforward" and confirms the military connection. Dorothy was "retired from the military service when I returned to Japan in 1958. She was working for an interior design company called Mildred Warder. I suppose she came over to Japan shortly after the end of WWII as a member of the Allied Occupation Forces. I have no idea when she retired from the military...."
Nancy Forster (1964–1970, 1977–1981, junior high history teacher and vice principal) has vivid memories of Dorothy's "inspirational" teaching. "I of course knew and greatly respected Dorothy Risser," she writes, "as an NIS colleague and treasured friend. We were among the pioneer faculty members of the junior high school, Dorothy as the teacher of English, Cornell Kurtz, science, and myself, social studies... I only know [her] as 'Miss Risser' and the Flerton [Fullerton] connection is news to me."
Former teacher and principal Adair Nagata (1972–1986) remembers the shock everyone felt at Dorothy's death—"the profound effect that losing them both had on NIS [Dorothy Risser and Yaye Hirooka5 died within months of one another].... It was as if the pillars at the entrance and exit of the school, [two individuals] who had been particularly committed to the vision of educating Japanese children in English and Japanese, had been removed almost at once."
Dorothy Risser was Paul Anderson's (1974) English teacher and his seventh grade homeroom teacher. He describes her as a "disciplinarian" but fair and one of the best teachers he ever had. He was aware of the military connection—that she was possibly a WAC in the U.S. military in Japan—but did not know in which branch of the service. He thinks she "died of a heart attack in 1977. I'm pretty sure she died suddenly and taught at Nishimachi until the end."
Jim Hawkins (1967–1980, junior high science teacher and vice principal) remembers Dorothy Risser as "tough and also sensitive. She was hard on me as a new teacher without a degree, but she was fair and thoughtful. She taught me to stick up for my ideas and push for things I believed in, as that is what she did (so I learned mostly by example), and she was among the first to congratulate me when I earned my degree from Sophia in the first two years I taught at NIS. We often disagreed, but I think we each respected the other and had a productive working relationship....
"Kids had widely varying opinions of her, from 'She ruined reading for me!' to 'I learned so much about writing from her.' I know that her classes were rigorous, and she was fairly unbending in her standards, which were high. I was also told on more than one occasion by staff and teachers at ASIJ whom I knew, that students from NIS who went on to ASIJ were extremely well-prepared and 'never a problem,' even those who learned their English at NIS, i.e., Japanese and other ESL students."
NIS alumna Sayuri (Sally) Akiyama (1973) has no doubts. "She was a wonderful English teacher, and I respected her so much that I became very interested in English as a subject and became an English-language teacher. I believe she inspired many students with her flamboyant way of teaching. She taught in a very dramatic way and kept me interested. I remember she often talked about her dog, Bijou [n.b., French for 'jewel'], a little white poodle.... I remember her wearing lots of heavy jewelry around her neck and her wrists. As I write this, I can even smell her perfume!... I'm so happy she is being recognized because I often talk about her to people. She just left a great impression on me."
Bringing Dorothy Back to Kansas
Dorothy lived in the Juban, not far from the school, where she had an apartment on the fifth floor of a building overlooking the shopping street. She was a great one for entertaining her friends, it seems, and was so knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the Juban, her friend Toshiko Morikawa asked her to do an NHK radio guide of the area. "Together we walked down the Juban with a microphone," Morikawa-san remembers. "She spoke with such warmth, affection, and excitement for each of the little shops on the street and their owners, citing delightful anecdotes. It was such a shock to learn a few days later that she had suddenly passed on. Tané and I dashed to the apartment. I still think of that charming place where she got us together."
Nice memories, and they certainly square with our reading of Shimizu's Major Flerton. Giving her an identity, that of Nishimachi's beloved teacher and friend, long gone, took the experience of viewing art to a higher level, into the realm of the miraculous. It let us re-find something we had lost. We may never know when and where "Flerton," or "Fullerton," entered the picture, but, on second thought, perhaps it doesn't matter. Mysteries aside, we enjoyed having an opportunity to revisit one remarkable woman and are grateful to Mr. Hayasaka for bringing Dorothy Risser home. To Nishimachi.