Otama Kiyohara (1861–1939) lived in two very different, and distant, worlds: Japan and Western Europe. She was the first Japanese female artist to paint in the Western style and the first Japanese woman to pose for a Western artist, Vincenzo Ragusa—an Italian sculptor from Palermo who taught at the Tokyo College of Engineering. Otama made a name for herself in Palermo during the “Belle Epoque” of the early 20th century, but was completely forgotten in her native country for more than 50 years. In 1933, six years after the death of her husband, Otama returned to Japan at the age of 73—to find a very different world.
