Toshio Asaeda coral reef fishes collection

Toshio Asaeda, an artist who specialized in taxidermy, painting and photography, was born in Tokyo, Japan. After four years at Tokyo Teachers College, studying Geology, Zoology, Botany and Geography, he emigrated to the United States in April 1923 to attend the University of Chicago. His American education was cut short by an earthquake that rocked Tokyo, cutting off his education funds. In 1924, Mr. Asaeda accepted a job at the James L. Clark Studios in New York. Mr. Asaeda credits Dr. Clark with teaching him the art of taxidermy.

From 1925 to 1927, Mr. Asaeda lived in San Francisco; it was during this time that he began his forty-year relationship with the California Academy of Sciences. His initial post was as an artist for the ichthyology department. He returned to New York in late 1927 to resume his work with Dr. Clark. However, after only two years, in 1930, Mr. Asaeda returned to San Francisco accepting a job with a color photography forerunner, Natural Color Photo Print Studio. A year later, in 1931, Mr. Asaeda took a place on writer Zane Grey’s expedition to the South Pacific. He served as the expedition’s artist and photographer while also collecting specimens for the Academy. Mr. Asaeda spent the spring of 1932 to the fall of 1939 (they were forced to stop by the outbreak of World War II in Europe) sailing all over the Pacific with millionaire yachtsman Charles Templeton Crocker. Two of these expeditions were with the AMNH. He was the primary photographer and artist on the expeditions. Apart from oil paintings of the islands he visited, Mr. Asaeda painted watercolors of marine subjects, corals, birds, insects and plant and landscape studies for three dioramas in the Whitney Pacific Bird Hall. He also collected birds and other specimens. He drew up maps of the islands and made a ten-foot cast of an Easter Island mo'ai, which is currently in the AMNH Pacific Peoples Hall.

In 1940, Mr. Asaeda opened his own photography studio in downtown San Francisco, on Grant Avenue. This was a short-lived business venture as Mr. Asaeda and his wife, Suzuka, were sent to a Japanese Internment Camp in Topaz, Utah in 1942. Here Mr. Asaeda taught adult internees United States geography and stone polishing. After the war and his release from internment, Mr. Asaeda took a job preparing, drawing, and photographing fossils at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. That same year, 1947, he wrote a letter requesting a job at the Academy. In 1949, Mr. Asaeda accepted a position as Assistant Curator in the Department of Exhibits. After sixteen years, Mr. Asaeda retired in 1965 to begin work on his garden. On March 18, 1968, Toshio Asaeda died from a long-standing illness.