Hashime Murayama

Hashime Murayama (1879–1954) was a Japanese American painter and scientific illustrator. He was best known for his exquisite paintings of birds, insects, fish, mammals, and other wildlife. Employed by the National Geographic Society from 1921 to 1941, his work was featured in The National Geographic Magazine.

During World War II he was interned in the USA for being Japanese. Despite this, he worked with George Papanicolaou at Cornell University, creating images of cancer cells that were used to train diagnosticians and prove the effectiveness of the Pap smear as a life-saving cancer screening method.

Life Hashime Murayama was born in Japan in 1879, and graduated in 1905 from the Kyoto Imperial Art Industry College. He came to the United States the following year. In 1910 his teacher’s daughter, Nao Makino, joined him, and they were married in New York City. Their sons Ken and Sutemi were born in 1911 and 1919.

Hashime Murayama was employed as a technician at Weill Cornell Medicine for several years, preparing slides, doing microscope drawings, and making models for anatomical study. In 1914 he patented a technique for mounting biological tissues to prepare them for photography. While at Cornell, he became a friend of Greek-born doctor and researcher George Papanicolaou. The 1926 Washington, D.C. directory shows that “Hashime Murayama, artist” was the owner of a new house at 2436 37th Street, NW, in the brand-new neighborhood called Glover Park.