Gajin Fujita got his start as an artist in the tough, mostly Latino neighbourhood of Boyle Heights in East Los Angeles, painting with spray cans on urban walls with his friends in the KGB and K2S graffiti crews. Yet traditional Japanese culture was always present in Fujita’s immigrant household. He grew up listening to tales of heroic samurai from his artist father, while his mother, a conservator of antiquities, restored Japanese lacquer and armour.