Made in 1986, "American Kabuki (Oishiiwa)" captures the fear and fury associated with the global HIV/AIDS epidemic in the era prior to effective treatments. The title is a reference to Japanese Kabuki theatre, which often featured political commentary, and to Oiwa, the female ghost in the famous Kabuki play Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan (The Ghost Story of Yotsuya). The painting also draws inspiration from Katsushika Hokusai’s woodblock print Cresting Wave off the Coast of Kanagawa (ca. 1830–1832), likening the health crisis’s impact and reach to the devastation of a tsunami.

Masami Teraoka depicts the ghostly mother with the characteristic lesions of Kaposi’s sarcoma, a type of cancer to which people with HIV are particularly susceptible. Protectively cradling a tiny infant, she surges forward on the crest of a wave. Her precarious position, with no sign of salvation in sight, evokes the societal ostracism that often unfairly stigmatizes people living with HIV/AIDS. Teraoka’s screen serves as a searing indictment of collective inaction, and perhaps as a reminder that the disease affects everyone.