Uchima was born in Stockton, California on May 1, 1921,[1] the eldest of four sons, to Japanese immigrant parents Anchin and Haru, and was raised in Los Angeles.
[2] Caught in Japan during the Second World War, Uchima discontinued his architectural studies and remained in Tokyo for 19 years, pursuing an artistic career based on painting and printmaking.
Americans living in Japan, such as authors James Michener and Oliver Statler, became collectors of sōsaku-hanga and sought to make them known abroad.
[5] Those interviews culminated in Statler's 1956 book Modern Japanese Prints: An Art Reborn,[6] which introduced sōsaku-hanga to the United States, where they earned critical acclaim and popularity.
"[13] Uchima helped to organize "Modern Japanese Prints – Sōsaku Hanga," a comprehensive exhibition of sōsaku-hanga from its origins in the early twentieth century to the present, the first of its kind, at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1960.
[20] Uchima's style evolved from works influenced by Abstract Expressionism until the mid-1960s, to minimalist compositions using geometric shapes from the late-1960s to the mid-1970s and, from 1977, to pastel hued works with "a 'tapestried' color surface" and parallel vertical lines forming the "panels" of a traditional Japanese folding screen, or byōbu, the complexities of which required great technical skill and labor, with up to 45 printings per sheet.