When the Cosmos Bloom: Educational Printmaking as Convivial Arts

Adults -700yen(560yen)

College students -400yen(320yen)

Children(High school students and under 18 years old) – Free of charge

Admission is free for disability passbook holders and up to one accompanying adult.

Have we truly opposed war in all its forms? Have we genuinely desired peace? These are questions that continue to be asked across disciplines, looming over ourselves and the society we inhabit today. This exhibit echoes those questions, seeking answers in the voices of children and through the hands-on act of engraving and printing woodblocks. In the post-war period, textbooks censored with sumi ink forced children to confront and doubt the histories and words they had once believed in. These children grew up, becoming teachers for the next generation, and yet, neither these adults nor children knew what to do. Therein lies the importance of communication. Use your voice. Face the question and fumble for an answer together. What they discovered was the foolishness of war, and the enduring reality of life in its aftermath. This is the backdrop that propels educational printmaking as a social movement. The artists, educators, and the woodblock prints created by children featured in this section represent their act of reclaiming identity, like a light piercing through the sumi ink reaching us here today.

This exhibit includes a variety of pre-war materials and references used by educators, textbooks blackened out with sumi ink, as well as woodblock prints and newsletters that give insight into the post-war education for peace. Through a timeline of the pre-war to post-war period, this display highlights the way educators and children worked together to rebuild a way of living, synergizing their observations of daily life with their prayers for peace.

Between 1944 and 1945, people from Mainland China were forcibly brought to Japan to work in the mines of the Akita Prefecture, including the Hanaoka Mines. They were subjected to cruel working conditions, poor living environments, and severe food shortages. Approximately 800 Chinese laborers staged a revolt and planned an escape, but they were captured a week later. Under complete oppression, the horrifying conditions were such that, when they were to be deported after the war, nearly half of them had already passed away. This event came to be known as the Hanaoka Mine Incident. “Beyond That Mountain: Remembering Hanaoka,” is a series of woodblock prints, a collaborative piece that depicts the incident. A work that openly confronts and grapples with the violence and horrors of war, the piece took two years–between 1982 and 1983–to complete. It stands as an exemplary result of education for peace, as it uniquely incorporates elements from an array of subjects including society, language, and the arts. This collection of woodblock prints includes a postscript by SHOJI Tokiji, “If our education towards peace relies merely on drawing attention to the catastrophes of war, or teaching that peace is simply the absence of war, are we not then turning a blind eye to the banal cruelties of war? We risk becoming nothing but passive observers hoping to maintain the status quo.” How can we ourselves respond to such a question?

Here, we present a woodblock print that weaves the theme of peace into the local context. The focal point, “Beyond That Mountain: Remembering Hanaoka,” is a piece that was used in educational print making at Koshiyama Elementary School in Akita Prefecture, located across the mountains from Aomori Prefecture. Other significant references used by Shoji include the Hanaoka Monogatari (Tales of Hanaoka), and a video narrated by SAITO Hiroko and filmed by SHIGA Lieko that actively engages with and expands on the Hanaoka incident, alongside additional woodblock prints by the A3BC.

One of the key topics covered in educational printmaking is “emotion within living.” Through exposure to this topic, children learn to acknowledge each other’s existence, developing an awareness that society is made up of people from all walks of life. As such, this method has increasingly incorporated works that feature local history and topography. By engaging with these works, children are made to understand their roots in the local community, which will in turn, guide their growth far beyond. However, this growth did not follow the kind of curve seen in Japan’s economic boom that swept through society at that time. Instead, it is a steady, grounded growth that uses the realities and hardships of their surroundings as a foundation, cultivating self-discovery through the consideration of others. In short, what educational printmaking seeks to nurture is the humanity of children–something that will be carried forward into the future.

This section showcases works and reference materials from the Japanese Economic Miracle of the 1960s and 1970s that fosters “the other side” of children’s growth where, through learning about local history and events rooted in various parts of the prefecture, they come to be aware of other people. In this first part of the exhibit, alongside the original “The History of Shariki Agriculture” woodblock print and other exhibited works, FUJITA Toshiyuki–who, as a student at Shariki Elementary School up until the 5th grade and then completing 6th grade at Goshogawara Municipal Minami Elementary School, had experience learning with “The History of Shariki Agriculture”–will be reprinting it based on the surviving woodblock. The finished print will be added to the exhibit in the second half. Caught between the past and the present through this educational printmaking relay, what should we, the children of the past and adults of today, pass on to the children who will run after us?

Educational printmaking in the 1970s focused on topics close to children’s immediate surroundings, acting as a guide for day-to-day living. To further strengthen that connection, it also incorporated societal and historical events, as well as stories from the past, which allow children to see themselves within these contexts. The topics learned by these children have been constructed into images that comprehensively express these themes. This mode of expression is referred to as “embodying the cosmos” by one of the leading figures in historical printmaking, SAKAMOTO Shokuro, in his article “Woodblock Prints of the Children of Tohoku” (1995, Shiroi Kuni no Uta (Song from the White Country)). Drawing on the cosmos’ symbolic meanings of “peace” in flower language and its association with the universe, the concept of “peace of the heart and mind” in contemporary times acknowledges that creative works flourish under the overflowing power of imagination. It is precisely because of this cosmos analogy that educational printmaking transcends the boundaries of space and time, bringing us together in solidarity with the children of today.

Displayed in this section are pieces from the 1970s and 1980s that represent the theme of “peace of the heart and mind,” pieces that depict local nature and history, as well as works from artists and children who have been brought together through printmaking. In today’s world where a longing for understanding and unity between humans is keenly felt, nurturing our hands and our eyes could be a practical avenue that will set us on the path towards peace, and reconsidering the role of educational printmaking may be one of the ways forward. Can a cosmos bloom amidst a blowing wind? How and whether it blossoms depends on how we ourselves take on that responsibility.