photo©S.ANZAI
Silence
沈黙
- Birth Year
- 1922
- Death Year
- 2018
- Date
- 2001
- Technique, Material, Format
- plaster, jute cloth, foamed styrol, wood, iron plate
- Dimension
- 99.0 x 110.0 x 112.5 cm
- Donor name
- Mr. Miyazaki Shin
- Category
- Sculpture or Three-dimensional Work by Japanese Artist
- Inventory Number
- 2002-SJ-001
In 1942, art student Miyazaki Shin was sent to mainland China as a soldier. At the end of the war, he was held in a Siberian internment camp for roughly four years. After those harsh experiences of war and then detention, it wasn’t until the mid-1950s that he once again took up painting. He explored a range of themes, but in the 1990s began addressing his wartime memories in paintings and also sculptures made using hemp cloth.
This sculpture draws on a memory of seeing the crying face of a Japanese orphan in China. Some such Japanese orphans are known to have been adopted by Chinese people, but others are thought to have fallen victim to wild dogs and other hazards. The work represents a prayer for the souls of these little-known victims of war.
(KASHIWAGI Tomoh)