Message to Gezoncourt Exhibition 2011

Dear Kids’ Guernica family members in Gezoncourt,

Since Kids’ Guernica was started in 1995, we are always emphasizing the importance of imagination to feel others’ sufferings and the necessity of collaboration to achieve a peaceful world.

As all of you know, Japan is now suffering a damage of the catastrophic earthquake on March 11. I live luckily in a city of the south-west end of Ibaraki prefecture, which is one of the affected prefectures, and my house had no damage. However, even in my city several old houses were broken and some parts of the roads were cracked. Tonight also I felt an earthquake of the 5^th degree on the seismic scale here. While I am writing this message, the sound of flying rescue helicopters are continuing.

Already one week has passed, still thousands of people are waiting for water, food and medicines in their shelters. The government and people near the affected areas are trying to do their best to rescue them but the difficulty is the areas are too vast and the access to reach there. As many news programs reported, people, young or old, who could evacuate are helping each other to support weaker ones even though some of them lost their families and houses.

I believe, not only in Japan, many people like you in the world will do in the same way in such a desperate situation. All of Japanese people, including me, who were not affected directly by this disaster want do something for the suffering people. It is not only inside Japan, Foreign media reported that many people in different countries have also the same wish to help them. Such wonderful cooperative spirit is what we want to nurture among young generation through the Kids’ Guernica’s collaborative work.

An unpredictable massive earthquake and tsunami attacked Japan last Friday. Another disaster may occur somewhere in the world. Even at this moment, not only a natural disaster but also poverty, conflicts, or different types of suffering are happening in different places of the world.

I hope this Kids’ Guernica exhibition will provide you a good opportunity to imagine those sufferings not only in Japan but also in other places of the world and share this feeling.

The peace mural of cherry blossoms was created by 200 people, from three year-old to eighty-six year-old, in Tokyo. Each participant printed an image of flower on a huge sheet of rice paper by a stencil technique. The whole art work is showing that all the flowers are singing a song of peace together.

I would like to introduce a recent Kids’ Guernica peace mural completed last month in Japan. This mural mixed with collage was created by children and adults of a life-long learning group in Sendai City. The city is located in Miyagi Prefecture, a part of the seriously affected areas by this massive earthquake. Sendai is one of the beautiful cities in the north eastern part of Japan and the name means “a base for a thousand generations” but this earthquake completely destroyed the coastal part of the city. Some of you might see the massive had swallowed tsunami the Sendai airport in TV news. One of the participating teachers in this workshop totally lost her house and now she is working for other victims in Sendai city.

This is my message from Japan

Takuya Kaneda

Representative

KIDS’ GUERNICA International Committee

Professor of Art Education

Otsuma Women’s University

Tokyo, JAPAN

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Message to Gezoncourt Exhibition 2011