Artists' Statement

I paint to tell people the importance of Inochi to Heiwa or Life and Peace. My honourable professor, Furukido Masaru, once told me: “Yoshida, don’t take up a rifle, take up painting”. During the Pacific War, Mr. Furukido refused to take up arms and spent the rest of his life instructing others in the Pacifist cause. He died among the Vietnamese.

Against his will I became a soldier. I spent days in meditation on Life and Death, witnessing the death of many of my companions and civilians. After the war, I was still alive, and, when I thought about how I should live and what I should do, the lesson my professor once gave me came back to me.

What people consider most important is Life and Peace. War is the most horrible act that destroys them. War should not exist. The only way to build Peace and to give importance to Life consists in giving people mutual confidence to discuss these two values and to try to make them become real. I understood the teaching of my master: “Yoshida don’t take up a rifle, take up painting” as my own mission from the gods, given to me at the same time as life itself.

Every morning and every evening I reflect with remorse on my own insufficiencies, praying for the souls of victims that wars produce all around the world. In accordance with my professor’s words, I want to transmit my ideas though my painting, as best I can.

Life brightens most when Peace occurs.
Peace is supreme beauty.

Kenji Yoshida 2007
Translated by Junko Abe

photo: Jonathan greet

Exhibitions