Date : 2023, 11,27 Place： Japan, my home town / Mandarin warehouse
I returned to Japan temporarily in November 2023 and painted a mural. This mural is for my grandma’s older sister, who I couldn’t meet in her final moment because of the 1st lockdown.🕊
She lived next house to us and took good care of little me. I wanted to do something for her, and this time I was finally able to do it.
Her name is “Tsuruko”, meaning “crane child”. So I decided to paint cranes, and her daughter (who is like an aunt to me) loves fashion, I thought of painting a mural of cranes and like a kimono pattern.
This part is inspired by the obi of a kimono.
This kimono is long-sleeved kimono when I wore at my coming-of-age ceremony. In Japan, we celebrate people who turn 20 and become adults. So I have a special attachment to this Kimono.
This building was used as a mandarin warehouse. So I also painted mandarins and mandarin ‘s flowers.
I was very happy to be able to paint that part with the neighborhood children! Children painted mandarin flowers with various expressions.
While I was painting this mural, people from the village came to see it and said, “Thank you for making the village brighter!” and my grandmother’s older sister’s daughter, who lives in another towon, also visited on the weekends and said , “Thank you! My lifespan has increased!!” （She is 80 years old. I hope her health and long life）This thing made me very happy!
I hope Grandma’s older sister, Tsuruko san, also seeing it from heaven and feel happy.
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My hometown is a very small village with around 25 people living there now.
This is my second mural in my home village, following my first mural for my grandpa. I wanted to do something for my small home village, and I found that my murals create a good circle. I am planning to continue painting murals for our village as a small personal project.
For one thing, I am very happy that the children who painted the Mandarin flowers with me have started painting murals.
At first, they started painting murals with chalk on the walls of their houses.
They didn’t stop, and finally started painting with paints!! I thought it was wonderful that their mother watched over them with loving-kindness.
I shared some paints with them and gave them some old painting materials which I found on my old desk.
I continued to paint my mural, and the children also painted their murals using their free ideas. Those were really good vibes.
A very nice murals was created, a local speciality crab, Town of four seasons, etc… Every painting had a story behind it.
A 10 years old eldest son said to me, “I didn’t like art class, but now I like painting!” which made me very happy. He was wearing his grandma’s a sleeved Japanese apron and painting. So cool!
I hope we can paint together soon!!
