An awkward moment of silence occurred as my dear old friend, Mr. Hedeshi Saito, from the Niigata School of Art came to visit us in Beverly, Massachusetts.We had been working together for a number of years developing an exchange program for his students to come and finish their art education in the US. I went over to Niigata and gave a speech for their convocation, as their guest. It was an amazing week for me, and I profited immensely from the experience.
I was so happy to have him in our house, I didn’t think of the myriad of art objects sitting around, but when he was in our kitchen talking to me and my family, I noticed his eyes wandering over to a framed 14” x 36” poster on the wall, pictured here.
I was stuck for a moment without the ability to think! What could I say? It was clearly not a Japanese friendly image, a WW2 movie poster about bombing Tokyo! I had never even thought about the war, it was just a “neat” poster I had acquired some years before when I lived in Kansas city! I had several, but the one anti Japanese one was in the kitchen!
I tried to explain that it was just an unimportant souvenir of another time, but there was no way out of this one. I just had to hope that our friendship could survive this gross idiocy!
It did!
A testament to his generous spirit? This is exactly the kind of thing that could happen to me. Nice post.
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