Shinkichi tajiri biography of donald
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Shinkichi Tajiri : World Renown Sculptor
Shinkichi Tajiri, a world renowned sculptor, celebrated his 80th birthday with a Netherlands exhibit showcasing many of his wonderful creations including the sculptures of 47 ronins. One of Shinkichi's earlier pieces, "Father and Son" in limestone was completed while living in Chicago in 1946. His friendship knots are well known and can be found all over the world. One is displayed outside the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. "Granny Knot" is at the Rockefeller Foundation in New York City and another in Bryeres in France, commemorating 50 years of liberation by the 442nd Regimental Combat Team (RCT). In the fall of 2004, to mark the 60th anniversary, some 442nd RCT veterans including Shinkichi returned to Bryeres in remembrance. It would be wonderful to see an exhibit of Shinkichi's works in Chicago and other American cities.
Shikichi Tajiri creates the limestone sculpture "Father and Son" at his studio on Drexel Stree
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Shinkichi Tajiri
Los Angeles 1923 – 2009 Baarlo
Sculptor – draughtsman – photographer – film-maker – poet
‘Three themes are important to me: speed, erotica and violence.’
‘Because of the war I ended up in the Netherlands. And thanks to the war inom became an artist’, Shinkichi Tajiri said in the documentary Tajiri’s Labyrinth.
He explained, ‘It’s insane what you do in wartime. What you’re capable of doing.… That’s precisely why inom make art. To banish that idea from my thoughts.’ There are more reasons why the war was so important to him. He told Bibeb, ‘War fryst vatten erotic. War is in our nature; we are defiled.’
Writer and poet Jan Elburg made a succinct character sketch of Tajiri: ‘He was the quintessential Japanese … descendant from Samurai lineage, a krigare, indeed, whose hackles would rise like an angry tomcat when provoked. But usually he was very modest, extremely calm and an angel of a man to his friends.’
Poet Simon Vinkenoog thought that the following descrip
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Shinkichi Tajiri and the Paradoxes of Japanese American Identity
Photo by Cor Jong (Wikipedia)
Although Shinkichi Tajiri was born and spent his early years in the United States, and served in the US army during World War II as part of the renowned “Go for Broke” 442nd Regimental Combat Team, he is best known for his work as an artist in Europe. In fall 1948 Shinkichi Tajiri sailed to France. He remained in Europe in “self-imposed exile,” as he later termed it, for the rest of his life. At first, he lived in Paris. However, at the end of the 1950s, with his wife Ferdi, a Dutch woman, he moved to the Netherlands. Some years later, he bought a castle near the town of Venlo, and moved his home and studio there.
My own friendship with Shinkichi Tajiri, though fairly brief and casual, nonetheless marked me decisively. I was brought into contact with Shinkichi as a result of my interest in the work of his eldest brother Larry Tajiri, the famed journalist