The Art of Gaman: Crafts from the Japanese Internment Camps

第二次大戦時に於ける、日系アメリカ人の収容所にて、日系人が手作りした、日用必需品から芸術品に至るまでを集めた、Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum での展示の様子。
全く何もない、倉庫のような場所に入れられ、苦痛な生活を強いられても、当時の日系人は器用に美しい物を作り上げ、心の潤いを保っていた様子が伝わってきます。

"We had no furniture," Mineta recalls. "All you get is four blank walls and one light bulb in the middle of the room and a black potbellied stove over in the corner ... and cots. That was it."

And so, in all 10 of the internment camps, people began making what they needed with whatever materials they could find. Scrap lumber became chairs, tables, dressers. Found metal became knives (they weren't allowed to bring sharp objects into the camps). And for fun, scrap wood was carved into small, painted birds.

From the Amache internment camp in Colorado came a silk vest a mother made for her son who was going off to war. (Eventually, some of the internees were drafted or even volunteered for a special combat unit of U.S.-born Japanese-Americans.) The cream-colored vest is decorated with 1,000 red, French-tied knots.

"One person made each knot," explains Robyn Kennedy, chief of the Renwick. "This was passed around in the camp, and this was in order to provide strength and good luck for the person it was given to."

On the back of the vest a ferocious tiger is painted in orange and black ink. His hunched shoulders and sharp teeth show his strength.

"No one is going to go through that tiger to get this person's back," Kennedy says.



Slide Show: Renwick Gallery

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NPR Musicでは、25歳の原田慶太楼さんが、有能なサクソフォン演奏家から、将来を期待される指揮者へ転身したエピソードなどを交え、人々が彼に注目する理由が紹介されています。

原田慶太楼さんの公式ページ

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Sir Ken Robinson: Schools Kill Creativity の補足スピーチ。
資源としての人材の欠如にどう対処するか等、現在直面している教育問題について、相変わらず面白く話されています。

"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country." -- Abraham Lincoln

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画一教育から、各自の能力を引き出す教育へ、今後の教育の姿について説いています。
彼の話をまだ聞いたことのない人は、是非ご覧ください。

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本で作られた世界。

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