Mugonkan revisited

A couple of days ago, I visited Mugonkan, the Wordless Museum for the Young Painters Killed in WWII, in Nagano. It was the 3rd trip there for me. I have posted the article for each visit in the past. 

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Getting off the highway near the destination, I drove through the rice paddies on a plain area around Chikuma River. Being several miles far from the river, there were pretty high mountains running along it. It is a wide valley along the river. Some trees were changing their colors on the mountains.

It was a plain week day and there were only few visitors at the museum. Very quiet. The entrance has welcomed me as it used to. As told before, it was on a top of a hill surrounded by trees.

A pallet shaped stone monument. Each painter's name was engraved like a big epitaph.

The museum made of exposed concrete. The museum name was engraved on the front wall above the entrance door. It looked like a church on the hill.

From the entrance way, a town and the rice paddies were seen below.

I have long wanted to return here. I would spend more time to look at the paintings and the painters' short biographies listed with them. 

I knew most of the painters had died in 1945 or in the end of the war. It might be because they have been recruited around that time. They could still have survived the war if it was ended earlier. Nearly half of them have died of some illnesses but not of battle. As with the other parts of the war or in the other areas, this means how poor the logistics were then. With better care, they could have lived until the end of the war.

Each work appealed me with quiet but also overwhelming power. The explanation says most of them have not stopped painting until the last moment they should leave home. I wonder what they have done if they could survive it or they were not deplyed for the military service. 

My father used to dream of becoming a painter when he was young, as I heard in my childhood. But, as told elsewhere, he had to spend his precious time of youth in the war. I have been sorting out the books he owned and have found a lot of books regarding the war and the responsibility of the war in addition to those of Christianity. In his elderly days, one of his concerns was surely in that subject. And those young painters are overlapped with my father. It was only a coincidence he could survive and come home later. Those young painters deceased in the war must have produced a lot of more works and contributed to the art in our country.

Likewise, I could not help thinking of young people in Ukraine and Israel/Gaza. They are talented with a lot of things. But they are forced to struggle in the battle. Some of them would die in the war. Their talents and capabilities would never be realized but would be lost forever. Non war or anti war ideas might be regarded powerless or helpless. But it is still a definite idea influencing on the international policy. Without it, the total war could result in total ruin. Really hope those young people could survive and exert their capabilities very soon.

Like the other people of my age, I am apt to have pain in the legs after a long drive. That was the reason why I had not driven up there. I found it worth going there again this time. Listening to Impromptu by Schubert on the way back home, I uttered to myself this could be the last drive trip there.