Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Kids' Guernica at Hachiman Elementary School in Tokyo



 
19 sixth-grade-students of Hachiman Elementary School in Tokyo exchanged their opinions on peace and created a Kids' Guernica peace painting on a huge canvas. They painted their own life-size figures holding hands together in front of their school. It represents their present peaceful life. A cloud in the right part shows an image of peace by living creatures while another cloud in the left does a image of war. The right bright image is painted in a upper part of the canvas and the left dark image is in a lower part. A rainbow is connecting these two clouds.
 Finally, all the students of the schools from the first garde to the sixth grade added a shower of cherry blossom by their fingers as a symbole of their wish for peace.
This peace painting was exhibited in the school art exhibition on November 25 and 26, 2016.
                 

In the exhibition, Kids' Guernica performance was also shown including musical performance and fashion show of their original clothes.
All thestudents showed their improvised musical performance to express their wish for peace facilitated by the sixth grade students at the opening and the closing of the exhibition. The played the tone chime in the beginning and the end of their performance. The sixth grade students chose a typical Japanese tune of a cherry blossom song but some students said that peace was not only for Japanese people. Then they played all the twelve tones. At last, they chose their own favorite tones since peace is necessary regardless of nation, culture, age and gender.





















They could received loud applause from the audience.