In Profound Memory of Mr. Ikuo Hirayama

I was deeply shocked to learn of the passing of Mr. Ikuo Hirayama on December 2, 2009. The sad news, like a bright star falling from the sky, brought deep grief, but also revived a succession of memories of my contacts with Mr. and Mrs. Hirayama over half a century.

The year 2007 saw the 35th anniversary of normalization of diplomatic relations between China and Japan. On June 3, I was honored to have a meeting with Mr. Hirayama at the Diaoyutai State Guest House in Beijing. Our conversation became an epilogue of his book The Age-old Long River―My Personal Experience of East-West Cultural Exchange under the title of “Dialogue between Ikuo Hirayama and Chang Shana”. The dialogue focussed on topics such as “The Silk Road”, “relations between Japanese culture and Dunhuang fresco art”, “Red Cross spirit for cultural heritage”, being ones that Mr. Hirayama had explored and pursued all his life. On June 4, Professor Zhang Qiman of the Central Academy of Craft Art, who had studied in Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, joined me in accompanying Mr. and Mrs. Hirayama on a trip to Guizhou to visit villages of the Miao and Buyi ethnic groups in Anshun and villages of the Miao and Dong ethnic groups in Kaili in Southeast Guizhou. On the way, we enjoyed beautiful landscapes―villages hidden in the mountains, clear running brooks, covered bridges, etc. Whenever we stopped for a rest, Mr. Hirayama’s invariable custom would be to immediately disembark and begin to draw sketches of the scenery. His concentration on drawing despite all the fatigue of travel impressed us deeply. We did not for a moment suspect that the trip would be the last time I would see him and travel with him.

The friendship between the Hirayama couple and the two generations of my family began half a century ago. It was our shared respect and love for Dunhuang Buddhist art that had brought us together.

In 1958, my father Chang Shuhong led a delegation to Tokyo to hold the first Dunhuang art exhibition. The young Hirayama, who was suffering from the after effects of a-bomb radiation, visited the exhibition and saw copies of Dunhuang frescoes that he said “changed” his life. “It seems Mr. Chang has come to pass on to me the worship of the art of Dunhuang. If this worship can save my life, my desire to visit Dunhuang will be stronger,” he said at the time. “The year of 1958 was the one that changed my destiny,” he later recalled, “Just like the monk traveler Xuan Zang found Buddhist scriptures in India, I have found the source of my inspiration in Dunhuang.”

At the Mogao Grottoes 20 years later, in September 1979, my father greeted Mr. Hirayama on his first visit to Dunhuang. He fulfilled his long-cherished wish to visit the Mogao Grottoes. Inside Cave No. 220, he saw that a fresco painted in the early Tang Dynasty bore a striking similarity to one he had copied at Japan’s Horyuji Temple. He was convinced that Dunhuang was the source of Japanese culture. He said with emotion: “Dunhuang has provided me with an extraordinary gallery of life.” After that, he launched a new style of Japanese painting.

In February 1990, at the age of 86, my father wrote a preface for Mr. Hirayama’s book Dunhuang Possesses the Art I Pursue. In it, my father wrote passionately: “Mr. Hirayama’s life and his works have showed that he is a highly talented man, a legendary man. In search of the source of Japanese culture, he has traveled along the Silk Road more than 70 times, covering a total distance of 800,000 kilometers which is equivalent to circling the Earth over 20 times. To preserve and study Dunhuang art and carry on the traditional culture of my motherland, I have lived in the desolate desert―Dunhuang for over 40 years, that is, over 14,600 days and nights. People with similar experience of hard pursuit sit down together. It has been 33 years since we were attracted to each other.” He went on: “Mr. Hirayama has made Monk Xuan Zang his role model. In search of sacred classics of Buddhism, Xuan Zang spent 20 years translating Buddhist scriptures. Hirayama had planned to spend 20 years to paint a 2.2-meter high and 50- meter long fresco entitled A Series of Paintings of Western Regions in the Age of the Great Tang Dynasty for the newly-built Xuan Zang Sanzang Complex at Yakushiji Temple in Nara as his last work.”

The large-scale fresco was completed in 2001 and placed inside the complex. It depicts seven scenes of Xuan Zang’s pilgrimage from Chang’an to India. It is a classical master piece depicting the Silk Road.

The desire to preserve the Buddhist art in Dunhuang shared by Mr. Hirayama and my father cemented their great friendship. Over the past half a century, I was fortunate to get to know Mr. and Mrs. Hirayama through my father and we met in Japan as well as in Beijing many times.

In the early 1980s, Mr. Hirayama, through the Japan-China Friendship Association and Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, made great efforts to promote exchanges between universities of the two countries to improve art education and cultivate a new generation of cultural and art personnel.

In 1985, when I was president of the Central Academy of Craft Art, I invited Mr. and Mrs. Hirayama to visit our school. The visit furthered the exchanges and friendly relations between the academy and Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, during which Mr. Hirayama was invited to be honorary professor of the academy. He set up the “Ikuo Hirayama Scholarship”, the first in the academy, which attracted the attention of the education and fine art circles in China. The students of our academy who have received the scholarship all felt very lucky and our academy gradually became known in the world.

The academy also sent students and visiting scholars to study in To- kyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. Many of them have become professors and leaders of various disciplines and departments upon returning home. Professors Zhang Qiman, Zhang Fuye, Zheng Ning, Li Dangqi and Zhou Jianshi were among them. Mr. Hirayama made important contributions to cultural exchanges between China and Japan and training of Chinese artist.

In October 1987, a delegation from the academy took part in the commemoration of the centenary of the founding of Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. The participants all felt that the cultures of China and Japan were progressing and developing along the “Silk Road” of the new era, and Mr. Hirayama was an envoy of culture and art between the two countries and a peace emissary safeguarding the success of various friendship activities between China and Japan.

When we cherish the memory of Mr. Hirayama, I would also express my sincere respect and admiration for Mrs. Hirayama. Through her book A Road Has Thus Been Opened―a Family Account, I, as a female, can truly understand her pure love of Mr. Hirayama. She gave up her own pursuit of art in order to accompany, take care of and encourage him, and help him in difficult times all through her life.

Mr. Hirayama has left us. His death was like the nirvana of Buddha Sakyamuni and parinirvana of Monk Xuan Zang. He had made his dream come true, leaving later generations the large-scale fresco inside the newly built Xuan Zang Sanzang Complex at Yakushiji Temple.

Mr. Hirayama’s achievements will go down in the history of human civilization. His great works and his spirit will live forever. The cultural exchanges and friendship between China and Japan still need our continual efforts so as to develop along the course blazed by Mr. Hirayama. Let us follow him and walk towards the Silk Road of the new century hand in hand.

December 2009 in Beijing