Ikuo Hirayama――the Builder of Cultural Silk Road

Several years ago, one evening I went to Beijing Hotel to see Mr. Ikuo Hirayama. I showed him a painting just given to me by Wang Chuanfeng, a young Chinese painter residing in Japan, and asked him to write an inscription on it. When seeing the lifelike fish on the painting, he gladly wrote down three words yu shui qing (meaning a relationship as close as that between fish and water). He said, “yu shui qing” expressed the aspiration of the Japanese and Chinese people for peaceful coexistence and everlasting friendship.

I have known Ikuo Hirayama for about 30 years. Particularly in the past more than ten years since I became vice president of the China-Japan Friendship Association (CJFA), I had more chances to meet him on work grounds. Every time I met him, I felt the fragrance of culture around him. Hirayama is a renowned artist with moral integrity and great artistic attainments. His paintings have both realistic and dreamy features, showing rich history and culture and expressing humankind’s aspiration for peace. I like his paintings very much and have fortunately visited the art museums that collect a large number of his paintings including the Ikuo Hirayama Museum of Art in Setoda-cho of Onomichi City, Hiroshima Prefecture, the Sagawa Museum of Art at the side of Biwa Lake, Shiga Prefecture, and the Ikuo Hirayama Silk Road Museum in Kitamori City, Yamanashi Prefecture. The Silk Road is the theme of his paintings and also his lifelong cause. In 1959, at 29 he created the painting The Propagation of Buddhism which was displayed at the Japan Fine Arts Academy Exhibition. This painting, which portrayed Monk Xuanzang on a white horse returning to Chang’an where he left for India and brought back Buddhist scriptures after going through innumerable hardships, won favourable comments from the art circles and thus, he gained prominence as a painter. I remember that in the spring of 1990 at the well-attended Exhibition of Ikuo Hirayama’s Paintings on a Trip to Loulan held in Takashimaya, Tokyo, Guan Shan- yue, Hirayama’s friend and famous Chinese painter, wrote a poem praising his artistic attainments after visiting the exhibition.

The Yakushiji Temple in Nara is the headquarters of the Hosso Sect of Japanese Buddhism. Master Xuanzang was the founder of the Hosso Sect. In a building of the Xuanzang Sanzang Complex behind the Yakushiji Temple grounds, some sarira of Xuanzang’s skull are enshrined. To extol Xuanzang’s great deeds, Hirayama decided to create the mural A Series of Paintings of Western Regions in the Age of the Great Tang Dynasty on the north wall of the ground floor of theXuanzang Tower. For this, he traveled along the Silk Road dozens of times, exploring historical remains and looking for his dreamland. He threw great energy into its creation and spent 30 years on it from on-the-spot exploration, sketching, designing and painting to its final completion at midnight of December 31, 2000 on the advent of the new millennium.

Ikuo Hirayama is an envoy of culture. He has served as UNESCO goodwill ambassador and president of Japan’s Foundation for Cultural Heritage andResearch for many years and done a great deal of work for and made important contributions to preservation of world cultural heritages and international cultural and art exchanges. In 2002 at an international academic seminar on the Silk Road in Xi’an sponsored by the UNESCO, Hirayama together with Ahmad Jalali, president of the General Conference ofUNESCO, signed the Xi’an Declaration, calling on all countries in the world to promote dialogue and understanding among different cultures through preserving world cultural heritage. Hirayama actively advocates the “Red Cross spirit for cultural heritage” calling on all countries to transcend the differences in political system, ideology, nationality and religion and save and preserve cultural heritages in the spirit of universal love. During Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita visit to China in 1988, Hirayama accompanied the prime minister to visit Dunhuang and acted as a guide for him. Prime Minister Takeshita decided to aid China to establish a centre for preservation, research and exhibition of the cultural relics in the Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes. In October 2004 when Hirayama took part in the activities in commemoration of the 1,200th anniversary of Master Kukai’s visit to China in Shaanxi, he was pleasantly surprised to learn that the Northwest University Museum had preserved the epitaph of Manari Ino, a Japanese student studying in China during the Tang Dynasty, and suggested that the news be published at home and abroad as soon as possible. There was good repercussion when it was published by major media. Hirayama said that Japan-China relations had met some difficulties and personages of insight of various circles were worried about it. The discovery of the epitaph made us seem to hear the voice of over 1,000 years ago calling on the Japanese and Chinese people to keep friendly relations. He said that seeing such historical evidence of friendship between the peoples of the two countries in the ancient times further strengthened our resolve to uphold friendship between our two countries.

Ikuo Hirayama is an envoy of friendship. In 1992 at the national conference of the Japan-China Friendship Association (JCFA) he was elected its president. Since then he has devoted greater enthusiasm to the cause of Japan-China friendship. He supports and encourages everything that helps Japan-China friendship. When some people in the world raised a hubbub of “China threat”, he would cite the contributions of the culture of the Tang Dynasty to the world civilization to prove that China’s current rapid economic growth is a peaceful development. The JCFA under the leadership of Hirayama has repeatedly carried out rich and colourful activities to further expand and deepen the friendship between the two peoples. On May 20, 2000 Ikuo Hirayama and Toshihiro Nikai, the then minister oftransport, led a 5,000-member Japan-China cultural and tourist delegation composed of personages of various circles to visit China and held a rally for Sino-Japanese friendly exchanges at the Great Hall of the People. The then Chinese President Jiang Zemin, Vice President Hu Jintao and Vice Premier Qian Qichen were present on the occasion. President Jiang Zeming delivered an important speech on Sino-Japanese relations. In his speech Hirayama recalled the 2,000-year history of friendly contacts between Japan and China and hoped that while experiencing China’s long-standing history and culture, the personages of Japanese various circles would join the rank of Japan-China friendship. This activity of unprecedented large scale and number of people was a new creation in the history of China-Japan friendly exchanges. Hirayama loves Chinese culture as well as the Chinese people. When the Chinese people suffered from SARS, he took the lead in donating one million Japanese yen and through the media called on the Japanese people to help the Chinese people prevail over the sudden outbreak of severe SARS soon. He follows the development of education in China with great interest and has established the Hirayama Education Fund and invited Chinese youth to pursue their further study in Japan. He donated money to build several Hope primary schools in Yunnan, Tibet, Hebei and other Chinese poor areas.

Hirayama is an envoy of peace.When he studied in a middle school in Hiroshima at 15, he experienced atomic bomb attack and since then suffered the aftereffect of nuclear radiation. Hence, he has realized more deeply the preciousness of peace and taken every chance to call for world peace. In 1995 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, he called on the Japanese young people of various circles to take part in renovating the city wall of Nanjing. The JCFA took this activity as a commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the post-war cause of Japan-China friendship. He said, “To help renovate the ancient city wall of Nanjing is not an act simply for preserving cultural relics, but of extraordinary significance. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, we should look squarely at history of the past war and never let the aggressive war be repeated. Future belongs to the young people, but they know little about history. The 21st century needs more young people to know about history and engage in the cause of Japan-China friendship.”

The history and culture in Asia and Europe are linked and have historical origin. The Silk Road is an important bridge facilitating the economic and cultural exchanges between the East and the West in the ancient times. Hirayama advocates all countries in the world to make concerted efforts to build a cultural Silk Road linking Asia and Europe, which can help push forward China’s large-scale development of its Western region, promote economic growth of various countries and maintain peace in the region and the world at large.

I greatly admire Hirayama’s noble moral integrity, broad and profound knowledge and superb painting skill. He is our old friend and a comrade of us Sino-Japanese friendship circles. The friendship between the Chinese and Japanese friendly personages has substantial contents. Just as Chinese literary giant Ba Jin once said, “Friendship is not an empty word. It is like a tie binding our hearts fast with the hearts of the Japanese friends.”