Ikuo Hirayama's Biography

Professor Ikuo Hirayama is born on 15 June 1930, in Setoda-cho, Hiroshima, Japan. He was a junior high school student of 15 years old in Hiroshima, when the atomic bomb dropped. Most of his school mates died as so many people in Hiroshima, the survivers got serious lucemic ilnesses, needing a contineous treatment. In March 1952, Ikuo Hirayama graduated from the Tokyo School of Arts, presently Tokyo National Academy of Fine Arts and Music. At about his 30-thies he became again very ill of the post effects of the bomb, was given some serious clinic treatment and without much hope sent to Setoda. He spent most in his bed feeling very poorly, when he saw an imaginary painting with his inner eyes, radiating very special etherial light guiding him farther and farther through dark woods, through dark waters to a kind of beeing so smiling, kind and attentive as only Buddha could be. And in fact what he saw in front of him was Buddha alive, moving and still at the same time, made of ligth soft and golden, stroking and encouraging everything, everyone approaching Him. All the pain, all the suffering, all the weakness disappeared, the sadness left the exhosted body and an enourmous joy filled it instead. The triumph of life transfigured everything, and everything was given a soul made of the transfigurations of primary ligth, as he saw it for the first time. What Ikuo Hirayama wanted at that moment was paints, paper and easel to paint everything he saw and felt for himself, for his close people, for everyone hopeless, in despair, lost. The story could be heard by Ikuo Hirayama himself, by his close people, on sunset in Setoda-cho told to the Inland sea by the Sun, looking at Master Ikuo paintings of Buddha, or listening to the whisper of paints in his studio mingled with babbling away water in the garden outside.

Then the chronicle shows:

Career:

1973 - Professor at the Tokyo National Academy of Fine Arts and Music

1988 - Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts in the Tokyo National Academy of Fine Arts and Music

1989 - 1995 - President of the Tokyo National Academy of Fine Arts and Music

1996 - President of Japan Scholarship Foudation

2002 - 2006 - President of the Tokyo National Academy of Fine Arts and Music


Affiliation and Positions:

1988 - UNESCO Ambassador of Goodwill

1992 - Chairman of the China-Japan Friendship Association and member of Boards of numerous Japan-Asian countries Committees

1993 - Chairman of the Art Research Organisation

1994 - Chaiman of the Foundation of Cultural Heritage

1995 - UNESCO Special Advisor to the Director General for World Cultural Heritage

1996 - President of the Japan Institute of Fine Arts


Awards:

1961 - “A Vision of the Buddha’s Death” received The Japan Institute of Fine Arts Award and Taikan Yokoyama Awards

1976 - Grand prize of the Japan Arts by the Association for the Promotion of the Arts

1991 - Commandeur des Arts et Lettres, France

1992 - Honorary Doctor at Waseda University (Dr. of Letters),
Cultural Award of the Kanagawa Prefecture

1993 - Order of Cultural Merit,
Special Award from the Smithsonian Institution

1995 - Crystal Prize at the Annual General Meeting of the World Economic Forum, Geneva, Switzerland

1995 - The 4th Montblanc Award for Patronage of the Arts

1996 - Legion d’Honneur, France

1997 - The UNESCO Carthage Gold Medal

1998 - Member of the Academy of Arts of Uzbekistan

1998 - The Japanese Order of Culture

1999 - Nominated for corresponding member of L’Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres (The Academy of the Cultural Sciences)

1999 - The Order of James Smithson

2000 - Gold Medal of the Academy of Arts of Uzbekistan

2001 - Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding

2001 - The Japan Foundation Award/The Japan Foundation Special Prizes

The great Mission of Professor Ikuo Hirayama’s life is his Conception For World Peace through “The Red Cross Spirit for Cultural Heritage”, which has grown gradually into a Movement, officially established in Japan during the 80-thies of the 20-th century. UNESCO accepted the Conception by promotion of Professor Ikuo Hirayama as UNESCO Ambassador of Goodwill and created conditions for its development which is connected with the numerous activities, enormous efforts and continuous sponsorship raised by Professor Hirayama.

Professor Ikuo Hirayama is outstanding Japanese painter. His paintings, located in the strong traditions of Japanese-style painting nihonga, are unmistakably Japanese, but they look outwards to the rest of the world and express the spirit of peaceful cooperation and appreciation of our common world heritage.

He began painting and cured himself with Buddhism and Buddhist subjects. And Buddhism gave him the freedom to paint symbolically, abstractly or figuratively, and develop a luminous, lyrical style characterized by muted-but-glowing colors, unclear lines and ambiguous forms. Master Ikuo Hirayama went back to the roots of Japanese culture and spirituality. He traced it to its sources in China and India, as the scholar Tenshin Okakura, one of the founders of the nihonga movement, had done in the 19th century. This meant that Professor Ikuo Hirayama went looking for Japan in the wilds of Central Asia, as he developed a fascination for the Silk Road and the seventh-century Buddhist monk Xuan Zhuang, who spent 17 years in traveling between Tang Dynasty China and India in search of Sanskrit sutras. And Professor Ikuo Hirayama traveled nearly all the path of Xuan Zhuang and hundreds of times the Silk Road, which is over 300 000 km, sketching and painting numerous scenes, landscapes, monuments and temples.

With all this experience he painted a large fresco depicting the journey of Xuan Zhuang in the Genjo Sanzo – Xuan Zhuang Wing of the Yakushi-ji temple in Nara, Japan, 2000.

The paintings of scenes along the Silk Road often have the sublimity and spirituality that comes naturally to the vast and the ancient. This reflects that, in essence, spirituality is about how far we can remove ourselves from the here and now. In visiting and painting such vistas, there's a palpable sense of Hirayama finding the perspective that allowed him to look once again at his country and the unbearable events of August 6, 1945. Written by C. B. LIDDELL in The Japan times on 27 September 2007 in "Ikuo Hirayama: A Retrospective — Pilgrimage for Peace" an Exhibition runs till Oct. 21 at the Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, 3-1 Kitanomaru Koen, Chiyoda-ku.

Professor Ikuo Hirayama established two museums in Setoda-cho, Hirayama Ikuo Museum of Art, and Hokuto near Tokyo, Hirayama Ikuo the Silk Road Museum with his paintings and artifacts from his traveling along the Silk Road.

There is only one more Center Ikuo Hirayama outside Japan:
“The Ikuo Hirayama International Caravan-Sarai of Culture” at the Crossroads of the Great Silk Road, Tashkent, Uzbekistan

One of the most remarkable achievements of the global civilization is the Great Silk Road that connected East and West for the first time in the history of the humankind. The beginning of its functioning dates back to the second half of the 2nd century B.C. The name "Silk Road" was first introduced into academic vocabulary by a German scholar Freiherr von Richthofen in 1877. Not only the Great Silk Road helped to export silk and other goods, but it was also the origin of diverse spiritual values, religious ideas, artistic cultures and traditions.

The Ikuo Hirayama International Caravan-Sarai of Culture (ICSC) is an academic, training and educational centre engaged in promoting cultural heritage of Uzbekistan, Japan and other countries located along the path of the Great Silk Road. In 1999 a famous Japanese artist Ikuo Hirayama invited Tursunali Kuziev, Chairman of the Academy of Arts of Uzbekistan, to be his guest in the city of Kamakura (Japan) and shared his idea of creating a Caravan-Sarai of Culture. This idea was supported by Islam Karimov, the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan, who ensured the implementation of construction of the ICSC.

The Uzbek-Japanese academic and creative centre called Caravan-Sarai of Culture was inaugurated in March 2002; the ceremony was attended personally by Professor Hirayama, a well-known Japanese artist, patron of arts, traveller and explorer, public figure, the President of the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, the Good Will Ambassador of UNESCO and the leader of the official Japanese delegation for the studies of the Great Silk Road carried out jointly with research centres in the two countries.

Following the order of the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Uzbekistan issued in 2004, the International Caravan-Sarai of Culture was given its official name and status. The International Caravan-Sarai of Culture facilitates the revival of the Silk Road traditions and the development of an international dialogue of cultures on the basis of mutual respect, religious and ethnic tolerance.