Field report: A touch of the brush in creating the dream murals

JIN, Soo Ryo
Second year student at the School of Letters, Arts and Sciences I
Representative of Bibinbap, a group in the Waseda University Hirayama Ikuo Anniversary Volunteer Center (WAVOC) which is organizing The Year 2005 Friendship between South Korea and Japan

Drawing the mural together with all participants

Local residents in the Okubo quarter, Shinjuku Ward, spent 15 days, from February 28 to March 14, painting murals. More specifically, their plan was to paint the murals on the walls under the elevated railroad tracks at both JR Okubo and Shin-Okubo Stations. The pictures used were selected from among those provided by applicants who wanted to see their work displayed. People of foreign nationalities, such as those from North Korea and South Korea, account for about one-third of the population of the area. Those who participated in the painting did so in the hope that Okubo might become a town that symbolizes ‘co-existence’, a town where as many people as possible can live together in harmony, whatever their national origins.

Our organization joined in the painting on March 10. It was our intention to enable both students and working people to become more informed about South Korea so that not only the Japanese, but also the Koreans living in Japan, will be much more inclined to take part in cross-cultural communications. Our interest is in the potential roles Koreans in Japan can play in promoting mutual understanding and friendship between the two countries. It is the mural painting project in Okubo that symbolizes our hopes for ‘co-existence’, most especially because the town has been taking on an increasingly Korean appearance.

We really enjoyed our part in painting the murals during the day we were present. At the beginning of the day, we helped toddlers from the local nursery school dressed in their baggy overall-aprons to color the walls. It was our task to lift the children in our arms so they could paint, while at the same time being covered all over in paint ourselves. Each of the painters present carried their weight, working at their own pace and expressing their own thoughts. Some people casually dropped in to join us, while others divided their time between painting and reading novels. Through participating in this project, we were also able to establish personal contact with the people involved in it. These included both the other participants and the local residents, with the latter cheering us up from the sidelines with such comments as ‘it looks fantastically good!’ or ‘keep up the good work!’. We were also able to make contact with members of the trade association in the quarter. There and then on that day, the people present gave us many opportunities for, in effect, ‘meeting only once in lifetime’. A casualness pervaded the atmosphere of the day’s work, with all present relaxing and enjoying the cooperation rather than competing in pursuit of their own interests. This was evident, for instance, in their making progress together somewhere on the mural or just unconsciously smiling at each other. All in all, this type of project has the potential to bring about significant change in the flow of the world’s relationships.

Okubo is, as it were, a melting pot in which people of many national origins come together. We were reminded of this by the ‘co-existence’ that characterized work on the project, with everyone, from tots to seniors, providing a touch of their brush in the creation of the murals reflecting the theme of ‘the town where angels live’. All people of the town helped in the painting, for it did not matter at all whether they were locals or non-locals, Japanese or non-Japanese.

It will not be long before Okubo, where the painting of the murals has enabled many people to enjoy ‘meeting only once in lifetime’, truly become ‘the town where angels live’.

In front of the finished mural together with the members (Center in the bottom row is the writer)