Japanese artist fights to save N. Korean treasures
ChimS1
By Elaine Lies
KAMAKURA, Japan, June 29 (Reuters) - Japanese painter Ikuo Hirayama believes
art can succeed where diplomacy fails.
The artist journeyed to Angkor Wat when Cambodia was still beset by fighting,
offered to buy Afghanistan's two giant stone Bamiyan Buddhas to save them from
the Taliban, and most recently travelled to North Korea in a quest to preserve
ancient tomb paintings in the communist state.
Hirayama hopes that getting some 63 tombs near Pyongyang listed as a World
Heritage site by United Nations cultural body UNESCO would help bring North
Korea -- now locked in a standoff over its nuclear ambitions -- into the world
fold.
"If the tombs make the World Heritage list, they'll have to be opened to
everyone," he said, speaking in his spacious studio in Kamakura, just south of
Tokyo, where sketches for a vast painting of the ancient Japanese capital of
Kyoto adorn the wall.
"This could open the door to peace."
Hirayama's beliefs were born in the shattering white light that destroyed his
native Hiroshima in 1945.
A schoolboy of 15 when the atom bomb was dropped, he overcame the ravages of
radiation sickness to become one of Japan's most famous living painters. He is
also an ardent advocate of saving world cultural treasures, a process he
believes can help bring peace when other means have failed.
"Even if we don't know if peace is possible, even if we don't know if talk is
possible, we have to work for others from the love of mankind," the genial
Hirayama, 73, told Reuters.
ON THE AGENDA
Hirayama has been a cultural ambassador for UNESCO since 1988. The group will
meet in Paris from June 30 to July 5, with listing of the North Korean tombs on
the agenda.
The tombs date from the late first century BC to AD 668 and may prove links
between the cultures of Korea and Japan.
Their walls are covered with brilliant paintings of kings, queens and natural
scenes that bear a striking resemblance to tomb paintings near the central
Japanese city of Nara.
Hirayama has been to North Korea eight times since 1997 and has high hopes the
coming meeting will result in registration.
During his April 12-15 visit to Pyongyang, Hirayama said, North Korean cultural
officials assured him the country had no nuclear arms -- although U.S.
officials have said Pyongyang admitted soon afterwards, at talks in Beijing,
that they did.
"I told them that if they do things to break international law, their bid for
World Heritage listing could fail," he said.
Hirayama hopes to spare North Korea the sort of destruction of cultural relics
that took place in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Only one site in Iraq has been listed out of many from its rich Mesopotamian
history, and one in Afghanistan.
"The registration process is a bit tedious, and many of these countries are at
war or isolated under dictatorships, so they end up not doing it," he said.
"Saving their art in these cases requires international help... If all of this
is destroyed, we will lose our understanding of human history," said Hirayama,
now at the forefront of a Japanese campaign to recover Iraqi antiquities looted
after Hussein's fall and working to preserve Afghan art.
OPENING DOORS
Hirayama believes there are powerful practical and psychological benefits to
gaining World Heritage status for art treasures even in nations struggling for
food or security.
A listing attracts tourists, sparking economic development and creating jobs,
he said, citing Cambodia's vast Angkor Wat complex, which he helped restore, as
a good example.
For countries like North Korea, where a substantial tourist industry is
unlikely to develop anytime soon, there are intangible benefits.
"North Korea has nothing -- no energy, no food, no money," he said. "If these
tombs, their local treasure, are listed, it will be a huge source of pride.
"As (Japanese) Prime Minister (Junichiro) Koizumi said to me, nobody respects
nuclear weapons. But everyone will respect these tombs."
Hirayama's career has been marked by his own experience with a nuclear attack.
On August 6, 1945, while taking part in wartime forced labour alongside other
teenagers, he darted into a shed to tell his friends about the plane he saw
overhead. In the blinding flash that followed, 188 of his classmates died
instantly.
Feeling his life had been spared, he says he became an artist as a way of
devoting himself to peace. Many of his paintings, which feature lush colours
brushed with gold, deal with the life of Buddha -- and he credits them with
restoring his health.
Of his campaigns, he says: "We must know we have exhausted our own efforts
first. Then, we leave the rest to heaven."
06/28/03 21:01 ET
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