Discover Nikkei

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Iron discipline at home (Spanish)

(Spanish) My mother walked in the shadow of my father; she always had to do what he said. At times this bothered me, but it was his way. I remember…look at how the Japanese were at that time. Fathers were like that with their wives and with their children. Did the children eat with the adults? You could not eat with your parents in the dining room, nor be a nuisance. You had to eat somewhere else with the other children and with the employees, but the adults sat around the main table. This dreadful tradition that…

But I remember that afternoon when my father was dying, he said, “Filo, Filo,” calling my mother. “I want to entrust you with something, remember” – he said so tiredly – “that Venancio must always stay in school, he should always study.” Why did he say such a thing? (Venancio cries while remembering) I recall…please forgive my show of emotion…I have many things, these things, I am very sentimental, they shock me and [then] it makes me cry, I get angry but I am like that, now more than ever…all right, I want to continue.

I remember when my father said that I should finish school, my mother went to the side of the bed and said, “Listen here, what are you thinking? This child is mine too. Of course, he is going to finish his studies; you don’t have to tell me.” It was the first time in my life that I heard my mother answer my father in that way. I didn’t know how to react. I was in the main room and she was over here, and my father’s body was there, and my mother was shouting. I said, “Wow, what happened to my mother!?” A few hours later my father died.


families

Date: September 6, 2007

Location: Lima, Peru

Interviewer: Harumi Nako

Contributed by: Asociación Peruano Japonesa (APJ)

Interviewee Bio

Venancio Shinki (born 1932 in Supe, Lima, Peru) is one of the most outstanding Peruvian painters. The son of a Japanese father (Kitsuke Shinki of Hiroshima Ken) and a Peruvian mother (Filomena Huamán), Venancio was raised on the San Nicolás hacienda in Supe, north of Lima, an area with a large concentration of Japanese immigrants in the early years. He studied at the National School of Fine Arts of Peru, and graduated with the best grade in his class in 1962.

His paintings recall Eastern, Western, and Andean traditions, with a distinctive surrealism that shows an unknown and intriguing universe, set off by a purified technique and a renovated figuration, which links Venancio with other great Latin American artists. Venancio has received many accolades and has participated in a variety of individual and group exhibits in Peru, Japan, Italy, United States, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Venezuela, Panama, and Mexico, among others. In 1999, the year of the centenary marking Japanese migration to Peru, Venacio was invited to exhibit his work in the Museum of Man in Nagoya, Japan. His most recent works were displayed in November 2006 during the 34th Annual Japanese Cultural Week in Lima, Peru. He passed away in 2016. (October 2017)

Sakata,Reiko T.

Parent’s Marriage

(b. 1939) a businesswoman whose family volunterily moved to Salt Lake City in Utah during the war.