Interviews

1. We go to America (Spanish)

2. Memories of my infancy: Japanese 1, Japanese 2… (Spanish)

3. Mistreating the Japanese community (Spanish)

4. Prejudice in Japanese school (Spanish)

5. Hiding out to avoid the concentration camps (Spanish)

6. Help from fellow Japanese (Spanish)

7. Iron discipline at home (Spanish)

8. Education Japanese style (Spanish)

9. Closing the Japanese school and deportation (Spanish)

Shinki,Venancio

(b. 1932-2016) Peruvian painter

Education Japanese style (Spanish)

(Spanish) Here comes the part of the story that, because of my old age, that I can criticize. Japanese education was totally controlled from Nihon, how to teach and what to teach. The Minister of Nihon ordered this. But what…a child was molded into a little soldier.

Why am I saying this to you? I was six-years old when I entered school. And thus it all began. How did the class begin? Listening to radio taiso, [and] doing exercise. Suddenly, the exercise ended, the director of the school appeared and climbed on a platform and began to speak to us: “Young ones, last night….No. Yesterday something happened….” It was a kind of news briefing regarding the war. “The army has entered such and such place, and we have taken such and such place, and this is due to the spirit of the Japanese army.” “Nihon, banzai! (Viva Japan!” we began to shout like crazy. Banzai! But little by little the days passed by…the months [passed by], and we began to receive information about how the war was going in Asia.

Why did they tell such things to a child of six, seven, and eight years of age? This is what I say right now, but it was a situation that Nihon had at the time, one has to understand that. That was our education, our formation. What is true is that we were very disciplined, very correct, very orderly, and when an adult was speaking, the only thing we could say was hai (yes). Period. There were no discussions.

Japanese language schools language schools Peru

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)