Keiko Miyamori: The Sea of Memories, Rose’s Pride

Showing from March 1, 2023 to April 9, 2023 at Nakamuraya Salon Museum

Several years ago, I inherited a rattan chair that was originally owned by my grandmother on my mother’s side. My father, who will turn 98 this year, had the chair in his room. My grandmother, born in Hawaii as a second-generation Japanese-American, came to Japan with her parents at the age of seventeen. She became a simultaneous interpreter, then married and had three children. However, when her eldest daughter (my mother) was seven, Japan and America entered World War II. After Japan’s defeat, she became socially withdrawn and spent most of her time inside her house in Shibuya. She was always calm, and never mentioned the absurdity of the war. But when I found out she had continued to renew her American passport, I began to imagine the scenes she might have seen in her mind while spending her days sitting in the rattan chair in her later years.

The word “Rose” in the exhibition title, The Sea of Memories, Rose’s Pride, implies the floral rose that symbolizes love and dignity, while also alluding to “Tokyo Rose,” the collective name given by the Allied troops to Japanese-American women who served as announcers on a propaganda radio programs produced by the Japanese military during the war. The lives of such second-generation women like my grandmother were at the mercy of the actions of World War II. My mother, born in the Showa era (1926–1989), is an overly earnest person. Though she had a privileged upbringing, she suffered from alcoholism. My father, born in the Taisho era (1912–1926), received a military education.

After the war ended, he was devoted to achieving the benefits of the high economic growth in Japan. I was born after the war and would eventually marry an American. The respective stories of my family and myself, who all lived through the Showa period, have washed ashore into The Sea of Memories. Will the viewers encounter the “Rose” buried within their own selves, one who has the will to survive without giving up on love, while also coping with any fate that may befall them? If they are able to perceive their own internal “Rose,” that encounter could evolve into hope in our own era of discord.

The exhibition is divided into five parts, using a method where each theme is discussed by three generations of the same family. In the final chapter, an installation called "Pride of Rose" is showcased in the section titled "Sea of Memories."