Word 107
In a quiet residential neighborhood of Gakuenmae, surrounded by greenery, the Yamato Bunkakan museum stands unassumingly.
It came into being in 1960, to mark the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Kintetsu Railway, out of one man's wish to share the beauty of Japanese art with the world. In the years not long after the war, when the site held nothing at all, an art historian who would become its first director gathered one work after another, while an architect drew up designs with careful attention to harmony with nature — and little by little, a museum took shape.
Today, the paintings and ceramics lining its galleries were each, long ago, brought into being from nothing, by the hands of someone whose name is now forgotten.
"Hello, creators!"
"No, I'm not a creator."
"No, no — you are, too."
"You are creating your own life, after all — so every single person in this world is a creator."
This is really just another, more positive way of putting the idea that "you are the cause" of your own life.
Most visitors who wander its galleries stand absorbed in the single painting before them, rarely pausing to consider that it too was once created from nothing, by someone's hands. But look out toward the garden beyond the window, and another quiet vision is at work there — someone's wish for harmony with nature, still breathing gently in its design. Perhaps, in the moment we notice that everything here was once created by someone, the museum itself is quietly telling us so.