Last year, Odakyu Railway held a “Train Design Contest” to collect drawings from children all over Japan. At the conclusion, two of the submitted works were used to decorate actual trains. (via.)

Posted by Joanne on Mar 13, 2009 | Comments | Link

Taro Okamoto’s Asu no Shinwa (”Myth of Tomorrow”) depicting the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, finally has a permanent home near the Keio Inokashira line in the Shibuya station. The painting, compared to Picasso’s Guernica, was originally commissioned by a Mexico City luxury hotel in late sixties. “Taro wanted the Japanese to surmount the misery of the past rather than to retract inwardly — to blossom outward and look ahead. That was a radical concept in 1967. He was probably the only Japanese person who even considered that,” says the developer Manuel Suarez. Asu no Shinwa was missing for decades, “until it was found in 2003 by Okamoto’s wife in a yard for building materials in Mexico City.”

Posted by Joanne on Nov 19, 2008 | Comments | Link

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