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Japanese philanthropist Haruhisa Handa, who is a experienced in lots of fields, together with calligraphy, artwork, music, noh dramas and literature, as properly as company, held a solo exhibition of his artworks, which include paintings, pottery and Japanese calligraphy, in Tokyo from March 18 to 21.
The exhibition has been held each year for the earlier 22 years to mark Handa’s birthday on March 18. Individuals visit the exhibitions and opening ceremonies — this year’s edition was attended by distinguished company, these as the winner of this year’s Miss Japan competition — to celebrate the celebration, but Handa is not undertaking this to be celebrated. When he turned 50, he could not assist but truly feel his electricity degree slowly dropping with age. He commenced the yearly birthday exhibition to give himself a demanding activity, a purpose to hold pushing himself to go larger and further in his creative endeavors.
The exhibition, which was held at TOC Gotanda Messe in Tokyo’s Shinagawa Ward, featured 150 operates, including 80 past parts picked by art critics and 20 of his hottest will work. “I have just brought in the 6 most recently finished pieces, which don’t even have frames nevertheless,” Handa claimed for the duration of the opening ceremony.
He took up sho (Japanese calligraphy) in higher university, but stopped right after some time and did not resume classes right up until he was 35, when he also started out portray. Just as he wears lots of hats, Handa has experimented with distinctive types of portray from Japanese and Buddhist to ink and Western-design portray, producing almost 3,500 operates.
Handa’s inspiration went way over and above just maintaining up with the yearly birthday exhibition, and he entered a doctorate class at Tsinghua University’s Academy of Arts & Style and design in China at the age of 52 to pursue his examine of art. In his commentary for this year’s exhibition, he wrote that all of his Chinese professors have been both calligraphers and painters at the same time, which may possibly have additional inspiration to Handa’s absolutely free and magnanimous model. Conversely, Handa’s way of decomposing conventional models or mixing them making use of the daring simplification exclusive to Japanese artwork or the vivid colors of Western artwork normally impressed his professors.
Prior to the exhibition, Handa, who is also a baritone singer, held a birthday overall performance titled “Sakura Fubuki Concert” (“Cherry Blossom Shower Concert”) on March 16. The live performance integrated soprano Hiroko Onuki, a 30-piece orchestra and an 8-member band carrying out music this kind of as “The Tunes of the Night” from “The Phantom of the Opera,” “Heavy Rotation” by J-pop idol team AKB48, and Handa’s own first pieces. It was Handa’s fifth live performance at the prestigious Nippon Budokan Hall in central Tokyo, subsequent a 6-year crack.
Earlier in March, he held a classical tunes concert celebrating the Hina Matsuri (Doll Festival) with 8 soloists, like himself, in front of an orchestra at the Westin Tokyo.
Handa has numerous faces in the subject of executing arts. He is a singer, composer and actor with a master’s degree from Western Australian Academy of Doing Arts, as perfectly as degrees in arts and songs from other universities in Japan and abroad. He has launched 112 CDs and 45 DVDs and operates his own opera and theater company.
Handa is not only a player in various artwork fields, but is also an enthusiastic supporter of music, theater, visual arts and artwork schooling. He is chairman of the Global Foundation for Arts and Tradition, a nonprofit business centered in Tokyo that now has branches in Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom to assist and deliver artwork activities across the world. He is also a chairman and an advisor to numerous other artwork-connected companies.
On the philanthropic front, Handa is the chairman of Around the world Assistance for Progress, a nonprofit firm that encourages international cooperation to offer essential social welfare and aid in particular in acquiring nations.
He also believes in the electricity of athletics in obtaining environment peace. He is the honorary president of the Global Blind Golf Association, which supports blind golfers and their tournaments globally. There is also the Intercontinental Sporting activities Marketing Society, a charity launched and chaired by Handa that supports several sport businesses and activities in Japan and overseas.
Some of the charity businesses Handa engages in have already built bulletins about impending situations they will be arranging or supporting, like a golfing match scheduled to choose place in Ibaraki Prefecture in April, as if to know what he explained in the opening ceremony of his birthday exhibition: “It feels quite very long when you are carrying out anything new and thrilling. To make this 12 months truly feel extensive, I am going to test but new factors based mostly on what I have experienced until eventually today. This is the crucial to experience content that you lived a extensive existence.”
At the stop of the ceremony, he also presented some tips, encouraging his friends to under no circumstances end undertaking new items: “Do not retire. Do not prepare for your personal demise, due to the fact you will die if you are completely ready to.”
