The 10th Radio Pop Music Festival – Akita Japan
Akita Music Festival
I kept tearing up at the news I heard in Korea of the 2016 Fukushima earthquake. I thought that my mother, who composed tanka her whole life in Korea, would have felt sad and composed a sincere line of tanka to cheer the Japanese up for the catastrophe that faced the Japanese who loved my mother and built a tall poetry monument in Aomori for her. This love poem is engraved in the poetry monument of my mother that I looked at from Aomori yesterday.
My dearest, did you close your eyes for a moment to test the depth of my love?
As my mother is now gone, I wrote and wrote to compose 250 poems, and they were published in Korea and Japan. Kudo Yuichi chose “A Flower Stamp” of those tankas, to complement beautifully and set music to it – I am happy and thankful that the music is presented here at Akita which is famous for being the place where the Korean drama Iris was filmed. I hope that you guys, amid this ordeal, will be cheered and consoled by this music. I also hope that Mr. Kudo’s wish of linking the good spirit of Korea and Japan by Korean literature and Japanese music will come true. That is also my mother’s lifetime wish and my wish as well.
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After I made this speech in Japanese and recited the poem in Korean and Japanese, Kudo Yuichi conducted the orchestra and a choir of around 200 members and a solo. Kudo, the composer, sang the second part of the poem himself. I sat on the stage and listened to the music.
Even after the curtain fell, thunderous applause continued. After the performance, a long line was waiting for me formed in the lobby. I was moved at their facial expressions of deep movement at my small consideration.
An opportunity like this came to me in March of 2013, at the publication party of my book, Because of Your Heart, a Flower Blooms, which was held in Tokyo–a publication party which Hashimoto Akira, a renowned journalist and a classmate of the emperor of Japan, was attending. He seemed to have been moved by my book, as he requested Mr. Kudo to set music to the poem. They performed it twice at a 2000-seat music hall in Tokyo. It’s the second time in Akita as well. The news media broadcast only negative aspects of the conflict between Korea and Japan. Yet facing each other on a human level, we can feel the warm hearts of each other. As we cannot move away from our country forever, we should approach each other so that we can be more friendly, and endeavor together so that we can leave a better world and a better relation to future generations.
There is no spring where only flowers bloom There is no winter which is not followed by spring A flower stamp sealing the ardent spirit Will be set afloat for you to let it reach
Even in the days of hardship and suffering No night comes without the next morning A flower stamp sealing the shining morning spirit Will be set afloat in the sky to let it reach
Let’s steel ourselves this day This day you wanted A flower stamp sealing the shining spirit of tomorrow Will be set afloat in the heaven to let it reach
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