Interviews

1. We go to America (Spanish)

2. Memories of my infancy: Japanese 1, Japanese 2… (Spanish)

3. Mistreating the Japanese community (Spanish)

4. Prejudice in Japanese school (Spanish)

5. Hiding out to avoid the concentration camps (Spanish)

6. Help from fellow Japanese (Spanish)

7. Iron discipline at home (Spanish)

8. Education Japanese style (Spanish)

9. Closing the Japanese school and deportation (Spanish)

Venancio Shinki

(b. 1932-2016) Peruvian painter

Memories of my infancy: Japanese 1, Japanese 2… (Spanish)

(Spanish) I was born on the San Nicolás Hacienda, where there was a place for the Japanese community, let´s call it “of the north,” one of many such places. I recall one in Cañete and then another called…well, I don’t remember, perhaps near Trujillo I believe, forgive me, Chiclayo, places where the Japanese settlement was near. The hacienda belonged to a Peruvian, naturally, and what he needed was cheap labor.

And I remember that one of the things that I considered amusing– I don’t know if you will also find amusing what I am about to tell you – I was a child who walked alone, and on Saturdays I remember going to the site where the workers received their pay; then they finished paying the Peruvian workers -- of course by their respective names, Luis Collantes, what I recall, and then when they began to pay the Japanese, they shouted out not a name but rather “Japanese number 1,” “Japanese number 2,” which made me laugh aloud because they [the Peruvian bosses] couldn’t say, for example, Shinki, Hitotuishi, these are difficult names for them to pronounce, and even worse to write. This is the strange thing that I saw when I was a child, I realize now.

discrimination interpersonal relations Peru

Date: September 6, 2007

Location: Lima, Peru

Interviewer: Harumi Nako

Contributed by: Asociación Peruano Japonesa (APJ)

Interviewee Bio

Venancio Shinki (born 1932 in Supe, Lima, Peru) is one of the most outstanding Peruvian painters. The son of a Japanese father (Kitsuke Shinki of Hiroshima Ken) and a Peruvian mother (Filomena Huamán), Venancio was raised on the San Nicolás hacienda in Supe, north of Lima, an area with a large concentration of Japanese immigrants in the early years. He studied at the National School of Fine Arts of Peru, and graduated with the best grade in his class in 1962.

His paintings recall Eastern, Western, and Andean traditions, with a distinctive surrealism that shows an unknown and intriguing universe, set off by a purified technique and a renovated figuration, which links Venancio with other great Latin American artists. Venancio has received many accolades and has participated in a variety of individual and group exhibits in Peru, Japan, Italy, United States, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Venezuela, Panama, and Mexico, among others. In 1999, the year of the centenary marking Japanese migration to Peru, Venacio was invited to exhibit his work in the Museum of Man in Nagoya, Japan. His most recent works were displayed in November 2006 during the 34th Annual Japanese Cultural Week in Lima, Peru. He passed away in 2016. (October 2017)

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