12. June 2024
Latest News
A Tree as a Symbol of Peace
by Tom Juncker & Adina Seeger
A small kaki (persimmon) tree shown in our temporary exhibition Peace at Museum Judenplatz in connection with an international art and peace project is now putting down roots in the Vienna municipal flower garden in Hirschstetten, establishing itself in this way as a permanent symbol of peace in Vienna.
Over 100,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed directly by the atom bombs dropped by the United States of America on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Thousands more died decades later from injuries or the long-term effects of nuclear radiation. A kaki (persimmon) tree in Nagasaki survived the destruction, although more than half of its trunk had been scorched. In 1994, the gardener Masayuki Ebinuma began to tend the tree and to obtain saplings from it. A year later, the artist Tatsuo Miyajima exhibited the saplings and founded the peace project Revive Time: Kaki Tree Project, an art and peace project whose aim is to distribute saplings from the mother tree all over the world and to encourage children in particular to address the subject of peace in art.
The first sapling was officially planted at an elementary school in Tokyo in 1996. The kaki tree from Nagasaki became a symbol of life conquering death and of the power of nature and of peace over war, similar to the origami cranes made by the twelve-year-old Sadako Sasaki after the atom bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima. When she died in 1955 of the consequences of radiation, the world showed sympathy for her fate by adopting the origami crane as an international symbol of peace and the ban-the-bomb movement.
The kaki tree project attracted international attention through its exhibition at the 48th Biennale in Venice in 1999. Schools and peace initiatives throughout the world have planted saplings—to date at around three hundred sites in twenty-seven countries. The project has been taken up in Europe in France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Slovenia, Switzerland, and Germany. The association Nagasaki-Brescia KAKI TREE for EUROPE was founded in Italy in 2020 and has been responsible since then for the dissemination of plants of the second and third generations throughout Europe. On the initiative of the peace researcher Werner Wintersteiner and the association Erinnern Villach, the first kaki tree from Nagasaki in Austria was planted in Villach in 2023.1
In cooperation with KAKI TREE for EUROPE and Werner Wintersteiner, the Jewish Museum Vienna displayed a kaki tree from Nagasaki at the end of 2023 during the exhibition Peace, the first time since the Biennale that a kaki tree from Nagasaki had been part of an exhibition project. The idea was to plant the tree in Vienna after the exhibition had closed as a permanent symbol of peace that would send a message in particular to children and young people. “The peace tree stands for so much, […] as a reminder of the danger of weapons of mass destruction (the atom bomb dropped on Nagasaki); for environmental awareness (the revival of the tree after being severely damaged); for peace (a symbol of life conquering death); for art and creativity; […] and finally for education as a way of expanding our world view so as to recognize and do something about the real challenges of the modern age"2, says Werner Wintersteiner.
On June 11, 2024, the kaki tree from Nagasaki was officially planted by Veronica Kaup-Hasler, city councillor for culture and science, in the public municipal flower garden in Hirschstetten, in this way establishing it as a permanent symbol of peace in Vienna.
Translation: Nick Somers
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Over 100,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed directly by the atom bombs dropped by the United States of America on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Thousands more died decades later from injuries or the long-term effects of nuclear radiation. A kaki (persimmon) tree in Nagasaki survived the destruction, although more than half of its trunk had been scorched. In 1994, the gardener Masayuki Ebinuma began to tend the tree and to obtain saplings from it. A year later, the artist Tatsuo Miyajima exhibited the saplings and founded the peace project Revive Time: Kaki Tree Project, an art and peace project whose aim is to distribute saplings from the mother tree all over the world and to encourage children in particular to address the subject of peace in art.
The first sapling was officially planted at an elementary school in Tokyo in 1996. The kaki tree from Nagasaki became a symbol of life conquering death and of the power of nature and of peace over war, similar to the origami cranes made by the twelve-year-old Sadako Sasaki after the atom bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima. When she died in 1955 of the consequences of radiation, the world showed sympathy for her fate by adopting the origami crane as an international symbol of peace and the ban-the-bomb movement.
The kaki tree project attracted international attention through its exhibition at the 48th Biennale in Venice in 1999. Schools and peace initiatives throughout the world have planted saplings—to date at around three hundred sites in twenty-seven countries. The project has been taken up in Europe in France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Slovenia, Switzerland, and Germany. The association Nagasaki-Brescia KAKI TREE for EUROPE was founded in Italy in 2020 and has been responsible since then for the dissemination of plants of the second and third generations throughout Europe. On the initiative of the peace researcher Werner Wintersteiner and the association Erinnern Villach, the first kaki tree from Nagasaki in Austria was planted in Villach in 2023.1
In cooperation with KAKI TREE for EUROPE and Werner Wintersteiner, the Jewish Museum Vienna displayed a kaki tree from Nagasaki at the end of 2023 during the exhibition Peace, the first time since the Biennale that a kaki tree from Nagasaki had been part of an exhibition project. The idea was to plant the tree in Vienna after the exhibition had closed as a permanent symbol of peace that would send a message in particular to children and young people. “The peace tree stands for so much, […] as a reminder of the danger of weapons of mass destruction (the atom bomb dropped on Nagasaki); for environmental awareness (the revival of the tree after being severely damaged); for peace (a symbol of life conquering death); for art and creativity; […] and finally for education as a way of expanding our world view so as to recognize and do something about the real challenges of the modern age"2, says Werner Wintersteiner.
On June 11, 2024, the kaki tree from Nagasaki was officially planted by Veronica Kaup-Hasler, city councillor for culture and science, in the public municipal flower garden in Hirschstetten, in this way establishing it as a permanent symbol of peace in Vienna.
We are grateful to the Japanese Revive Time: Kaki Tree project, Francesco Foletti and the Nagasaki-Brescia KAKI TREE for EUROPE, Werner Wintersteiner, the Vienna Municipal Department for Parks and Gardens and Karl Hawliczek, head of the park maintenance section and deputy department head, and Robert Fahsl and all of the staff at the Hirschstetten municipal flower garden.
Translation: Nick Somers
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1 Tanja Janschitz, Villach pflanzt ersten Friedens-Kaki, https://archiv.5min.at/202306671911/villach-pflanzt-ersten-friedens-kaki/ (28.5.2024).
2 Werner Wintersteiner, Das Friedensprojekt „Ein Kaki aus Nagasaki“ in der Stadt Villach. Eine neue Initiative zur Schaffung eines Friedenssymbols und eines (nicht nur) kommunal relevanten Bezugspunkts für die Friedensarbeit und die Erziehung zum Frieden, unveröffentlicht, Villach 2023.
© JMW
© JMW
© JMW
