Takashi Tanemori's Current Activities

 

Speaker

An inspiration to audiences large and small, Takashi speaks about hope, freedom, and fighting to survive. But mostly, he speaks about the way God’s love transforms, and how communication between people and countries is the answer to lasting peace throughout the world.

 

Takashi has visited many churches and schools, appeared at memorials honoring the victims of the atomic bombing, and has served as professional keynote speaker, Christian motivational speaker, and youth motivational speaker at conferences in the United States and overseas. He has special experience from having been an ordained minister, educator, lecturer, writer and inter-cultural consultant for US/Japan business developments in the Pacific Rim. 

 

Writer

 

The book Hiroshima: Bridge to Forgiveness chronicles Takashi’s journey from childhood to adult, from Japan to America, from revenge to forgiveness. He is currently writing a portrayal of the Samurai codes his father taught him, and a compilation of his poetry.

Artist

 

Only deeply held beliefs are demonstrated through Takashi’s artwork, as shown in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima (2003) and Takasaki (2001) and at Bradbury Science Museum in Los Alamos, New Mexico (1999 – 2001). In 2008 he produced a commissioned eighty-piece series for exhibition during August at the Atomic Testing Site Museum in Las Vegas, Nevada.

 

The style of Takashi’s art is an intuitive collection of collage in the media of water-colors, acrylics, magic markers, colored pencils, etchings, photos, cut-and-paste magazine pages, even origami. It is simply what Japanese call: “Garyu-shiki”, self-styled products made without formal training or art-education. 

 

Poet

 

Poetry is also a way Takashi shares his heartbeat, his inner soul: “Poetry is like the wind, as it speaks sometimes softly, carrying the fragrance of the cherry blossom; it is sometimes a howling in the darkest night where countless stars were hiding, bearing pains and sorrows into the distance yonder; and there are times creating all the trees of the forest, clapping their branches for thanksgiving and dancing for joy!” 

“My poetry is my own life-experience, allowing me to honor both the past and the present and to express my love for the two countries—Japan and America—that both wounded and nurtured me.”