On April 1, 2012, the prominent Peruvian painter Venancio Shinki Huamán will turn 80 years old. A lifetime dedicated to art, which at Discover Nikkei we want to honor by sharing an interview conducted a few years ago, and which shows us the sensitive artist behind the brush.
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Listening to Venancio Shinki, renowned Peruvian painter, is a life lesson, a delight, a true learning experience. He welcomed us into his home and shared with us – even with the warning of his poor memory – some of his experiences and longings.
"Being a painter is being stubborn, a little crazy, a little irresponsible, but it's worth it. It's a passion," says Shinki.
According to his papers, Venancio Shinki Huamán was born on the San Nicolás hacienda, but his mother, Doña Filomena, assured him that it was in the Pativilca valley, on the Las Vírgenes hacienda. His father, Don Kitsuke Shinki, had arrived from Japan in 1915, worked for a short time in San Nicolás and then established his own businesses, a dairy farm and a restaurant in Llamachupán, in the Pativilca valley (north of Lima).
"I was a child very close to my father, who decided that I had to study at the Japanese school at the San Nicolás hacienda directed by Mr. Tsukeo Isayama, a helpful and intelligent man... I owe a lot to him, he has intervened In many stages of my life... I shared a folder with his son, with whom we loved each other like brothers.
One of the things I remember is that at the beginning of the school year a package of study materials arrived from Nihon, which for me is the beginning of my life, of my Japanese training. It was very nice because in that package I found a book to make origami, landscapes with crayons, nendo (a type of clay) to make dolls. For me it was like a saving grace because I didn't care at all if the boys didn't want to play with me."
With vivid images, Don Venancio tells us that at that time, 9 pm was already midnight in the province and all the lights were off. "There was only one house that had the lamp on. It was my lamp on the dining room table. It was me drawing, until I heard my mother's voice saying: 'Venancio, turn off the light!'... I remember a lot ".
The painter also remembers the discipline and correction with which he was educated. "I learned to be a proper child, we all had to be fighters, workers, that was a rule that was put into our heads... At school I also remember the principal listening to the shortwave radio and telling us the news from Japan. 'Nipon Banzai!' he shouted... Some of the students traveled to Japan sent by their parents and ended up being soldiers, and it was an honor because we had been raised that way."
Like most children of immigrants, Don Venancio stayed in Peru. They were the years before the Second World War, of the deportee lists, of the looting, of having to hide.
"In the year 40 my father had to escape, we didn't know where he was, and later we found out that he slept in his clients' house and ate poorly... One day I was jumping from one stone to another when I see a figure with a long cane, a cane. 'My dad!' "I was very sick. Now I know it was bronchopneumonia."
At that time Don Venancio knew how to write in Japanese, so he sent a letter to Mr. Isayama requesting his help. "Two days later two trucks appear, and in one of them they put my father on a mattress, covered with blankets... There is a beautiful scene when I start to see the workers, the ladies saying 'Goodbye, Mr. Shinki 'Goodbye!'... tremendous," he tells us with a broken voice. "That was my father. Apparently he was very loved. I was about to turn 9 years old and Mr. Isayama took us to the San Nicolás hacienda, to a big house. A few days later my father died."
"My life is tragic, it has a lot of painful stages, and beautiful things too, as is life...", he tells us while sipping a cup of anise and playing with his cat.
And it continues... "My mother would inherit from my father the ingenuity and learning that to survive it was better to have a business. First she had a stand where she sold fruits and then she opened a grocery store and supplied butter to commercial establishments in Barranca and Pativilca. There He gets engaged again and my sister is born.
Time passes and when I was 14 years old my mother died. I'm going to Huando, where my uncle is, but I was sad because I wasn't studying. Then I wrote another letter to Mr. Isayama and shortly afterward he brought me to Lima where he had managed to contact Mr. Umezaki, who had a chain of photographic stores. I arrived in Lima almost when I was 16, in the month of May. The war was over and a new life was beginning for me."
"I was always a lonely child. I would chase the lizards and go by the river. I would see the trees bend in the wind and I would hear the trunk creak, as if it were speaking. The branches were a chorus and the trunk was the voice , and down there the Pativilca River. That was my fun in Llamachupán."
His work is admired in Peru and in many countries.
* This article is published thanks to the agreement between the Peruvian Japanese Association (APJ) and the Discover Nikkei Project. Article originally published in Kaikan magazine No. 1 and No. 2, July – August 2005 and adapted for Discover Nikkei.
© 2005 Asociación Peruano Japonea
