On the invitation of Koganei Artfull Action! (Koganei City Art Culture Promotion Plan), artist and Australian resident Haji Oh is implementing the Pen Friend Project. For this project, the artist and four correspondents living in Japan with origins overseas exchanged a series of letters on memories of their grandmothers’ lives, and the resulting work based on these memories comprises notebooks containing memories of each correspondent’s grandmother.

Now we are looking for people to share memories of their grandmothers in these notebooks in writing and/or drawing. When you look inside the notebooks, you will find letters written by the artist’s pen friends for the project – four women living in Japan who are originally from Thailand, Hong Kong, China and Peru (Nikkei Peruvian of Japanese descent) – on the theme of their grandmothers’ lives.
There are four notebooks, each containing the story of one person. Please share memories of your grandmother’s life by adding them to the stories by these women. The notebooks will act a repository for memory.

Participants writing in languages other than Japanese should write memories of their grandmothers’ lives on the left-hand page. The translated Japanese text will appear on the right-hand page.

*‘Grandmother’ does not necessarily mean a relative but may refer to an older woman.
*For more information on this project, please visit this website .
*The notebooks will be displayed in the exhibition “Pen Friend Cross Border Project” at Koganei Art Spot Chateau 2F, scheduled for November, 2020.