Children among Cyclamen Flowers

From 1972 to 1973, in opposition to the Vietnam War, Chihiro created the picture book Children Among the Flames of War. This illustration is accompanied by the following poem: Last year and the year before and the year before that, at my winter studio One by one the red cyclamen bloomed. Before I knew it the flowers had opened and as I worked we gazed at one another. Last year and the year before and the year before that incessantly bombs rained down on the heads of Vietnamese children. From the translucent petals of the red cyclamen the dead children gaze at me, whispering: “Our whole lives we lived in the midst of war.”