Junko Chodos

At Waseda, she studied under Professor Shigeo Ueda, noted translator of Martin Buber into Japanese, and took an interest in his writings of philosophy.

[6] In an article in the Winter 2003 issue of CrossCurrents, Chodos wrote: To seek justice, to be courageous, to be ethical in other words, to choose rational universal standards over loyalty towards the group is to be a traitor in Japan, and these individuals break the biggest taboos of the totalitarian society.

[9] In 2005, the Museum of Contemporary Religious Art in Missouri presented a 30-year retrospective of her work titled "Junko Chodos: The Breath of Consciousness".

The exhibition included complex drawings of roots and dead flowers and works from a 1991 series, "Requiem for an Executed Bird".

[10] In the same year, the Fresno Art Museum Council of 100 gave Junko Chodos The Distinguished Woman Artist Award.

"[11] Her influences include Paul Klee, Willem de Kooning, Matthias Grünewald, Albrecht Dürer and Japanese calligraphy, as well as the authors Rainer Maria Rilke, Herbert Read and Martin Buber.

[13] Junko Chodos herself defines it as "art created by an artist who strives towards her center and encounters Divine Presence there, where people go beyond the barriers of ethnicity, gender, religious denominations, dogma, and of confined ideas of blood and soil.