What was Kyushu-Ha to Dr. Kenichiro Terada?
Takami Sakurai
What was Kenichiro Terada to us, or rather, to me?
In Fukuoka around 1950, public organizations such as Dokuritsu and Nika had a power thatis unimaginable today. At the top of the list in Kyushu was Dr. Kenshi Ito, the head of theKyushu branch of Nika. I am still deeply impressed by his elegant appearance, with the whiteface of a tuberculosis patient, and the fact that he was a graduate of a famous private
university in Tokyo and had just returned from Shanghai.
The newcomers to Nika in Fukuoka were Ochi Osamu and Takami Sakurai, and the artists
who had been selected for several public competitions before them were Yohji Kuroki,
Yasuyuki Ishibashi, and Kenichiro Terada. This meant that Terada and Kuroki were direct
disciples of Ito. Ishibashi and Sakurai were from Kurume, and Ochi was from Saga. The
others respected Ito but did not have a master-disciple relationship.
At the time, the world was in the midst of a dramatic shift from the thriving coal industry tothe oil industry. The next industry was emerging and was in the midst of an intense alternation.
This trend was clearly beginning to manifest itself in the avant-garde Nika, which was thecenter of power in the art world. In other words, it was Mr. Ito who was the most popular andhad the most leadership ability in Kyushu Nika. In between, the one who had a hard time
was Yohji Kuroki. Fortunately or unfortunately, Kenichiro Terada, a classmate of Yohji Kuroki,
was not in Fukuoka City when Kyushu-Ha was formed. I believe that Kenichiro Terada wasin a tuberculosis sanatorium at the time. He had come all the way from Tokyo with his
beautiful wife and made a spectacular appearance in front of us. At that time, I was not yet amember of the "Burai-ha" group. I had even named my son "republic," and I had quit smoking
and drinking, thinking that one day Japan would become a socialist country. One of thepeople who connected the circle was a teacher named Takashi Fukumori. At his wedding,many young men from the famous Taisho Coal Mine attended, and Kyushu-Ha also
participated, and I had a quarrel with a teacher from the Taisho Coal Mine. Gun Tanigawa
and his group mediated with me. That night, I accidentally drank too much and ended up ina ditch in front of the current Fukunichi Shimbun, and when I was already out of breath,
fortunately the last police car caught me and took me to the hospital, where I survived. I still
remember that it was a cold day on January 15.

Fukumori is a poet and the only man to have walked through the doldrums of the energy
revolution that continued with the Miike and Taisho coal mines. What did this Fukumori do by
mistake? He became an apprentice of Kenichiro Terada! Terada was a real "Burai-ha" group,
drinking from morning and fighting with us. Quick to conclude, we have turned against ouresteemed mentor, Kenshi Ito. We decided to quit Nika and rush into a strange artistic
revolution in an attempt to start a new movement. It sounds pretty cool when written like that,
but in reality, they were a bunch of dirty rats. Among this group, he took Fukumori as hisapprentice, acquired the former residence of Eishin Ueno, and controlled the Fukuoka art
world after the death of Kenshi Ito. There were many better than Kenichiro Terada, but forsome reason, when it came to the best in Hakata, it was Kenichiro Terada.
And now there are his own paintings that have always rebelled against Kenichiro Terada, thebest in Hakata. Many paintings that Kenichiro Terada himself cannot explain have been
projected and have escaped. Even I, a long-time friend, do not understand the causal
relationship between Kenichiro Terada and the swirling primary colors. I really don't know. I
secretly believe that if Kenichiro Terada's paintings are truly eternal, it is mostly due to themysterious relationship between these incomprehensible paintings and Kenichiro Terada. So,
I would like to take another look at Kenichiro Terada's paintings.