Collection: Hanako Kumazawa Original Sculptures

ANIMA* is an imaginary animal linked to Japanese culture, and in particular to Suwa, my homeland, which is located in a very beautiful part of central Japan with a landscape that includes a vast lake, various rivers and mountains, numerous hot springs and one of Japan’s main Shinto sanctuaries, Suwa Taisha.

Shinto religion today thrives alongside Buddhism in Japan. The Japanese have a religious feeling rooted in nature, in daily life and in existence itself. They recognize that between man and nature, the action of special sign-bearing creatures intervenes – guide animals, or psychopompic animals.

ANIMA is a messenger animal. It has the body of a deer, the head and paws of a cat, and tree-branch-or-thornbush horns. It came into being through the work of my hands, in its triple animal-vegetal-transcendental form: the body is animal, the horns are vegetal, and the inspiration that created its shape is immaterial. Thus straddling different states of being, ANIMA has the sacred capacity to open the doors that seem to keep these states separate, and to allow contact between them, for those who wish it.