Changing and Unchanging Things: Noguchi and Hasegawa

In the spring of bright May, nineteen hundred and fifty,
Noguchi returned to his ancestral shores,
Two decades had passed since he last saw Japan,
Now drawn by a quest for the soul of his art.

Emerging from years shadowed dark by the war,
A purpose had seeded deep in his heart—
To sculpt not for self, but for society’s need,
To bend stone and metal to serve the soul’s creed.

With eyes toward the East, for models he sought,
A vision to blend what the old world had taught;
No longer content with forms of mere beauty,
He craved art with purpose, to serve a new duty.

And there, on his path, stood Saburo Hasegawa,
An artist and thinker, his soul steeped in two—
From Parisian halls where the avant-garde met,
To the sacred Japan of his own roots he’d stayed true.

These two men—alike yet diverse in their fates,
Both lovers of forms, of tradition and change—
Bound fast by a yearning to bridge what divides,
A friendship was forged on a wave’s restless tides.

Through Hasegawa’s guidance, Noguchi saw clear
The wisdoms of centuries, cast in stone,
In gardens, in temples, in shadows and light—
A culture that whispered, “Art lives where it’s grown.”

And so they began, these seekers of fusion,
In old Japanese ways they would find new illusions,
Not lost in the past, nor cut from its root,
But art that would echo, both foreign and true.

“An innocent synthesis!” Noguchi declared,
“Born from the embers of what we once knew,
A blend of the world, yet pure at its core,
From ruins, creation—timeless, yet new.”

Their works, now displayed in resplendent array—
Forty pieces of triumph, of joy, and of pain,
Of Japan’s rugged hills, and the fractured human form,
Of shattered matter, and atomic age scorn.

From the essence of landscapes and the spirits of stone,
To the echoes of war, carved and reborn,
Each piece is a chapter, a verse in their tale,
Of two artists united, where two worlds prevail.

Behold this collection, these visions on view,
In Noguchi’s museum, their journey ensues.
Elegiac, assured, and anguished, their cries—
Two souls intertwined, like the vastness of skies.