Umada Landscape  | うまだ風景画

Noriko Umada

Mrs. Umada embodied the friendliness and humor I'd grown to expect and love from the residents of Ushibuka. She started joking as soon as we met her, and she enthusiastically invited me and my assistants to her house for tea. For her memory she chose the slope which had contained the Daruma Movie Theater during her youth. As a child in the 1940's, she and her friends would play rock paper scissors to determine who could sneak a peak into the side of the theater to see what movie was playing. For her memory she wrote, "I wondered how long this slope has been here. Upon asking an old man of ninety, he said that it had probably been there since long long ago. On snowy mornings, we would slip when going to school that way, so we walked cautiously."