Records of past activities (Kasai City and the Community Outreach Center, Graduate School of Humanities, Kobe University

Many exhibitions, music concerts, lecture meetings and other related events in connection with the Aonogahara Prisoner of War Camp have been held to date through the cooperation of related local governments and organizations. In 2005, Ono City Kokokan hosted a special exhibition entitled “The World of the Aonogahara Prisoner of War Camp: From the Early Modern Period and the Modern Period of the Kawai District of Ono City to the Present.” At this special exhibition, they presented the research results obtained since the compilation of The History of Ono City and exhibited materials related to the Aonogahara Prisoner of War Camp that were left with local residents. In 2006, an exhibition entitled “Living at a Prisoner of War Camp: The World of the Aonogahara Prisoner of War Camp during World War I” was held at the exhibition hall of Kobe University Centennial Hall. In addition, events were held reproducing “The Music Concert in Memory of Hometown (Ono City Eclat Hall, 2005),” which was performed by prisoners at the camp, and “The Reproduction Concert” (Kobe University Takigawa Hall, 2006). These concerts were performed by the Kobe University Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Fumio Tamura (associate professor at the Faculty of Human Development, Kobe University) and they “reproduced” the programs that had been performed at the “Charity Concert” held at the camp. They presented the realities of the Aonogahara Prisoner of War Camp by combining the experience of “seeing” and “listening” through reproduced concerts in a succession of exhibitions.

Photo: The opening ceremony of the exhibition in 2006 (photo taken by the Community Outreach Center, Graduate School of Humanities, Kobe University)

Following these two exhibitions and concerts, a project was launched to realize the prisoners’ “home visit” to Austria, and the “Home Visit to Vienna” Exhibition was held in the exhibition room of the Austrian National Library in September and October 2008. “The Home Visit Reproduction Concert” was performed at the Austrian National Library and the Museum of Military History in Vienna as well to reproduce music performances given at the camp. The local government and the university cooperated in unearthing historical heritage left in the local community, published the results and successfully delivered them all the way to Vienna, showing the potential of regional collaborative projects.

In 2009, which marked the 140th anniversary of the establishment of friendly relations between Japan and Austria, the Austrian Embassy held an exhibition, a lecture meeting and a reproduced concert at the German Cultural Hall. At the exhibition “Japan Seen from the Viewpoint of Prisoners at the Aonogahara Prisoner of War Camp: From Newly Discovered Photographs Taken by Prisoners,” which was held at Ono City Kokokan in 2011, they introduced not only the Aonogahara Prisoner of War Camp but also the area surrounding the camp based on the precious photographs provided by Mr. Dieter Linke. In this concert entitled “The Sound of the Sound That Crosses Space-Time (Ono City Eclat Hall, 2011),” they performed the Overture of the Symphony Chushingura composed by Herrn Ramseger as well as the reproduced version of the songs performed by the prisoners at the camp. Ramseger, who lived in Kobe at that time, was not a professional musician, but he performed and composed music and visited the Bando Prisoner of War Camp at Matsuyama. The Symphony Chushingura composed by Ramseger was performed by the Engel Orchestra of the Bando Prisoner of War Camp.

Photo: A concert at the Museum of Military History, Vienna (photo taken by the Community Outreach Center, Graduate School of Humanities, Kobe University)

In February 2013, an event entitled “The Europeans Came to Kasai: The Aonogahara Prisoner of War Camp and International Exchange” was held at Kasai City Library. In 2014, which marked the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I, Kasai City and the Austrian Embassy jointly held an exhibition entitled “The 100th Anniversary of the Outbreak of World War I and the Aonogahara Prisoner of War Camp: Central Europe in a Miniature Garden” and a memorial concert entitled “A Bridge of Music” at the Idemitsu Sazo Memorial Rokkodai Auditorium, Kobe University. In particular, they invited a guest from Austria to the opening ceremony and the concert and held the events with great enthusiasm. In addition, a panel of photographs related to the Aonogahara Prisoner of War Camp was exhibited at the International French School in Tokyo in November 2015 to introduce the memory of 100 years ago. In April 2016, the same panel of photographs was exhibited at Lycée français international de Kyoto.

Photo: An exhibition in 2011 (taken by the Community Outreach Center, Graduate School of Humanities, Kobe University)

In 2015, the milestone year that marked the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the Aonogahara Prisoner of War Camp, Kasai City held various events in commemoration of the anniversary. Starting with the material exhibition “Kasai of 100 Years Ago and World War I,” which was held at the Kasai City Library in February 2015, they also held many other events, including a German cooking class (in September 2015), an exhibition game to reproduce soccer games played by prisoners interned at the camp (in November 2015) and a walking excursion to trace the roads covered by prisoners (in December 2015), as well as lecture meetings and other exhibitions.

Photo: A world cooking class (German cooking) at the Nambu Community Center

Photo: A reproduction of a soccer exhibition game among prisoners at the Aonogahara Prisoner of War Camp