Japanese painter Yoshida Isamu was born in December 1923. On the 1st of December 1939 as a senior non-commissioned officer he entered the 22nd regiment of the Japanese Army where he spent most of his military service. In 1944 he took part in military operations on the Thai border. He also saw action in Manchuria. He has spent three years in the Soviet captivity. On the 23d of July 1947 he came home.

The major theme of Yoshida's paintings is war. A large portion of his works is dedicated to the fighting in Manchuria.

Images of the Soviet captivity have also found their place in his art. Yoshida in a unique manner based on his personal experience and deep emotions has depicted on his paintings all aspects of everyday life of the Japanese soldiers in Soviet prison camps. When you see those paintings you can almost feel the emotions of the author who was the eyewitness and the participant of those horrible events. As Yoshida himself wrote, after he had completed this series of paintings he couldn't hold his paint bruch any more. However he managed to overcome those deep emotions and resumed his artistic work being able to show to the younger generations those horrible scenes from the history of his people. As you may notice in the series of paintings titled "Siberia" artist have used only two colours: black and white. As he describes it himself after what he has gone through he remembers Siberian landscapes only in these two colours.

Further below you can see some of his works. Click on the picture to zoom in.