For those who are interested in sculptures, Ueno Park is known to have a few.
But it’s not limited to just the park, they have sculptures inside Ueno Station, but surprising to travelers, these sculptures are nude.
This goes to show the difference in culture of how one culture views nudity, where in America, nude sculptures would earn the ire of conservatives who would find the sculptures to be lewd or appalling, while other cultures would look at it as art.
One of the statues (as there are three women) you will see is “Sanso no Zo” (Three-phase statue) near the JR Ueno Station central ticket gate. Three-phase for this statue stands for “knowledge, emotion and intention”.
When Ueno Station was celebrating its 75th anniversary commemoration on October 10, 1959 (Ueno Station opened back in July 1883), prior to the commeoration, famous sculptor Fumio Asakura decided to donate another statue on his birthday.
Asakura Fumio was a western-style Japanese sculptor and is known as the father of modern Japanese sculpture and referred to as the “Rodin of Japan”. His work spanned the Meiji, Taisho and Showa periods of Japanese history.
But that’s not the only Asakura Fumio nude sculpture in Ueno Station, the fourth work by him is “Tsubasa no Zo” (Statue of Wings). This is located on the left side of the central ticket gate of JR Ueno Station and this was built in 1953 and donated to Ueno Station commemorating it’s 70th anniversary.
Asakura passed away in 1964.
