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In 2012, as an advisor to Peynet in Karuizawa, I visited the Peynet Museum in Antibes on the Cote d'Azur in southern France.
Peinet Museum in Antibes, southern France
My company (ADEKA Co., Ltd.) ran Galerie Adeka and Gallery Vingt de France, an art gallery specializing in French paintings, at Karuizawa Prince Shopping Plaza and Karuizawa Prince Hotel for 20 years from 1995 to 2015.
Gallery Vin de France at Karuizawa Prince Shopping Plaza
The Gallery Vingt de France was sponsored by the French Embassy.
Bernard Rolland, economic and commercial attaché at the French Embassy, and his wife Yasuhiro Takeda
At the request of Mr. Masahiko Koyama, General Manager of Karuizawa Prince Hotel at the time (currently President of Prince Hotel), I held a lecture at Karuizawa Prince Hotel on how to make Karuizawa an international tourism and international conference city. At the time, the tourism industry was in a recession, and Karuizawa Prince Hotel was hitting its lowest occupancy rate outside of peak season.
The four of us - former NHK news anchor and first director of the Japan Cultural Center in Paris, Isomura Hisanori, president and chairman of Shobi University, Matsuda Yoshiyuki, Matsuda's student and professor at Jissen Women's University, and myself - gave a lecture at the first Karuizawa International Resort Conference.
The talks were lively, with talks on topics such as Davos, Switzerland, famous for the Davos Conference, where top politicians and business people from around the world gather, and Aspen, a high-end cultural resort city in the United States. The first event was held at the Karuizawa Prince Hotel. The following year, in 2011, it was held at the Manpei Hotel, which is under the umbrella of Mori Trust, and Mori Trust's Managing Director Miwako Date (current president), Ministry of International Trade and Industry bureaucrats, Nagano Prefecture Tourism Division personnel, and Prince Hotel General Manager Masahiko Koyama (current president) gave speeches.
Mr. Naonori Isomura and Gallery Adeka Yasuhiro Takeda
Each time, Karuizawa Mayor Fujimaki would attend, creating an excited atmosphere throughout the town. The Karuizawa Resort Conference Promotion Committee (Karuizawa RCC) was established, and the town of Karuizawa decided to allocate a budget to the Karuizawa RCC.
The Peynet Museum in Karuizawa is located in Taliesin, a comprehensive cultural park centered around Lake Shiozawa in Karuizawa. Taliesin is home to the Karuizawa Kogen Bunko Library, which collects manuscripts by artists other than Peynet, as well as the Flower Museum, making it a tourist attraction in Karuizawa where you can have fun spending about half a day.
Peine Museum at Taliesin, Karuizawa
I became somewhat famous in the Karuizawa area because I planned seminars to attract international conferences and tourists to Karuizawa and gave lectures as a panelist. Taliesin is home to the Peynet Museum, and I am the world's largest collector of Raymond Peynet's original prints, which I purchased from the publisher, Muret. In 2012, I was asked by Taliesin to visit the Peynet Museum in Antibes as an advisor to the Peynet Museum.
Statue of Peynet's Lovers in front of the Karuizawa Peinet Museum
It was in the fall of 2012 that I first met with Curator Goujon of the Peynet Museum in Antibes (more precisely, the Museum of Raymond Peynet and Humorous Artists) and Annie Peynet, Raymond Peynet's daughter, to exchange opinions.
At the time, the only Asian visitors to the Peinet Museum in Antibes were Japanese. (Nowadays, Peinet is famous in China and Korea, and there are more Chinese visitors than Japanese. According to Director Goujeon in 2019.)
Both Director Goujon and Annie Peynet welcomed me with great enthusiasm, and I received a proposal to make Antibes and Karuizawa sister cities. Since both the Peynet Museum and the Picasso Museum in Antibes are part of the Antibes Municipal Museum, Director Goujon is also a city employee, so he was the one to propose this to the city of Antibes. In addition, since Karuizawa Town Mayor Susumu Fujimaki's family is the manager of Karuizawa Taliesin (Peynet Museum), I thought the idea would move forward.
In front of Raymond Peynet's original print "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter" at the Peynet Museum
Annie Payne ↓
I returned to Japan with a gift of a proposal for a sister city relationship between Karuizawa and Antibes, and reported it to Taliesin (Peinet Museum). However, I received an unexpected response. The mayor cannot pursue a project that benefits the company he manages. As the mayor is a public figure, he cannot use his position to pursue personal gain. This made sense to a certain extent, so I had no choice but to accept it.
Karuizawa Town is a villa area and land prices are high, so they receive a lot of property tax. I heard that Tokyo and Karuizawa Town are the only local governments in the country that do not receive local subsidies. I heard from others that Karuizawa Town discusses tourism policies, but does not actually take them seriously. It seems that they are laid back because they are a wealthy local government.
In 2013, the Abe administration came to power, the economy recovered, and a tourism-oriented policy was adopted. The occupancy rate of the Karuizawa Prince Hotel soared, and Prince Hotels Co., Ltd. went from a deficit to a period of large profits. No one talked about making Karuizawa an international resort and international conference city. Masahiko Koyama also became a managing director and general manager of Prince Hotels West Japan, and moved to Kyoto.
In 2015, our company also changed from retail to wholesale, and Gallery Vingt de France at Karuizawa Prince Hotel closed and we withdrew from Karuizawa.
Although the plans for sister cities between Karuizawa and Antibes did not move forward even one step, exchanges with Director Goujon of the Peynet Museum in Antibes and Peynet's daughter, as well as with the Karuizawa Peynet Museum, continue to this day.
We would like to continue to work with the Peynet Museum Karuizawa and the Peynet Museum Antibes to invite many people into the artistic world of love and peace depicted in Raymond Peynet's Lovers, a work of art created in 20th century France.
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Raymond Peynet original print rental
