Letting go of something or someone is one of the hardest thing as a human to deal with. It teaches you to be more mature but most of the times, it breaks your inner soul, pulling you down not to move on. We have all experienced being left out and have left.
This is the story lies within this institution in Japan, the Iwaki Sogo High School which was scheduled to be demolished back in 2011 due to the Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami.
But right before it’ll vanished, something beautiful and extraordinary happened- a memory to treasure forever. With so much love to their alma mater, a handful of recent graduates gathered to create a memorial on one of the school walls.
In a news written by the Japanese webmagazine Tetoteonahama, students used 27 liters of bright pink paint to create this stunning blossoming alley of sakura trees.
As what you can see below, hundreds of students’ hand prints made the vibrant flock of flower petals.
This beautiful artwork is actually known as the ‘Okurie’ following an artwork created by Yosuke Tan. . Okurie might come from a phrase okuri-bito, meaning to departure, as in funeral and it involves painting murals on buildings that are destined to be demolished.
Okurie is used to create a living memory of the building and events that took place.
Yosuke Tan explained the beautiful project during an interview with his good friend Phil Bailey:
“Although it was too early to feel the advent of spring, a row of cherry trees stood there in full bloom.. Hundreds of flowers were painted by the students pressing their hand prints to the wall during the January chill. Wall, hand, flower, wall, hand, flower… It was a heartfelt expression of gratitude for the school where they spent their high school lives. It was as if the now-disused building reflected warmth of the people who were once there.”
Source Credit: APlus