This photograph shows Modegi Masaaki, Director of the Tokyo Kite Museum, and Ijichi Eishin, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Japan Kite Association. They were photographed in the museum, in front of the reconstruction of the workshop of Hashimoto Teizō, a maker of Edo kites, and a kite depicting a portrait of Modegi Shingo, the museum's founder.
Modegi Shingo and Hashimoto Teizō were close friends; it was partly to help Teizō to live from his job as a kite maker that Shingo founded the Japan Kite Association and the Tokyo Kite Museum. The next generation, Modegi Masaaki and Ijichi Eishin, are also good friends. They have known each other since childhood. At the creation of the museum, Ijichi was a high school student. One year before the museum opened, he came to help with the preparations every day after school. Today, Masaaki and Eishin are the guardians of the museum and its legacy. Standing on either side of the path created in the center of photograph, they welcome us for a guided tour of the Japanese kite culture. The Rokkaku kite standing in the front left of the photograph was brought to France and flew in the Parisian sky in front of the Eiffel Tower with Eishin in 1965. It is a reminder of the exchanges between France and Japan through kites.
Like his father before him, Masaaki became a chef. The Taimeiken restaurant is famous for its omelets. Omelets and kites are inseparable at the Taimeiken!