is a modernist Japanese sculptor who has the nickname "Samurai

Samurai

is the term for the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan. According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning to wait upon or accompany a person in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau...

 Artist". In 1923, he was born in Nagasaki, Nagasaki to Kojuro Nakagawa, who established Ritsumeikan University

Ritsumeikan University

Ritsumeikan University has a growing reputation as one of the main private universities of Japan. It is part of a group of prestigious private universities in the Kansai area, called "Kan -Kan -Dou -Ritsu "...

. As a teenager, he lived in several temples in Kyoto where he studied the patterns of rocks, plants and water created by traditional landscape artists. In 1942, he went on to Ritsumeikan University where he studied Shintoism and sword-making, but he left before graduation. Afterwards, he entered the naval forces preliminary school, and experienced the end of the Pacific War

Pacific War

The Pacific War, also sometimes called the Asia-Pacific War refers broadly to the parts of World War II that took place in the Pacific Ocean, its islands, and in East Asia, then called the Far East...

 as Zero Fighter pilot. After the War, he learned sculpture by self-study while roaming the world.
Nagare's works include "Cloud Fortress" which was destroyed at the World Trade Center

World Trade Center

The original World Trade Center was a complex with seven buildings featuring landmark twin towers in Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States. The complex opened on April 4, 1973, and was destroyed in 2001 during the September 11 attacks. The site is currently being rebuilt with five new...

 (New York City), "Sakimori" (Frontier Guardian) installed in a courtyard at the Honolulu Academy of Arts

Honolulu Academy of Arts

The Honolulu Academy of Arts is an art museum in Honolulu in the state of Hawaii. Since its founding in 1922 by Anna Rice Cooke and opening April 8, 1927, its collections have grown to over 40,000 works of art.-Description:...

, “Hamaritsurin Garden” in Seto Ohashi Commemorative Park, Kagawa Prefecture, Japan and "Ju"(受) stored to Museum of Modern Art

Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...

 in New York City, and "Transcendence" (informally called "The Banker's Heart" by locals) installed in A.P. Giannini Plaza at 555 California Street (formerly the Bank of America building) in San Francisco, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

.

External links

• Nagare's Official Website
• Nagare's biography at Nagare Foundation, Japan
• Picture of Nagare's World Trade Centre plaza granite sculpture, lost after the attacks of 9/11
• Entries for Nagare at the Inventories of American Painting and Sculpture, by Smithsonian American Art Museum