Angkor Wat Restoration – For Cambodians, with Cambodians

Tōkyō : Japan

Jul 08, 2011

By northernlight

He was a 23-year-old student of French then, when Professor Yoshiaki Ishizawa (73) ‘fell in love’ with Angkor Wat, with sudden feeling of sensation running down his spine. It was a kind of empathy and respect that every good student might feel from his/her mentors.

There, he met a French scholar, a Muse who devoted herself to the research of Cambodian archaeology. Boldly he asked his future teacher from Paris why she didn’t get married and only found himself embarrassed and shocked being replied, ‘there is something worthwhile other than married life and for me this, Angkor Wat is my life.’ After the encounter with the Muse, he went France to study archaeology under her guidance and devoted himself for 50 years since then to restore Angkor monuments (culture), traditional villages (people) and forest (nature) for Cambodians, with Cambodians.

Why this concept: for Cambodians, with Cambodians? While he was staying at the ruins of Angkor working together with 36 young Cambodian students and researchers, they developed mutual friendship. He was particularly impressed by the sense of their human characteristics, living in harmony with nature and leading a life of honorable poverty and devotion. However, as you may recall, Cambodia lost approx. 1.5 million promising intellectual individuals since 1970s. These 36 friends of Dr. Ishizawa were all killed during the civil war and the political turmoil. Since then, his work has been dedicated as the Requiem to those beloved brothers.

These are his personal motivations to Angkor Restoration. In 1982 Dr. Ishizawa became a professor at Sophia University, his alma mater (est. 1928 by Jesuits in Tokyo). Later in 2005, he became the President of Sophia. The mission statement of this educational institute is:

to cultivate men and women for others, with others.

Enhanced on this educational spirit, since April 1984, Sophia University has been closely working with Cambodia for the preservation and restoration of Angkor. In March 1989, the first Sophia Int’l mission started the survey on the Banteay Kdei temple. April 1991, the intensive lecture by the mission members began at the Royal Art University in Phnom Penh and lasted till 1997. In December 1993 the Royal Government of Cambodia requested the mission the Restoration Project of Angkor Wat. The Sophia Asia Center of Research and Human Development was established in the city of Siem Reap in 1996. Cambodian students started attending graduate school of Sophia in Tokyo. Together with those graduates from Royal Art Univ. in Phnom Penh, the scholars trained in Sophia are working to restore their own national heritage of Angkor. Not only scholars and engineers, Sophia mission gave 8-year-long training of stonemasons and workers, adopting their own traditional method of civil engineering so that Cambodians can restore their own Khmer pride with their own hands.

In August 2001, the historically important discovery happened. The mission members excavated 274 discarded Buddhist statures at Banteay Kdei. Receiving the news of discovery, Mr. Okada, the chairman of AEON Co., Ltd. came to Siem Reap to meet with the statures and said, ‘let’s build a museum to display these treasures of Cambodia.’ So the building was financed by his foundation and in November 2007, the Preah Norodom Sihanouk-Angkor Museum was duly opened.

Dr. Ishizawa’s passion to Angkor has never ceased as he tirelessly gave us his special lecture on Angkor Wat in Sapporo last Saturday. I have attached some video with this report. The lecture was in Japanese.