Born in 1935 in Tokyo, Koji Kamoji is an artist who, after studying at Tokyo’s Musashino Academy of Fine Arts, came to Poland, where he studied at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. Permanently linked to Warsaw and the Foksal Gallery for years, he has consistently combined Japanese aesthetic sensitivity with his experience of Western avant-garde. The Koji Kamoji Retrospective, ‘Silence and the Will to Live’, prepared by Zachęta – the National Art Gallery – in 2018, then displayed at the Manggha Museum, is an homage to an artist who has actively worked on the Polish art scene for 60 years. At the same time, the exhibition suits the program for the 100th anniversary of the start of diplomatic relations between Poland and Japan, becoming a significant event of these celebrations because the life and art of Koji Kamoji co-creates the history of Polish-Japanese relations.