Gaston Petit-the Kimono and the Cross: Interview with an Artist in Japan

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University and an avid outdoor recreationist. She is the
author of several books, including The Mountain Is Moving: Japanese
Women’s Lives, Kurlek and Margaret Laurence: T

This unusual book is a lively, well-researched
autobiography-cum-biography couched in interview form. Interviewer Linda
Ghan grew up in a small town in the Canadian west and was drawn to
literary journalism. She currently heads a Canadian studies program at
Ibaraki University and writes for Japanese newspapers.

Gaston Petit, her chosen subject, is a widely traveled Dominican priest
who spent his early life in Shawinigan and Trois-Riviиres. He settled
in Japan in 1966 and now divides his time between Tokyo and the North
Shore of the St. Lawrence River. His chosen media and techniques are
equally flexible. Petit not only paints but also produces stained-glass
works, silkscreen art, woodblock prints, sculptures, and murals.
Whatever the medium, Petit strives to combine the traditions of East and
West.

Ghan is an experienced interviewer, skilled at drawing her subject into
reflection and reminiscence. Her personal knowledge of a Canada where
unemployment, political unrest, and soup kitchens were well known
overlapped sufficiently with Petit’s memories to put the two on the
same wavelength. Between them, they reminiscence about Old Quebec before
the 1960s, and the challenges of exploring postwar Japan in the days
when foreigners were known as “gaijin.”

Numerous small black-and-white photographs, along with 16 in full
color, illustrate Petit’s art in all its forms. Ghan catches Petit’s
curiosity and love of beauty very well.