Remembering Junichi Miura, the Artist Behind a Beloved SUA Tradition

April 21, 2026

• Campus News

From left to right: Nobuko Miura, mother of the late Junichi Miura; Yumiko Miura, his daughter, holding his children's book "My Big Brother"; Junichi Miura; and Toshie Miura, his wife. (Drawing by Sakura Arai '26)

The Soka community mourns the passing of Junichi Miura - an accomplished painter, children's book author, and dedicated supporter of the university - who died on March 9 in Ueda, Nagano Prefecture, Japan.

Since 2011, Miura has sent the SUA community a gift every spring: a new painting celebrating that year's graduating class. His detailed works depict SUA from sweeping aerial perspectives, weaving together students, banners and balloons, and the surrounding Aliso and Wood Canyons Wilderness Park into memorable scenes filled with the joy and possibility of commencement.

These works found a lasting home in the second-floor lobby of the Daisaku and Kaneko Ikeda Library, where they are displayed alongside photographs of each graduating class of graduate and undergraduate students. Supported by the generosity of SUA donor Kenichi Maeda, Miura's paintings were also reproduced as postcards and shared with graduates, their families, and students across the Soka school system. Over time, these postcards became cherished keepsakes, carried by alumni as reminders of their time at SUA and the hopes with which they set out into the world.

Junichi Miura's painting for the Class of 2025.

Born in Yokohama in 1952, Miura was an accomplished painter and picture book author whose work appeared in museums and galleries throughout Japan. From a young age, he loved the mountains and immersed himself in skiing and mountaineering, eventually building a life in the mountains of Nagano Prefecture with his family. Together with his wife, Toshie, he served as caretaker of the Soka University Sugadaira Seminar House in Nagano Prefecture, where they supported student athletes during training camps by preparing meals and maintaining the facilities. For 18 years, the Miuras created a home away from home for the students, who referred to them affectionately as "Mama" and "Papa."

Underlying Miura's paintings of SUA was a deeply personal story. In 1998, his 11-year-old son died after a bicycle accident. Years later, Miura wrote and illustrated "My Big Brother," a children's book inspired by his son that is imbued with the unyielding power of hope.

Junichi Miura's children's book "My Big Brother" and his painting for the Class of 2018. A two-page spread from My Big Brother, written and illustrated by Junichi Miura.

The tragedy of losing his son became a turning point in Miura's life as an artist. Refusing to be defeated by grief, he poured himself into painting, transforming sorrow into vibrant scenes of memory, beauty, and hope. His first solo exhibition followed soon after, in Hakodate in 1999, and his work would later be shown at prominent museums and galleries across Japan. In 2023, he held a two-person exhibition, "Junichi Miura & Fujio Mohri," at the Soei Gallery in Ginza, in recognition of the artistic path he had forged through years of creative perseverance.

After donating the Japanese and English editions of his picture book to SUA's Ikeda Library in 2015, Miura said he felt as if his son had traveled to SUA as well. In a sense, each of Miura's paintings for SUA's graduating classes - young people filled with promise on the threshold of their lives - is a testament to those he saw as companions to the son he lost.

At the time of his passing, Miura had already begun work on this year's commencement painting, which he had planned to deliver in person this May. Although he will not be able to attend commencement this year, his paintings will remain, hung in Ikeda Library and carried on postcards by alumni around the world. His work will continue to resonate in the Soka community, reflecting the heart of an artist and father who transformed grief into generosity, and who found in each new class of SUA students a reason to keep painting - a reason to choose hope.

A painting by Junichi Miura honoring the Class of 2018.