“As a child in Japan, I used to go to a temple and write out a wish on a piece of thin paper and tie it around the branch of a tree. Trees in temple courtyards were always filled with people’s wish knots, which looked like white flowers blossoming from afar.”
Yoko Ono: ‘All My Works Are A Form Of Wishing’
Yoko continues to collect all the wishes from her Wish Trees from all over the world – currently totaling over a million. They are preserved and their messages continue on in the Wishing Well of IMAGINE PEACE TOWER – to send their power out the world and to the Universe.
YO: I don’t remember exactly when. It’s after 1981, after John, my husband’s passing. [NB – It was Shoshana/Wayne Gallery, Santa Monica in April 1996].
Q: Every city could have a “Wish Tree!”
YO: When they did it in Finland [1999, photo above] they said one tree was not enough. Because the wish was becoming much larger than one tree. They added so many trees it became like a mini-forest. You suddenly see very strong emotions of people coming out. It is fantastic.
Interview with Yoko Ono
November 2001
“I have saved all the wishes people made and hung on my work, called ‘Wish Tree’ in many different countries. The number of those wishes I collected and kept has now reached over a million. They are preserved and their messages continue on in the Wishing Well of IMAGINE PEACE TOWER – to send their power out the world and to the Universe. I hope IMAGINE PEACE TOWER will give light to the strong wishes of World Peace from all corners of the planet and give encouragement, inspiration and a sense of solidarity in a world now filled with fear and confusion. Let us come together to realize a peaceful world. I consider myself very fortunate to see the dream my husband and I dreamed together become reality.”
Yoko Ono, 2007
