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Соняшникові поля Донеччини
Sunflower fields of Donetsk

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Summary

Original Title	Соняшникові поля Донеччини
Composer	Masakazu Shiokawa
Year of Composition	March 2026
Instrumentation	Piano solo
Duration	approx. 5 minutes
Sheet Music Publisher	LesClefsOffice co.,Ltd.
Copyright Management	LesClefsOffice co.,Ltd.

Work Description

This piece is a new addition to my collection Sketches of Seasons and Scenes, a set of short works written under the theme of “atmospheric pieces suitable for pianists with smaller hands who cannot comfortably reach octave intervals.”

As of March 2026, when this work was completed, the war between Ukraine and Russia that began in February 2022 shows no sign of ending and has become increasingly protracted. While the Russian forces initially advanced as the invading side, the years that followed have seen increasingly effective counterattacks by Ukrainian forces, resulting in an enormous loss of human life. Against the backdrop of this ongoing tragedy, this piece focuses on the imagined story of a single soldier.

The duration is just under five minutes. Throughout the piece, a low ostinato in the left hand underpins a wavering melodic line on the right. From the middle section onward, tension gradually increases using chromatic motion and the tritone—the so-called “devil’s interval.” In the later section, the main theme gains weight through chordal writing, raising the technical demands somewhat; however, toward the conclusion the theme returns in a single melodic line, passing by and fading away like scenes in a lantern of memories. At the very end, the piece quotes the national anthem of the former superpower, the Soviet Union, bringing the music to a close in an atmosphere of despair.

As an epigraph, I quote words reportedly spoken by a Ukrainian woman to Russian soldiers who had advanced into Kherson Oblast in the early days of the war:

“Take these seeds and put them in your pockets, so that at least sunflowers will grow when you lie down here.”

This remark attracted widespread attention in the media as a symbol of the stark difference in perception between Russian soldiers—some of whom believed they were carrying out a military operation to liberate Ukrainian civilians from oppression—and the Ukrainian civilians themselves.

We do not know what became of the soldier who might have taken those seeds. Today, however, along the front lines in places such as Donetsk Oblast—now among the fiercest battlegrounds—more than thirty thousand people are killed or wounded each month. It is not impossible that, as the woman’s words suggested, plants may one day grow from the soil where fallen soldiers have returned to the earth.

Even if those flowers are sunflowers, whose symbolic meaning is love, how should we look upon them?

Background Story of the Work

On the bleak plains of Donetsk, where the air of death hangs heavily over the front lines, a young Russian soldier hides among tall plants swaying in the wind. He had heard that soldiers who completed their service could receive a substantial reward, and with that promise—and a faint hope for the future—he had thrown himself into the war.

He had traveled far west from the rural hometown he had never once left before. His mission was simple: advance and destroy the enemy. Each time he pulled the trigger, he reassured himself that he was not fighting merely for money—that at the very least, this was an operation meant to help oppressed compatriots. In this way he pushed aside the guilt that rose within him.

His grandfather had often told him heroic stories from the Soviet era, and he had assumed that the Russian army—the rightful successor to that legacy—would naturally overwhelm its enemies.

But the battlefield proved far more hellish than he had imagined. The information reaching his unit was so confused that he could scarcely tell whether the enemy they faced were human beings or machines.

Following orders, he advanced toward a designated point, narrowly avoiding a storm of mortar fire. A fellow soldier who had been moving alongside him had been blown apart by a landmine only hours earlier—despite the fact that no one had warned them that mines were present.

Fear and adrenaline blurred his emotions. He steadied his breathing and cautiously peered out from the bushes. The only sounds were his own breath, the pounding of his heart, and the wind rushing through the trees. Along the horizon in the direction of his objective, an eerie silence seemed to reign.

He stepped out from the brush and approached what appeared to be the ruins of a building. Just as he tried to enter, an unpleasant buzzing sound suddenly rang out behind his head. The moment he turned—

something exploded.

His body was thrown through the air. Dust rose all around him. His vision spun wildly in every direction, yet strangely he felt no pain.

In an instant, his entire life flashed before him: the poor but lively home where he had grown up in a large family, the nights spent wandering the streets with friends and a bottle of vodka, the many words of apology he had never spoken to the girlfriend he had left behind after a quarrel.

His life had been ordinary, but perhaps not so bad after all. Only now did the thought strike him—why had it come to this?

Just before his consciousness faded, a field of sunflowers came into view. The soil here was said to be fertile, rich with agriculture. Would his own body one day become part of that soil, nourishing flowers like those sunflowers blooming so brightly?

His corpse would lie beside the rubble of what had once been a ruined building. The chance of his ever returning home was none at all.

Beyond the shattered stones, the ghost of the Soviet past seemed to stand silently, gazing at the fallen soldier.

—The Last Moments of a Soldier

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