About the artwork

I had a strange feeling when I stood in a terraced paddy field in Echigo-Tsumari Gejyo for the first time. Moved by the rice field terraces, something that had been closed up in the recesses of my mind bubbled up to the surface. There is a poem which Saigyo is said to have recited before the Ise Shrine about tears inexplicably flowing from the deep gratitude that overcame him there. I felt exactly the same. There is something in that terrace paddy field. The first thing I did was to try to draw out from that rice paddy what that something that I felt was. It was like drawing on the memories that lived in my five senses — of a shape I had encountered somewhere in my past, of something that I somehow remember having touched once, some plant that I remember smelling. . . I would put BONKEI an archetype landscape of that pleasant terraced paddy field scene in the midst of the real scene. After a certain period of time, BONKEI would go back to the quiet scene of the terraced rice field, like the quietness after a festival. I hope that it will remain in the memories of people who saw it.