The Artist’s Background

EDUCATION

I grew up in Kyoto, in an area with many Kiyomizu ware porcelain kilns. In my childhood, this was a place where one workshop jostled up to the next and the roads were littered with pottery shards from the kilns. My family had been ceramic artisans for generations, and so were my father and uncles, who had their own kilns.

Despite growing up in such pottery-centered surroundings, my earliest interests were not for products of clay but rather of the brush – I remember being fascinated, even as a child, with both painting and calligraphy.  As for painting, I became, at an early age, a pupil of Akamatsu Ryō (1933-1996), who a leading Kyoto Nihonga (Japanese style painting) masters of the post-war years. Then at a later time, I continued my Nihonga studies at the Kyoto Art College.

As for calligraphy, I studied, again starting at an early age, for more than twenty years under Fukada Hōsen, a member of the close circle of disciples around Hibino Gohō (1901 – 1975). Gohō was one of the leading Japanese calligraphic artists of the twentieth century, who also actively promoted the reevaluation of traditional Japanese-style kana calligraphy. His great interest in life was the kana calligraphy of the Heian period the practice and study of which he felt had been greatly neglected in the late Edo and Meiji periods. His love for kana calligraphy and his interpretation of traditional styles became the foundation for his teachings and for the calligraphy movement that he founded.

ACTIVITY

I hope, in a humble way, to be carrying his teaching as I attempt to formulate my own interpretations of the styles that have been passed down to me.  I also became a calligraphy teacher and have taught in Japan, the United States, and Europe and have exhibited in a number of shows, including the Kyoto Municipal Museum, Princeton University Graduate College, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the Community Art Fair in Chicago, as well as in numerous exhibitions in Switzerland. Presently I teach calligraphy and brush painting privately in Zürich and Uster while creating and exhibiting works of art.

PHILOSOPHY

While living in the USA, I started reevaluating my work and worked to combine both parts of my education: the Nihonga painting background and the calligraphy tradition of which I am a part. An early example of this combination of word and images was the Ryôkan exhibition at the Princeton University during 1998, where I expressed the poems of Zen monk using both images and calligraphy. Since then, I have continually worked on various ways of combining writing with painting, and idea that I have also introduced to my university classes. Recently I started working with musicians such as the mezzo soprano Sonoe Kato and the concert pianist Satoko Kato, with the former, we created a musical and artistic performance, and with the latter I started a cycle of paintings to match musical performances, for example, I have started on a series of works for Schubert’s Schwanengesang lieder, created to match a performance of the lieder cycle.

I have also been interested in the connection between space and art and have made works of art in response at various occasions and spaces, for example, decorating the sanctuary of a church in Chicago to celebrate Pentacost, or exhibiting in the halls and moss garden of a Zen Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan. I look forward to future adventures as I work in my art and hope to have you explore new ideas and directions with me.

CV (ENGLISH)

CV (日本語)