I created this piece with the desire to value the honest feelings you have on a dazzling morning, when you are half asleep and both the world and your emotions feel hazy. Without making a precise plan for the movement or doing any preliminary sketches, I listened to music and drew the animation and collages, choosing colors based on the impressions and rhythms of the sound.

This work is based on the “Kasuga Shrine Mandala” and the “Kasuga Shrine-Temple Mandala,” and depicts a “fusion of thought” spanning the past, present, and future. In the original “Kasuga Shrine-Temple Mandala,” the lower part of the painting depicts Kofuku-ji and, below the First Torii Gate, the richly natural Kasuga-no, with trees and fields. In this work, however, it replaces them with the Fujima Family Residence, the only remaining Shinto priest’s family house in Takabatake-cho today. This work was created in 2022 as part of a crowdfunding campaign held to support the preservation and restoration of the earthen walls and gate that convey the landscape of the time when the Fujima family served as the residence of Kasuga priests.