Two days after March 11, 2011, while photographing Kobori Enshū’s garden at Nijō Castle in Kyoto, an unexpected and unexplained figure appeared in a photograph—transparent yet clearly outlined—raising profound questions about memory, place, and the unseen in the aftermath of catastrophe.

I had often visited Nijō Castle to photograph it during the previous year.
It was the period in my Kyoto photography history when I visited Nijō Castle most frequently.

On that day in particular, I was photographing Kobori Enshū’s garden.
While shooting, I noticed something and thought, “Huh—over there, in the shadow of those rocks, there’s a duck or maybe a heron, standing with its back toward me. I’ve never seen anything like that before…” and I pressed the shutter.

After returning home and importing the images to my PC, I thought, “That’s strange—the duck or heron that was supposed to be here isn’t there.”
And then I noticed that beside that spot, there was something shaped like a monk—something that can only be described as a spirit.
It was transparent, yet its outline was clearly visible in the photograph.

March 13, 2011, was two days after March 11, 2011.