The profound emotion of Rina Nakano’s performance of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with the Osaka Philharmonic Orchestra at Kobe Kokusai Hall on July 22, 2026, is preserved through Sayaka Shoji’s performance and photographs of the Omuro cherry blossoms at Ninnaji, Byodoin in Uji, and the Kirishima azaleas at Nagaoka Tenmangu Shrine.

On July 22, 2026, at Kobe Kokusai Hall, I heard Rina Nakano perform Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with the Osaka Philharmonic Orchestra.
It was a truly magnificent and deeply moving performance.
The sound produced by Rina Nakano’s violin was powerful yet fresh, brilliant yet never confined to mere outward beauty.
The passion, sorrow, longing, and exultant joy of life contained in Tchaikovsky’s music were released into every corner of the hall.
I felt compelled to preserve the emotion of last night together with my own photographs.
Naturally, no recording exists of the performance I heard last night.
I therefore searched YouTube, hoping to find a performance by one of the brilliant Japanese violinists whom Japan can proudly present to the world.
Fortunately, I found a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto by Sayaka Shoji.
I could not have hoped for a greater stroke of fortune.
Sayaka Shoji belongs to the generation preceding the extraordinary group of violinists now emerging one after another from Japan, including Rina Nakano, Natsuho Murata, HIMARI, and Riisa Nakahara.
She is herself a violinist of exceptional genius whom Japan can proudly present to the world.
Her playing combines razor-sharp technique with profound spirituality, bringing the passion and lyricism within Tchaikovsky’s music vividly to life.
For the visual images, I used photographs of the Omuro cherry blossoms in full bloom at Ninnaji Temple, taken on April 10, 2022, together with photographs taken on April 20 at Byodoin Temple in Uji and of the Kirishima azaleas in full bloom at Nagaoka Tenmangu Shrine.
All of these photographs were originally taken and preserved in ARW format and were newly converted into JPEG files for this work.
The noble beauty of the Omuro cherry blossoms, symbolic of spring in Kyoto, the quiet light surrounding Byodoin, and the Kirishima azaleas blazing in full bloom.
I brought these scenes together with Tchaikovsky’s music as performed by Sayaka Shoji and composed them as a single work.
Through her performance and the beauty of the Japanese spring that I photographed, I preserve here the profound emotion that I received from Rina Nakano’s performance last night.
Although Kobe is only a little more than twenty minutes from Shin-Osaka by rapid train—almost the same travelling time as Kyoto—it does not give me the feeling of being in my own garden that I experience in Kyoto.
That is only natural, since I do not visit Kobe frequently.
Whenever I go there, despite the journey being only a little over twenty minutes, I am invariably overcome by the feeling that I am an étranger.
This is partly because Kobe is such a great metropolis and such an elegant and sophisticated city.
Even so, Japan has magnificent concert halls in cities and towns throughout the entire country, and in that respect it must surely be overwhelmingly the finest nation in the world.
This may also be one reason why classical musicians of extraordinary calibre continue to emerge without interruption.
Here is a truth to which I have repeatedly referred.
Throughout recorded history, Japan has been the country in which women have been cherished and treated with greater care than anywhere else in the world.
Upon that tradition arose Murasaki Shikibu, Sei Shonagon, and other remarkable women.
Today, outstanding Yamato nadeshiko continue to emerge at the highest level in every field and every part of society.
The United Nations committee on discrimination against women has been dominated by countries contaminated by Chinese and anti-Japanese propaganda, with women from those countries serving as its members.
Astonishingly, they have repeatedly issued outrageous statements against Japan, under the name of human-rights recommendations, claiming that it is a country in which women are discriminated against.
They must confront the actual conditions faced by women in their own countries.
Those who belong to the advanced nations of Europe and North America must humbly accept the findings of the Newsweek survey published some years ago.
Namely, the reported reality in their countries that around fifty per cent of adult women had experienced rape.
When I read that report, I thought, “This is what one gets with carnivorous peoples.”
The severity of male domination and the contemptuous treatment of women in China and on the Korean Peninsula is an evident fact.
When South Korean women golfers began to dominate the LPGA, I was the first person in the world to point out that this was the underlying reason.
As for the condition of women in the Islamic world, it is no exaggeration to say that it is almost beyond description.
Women from such countries have dominated and constituted United Nations human-rights committees and have attacked Japan at every opportunity.
This, too, is one reason why the turning of the table of civilization has come to a halt and why today’s profoundly dangerous and unstable world has emerged.
Rina Nakano’s performance in Kobe last night was an eloquent demonstration to the world of the cultural depth nurtured by Japan and of the extraordinary talent of Japanese women.