A rare day when full-bloom cherry blossoms and clear skies finally coincided in Kyoto.
This essay reflects on photography, the decision to share images through PIXTA, and the unforgettable moment when Omuro-zakura at Ninnaji marked the closing of Kyoto’s cherry blossom season.

May 15, 2016

About my photography.

As I have written before, a friend once said to me, “I will make a photo gallery for you,” and for that reason I asked that my photographs not be posted on the internet.
However, one day I read an article about a photo sales website called PIXTA.

It said that many companies and individuals make extensive use of it for brochures and other materials, particularly corporations such as travel agencies.

I sometimes tell the people around me, face to face, “When it comes to photographing Kyoto, I am the best photographer in the world,” and I say it half in jest.
Not only because I live my life immersed in birds, flowers, wind, and moon with the same gaze as the great painters of all ages, but above all because there is no one who has photographed Kyoto through all four seasons more than I have.

For example, my visit to the garden of Tenryū-ji the day before yesterday must have been my fiftieth time already this year alone.
Recently, it has become customary for me to joke with the woman at the reception desk, saying, “You should tell the head priest to issue me an annual pass” (laughs).
At this point in early May, there simply cannot be another photographer in the world who has photographed the garden of Tenryū-ji that many times.
At the same time, I joke by saying that I am the one who has made Kyoto number one in the world.

Because of this, I now possess, even to my own surprise, tens of thousands of photographs that I consider magnificent.
I have long believed that keeping them stored only on my PC would be a loss for the world.
For people around the globe to use them freely—that is my true wish as a photographer.

Now then, yesterday, three of my photographs went on sale on PIXTA.

Please feel free to use them for a wide variety of purposes.

This year’s cherry blossom season in Kyoto was such that the period of full bloom never coincided with a day of clear skies, making me think that perhaps spring truly is a season of hazy clouds.
However, on the day when Ninnaji’s Omuro-zakura—bringing Kyoto’s cherry blossom season to its grand finale—reached full bloom, a perfectly clear day finally arrived.
It goes without saying that I rushed straight from JR Shin-Osaka to JR Kyoto, then to JR Enmachi, and from there by JR bus to Ninnaji.

These are the three photographs from that day.

https://pixta.jp/photo/21718884
https://pixta.jp/photo/21718393
https://pixta.jp/photo/21718887

I would be happy if the people of Yuriage could come to know my daily life and my life’s journey through these images.

When purchasing, it seems you can make use of the following benefit.

https://pixta.jp/user-invites/699886

I would be delighted if people around the world would make use of the photographs of “the modern-day Katsushika Hokusai.”