March 12, 2026
◎Osaka Castle Plum Grove 2026 | Japanese White-Eyes, Plum Blossoms, and the Clearest Air of the Year
My first visit of the year to Osaka Castle and its plum grove was on February 19.
The air was astonishingly crisp, and from the very first frame, the cut of the shutter was unmistakably sharper.
The air was so crisp that the first cut of the shutter was the sharpest.
The original concept of this work was to pair the photographs taken on March 22 with Haydn: String Quartet No. 82 in G major, Op. 77-1 (Lobkowitz Quartets), performed at Natsuho Murata’s invitational recital in Rome.
However, because the piece lasts about 24 minutes, I did not have enough photographs to sustain that original concept.
When I looked back over this year’s Osaka Castle and plum grove photographs, I realized that February 19 was the only day on which I encountered Japanese white-eyes among the plum blossoms.
Moreover, the photographs from that day captured the clearest air and the finest sharpness of all my Osaka Castle Plum Grove photographs this year.
Including the cropped images that fully draw on the power of the SONY α1, I believe this became my most memorable record of Osaka Castle Plum Grove this year.
For production reasons, those photographs were placed at the end of the work.
Please stay with it until the final frame.
This work is not only a visual record of plum blossoms, Japanese white-eyes, and Osaka Castle.
It is also a work through which I hope viewers may sense how differences in the clarity of the air reveal themselves in every corner of a photograph.
Music
Haydn: String Quartet No. 82 in G major, Op. 77-1
(Lobkowitz Quartets)
Camera
SONY α1