2026/3/16
Guided by a cloudless blue sky, I changed my original plan to head for Osaka Castle’s peach grove and turned instead toward photographing the sky and skyline of Umeda.
In the light just before three in the afternoon, I encountered what may well be Hiroshi Hara’s greatest masterpiece, glowing in a magnificent pale blue unlike anything I had ever seen before.
Set to Haydn’s The Philosopher, this is a rare visual work in which an instant decision captured the sky, the city, and the miraculous color of architecture.

The moment I looked up at the cloudless blue sky, the plan for that day changed.
It was the light itself, just before three in the afternoon, that told me—though I had intended to head for Osaka Castle’s peach grove—that what I should photograph on this day was the sky over Umeda and its buildings.
This work is a record of Umeda and the afternoon light, photographed in the midst of that instant decision.
It is one of Hiroshi Hara’s masterpieces, and the only building in Japan to have been introduced by the British newspaper The Times as one of “the twenty representative buildings of the world.”
That is why this building is always visited by large numbers of tourists from overseas.
It would not be an exaggeration to call it his greatest masterpiece, and the fact that I deeply love this architecture is abundantly clear throughout my body of work.
On this day, the structure on the ground was shining in a marvelous color I had never seen before.
This is a precious piece in which a split-second decision led me to a magnificent pale blue.

I am not a person who has made a living through speech or writing.
Nor have I ever once made my living that way.
As has already been written, I have lived my life as a businessman, and the achievements and course by which I have served the nation of Japan are as previously stated.
Since July 2010, I have continued to write The Turntable of Civilization without compensation.
Online, I am a writer and philosopher without equal anywhere in the world.

Today, the weather was as clear and beautiful as it could possibly be.
In other words, it was a perfect day for photography.
I could not move in the morning, because there was the WBC semifinal between the Dominican Republic and the United States.
Even in the afternoon, it had already become just before three o’clock.

Today, for the first time in a while, I had intended to head to Osaka Castle’s peach grove to photograph it, but the instant I stepped outside and looked up at the sky, I changed my plan because of the sheer magnificence of that blue sky.
This is what I want to photograph, I thought.
Near as it may be, it felt already too late to head for Osaka Castle Park.
So I abruptly changed my plan and decided to photograph the Umeda skyline and sky in the light pouring in from west to east.
If I stayed in Umeda, I could return home in time to watch Grand Sumo as well.
I decided at once.