July 8, 2025.
I awoke far earlier than I had planned.
Outside, it was still dark.
It was so early that I could not get a taxi to come.
With little choice, I set out on foot toward a park known as a good place for photography.
The black cat I had encountered the night before appeared in the same place.
Seeing it again, away from home, brought an unexpected sense of familiarity to the darkness of the morning.
As I walked along the lakeshore, two swans were following me.
Near the shore, someone was fishing from a boat, a line cast into the water.
It was a lovely scene.
Had I woken at the appointed hour and taken a taxi, I might have passed by all these moments along the way.
Then a cormorant appeared.
I began taking photographs as though possessed.
To my astonishment, it was struggling to swallow, in a single gulp, a black bass nearly as large as itself.
I could not take my eyes off what was happening before me.
Its posture changed from one instant to the next.
I had no idea what the following moment would bring.
I simply kept releasing the shutter, trying to preserve that struggle in photographs.
And directly ahead stood Mount Fuji in the early morning.
An encounter with the black cat once again.
Two swans following me.
A person fishing near the shore.
A cormorant wrestling with an enormous fish.
Mount Fuji was there, sharing the same morning with them all.
I named this morning “The Miracle of Lake Kawaguchiko.”
A departure that did not go according to plan had led me to scenes I could never have anticipated.
Looking back at the photographs, the early awakening, the taxi that would not come, and the lakeside path I ended up walking now seem like the events that brought me to this morning.
Beauty exists in the moment.
And sometimes, simply being there to witness that moment is itself a miracle.
Tonight, after drifting into sleep while listening to music on YouTube, I awoke to Ravel’s Boléro, performed by the NHK Symphony Orchestra under Junichi Hirokami.
Released as part of the Orchard Series, it was a performance that had appeared on my large-screen television several times before.
How magnificent it was.
I was struck by the realization that this was a work in which Ravel’s genius had brought the very essence of orchestration to its fullest expression.
As the recurring melody passes from one instrument to another, it takes on a new expression.
Sounds gather, and the landscape of the music changes.
I brought this performance together with my photographs from that morning.
The time I had preserved, image by image, at Lake Kawaguchiko began to move again with Boléro.
One morning, an unplanned awakening led me to a miraculous lakeshore.
And tonight, awakening within music brought me back to that morning once more.
I want to share these scenes with people around the world.
Lake Kawaguchiko, early in the morning of July 8, 2025.
A morning that will never return, when I was there, taking photographs with all my attention.
Photography, film production, and text: MIKIO KISARA
Photographed at Lake Kawaguchiko, Japan, early in the morning of July 8, 2025
Music: Maurice Ravel, Boléro
Conductor: Junichi Hirokami
Orchestra: NHK Symphony Orchestra
Audio source: The above performance, available on YouTube as part of the Orchard Series