A 36-minute-and-30-second video work composed of 223 photographs taken at Nagai Botanical Garden on June 16, 2023, featuring hydrangeas, lotuses, and a grey heron. Set to Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, the work brings together the beauty of nature, the power of photography, and the genius of musical performance.

The Nagai Botanical Garden on June 16, 2023, was truly magnificent.
223 photographs.
This is a work that should be released with each photograph shown for more than eight seconds.
My preparation for the concerts up to June 26 has now been completed.
Just as I was thinking, “Now then,” this Nagai Botanical Garden came back to me—especially the hydrangeas, which were among the finest I have ever photographed.
On July 22, I will go to Kobe to hear Nakano Rina perform Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with the Osaka Philharmonic.
I thought there must have been a performance by Himari, but only the first movement from when she was nine years old appeared.
I wanted to use a Japanese performance.
Then I found Kato Tomoko, Inoue Michiyoshi, and the New Japan Philharmonic.
I had watched his interview on the Gensen Classic Channel and had been deeply moved.
To put it simply, genius recognizes genius; my “view from a height” had begun to function.
I had never heard his performance before.
Kato Tomoko was also completely new to me.
But if she was the soloist he had chosen, there was no way she could be an ordinary musician.
I decided to use this performance and began listening.
From the very first note, just as when I recently heard Okisawa Nodoka and the NHK Symphony Orchestra perform Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony, I recognized the genius of Inoue Michiyoshi.
June 16, 2023.
On that day as well, the grey heron greeted me above the lotus flowers.
There was something in the Nagai Botanical Garden that day that could not be captured by the word beautiful alone.
Although hydrangeas are flowers of the rainy season, they did not merely carry moisture; they held light within them.
Their colors did not sink.
Rather, they breathed deeply.
Blue, purple, white, pale crimson.
Each had its own expression, yet together they formed a single symphonic landscape.
The grey heron standing above the lotus flowers seemed like a being announcing the beginning of this work.
At times, nature reveals a moment that seems to have been arranged for human beings.
But whether that moment can be received as a work of art depends on the eye of the photographer.
These 223 photographs are not mere documentary records.
They are the spiritual form that Nagai Botanical Garden revealed only on that day.
Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto is placed upon that world.
This music is not made only of sweet melody.
It contains joy, solitude, passion, pride, and the very pulse of life itself.
Across 36 minutes and 30 seconds, the photographs and the performance elevate one another.
The photographs do not submit to the performance.
Nor does the performance submit to the photographs.
The photographs are genius.
The performance is genius.
Genius and genius resonate within the same time.
That is why this work contains something beyond an ordinary video work.
Nagai Botanical Garden on June 16, 2023.
Hydrangeas.
Lotuses.
A grey heron.
And Tchaikovsky.
When these four became one, I saw yet another decisive summit in the world of my own work.
Performance and video duration: 36 minutes and 30 seconds.
It is a splendid work.
Filmed on June 16, 2023.