　Since 1978, I have been creating ceramic art by pressing live flowering plants into
soft clay to leave a pattern, baking the clay, painting the impressions, and then baking
the clay again. At first I did this with the leaves of trees merely to amuse myself with
the designs they left behind, but I gradually became captivated by the shapes of
different kinds of leaves and the beauty of their vein patterns and decided to make
ceramics this way in earnest.

On day I was tackling a very large piece of work using many vines. It was my second
day of pressing the leaves into the clay. As I was removing the leaves from the clay
with tweezers one at a time to check on their imprints, I accidentally brushed a section
of perfect impressions with my sleeve. Because the piece used 72 leaves and I had
almost finished removing them all, the trash can was filled with leaves I had already
stripped off. It took me a full day to repair the damage by taking each leaf from the
garbage and pressing it back into its original spot.
Through this experience I discovered that, though at first glance all leaves on the same
vine look alike, no two leaves are identical and each leaf is perfect in its own right.

Later I had the chance to meet the head priest of the Daitoku-ji Tenple who quoted a
Buddhist saying to me: Somoku kokudo shikkai jobutsu(Buddha dwells in all living
thing on the earth). My work changed from this point onwards. A leaf was no longer a
mere leaf to me; it had become a vital entity. The roots of plant were now the same as
the mouth of animal, its leaves the hand and feet, its stem a torso, and its flowers the
reproductive organs. When I saw it this way, I felt an obligation to express every part
of the plant from its hair-fine roots to the veins at the tips of its leaves.
Now, the goal of my work is to create art that conveys this awareness of Buddha's
existence in all things.