When the paper starts to look like a cosmos, courage conjures up and makes me feel like
plunging into anywhere. People gone-by called this first three dimension ‘spirit of gold and
stone’, and warned that the flat, two-dimensional surface was the weak spirit. In old days,
people who failed to inscribe the epigraphs in the stone seemed to have their heads cut off.
Now, it won’t happen even if we fail in writing on the paper. However, be aware! The brush
made of animal hair would reveal its performer’s state of mind.

Used the clay from Shigaraki region, southern part of Shiga-prefecture, Japan, and hand-
twist skill only, just as to make a sculpture, without using a wheel. Glazing comes from natural
resin of red pine trees and no artificial material is added, aiming at those colours and textures
appreciated at Muromachi- and Momoyama-periods, called ‘sabi’, non-glossy and rather
understated.  I strongly believe that pottery is also a living creature, just like those of Chinese
neo-stone age.

Expressed is not what I saw, but what I understood through my elevated feelings.

Once shocked at the sight of a shawl in the exhibition of Nashoba tribe of American Indians.
Realized there was forgotten simplicity, naivety and strength in it, I have been trying hard to
depict it by myself, imagining myself walking in the air freely.

This idea came to me while studying etching. Process is to draw with a hard pointed stick on the
thin bronze plate and then soak it in the sulphate liquid. With a lot of patch work, differentiating
penetration, which changes colours second-by-second, otherwise it all turns black in the end.
This type of work suits me, who values unpredictability.

I was inspired at the sight of the rough, gross Washi paper a friend of mine was making. Drawing
with wax heated at 60 degree centigrade, it permeates rapidly and even the tip of the brush gets
bent with the heated wax. Then, ‘Here comes, an interesting, unplanned result.’

Historically, there has not many remained. We have to go back to the ancient time. In a small
squeezed square world, how freely you can release yourself? It’s a battle of yourself.

In a small hard stone surface, engrave millimetre-by-millimetre. Then gradually the tiny stone will
change into a cosmos; a boundless universe. Strangely, you now feel that you can do anything in it.

Shimizu Yoshimitsu
(Translated into English by Shizue Sunaga, in London.)