Hikari no Wa (Wheel of Light)

Clouds linger
The bracken sprouts
Cherry blossoms bloom
And the flowers scatter

Life spirals, unravels
Wish upon a star with a prayer
The heart, quiet, is sparkling

Smell the autumn breeze, a golden yellow
The beauty of the season is still changing

Clinging to the cold, proof of life
Snowfall on snow
The plum of hope blooms

Pine is eternal
I wander around with my prayers

Wheel of light
Going around and around
We will meet again

Autumn 2016
Karakami Artist Toto Akihiko

Time passing, even though my eyes are closed to the dazzling light

Life is short, however
The aspirations that people have succeeded in fulfilling
Last forever in time as people’s memories

Karakami; it communes with the blue of the sky.
Blue of the morning, blue in the daytime, another blue at night. 
Toto Blue shows us all of the expressions of blue
This work delves into the transition of time as a wheel of light.

Eight years have passed since I began representing karakami in the world of art.

I had a dream to display karakami at the Musee de l’Orangerie someday in an arrangement like Claude Monet’s “Water Lilies.” I would love to present the world of karakami on a vast, curved wall.
I received an opportunity to talk about displaying karakami as art on a 34-meter-long cylinder. Such an ambitious artwork, exceeding even my largest piece, the 17-meter-long work unveiled at the Mitsuo Aida Museum of Art at the Tokyo International Forum in 2014, is also a record-breaking feat for karakami. It is completely unprecedented.