📍Matsumoto, Nagano, Japan
1929 – 1957“I was born in 1929 in Matsumoto, a castle town ringed by the mountains of Nagano, the youngest child of a family that ran a plant nursery and seed business. I grew up among fields of flowers, seedlings and tendrils, and they never left my work. From about the age of ten I began to see things others did not: flashes of light, fields of dots spreading over walls, ceilings and my own body, flowers that spoke to me, patterns that multiplied until they swallowed the room. Drawing them was the only way I could face them, and I filled sheets with watercolours, pastels and oils of dots and nets. Home was not a gentle place: my mother was harsh and did not want me to be an artist, and my father was rarely faithful. In 1957 I left for New York. I came back to Japan in 1973, and from 1977 I chose to live in a hospital in Tokyo, walking each day to my studio nearby to paint, almost to the very end. Matsumoto's city art museum holds a large collection of my work, and my own museum in Tokyo carries it on.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today