I moved to France, drawn by a deep admiration for the paintings of Maurice Utrillo.

I enrolled at the Académie Julian in Paris, a historic atelier that nurtured artists such as Henri Matisse and played a formative role in the emergence of the Nabis movement.

By walking the streets of Paris and engaging directly with its architecture, light, and history, I came to understand art through lived experience rather than through images or theory alone.

Through sustained contact with diverse races, cultures, and languages, my perspective broadened profoundly. Immersion in such diversity ultimately led me to a renewed awareness of the depth, refinement, and spiritual foundation of traditional Japanese culture.

My training focused rigorously on the human figure. Using charcoal, pencil, and fragments of wood, I studied how to express light and shadow, anatomical curves, and the subtle distortions and gravity-induced sagging of forms that are not immediately visible.

From fundamental principles, I trained to understand the human body as an integrated structural and expressive system.

Encountering the drawings of Michelangelo was a decisive moment, revealing drawing itself as a form of thought and the core of artistic creation.