ABSTRACT
43When I was little, I liked to paint pictures. I went to school in a place called Yamanote in Yokohama. It was a town where only foreigners lived, and in my school there were only foreign teachers. On the way to and from school, I used to walk down a street by the sea that was lined with hotels and Western companies. If I stood at the shore, I could see many warships and merchant boats lined up on the deep blue sea. Smoke billowed from the smokestacks, and flags draped between the masts. It was so beautiful it almost made my eyes hurt. I often stood on the bank to admire this view, and when I returned home, I tried to paint what I saw as faithfully as I could, but with the paints that I had, as hard as I tried, I couldn't seem to capture the seemingly transparent blue of the sea and the crimson painted near the waterline of the white sailing ships. No matter how many times I painted it, I couldn't match the colors of the actual scene.
