An instinctive gaze that defies perspective: Shunji Dodo looks at Japan from the Sea of Japan. Turn the map of Japan upside down and look from the continental side, and the Sea of Japan seems a big lake; its coast was once the front door through which continental culture entered. Born in 1947, Dodo, a bundle of curiosity, shouldered a large-format 8 x 10 camera and travelled through the climates and landscapes bound up with human life, setting up his tripod with the camera in the middle, facing his subjects. A weeping cherry in Hagi, terraced rice fields overlooking the sea on Sado, a snowstorm on Rishiri Island: in each place people live with deep roots, and happy encounters with children are added along the way. The monochrome photographs of the coast, showing the dignified figures of those for whom the land is home and the memory of its climate, form a record of the sources of Japanese culture. In his contributed essay Tetsuo Yamaori sees in Dodo's eye an instinctive gaze that resists the perspective found by the painters of the Renaissance, as Hokusai once did, standing between Hokusai and Buson.